From something old to something new.

In the past two months my life has completely changed, and for whatever reason I've found myself struggling to blog here lately. My time and energy has been completely consumed with planning a wedding and trying to buy a house, and I've felt for some time that I'd like a space that can be dedicated to those things. After nearly four years at laureality I've decided that it's time for something new, which is what led me to create my new blog, Grow the Love.

The new blog will feature more wedding planning details, home decor and organization, and all of the DIY projects that I attempt for our big day and for our new house. It will also be a place to document this overwhelming and exciting time in our lives. Grow the Love seemed like an appropriate name, since that's what we're doing every day. Learning more about each other, bringing our two families together, and laying the groundwork for our life together.

It feels good to be excited about blogging again. I hope you'll all join me over at the new site! I can't wait to get caught up with all of yours.



Hoping to say yes to a dress.

Today feels somewhat legen-wait for it-dary, at least in terms of planning a wedding. After work I'm heading to a bridal salon to try on what I believe is my dream wedding dress. I hope I love it as much in person as I do on Pinterest!

Ever since my friend Niki over at Ledbury Drive started planning her own wedding a few years ago, I've been in love with Watters dresses. They're all pretty, elegant, and completely unique. I wont be posting the one I have my eye on since Aaron reads my blog, but I thought I'd share a few Watters designs. If you like to look at pretty dresses, which I know most of you do, I highly recommend clicking on over to the website.


I've found an amazing deal on the exact dress that I'm head-over-heels for, and it's the perfect size too. I figured that I should at least try this particular style dress on in a store before I decide to make the purchase. I hope that it works out, because it's an incredible deal! I'll try on a few other styles as well, to make sure that it's meant to be.

My mom found her wedding dress in a magazine and it was love at first sight for her. Maybe it will be the same way for me!

Tell me how you found your dress! I'd love to hear your stories.

Cold Hands, Warm Hearts - Swap!

This year I participated in a new blog swap called Cold Hands, Warm Hearts, hosted by Ilene and Sandy. We were paired up with other bloggers to share scarves and hats and mittens to help us keep warm this time of year, as well as any other fun goodies we wanted to share. 

I was paired with Moriah of Moriah Makes, and she definitely spoiled me! I knew I needed some new fingerless gloves to have for outdoor photography, and I got an adorable pair in my favorite color.

                                         

I also got a brand new scarf! Anyone who knows me or reads my blog can tell that I'm a huge fan of scarves, and that it's my mission in life to build an incredibly collection of colorful, unique scarves. Thanks for helping me achieve my goal Moriah! I absolutely love what you sent me!

I have another fun swap to share with all of you, but that will have to wait for another day. I worked late tonight and there's a couch and a glass of red wine calling my name in the other room.

Volted!

Last week I took my car to the Chevrolet dealership that sold it to me for an oil change and a few other basic needs. While I was waiting for the service department to finish working their magic, my salesman came out and asked if I wanted to test drive a Chevy Volt. My other option was to sit in the waiting room and watch daytime television, so I grabbed the keys and headed out on a little eco-friendly adventure.

I've been intrigued by electric cars for a long time now, so I was excited to finally be able to test drive one. The inside of the car felt a lot like my Chevy Cruze. It was comfortable and sleek, and I definitely didn't feel like I was driving something that you plug into the wall. The most bizarre part of driving the Volt is that it is almost completely silent. I kept putting my foot on the gas and expecting to hear that familiar vroom, but there was no sound whatsoever. Pretty cool.

The screen behind the steering wheel shows you exactly how many miles you have left on your charge, so you know exactly when you need to plug in.

The Volt can go approximately 35 miles on one charge before having to switch over to its gas-fueled generator. The salesman I was working with is leasing a Volt and because he has such a short drive to work and has the ability to plug the car in when he arrives, he hasn't had to buy gas in SEVEN MONTHS. Can you even imagine?

I was surprised to learn that the average cost for a lease is $350 per month, which isn't bad if you're already driving a new car and are able to avoid filling up the tank. It seems that folks are hesitant to consider an electric car because they don't understand how they work and a lot of people assume they're too expensive. Knowing what I pay for my new vehicle, I can honestly say that I'd happily own an electric car if and when I work closer to home. Hopefully the technology will continue to improve and the battery life will get even longer by the time I'm ready to purchase one!

Have you ever driven an electric car? Would you ever consider owning one?

For the record, Chevy did not ask me to write about the Volt. They have no idea who I am, I just like to blog about things that interest me and take pictures of myself with my phone while test driving their cars.

It's a holly jolly Molly Monday.

Good morning! I hope everyone had a great weekend. Mine went by way too fast, but Monday morning brought some exciting news! My best friend Lindsey had her baby girl last night.

Welcome to the world baby Molly!


Mom and baby are both doing well! I can't wait to go see them after work today. Hopefully the work day will fly by for me.

I worked on Saturday, which is why I feel like I didn't have much of a weekend, but we made up for it on Sunday. Erica and I went to my parents' house and baked holiday treats with my mom all day long. We made dozens and dozens of cookies and chocolate covered marshmallows and other sinfully delicious things, including some that look like Santa Claus.

Some of them look angry and some of them look confused, but I still think they're pretty cute.

How was your weekend?

Too many books, too little time.

I go through phases with reading, depending on how excited I am about a particular book and how much time I have on my hands. I've always had a bad habit of accumulating dozens of books that I have every intention of reading, only to leave them sitting on my shelf for months. If not years. It's bad.

Don't even get me started on my magazine subscriptions. I had to force myself to sit down and actually flip through the pages of the holiday issue of Real Simple. It's not that I don't enjoy reading, I just really stink at making time for it.

The novel I'm currently reading on my Nook is called The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley. I found it for a ridiculously low price in the Barnes and Noble online bookstore and the reviews were good. A writer travels to snowy Scotland and stays in a tiny cottage overlooking the sea while writing her most recent historical fiction novel, inspired by her own ancestors. There are castles, mysteries, and men with sexy Scottish accents. Need I go on?

Since my attention span has been non-existent lately, I've also started reading a book called Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married by Gary Chapman, the same author who wrote The Five Love Languages. I spotted this book while standing in line to buy my first bridal magazine at CVS. Coincidence?

Anywho. I'm only a few chapters in, but what I like so far about the book is that it encourages readers to prepare for marriage. The concept is completely logical, but unfortunately it's not something that most people even consider before tying the knot. I may not agree with every idea in the book, but I'm choosing to look at this and whatever other books on marriage I can find as homework for our impending matrimony.

If that's not romantic, I'm not sure what is.

Speaking of marriage, the next book on my digital shelf is It's All About the Dress by Randy Fenoli. In terms of my budget, it is sadly not all about the dress, but I'm still excited to read Randy's advice before I go dress shopping.

And last but not least, I've been reading great things from multiple bloggers (Ashley and Ashley!) about The Happiness Project, which focuses on taking small steps to live a happier life. I'm a firm believer in philosophy that happiness is a journey, not a destination, so I think I'll enjoy this one.

What are you reading? What else do you think I should add to my bookshelf?

The pre-holiday season.

I've decided that I'm in love with the pre-holiday season. It's a real thing, I swear. Few people take the time to appreciate these weeks when Fall is transitioning to Winter, but this year I've really been doing my best to savor every minute of it.

I love that the weather has been chilly enough to wear scarves and jackets, and that we haven't had to deal with snow yet.

I love the anticipation of the holidays that are right around the corner. I try not to decorate or listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, but I definitely start to feel excited for the festivities to come.

I love taking walks with Aaron through nearby neighborhoods and making plans for our future home.

I love trying new recipes, most recently homemade pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

Aaron and I first met the week before Thanksgiving and proceeded to fall for each other throughout the weeks that followed. I've always felt that were lucky to have met when we did, because we started to get to know each other during the time of year that is consumed with family, tradition, and feeling thankful.

This year we're celebrating our engagement and starting to plan a wedding during those same special weeks. It's easy to see why the pre-holiday season has become my favorite time of year. I can't wait to see where we'll be this time next year.

How have you been enjoying the pre-holiday season?

A lot can happen in two weeks.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your kind words and congratulations! The past two weeks have been a lot of fun for Aaron and I, and this experience wouldn't be the same without the amazing friends and family we have to share it with.

As though we didn't already have enough going on, Aaron and I actually made an offer on a house the same weekend we got engaged. We'd been keeping an eye on some short sale homes in the area and ended up falling in love with a house sooner than we'd anticipated. The house is located in the downtown area of one of our favorite cities and is the perfect starter house. Since the home is a short sale it could take several months for us to hear back from the mortgage company, which works out well because we have nothing but time. So now we wait!

In wedding planning news, we've finalized a wedding date and a venue! I discovered that if we wanted to get married next year we'd have to move quickly as there were very few Saturdays available for 2012. We got lucky and found a date next September at one of my favorite local venues, Indian Springs Metro Park. It's located in the middle of 2,215 acres of natural wildlife and the building is entirely eco-friendly. I love that it's not your average banquet hall and that we'll get to incorporate the great outdoors for our wedding. It's absolutely perfect.

image found here

My friend and fellow blogger Niki was married at this same location back in August, and she actually just posted a bunch of photos from her big day. Hop on over to her post if you'd like to see more of what the inside of our venue will look like. Niki made an absolutely stunning bride and her wedding was filled with amazing DIY details.

Oh, and did I mention that I was her wedding photographer? Hehe.

Let me know what you think!

Footsy and Forever.

On Saturday night Aaron and I sat down to watch Crazy Stupid Love. If you've seen the first five minutes of that movie you know the scene where they pan across the floor of a bar and show dozens of couples playing "footsy" with each other. Cheesy, but that's not the point of this post.

It got me thinking about how relationships always reach a certain point where you feel like you've left the honeymoon phase and start to notice the little things that don't happen as much anymore. At that particular moment I could not for the life of me remember the last time Aaron and I had played footsy, or if we ever had at all.

I obviously made this comment aloud to him, and he looked at me and said, "Babe, we're doing it right now."

Sure enough, I looked down and saw that our feet were tangled together on the ottoman. I laughed at myself for being so unobservant and scatterbrained. It's a fault of mine, but it's comforting to know that my other half is there to pull me back to reality and to remind me of the things that aren't always clear to me.

And that is one of the many reasons why, just hours before the footsy incident, I agreed to marry him.


We were enjoying a cup of coffee and dessert on Saturday evening, and on a cozy little couch in that dimly lit cafe he pulled a beautiful ring out of his jacket pocket. I would have been crazy to say no. I love the ring almost as much as I love him.

I can't imagine a better man to spend the rest of my life with.

Stretch pants.

On Sunday afternoon we went to a local cider mill to breathe in the crisp Fall air and indulge in some hot cider and donuts. This particular cider mill brought in a very diverse crowd, which meant that our donuts came with a side of people watching. Of all of the interesting characters that we saw that day, one in particular stood out to me the most.

I was innocently sipping my cider when a young girl walked past our table and immediately caught my attention. She couldn't have been older than fifteen, but she had the makeup of a streetwalker and she was wearing stretch pants so tight that I could see everything her momma gave her. My instinct was to run over and cover her with my jacket so that all of the filthy men of the world couldn't see her, because goodness knows they were looking too.

It was then that I noticed three other pre-pubescent girls wearing the same type of outfit. Way too much makeup, some sort of baggy sweater, and stretch pants that I would have categorized as tights.

Remember when girls used to wear tights?

It's understandable and probable that teenage girls left to their own devices will make bad decisions in an attempt to get approval from friends and boys. That part is easy to understand. What I want to know is WHY their parents are letting them out of the house wearing pants that look like they've been painted on?

Why is there such a pressure for young girls to be sexy? And why aren't we doing more to stop it? I am constantly baffled by this phenomenon.

I'm not a parent and I can only imagine how stressful it is to raise teenage girls these days (or ever, for that matter). What I do know is that my parents played a huge role in my understanding of the world around me and in the development of my self worth. The memories from my childhood do not involve skinny jeans or Bratz dolls or a desire to be seen as "sexy."

I may not have always wanted to listen to what my parents had to say, but that didn't mean they stopped talking. If I'm lucky enough to have daughters of my own in the future, I hope I'm able to give them the same gift that my parents gave me. Innocence and age-appropriate clothing.

Our Halloweekend.

There are some who say that dressing up for Halloween is childish, but I have to disagree. I love coming up with an idea for a costume and piecing it together myself with things I have laying around the house, clothes from a local thrift store, and a few craft supplies.

On Friday night we had a costume party to go to, but I didn't want to wear the same costume that I had prepared for our party Saturday night. After reading Kim's blog post last week I got the idea to be Rosie the Riveter. Aaron has a lot of old camo gear from his days in the Marine Corps so we called ourselves a World War II couple. Well, I called us that anyway.

My clothes cost about $8 at Salvation Army, and I cut an old red t-shirt into a bandana and I sat at my desk at work Friday afternoon using White-Out to make the polka dots. It was fun and incredibly easy to put together. Thanks for the idea Kim!

On Saturday we threw a party here at the condo. My roommate Erica and I found lots of fun ideas for food and decorations on Pinterest and were excited to show them off. For example, the pumpkin "puking" my homemade guacamole. At first I was slightly grossed out by the idea, but it grew on me.

We also made a pumpkin cake using a bundt pan. Aaron went outside and found some twigs and leaves which I bundled together to make a stem. I was definitely pleased with the end result.

And lastly, our labor of love, candy corn jello shots. These bad boys took several days to make, but it was worth it. We layered lemon, orange and coconut cream jello in clear plastic shot glasses. Pretty cute, no?

Some of our guests included a pumpkin and her farmer...

And Ranbow Bright and her Ceiling Fan.

Get it? Ceiling Fan? Heh heh.

And the party was hosted by the Flintstones and the Rubbles. Aaron and I as Barney and Betty, and our roommates Erica and Justin as Wilma and Fred.

We made all of our costumes over the past week and they turned out exactly how we'd envisioned them. I found a blue dress at Salvation Army (what would I do without that place this time of year?) and sewed on some black straps. The rest of the costumes were all assembled from fabric we bought at Joann's.

We made Wilma's necklace out of styrafoam balls that were banged up and spray painted to look like rocks.

And I made a bow for my hair out of the fabric that we cut off the bottom of my dress. It worked out perfectly.

Erica and I worked on these costumes every night this week, and with the help of my amazing mother and her sewing machine we finished them the morning of our party.

So much fun!

Tonight our plan is to watch Hocus Pocus and the new Halloween episode of How I Met Your Mother (to find out who the Slutty Pumpkin is!). There will also be some sort of delicious Fall dinner, cider wine, and some leftover candy. I hope we get some trick-or-treaters at our condo!

How was your weekend? Did you dress up? What are your plans for Halloween?

How Pinteresting! Fall Foods.

I've always loved baking and cooking, but over the course of the past few months I've really started to become passionate about food. I love finding new recipes and combining new flavors and forcing my loved ones to eat whatever I make. It works out well for everyone; I get to practice and they get tasty treats. Fall is an especially fun time to try new recipes, because it gives you an excuse to add things like pumpkin and sweet potato to otherwise boring recipes.

Pinterest has been my new BFF when it comes to finding new recipes this year, so I thought I'd share the ones that I've made so far so that you can enjoy them too!

Working our way clockwise from the top left, the first recipe is for Homemade Pumpkin Frozen Yogurt. I had some leftover pumpkin puree in the fridge that I didn't want to waste so I combined it with fat free vanilla yogurt, a bit of sugar and some spices and voila. My only complaint is that by the end of the night it got way too hard in the freezer. It tasted delicious while it was edible, and based on the ingredients I used it doesn't seem terribly unhealthy!

Next on the list is Sweet Potato and Honey Dinner Rolls. These? Were incredible. They were time consuming (I'm not very patient when I have to wait for dough to rise), but worth every bit of effort. I recommend that you make them immediately, and serve them warm and drizzled with honey. I'm trying to convince my mom that we should make them for Thanksgiving dinner. I don't think it will take much convincing.

Continuing clockwise we come to Pumpkin Pancakes. I've made these twice so far, once for Aaron and Erica, and a second time on our wine tasting trip. They were a hit both times. So perfect. So fluffy. It's like eating pumpkin pie for breakfast. And who wouldn't want to do that? There are lots of recipes out there for them, but this one has served me well.

The last photo is for Stuffed Sweet Potatoes. I haven't made them yet, but mark my words I will make them and they will be delicious.

What is your favorite Fall recipe? Have you tried any new ones this year? Share links if you have them!