Overloaded

Lately I've been feeling overloaded. Work has been crazy with a lot of long hours (nothing says work life balance like rocking out at work on a Friday night past midnight) and I feel like I've been almost permanently out of town with business trips to Charlotte, Japan and Northern Kentucky and a personal trip to New York squeezed in. Although I've made time for some fun during my free time on my work trips, overall I'm feeling a bit exhausted and depleted and looking forward to being at home for a bit. I have a lot to catch up on...

Jefferson Market and Our Wedding Cake

One of the things that I love about my neighborhood is Jefferson Market. It is a little bakery around the corner from my house, a throwback to the days when the neighborhood was peppered with small businesses among the homes. 

On Saturdays and Sundays Jefferson Market is open for brunch from ten until one. People from all over the neighborhood pour into the small bakery and seating both inside and outside quickly fills up. Frank always gets the same thing when we go, a Mount Rushmore Plate (a fantastic hash brown and egg scramble) with a side of bacon.

I, however, usually opt for one of the specials. Every month there are two new specials, one savory and one sweet. I've enjoyed everything from brie stuffed French toast to strawberry rhubarb pancakes to root vegetable hash.

When Frank and I got married last year we decided that of course we should order a cake from Jefferson Market. They offer a fantastic selection of cake flavors and fillings.

We tried a bunch of samples and really enjoyed them all, finally settling on black magic cake with salted caramel filling and buttercream icing. 

I ordered the cake and dropped off a few succulents and some navy ribbon for them to decorate the cake. When I picked up the cake I quickly snapped the picture of it below and they helped me pack up the cake for the drive up north.

Unfortunately, this is the best picture that I have of the cake at our reception, which is a shame, but it was really delicious and everyone loved it.

Since we had a tiny wedding of only fourteen guests, we served the bottom tier at the wedding and took the top tier home to freeze for our anniversary.

This past Sunday marked a year since our wedding so of course we started the day by heading over to Jefferson Market for brunch. I got one of the specials, banana walnut pancakes, while Frank ordered his standby Mount Rushmore plate with a side of bacon.

We didn't do much the rest of the day due to the fact that on my flight home from Japan on Friday I had managed to contract a nasty cold, but we did thaw out our wedding cake and enjoy a slice of it together in the evening. Honestly, I was pretty surprised that it tasted so good after a year in the freezer. 

I can't believe that a year has past since Frank and I got married. Among other things it has been a busy year for us traveling: Domincan Republic for our honeymoon, New York in the fall, Arizona and Atlanta over the winter break, Las Vegas in January, Florida to see my grandparents and go to Tigers Spring Training in February, Indianapolis for the NCAA Regional Final, our extended trip to see Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Finland with a stop in Amsterdam this spring plus several business trip for us both including Japan, Chicago, Las Vegas and Seattle for him and twice to Japan plus Charleston, LA, Arizona, Kentucky and Northern Michigan for me. While we've had a ton of fun traveling together we've also enjoyed our time at home going to our favorite places and working on our home renovations. We both love living in Ann Arbor and taking full advantage of all the amazing things our little town has to offer together. The year has flown by quickly for us and I hope that we have many more like this one ahead...

Taking the Bad with the Good

The past several weeks have really been a case of both the best of times and the worst of times for me. I got some really disappointing news at the start of the new year that was pretty tough to take and had a minor surgery two weeks ago. On the positive side of things right after Christmas Frank and I had a wonderful vacation to Arizona and Atlanta to see our alma maters' football teams play in their bowl games and then in January we had a great trip to Las Vegas. Over the last month I've either been depressed/not feeling well so I didn't feel like blogging or too busy having fun traveling with Frank to have a chance to post.

I'm feeling more like myself now and have so many things to share about our recent travels as well as a backlog of projects that I completed. I finished the master bedroom closet makeover (below is a sneak peak) back in December plus I have all of the gifts I made for Christmas and our wedding details to still write up. I'm looking forward to getting back in the swing of things!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

I hope that all the Americans out there had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday! Frank and I spent the morning making food, he smoked the turkeys and I made desserts, and then we headed over to his sister's house for dinner where she made the sides and appetizers with her girls.

We ate way too much delicious food and had a great time hanging out. Frank's two youngest nieces showed me how to make bracelets on their rainbow loom as they made bracelets for the whole family. It reminded me of being their age and making embroidery floss bracelets.

All in all it was a nice, relaxing day and I feel very lucky that Frank's family has taken me in like one of their own. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday weekend! Let the Christmas preparations begin!

Wedding and Honeymoon Pictures

After waiting for three and a half months I finally got our wedding photos from our photographer. Apart from the long wait I am so disappointed in the quality of the photos which for the most part look like snapshots from a friend instead of professional photos. There are a handful of photos that are great, particularly the three I've posted but overall there is a lot of poor composition, visual clutter and bad lighting in the photos. The thing that makes me the saddest is that there aren't any formal photos of Frank and I on our wedding day that I love.

As someone who loves photography I've been pretty bummed about the wedding photos, but Frank being the awesome guy that he is helped me put things in perspective. We had an awesome wedding day that was relaxed and fun and I wouldn't trade one bit of that day to have better pictures. I had been waiting for my professional photos to include them in my posts about some of my handmade wedding details on the blog, like my flowers and favors, but as it turns out I shouldn't have bothered waiting and I will start posting those soon.

While we don't have the greatest wedding photos we did luck out in the honeymoon photo department. The resort we stayed at for the second half of our honeymoon, Iberostar Grand Hotel Bávaro, had a professional photographer and he would take people out for half an hour to take some pictures. Frank wasn't so keen on doing it but I talked him into it and I think in the end even he will admit it was a good idea. I love all of the the photos and have posted a few of my favorites below.

Now I just need to figure out which one of the honeymoon photos to frame for our house...

Back to Reality

July was quite a month. At the beginning of the month I had a little reunion with two of my friends, Danielle and Trisha, who I met while living in Japan. The three of us hadn't all been together in nearly four years so it was great to spend five days together in Trisha's new city, Milwaukee. It was an awesome time full of concerts at Summerfest, lounging at Bradford Beach, a brewery tour and skydiving.

On July 20, Frank and I got married! The week leading up to the wedding was busy as I was making all sorts of things for the wedding like table cards, centerpieces, favors and so on. I will definitely share all of the things I made but I want to wait until I have my professional pictures back since I know she took pictures of everything all set up which I didn't have much of a chance to do. The wedding weekend was fabulous and now I am happily Mrs. DiMaggio.

For our honeymoon we headed down to the Dominican Republic for a bit of history and culture in Santo Domingo followed by some intense relaxation in Bavaro. It was lovely and we really didn't want to head home at the end.

All told, for the month of July I was only at work for ten days. Now that it is August reality is settling back in and it needs to happen fast. Frank and I are planning to have a backyard barbecue to celebrate our wedding with local friends (we only had 16 people at our wedding) so we need to get a lot of things finished at the house prior to then. In particular we need to get the downstairs bathroom done and finish up work on the backyard. It is going to be a little crazy around here for the next six weeks. Wish us luck!

We're Married!

Frank and I got married on Saturday! We had a tiny wedding (only 16 people including ourselves) and everything turned out wonderfully. The wedding was at Black Star Farms in Suttons Bay and it was the perfect venue for us. We not only had the wedding and reception there but we and all of our guests also stayed at the Inn. It was really great because we all got to spend a lot of time together and have a relaxing, fun weekend.

Everyone arrived at different times on Friday and several of us walked up to the tasting room for wine tasting, which is complimentary for guests at the Inn. Frank and I ended up later buying a bottle of the pear and the apple brandy as mementos of our wedding.

From 5:30 to 6:30 we enjoyed a wine and cheese reception at the Inn and then we all headed to Traverse City for an 8:00 dinner at the Towne Plaza. The food was fantastic and everyone had a great time chatting and getting to know other guests that they hadn't met before. After dinner we ended up hanging outside on the verandah behind the Inn chatting until late before calling it a night. 

On Saturday we had a wonderful breakfast at the Inn and then while the guys went off on a fishing charter for the day the ladies headed for a little sightseeing at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore followed by lunch in Glen Arbor.

At 4:30 my girlfriends and sister did my hair and makeup and we had fun getting ready together. At 6:00 we had our ceremony in a pretty grassy little area behind the inn. It was short, but meaningful to us and it couldn't have been more perfect. We took pictures while we had cocktails and appetizers and then had dinner at 7:30. We all sat at one long table and it was so much fun to be able to have conversations going that involved all of our guests. We had to leave the reception room at 10:00 but then we all changed and headed to the lounge/bar area of the Inn and hung out for a few more hours.

On Sunday morning we had breakfast at the Inn and then said our goodbyes as everyone left for the airport or packed up into cars to drive home. It was really a fantastic weekend for us and just what Frank and I had envisioned for our wedding celebration. I'm not one to be very lovey-dovey in public but I will say that Frank is pretty much the most super awesome person on the planet and I feel like the luckiest lady alive to get to spend my life with him. Now I'm ready for our honeymoon!

Aunt Dorothy

This past week has been a tough one. My beloved Aunt Dorothy passed away after 88 years of filling the world with love and making it a better place.

Truth be told, Aunt Dorothy isn't biologically related to me, but I've known her since I was born and she has been like a grandma to me throughout my life. Her love knew no bounds and she deeply loved not only her family, but also people like my sister and I who she adopted as her own.

Some of my earliest memories were of sitting in her lap and playing with the beautiful brooch necklaces she wore. She and Uncle Milty (her husband) watched me when my parents were at the hospital when my sister was born. I have great memories of playing at Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Milty's house when they lived in Cleveland and visiting them in North Carolina after they moved there. Growing up, Aunt Dorothy was always there providing love and support.

As I got older, she also set a wonderful example for me as a woman to aspire to be like. Through her life she taught me that you should always keep learning and that you can always keep redefining your life. How many women born in 1925 do you know that took a computer programming class?

She retired no less than three times. She was always on the go so she would get bored being retired and end up working again, always making herself indispensable wherever she went. The final time she retired was not much different as she then started volunteering at a hospital.

She truly defined the term "young at heart." Her collection of teddy bears was legendary. She was always on the move and had a quite a lead foot while driving. Watching her tear off down the street in her car always made me smile. She was also a talented piano player and organist. Up through her early eighties she would volunteer to play piano for sing-alongs at a retirement home, often times for people younger than her.  

Aunt Dorothy has always been such a constant in my life that that right now I can't really imagine a world without her in it anymore. What is certain is that I have been incredibly lucky to have known Aunt Dorothy and to have had her be a part of my life.

March Madness

March has not been the best month for me. Halfway through our vacation in Cartagena at the beginning of the month I got really sick. I was laid out for a day and then could only go out for a few hours at a time before I needed a rest. It was really frustrating but on the positive side it did force me to have a relaxing vacation, which is not something that I am exactly known for.

It took about two weeks for me to start feeling better and then I got hit with a terrible cold that I am just now starting to get over. Feeling under the weather for the past three weeks has been really frustrating because going to work has taken everything out of me so all of my energy is gone by the time I get home. As a result I have done very little outside of work with one notable exception; Frank and I went to the first two Michigan games in the NCAA Tournament last weekend.

Let me back up a bit and say that I love the NCAA Tournament. I went to Duke for undergrad and it is just about impossible to graduate without becoming a fan of college basketball. To me college basketball is so much more fun to watch than professional and nothing is better than the NCAA Tournament. Every year there is so much excitement: great match-ups, Cinderella stories, upsets and players leaving everything they have on the court.

After the bracket comes out on selection Sunday I always fill out my bracket in the same method every year. First, I fill in Duke to win all of their match-ups culminating in the National Championship. I have never filled out a bracket without having Duke win it all, no matter how their season is going. It just seems like it would be traitorous so I go with my heart.

Once I put Duke all the way through I go back and fill in the rest of my bracket, making sure to pick at least one 5-12 upset. This year I picked two, Oregon (because I think they were totally underrated as a 12 seed) and UC Berkeley (because I went there for grad school so I am a little biased). Overall, my bracket so far is not doing so hot as I overestimated Indiana and New Mexico. The best I can do in the pool I am in at this point is fourth if Duke wins it all, Michigan makes it to the Final Four and Ohio State loses tonight. Here's where my bracket stands after the Elite Eight.

This year Duke was playing their first two games in Philadelphia, but Michigan was playing only an hour away from Ann Arbor. Frank has loved Michigan basketball since he was a little kid and I've adopted them as my second favorite team (after Duke!) so it was a no brainer for us to go to the games.

The first game on Thursday night was against South Dakota State and although Michigan won, they weren't playing their best basketball so we were a little worried about the next game on Saturday against VCU. Michigan played one of their best games of the year on Saturday and ended up blowing out VCU to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. It was really fun to be at the game, especially since this was Michigan's first Sweet Sixteen berth since 1994.

Meanwhile, Duke played on Friday and Sunday, handily beating Albany and Creighton to also advance to the Sweet Sixteen. We have casual Friday at work so I dug up one of my old Duke basketball shirts from my undergrad days to wear for good luck and it seemed to have worked.

In the next round, Michigan was in Arlington but Duke was only a five hour drive away in Indianapolis. We had Friday off from work so we debated going to see Duke play, but still feeling ill I wasn't up to the drive so we just stayed home this weekend and watched the games on TV.

On Friday night Michigan played Kansas first and it was quite a game. Kansas was pretty dominant for most of the game. With 2:19 left in the game Michigan was down by 10 points and a loss looked certain. Michigan went on a tear at this point and Trey Burke hit a three pointer to tie up the game with only a few seconds left on the clock which drove the game into overtime. Michigan dominated overtime and pulled out a win to make it to the Elite Eight. It was a heart pounding game and so much fun to watch.

Duke then played Michigan State with the game being pretty even throughout the first half. At the beginning of the second half Duke pulled away and never let up, winning the game by ten. It was not the most exciting game, but after nearly having a heart attack watching the Michigan game I was glad to just sit back and enjoy my Blue Devils win.

 

I'm so happy that both my teams made it to the Elite Eight. Here's hoping that they both move on to the Final Four with wins tomorrow (and that I am feeling better soon)!

Engaged

2.03.2013