thankful.

even though i was about a month behind on my halloween post, i'm already prepared to share a thanksgiving post with you. keeping you on your toes, i guess.

austin and i started thursday by doing our usual thing of taking pictures for our christmas cards. i'm hoping by this point you've noticed the blog {and even my facebook} got a nice little update and i used some of the pictures we took for our card. but we actually got quite a few good ones, at least i think so.

and then, of course, we brought out the guns. literally. cause that's what people do on thanksgiving, right? actually this was the first time i ever shot a gun. and turns out i'm a pretty good shot. #scary

after photoshooting and gun shooting, we got to the main part of thanksgiving: the food. we had the usual thanksgiving menu items. and after a slight miscalculation on turkey frying time, i was thankful for my tofurkey as everyone else got to debate the edible-ness of the bird. this year i really stepped it up with my contribution to the meal by bringing tofurkey, macaroni and cheese, homemade bread, and french silk chocolate pie. and if i may so so myself, my food was delicious. but i might be a bit biased.

but since austin was really craving some turkey we decided to have a little thanksgiving do-over on our own. i was pumped to be able to set our table with the cute wooden turkeys we made this year.

and i even made us little place cards with pumpkins. austin made fun of me. jerk.

and even though i said it was a "little" do-over, we still had tons of food. turkey {for him}, potatoes, gravy, green beans, stuffing, mac and cheese, and bread. too much food, actually.

so anyway. i hope you all had a fabulous thanksgiving with your families/friends/whomever. i'm thankful for all of you. :) also, i missed my family very much and i can't wait to see you all for christmas!

a peck of pickled peppers.

who even knows how much a peck is? i don't. but i feel like it's a lot. and more importantly i think we have a peck of pickles and peppers and beets canned fresh from our garden.

and while i can be proud that austin and i have a {relatively} successful garden and we can turn it in to good food for ourselves, it's really too bad that i won't eat any of it. because the thought of pickles makes me want to throw up. although i will use the jalapenos and other peppers in cooking {but i won't actually eat them, just the flavor of them...}

but one thing we've made recently from our garden veggies that i will actually eat is this:

homemade tomato sauce! yum! we decided just to freeze it in freezer bags since it really won't be that long before we'll want to use it. and in each bag we only put the amount we would use for one meal, so we can just heat up what's in the bag and the rest can stay stored in the freezer until next time. i can't wait to have some pasta with homemade sauce. i hope it's delicious.


so that's about all i have to share today. we have literally been doing nothing over the past few days other than attempting to stay cool and hydrated. please let these 107 degree temperatures back off a bit, because i'm getting summertime cabin fever. but i can't really complain too much especially when i know my family back home is in the same heat without any power. that means no air conditioning, people! hopefully the wonderful power people will have them back on the grid sooner rather than later...


oh. and look at my pretty puppy. she's been a little absent lately, so i just want to share her cute face with all of you.

two whole years.

it's been two years since austin and i said our vows to each other. and although our anniversary this year landed on a tuesday, which meant austin had to work, we were still able to celebrate.

austin had flowers delivered to me at the house. aren't they pretty? he was even thoughtful enough to get stargazer lilies added to the bouquet since i had those flowers in my wedding bouquet. he's a keeper, for real, y'all.

after austin got home from work, we headed out to dinner at 212 market downtown. it was delicious and i even tried some new things! for starters i had the herbed goat cheese crostini and austin had the fried georgia quail breast. for our meal i ordered the housemade spinach and walnut ravioli and austin had the wild caught shrimp and falls mill stoneground grits. and i accidentally ate a bunch of green onions. i thought they were green beans. true story.

for dessert and in order to incorporate cotton {the traditional second anniversary gift} i had made some cotton candy cupcakes at home. i even made them pink and green as a nod to our wedding colors. aren't they pretty?

i think they look like they belong at some sort of dr. suess inspired party.

also in order to keep our tradition of cake and champagne on our anniversary austin picked us out a bottle to pop open. the plan i had was to have the cupcakes and champagne at midnight when it was officially our anniversary, just like we did last year, but juliet decided that was not going to happen when she broke out into a rash/hives all over her little tummy and then threw up all night... so we waited to have the cake and champagne after our dinner date instead.

fortunately, the champagne was tasty.

the cupcakes, however, were a complete and total fail.

they were hard as rocks. so hard that i could barely get the fork through it to cut it. and they were completely inedible. and being the sweets-lover that i am, i will suffer through some mediocre desserts if i have to, but two bites of this and i was done so you know it was bad. they're all going straight to the trash. i was really disappointed, but it was a weird recipe {you failed me, pinterest} and i could tell when i mixed it up that things weren't looking great.

fortunately, i was smart enough to know that the cupcakes were going to suck, so austin and i ordered some desserts to go from 212, just in case. and although i haven't eaten my cheesecake yet, i know it's going to be de.lish.

so that was that. our second wedding anniversary celebration complete with flowers, dinner, drinks, and desserts. and dog vomit. all the essentials, right?

recently.

it's been a little while since my last post and i'm sure you all have been anxiously awaiting an update from me. but fret no more, my friends {or random strangers} because i am here to update you on some recent happenings.

austin and i have been getting lots of good stuff from our garden and we're having to get a little creative with some recipes in order to use all the veggies.

we used the giant bell peppers we got to make some stuffed peppers. it doesn't really look all that pretty, but it sure was good.

austin, juliet and i shared the first cucumber from our garden together.

and yes, juliet absolutely loves cucumber. however, just like her mother, she will not eat the peel.

proof that she will eat the cucumber, but leave behind the peel. and quite literally turn her nose up at it.

and just like last year, austin and i had to tie up our corn stalks although this time it wasn't because of a big storm's wind. i think our ears of corn are just weighing down the stalks, but they aren't quite ready to pick yet. so we brought out the tulle and tied 'em up.

we also bought some new stuff over the past few weeks to add to the garden. since our onions died {i'm told our soil isn't sandy enough for onions} we removed them and planted two banana pepper plants and some kind of pepper called a holy mole! not sure what we'll do with them, but we've got them anyway. we also pulled up all the lettuce we had growing because it was nasty. it tasted spicy, like horseradish. but we bought some new seeds and replanted. hopefully this lettuce will be much better.

and one last garden-related thing. austin and i pulled up all the beets we had growing in ordered to make some pickled beets. sounds gross, right? but for whatever reason austin likes them.

turns out we are pretty good at growing beets!

check out our prize beet. it was huge!

literally bigger than my hand.

and while i'm glad that austin is going to enjoy his pickled beets, i seriously did not enjoy the smell of the process. it was the boiling vinegar mix on the stove that was the worst. yuck. but i can appreciate the hot pink color of the beets in the jar.

moving on. a couple weekends ago, austin and i spent the day up on the mountain hanging out at his cousin's pool.

this past weekend, we were up the mountain again for a family cookout. some of austin's family from out of town were in, so we had a big group up there. we played corn hole and ladder golf until it was too dark to see anymore.

all the sisters and cousins together.

and i do apologize for making this picture so awkward. clearly, i didn't know what to do with my hands. also, i'm really pale.

the best part of all these gatherings is that i'm able to force austin into getting his picture taken with me!

and it's a good thing i wore my boots, because austin and i took a little adventure hike to go pick some yummy {and pretty!} blackberries.

we're planning on making blackberry pancakes for dinner one night this week. but let's be honest, i don't eat fruit cooked in food, so i'll just have plain...

saturday morning, austin was sweet and took me yard sale-ing. we kinda just drove around until we found a sale to stop at and although we didn't actually buy anything at any of those, we did make some pretty sweet purchases at a little local place called the insyde outsyde shop. it's a little antiques/resale/fun things store that we browse every now and then.

austin bought this sweet mug {or is it a stein?} with his fraternity shield on it. it may be from the university of georgia, the year 1958, and have the name johnny on it, but it was like five bucks and we thought it was cool. so cheers to you, johnny.

and austin bought me this ceramic l.n. fowler phrenology head. i was so. pumped. because i'm nerdy like that.

i think he really adds to our eclectic decor around the house. fits in nicely with some of austin's coca cola collection.

and this faux ivory {it's actually like some kind of papier-mâché} elephant.

rounding out our collection of random things is a dried displayed rattlesnake head, some vintage cameras, and juliet toys, of course. quite the mix, yes?

and one last little thing, speaking of juliet. every one think good thoughts for my juliet today, please. she's at the vet right now getting checked out because she's been a little sickly lately. i had to drop her off this morning so they could see her in between surgeries because they didn't have any open appointments, so i'm all alone without her next to me.

look at that adorable little face.

{update: literally as i was typing this up about julie boo, they called to tell me she was ready to come home! she's got some meds and is feeling much better. i'm glad i didn't have to miss her all day long! hooray!}