wil and kris (and gracie and ava)

ava is honored to share her birthday with karly and sherry. happy birthday everyone! (a day late…)

watching a nashville ’sounds’ game on a perfect friday night with friends, hot dogs, peanuts, and fireworks!

last night was filled with amazing music and good friends as we celebrated our friend’s cd release party/show at the five spot. dave asked me to take pictures throughout the night (stressed me out way more than it ought to have because they turned out better than i thought on the computer), so here are a few of my favorites (larger set here).

dave is the lead singer of the champion and his burning flame (wil and dave go back to working at the downtown franklin starbucks together), and so we have also gotten to know the rest of the guys through the band, mutual friends and starbucks of course (everyone we know seems to work, have worked, or been related to someone who works at starbucks…it’s an interesting community).

their music is really amazing…wil and i blasted our new cd through the house while we enjoyed pancakes and bacon this lazy saturday morning. their myspace gives you a little hint. enjoy!

due to a disco “mustachio bashio” skating party on saturday night, wil and i found ourselves perusing a couple thrift stores this weekend to find the perfect outfit…what we didn’t expect was to find the coolest piece of furniture ever…

near the back of the store we came across an retro looking console, moved some stuff off the top and noticed the top open up to reveal a turntable and radio! noting what a cool piece it was, we saw a nearby 50% off sign, making the piece only 23 bucks. yes, 23 bucks. the lady mentioned that the radio for sure worked and on a whim, we made the purchase.

after loading it into the car, we immediately got so excited about the prospect of fixing it up and went straight to home depot to pick out a stain and buy some sand paper. two days later, we have a beautiful vintage stereo that we can’t wait to use. it worked out that i took care of the outside, while wil is working on the innards…i sanded down the varnish that had long ago started to peel off, discovering really pretty wood with bookmatched grain on the sides. after some mahogany stain and a few coats of poly, we brought it inside to it’s new home (behind the sofa). wil’s still working on the stereo…the speakers worked partially, so he plans on buying some old speakers from craigslist or more thrift stores to disassemble and possibly a used turntable to replace the other in case it doesn’t work. it’ll get there eventually!

hey. finally got the rest of our pictures uploaded and such, so here’s the set from our trip.

enjoy.

*i ought to have written a full post on our experiences, but it was mostly just family events, graduation events and wine tasting… here’s a quick summary of the week

graduation, golf, another round of golf, wine tasting, chefs market downtown, dinner & wine at different family members’ houses, check in to hotel, pool, fancy dinner at bouchon, graduation party, goodbyes!

we added a new room to our house! well, it might be outdoors, and might not have walls, or a roof, but it is a new space for us for us to enjoy this spring and summer.

we attempted last weekend to lay the patio we’ve talked about for a couple months, and it was just not a good day for me and wil…hard, labor intensive shoveling with no light at the end of the tunnel is not good for a marriage. but, with a more positive outlook this weekend (also motivated by the fact that the left side was even more of a mudpit with so much recent rain), we picked up the project again …and knocked it out yesterday.

i think we were both surprised at how well everything worked, without any hitches at all. and to top the evening off, we went back to home depot to get wil the grill he’s always been dreaming about.

the dogs, while they couldn’t hang outside with us while we worked, loved every moment we’d let them out for the bathroom…they were dying at the prospect of getting to experience the new lawn, even when we only had a little sliver of it open to them. the grass was truly greener on the other side for them the last two months. they are overjoyed, to say the least. wil almost shed a tear when he saw them go to the bathroom on it the first time…i’d don’t think we’ll ever have a pristine lawn. : (
anyways- here’s lots of pictures (descriptions when you hover the mouse over the pic, fyi)! (notice the change of seasons in the first three pictures!)

the whole set with more pictures is here.