This long weekend was so wonderful! On Friday night we stayed in and watched an episode of Star Wars (Luke is trying to catch me up on them- I had never seen any of them and apparently that is not acceptable).  

On Saturday we took it easy again, did some errands, rested my hip and painted a bamboo sideboard we bought when we first moved here.  We initially had our TV on it but Luke has since hung it up so that it makes more space and I LOVE it! I decided to go bold because, why not?!  The thing cost like $40 and if the color was a total miss, I could repaint it!  

Here's how it turned out:

We woke up Sunday (my birthday) and Luke had decorated the house with "happy birthday" streamers, signs, and tulle my mom secretly sent him. It was the sweetest!  He then made me pancakes.  I may have talked him through every step but he really did everything himself and they were amazing!  I was very impressed. I am lucky to have such a kind, loving husband :)

Here are my decorations! :)  

After pancakes I decided I wanted to go out to the "country" (suburbs) for something different, because I love a road trip adventure, and I needed to breathe some fresh air!  We looked up where to go/ what to do and decided on a vineyard about an hour outside of the city.  We drove the hour to it, pulled up, and it wasn't even a vineyard! Yes, it was a very pretty building, but there were no grapes growing there, no pretty views, no fresh air!  We decided to drive around a bit more to see what we could find.  I pulled up the map and a riverboat casino showed up.  Luke and I looked at each other and shrugged, why not?  So we adventured our way to a riverboat casino in the middle of nowhere.  When we walked in we brought down the median age... but it was still well over 60 years old.  Still, we decided to go with it for a while- it was an adventure after all!  We got some cash, went to the craps table, and tried our luck.  An hour later we were up a good amount of money and pretty pleased with our decision!  After I rolled, we cashed out and called it a day but it was such a fabulous, ridiculous adventure and I am so happy we did it.

This is us after we cashed in our winnings.  Very happy..... :)

After our casino adventure, we headed home where we were so lucky to visit with one of Luke's good friends from high school who was in town.  They talked nerd, I tried to keep up and surprised myself at how much I have learned in the 3 years I've been with this guy.  Uh oh....

After our visit we got all fancy and went to dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant that happens to be 25 yards from our house.  We had a fabulous meal, amazing wine, and topped it all off with tiramisu and espresso.  It was a perfect dinner (and I didn't take a single picture!!!)

On Monday we met our friends from DC (originally Luke's friends from Wake Forest.)  We went to our first Cubs game and it was so much fun! I finally got some sun on my translucent self and just got to hang out and soak up the pretty weather.  It was such a perfect end to an amazing birthday weekend.

House Updates: Hanging a Mantel

This weekend we (Luke) finished hanging our mantel!  Ah I am so excited to have it up! And, it actually comes with a nice story...

While living in my house in Richmond, we were installing extra storage and shelving everywhere because the house didn't have any!  For the kitchen, we put up really pretty white shelves and wanted to hang a big butcher-block-type bar under them that could be used as extra counter space in regular life and a bar when entertaining.   The search began for this "butcher-block-type" piece of wood that didn't cost the same as my mortgage!  We soon found out that wasn't very easy to do....we looked at lumber stores, thrift stores, restoration places...nothing had anything big enough and within our price range.  When we had all but given up, we found a salvage yard run by a man who would go into old Richmond homes after they were gutted to be remodeled and bring all the gorgeous old fixtures, wood, moulding, etc. back to his store.  We ended up finding the top wooden piece from a mantel from an old Richmond mansion buried under a whole lot of other "scrap" wood.  We bought it for $75, brought it home, and Luke started sanding away the years of wear and tear (and paint). Fast forward a couple months, Luke moved to Chicago and I was left with this block of wood.  Needless to say it was never hung in Richmond and somehow made it's way to Chicago with us.

We planned to just pay someone to come in and hang it for us, but that project was pretty low on our list. I had gotten over my blank fireplace and put the project out of my mind until last weekend, when we invited our neighbors in for some tea while everyone was out cleaning our yard.  Our architect neighbor saw the wood, raved over how beautiful it is and asked what we were planning to do with it.  We told him the story and he volunteered to help us cut it with some very fancy tools (Luke was most excited about the sawzall). We are very lucky to have such wonderful and knowledgable neighbors.  So Luke and Matthew set everything up in the basement, cut the wood down, and then Matthew talked Luke through how to actually hang it.  Below is how they did it! Huge, huge, huge, thank you to Matthew for helping us.

Here is the before!  A bit boring, and how in the world would I decorate for Christmas??

The block of wood preparing to be cut to fit between the brick.  You can see the nail holes where it was attached to a fireplace before.  

They set the wood up for easier access.  

Luke, measuring twice, cutting once! hehe

We found the wrought iron brackets at a plant nursery. They were supposed to be for window boxes or planers but we drilled a couple extra holes in them and they work perfectly.  

Luke bought all kinds of new toys, including a drill bit that could drill through the brick.  It was pretty cool to learn about actually.  

Blurry, but a man proud of his awesome work!  I am so excited by how well it turned out!

Side view of the brackets and pretty wood.  

All decorated!  Omgosh I am so excited!  Now we have a piece a Richmond here in Chicago.  :)

Easter Decorating for a Christ- Centered Easter

I have been scouring Pinterest for MONTHS trying to find inspiration for Christ-centered Easter décor.  It is super hard to find! Everything out there is about involving kids in Easter and how to teach them the real meaning. There was nothing that works before kids.  I think during Easter we do need a reminder (especially adults) of what this season is about. We can get caught up in the super cute plates, bunnies and Easter egg topiaries (me, that’s me) that we forget! 

So y’all, the other day when I was trying one more time before I really had to have my Easter décor up, I stumbled upon The Small Seed and a series they have called Traditions of Faith.  Basically they talk about real family traditions they have during each holiday that incorporate God and remind us of the real meaning.  For Easter, one of the writers wrote about an Easter Tree [click here to see the post].  It was absolutely perfect!  It is a tree that you decorate with ornaments, scripture and words that remind us of Christ. The words take us through his whole life, ending with his death and then resurrection. On the blog, they set it up to involve children. They have them hunt for an Easter egg containing an ornament with an accompanying scripture each day of the week leading up to Easter.  The kids find the egg and then the family sits down to talk about that part of His life. It is super cool and so easy!  Below are pictures of how I used their super precious idea and a couple other Easter decorations I put up. 

Here is the strip of paper with the bible verse on it.

The "He is Risen" sign from The Small Seed and and amazingly fragrant Easter Lilly  from a boutique flower shop a few doors down from our house.

Here's the whole set up. Sorry for the poor light (and the crooked lampshade)

 

This "Happy Easter" banner is from Target!  It was only around $7!!  Super cute and super easy!

We bought a Condo

Woah.

I am still completely speechless at how life has started to fall into place [and fly by!] the last couple of weeks.  We only have 19 days until we are married, my house sold one day after being on the market, and we bought a condo in Chicago two weeks ago.

After we went together to look at close to 10 condos and Luke looked at probably 15 others we were very discouraged about finding a place to move right after the wedding. We found one house we really liked but before we put an offer on it the seller took it off the market.  We then found another but were outbid.  I really wanted to not have to move my house up there and live in limbo until we found somewhere permanent. I feel like everything has been in limbo since Luke moved up there anyway! I don't actually even remember how we found this condo which makes me even more sure that God put it in front of us. Once we found it online Luke went and looked at it  and loved it.  We put an offer in on it the next day (the weekend we were both on our bachelor/bachelorette parties so that added a bit of complexity to it!).  We countered back and forth a couple times and ended up settling on a great number.  We are so very excited about it- and I can't wait to decorate it and host parties!

We close on March 5th so pray everything goes well!

 This is the outside of the building.  Our unit is on the first floor, right side :)