Our "Hannibal" Trip

We took a total of over 400 pictures during our trip to Hannibal, Missouri this past week. Don't worry, I won't be posting them all here... only a few! Phew!!

Our "Hannibal" Trip actually included the towns of Florida and Lousianna as well. We have a habit of doing that. For instance, our "Pilot Knob" trip also included Ironton and Lesterville... and our "Fayette" trip included Rocheporte and Glasgow. 

Our first stop during Our "Hannibal" Trip was Florida, Missouri. It is about 45 minutes west of Hannibal and just so happens to be the birth place of Missouri's own Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain. There is a museum there that is pretty wonderful. The cabin in which he was born and spent his earliest childhood years living in is actually placed inside the museum. Originally situated less than a mile down the road from the museum, it was picked up and moved in full to the museum and built around to keep it in the best condition... and it is in very fabulous condition. Here's a photo of it:

It's kinda crazy that this house is in such great condition. You can't go inside it, but you can look through it and see how they lived. Also in the museum are many artifacts from Mark Twain's Connecticut home. His furniture was pretty lovely and of course I wanted it all. We came across a giant boat wheel and couldn't resist those typical tourist photos!

I thought they turned out pretty cute!

I had to kneel on a stool because I'm so short! After the museum, we went to Mark Twain Lake and found Clara's View Outlook. Let me tell ya, I wasn't expecting much. It was stinking hot and I was not looking forward to the walk to the lake. BUT, once we got to the water and the cool breeze from the lake hit me in the face I was all "Ahhhhhhh! I love this place!" ha ha It really was beautiful, and COOL!!! And considering it was a degree of 105, breeze was my kind of attraction. I was just standing there letting my hair blow in the wind coming off the water when Mark snapped this shot of me:

It turned out pretty good, considering I didn't even know it was being taken! Then, though, I had to do one smiling... of course...

After having our fill of the lake (sorta, we probably could have stayed there all day), and going by the original location of Mark Twain's childhood cabin, we drove into Hannibal.

The last time I was in Hannibal I was a fifth grader on a school field trip. At the last minute, the teachers informed us we didn't have enough parent volunteers to take the trip so I called my Nana to see if she could come. She couldn't because the priest was going to be visiting that day, so someone else got their parent or some other to come and THEY got to be the one to save the day. Ah, the downfall of being an Irish Catholic... ha ha... but seriously, that's what I remember most from that field trip. That, and when they turned the lights out in the cave... another story for another time. Anyways, Hannibal is waaaaayyyyy different when you are a kid. I was expecting a completely different place.

Hannibal is a sweet little town, and MUCH more than just Hill Street (the area where Samuel Clemens home is, and, I note, the only thing I thought existed in Hannibal when I was 10 years old). We settled down for a meal at The Brick Oven where we thoroughly enjoyed super yummy pizzas made in, of course, a brick oven. Let me tell ya, if you ever go there you must order the chicken alfredo pizza. Yummy! 

Oh! Our bed and breakfast! O.M.Geeee!! I knew that Mark had gotten us a really romantic place to stay, but I had no idea how incredibly fabulous it was until we checked in. Seriously. This place was a dream! It is called The Rockcliffe Mansion and it sits atop a limestone bluff that overlooks the entire town and the Mississippi River. It is 28,000 square feet of GORGEOUS. I'll post pictures of it later, because I took so many that I can't even decide yet which ones I want to post on here!

You can't go the Hannibal without doing the Mark Twain's Boyhood Home & Museum Tour. So we did. Here's a picture of Mark inside the Huck Finn house:

Granted, this house does not look like much. It's pretty bare. Really, though, Huck Finn wasn't a real person and so this house wasn't a real home. It was built merely as a tourist attraction. Huck was, though, based highly off of one of Sam's childhood friends and stories about him and his friendship with Sam are on plaques all over the walls. So were many other characters from his books. That was fun to learn :)

We also went on two Riverboat Cruises! First was the dinner cruise. This was FUN! We had a little table for two reserved right next to the dance floor and after we ate we went up to the top deck and took in the sights. It was absolutely lovely and so much fun :)

The second cruise we went on was the Fireworks Cruise. It was definitely a new experience and a pretty sweet way to spend the 4th of July!

After walking and walking and walking all around Hannibal in degrees over 100, the cave was a very welcomed experience. At a brisk 55 degrees, we could not have been more thrilled to be touring the cave. You'll have to excuse the quality of the photos, of which I am only posting 2 out of the many many many that we took. It's a bit difficult in the moist dullness of the cave to get anything of quality while at the same time trying to keep up with the tour guide... who obviously didn't understand the importance of a good photograph and the fact that we, and the rest of our tour group, weren't in a hurry anyway; it was over 100 outside!

We went into a massive amount of shops during our trip, but sadly we didn't find much of anything. We wanted to buy a copy of our favorite Norman Rockwell painting from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer collection that he did, but they didn't have any to buy! The nerve! So, we opted for a cheap post card copy of it instead and called it a day. Although there is an overwhelming supply of Huckleberry products for purchase from chocolates to lip balm (which I found absolutely repulsive... just gross) Hannibal doesn't earn points in my book for quality souvenirs. The antique stores are pretty great though, and every person we talked to was super nice. 

On the way home we stopped in Louisiana. Mark has been talking about taking me here for the last 5 years to show me this house he likes. The only thing was that he wasn't sure exactly where the house was once we got to town, so we drove around a bit until we found it. Once we did, and after talking a bit with a nice old farmer at his fruit and vegetable stand, he wanted to take me somewhere special. We drove around a bit more and he found the spot - a little park that overlooks the Mississippi River. The last time he was there he was with his dad, who passed away three years ago. We spent some time there, talking, resting, trying to talk ourselves into going home and ending our trip. It's a quiet spot with a beautiful view, a view that I probably took far too many photographs of. Here is our favorite photograph from that spot, though, and the last we took of our trip. It doesn't really cover the view, but it does capture the important part :)

After that, we got back into the car, cranked up the AC, and finished our trip with the lovely drive down 79. We did make a pit stop in Winfield, where his brother drove into town and met us for a nice dinner. It's not often that Michael is "on the way" when we are heading somewhere, so we thought a call to see if he could meet us in town was in order :)

Though the trip was great, and the house we stayed in was just the most amazing house we've ever been in, it is always good to be back home in your own bed. With the trip over and fond memories made, we fell asleep that night completely at peace to be home, healthy, and happy in love. There is really not much more one could ask for.

Up next for our exciting life: Our Anniversary later this week!!

The Party

So the big day finally arrived. I became old. Some say getting old is a privilege, right? Mark took me out Friday night for my birthday dinner and presented me with "tickets" to see Wicked when it comes to The Fox in December. So so so so soooooo excited!! I have wanted to see that FOR YEARS. Wicked was at The Fox just before we started dating, so this is our first chance to go see it together and Mark definitely surprised me :) He said he was going to give them to me for Christmas, but by then I would have heard they were coming to The Fox and I would have already dropped hint and hint after obvious hint that I wanted to go and it would have been much less of a surprise. He's so smart :)

My party was AMAZING, though I have to admit when the last friend left at 11:30 p.m. I was ready to collapse. I don't have too much time to blog about it at the moment. My sister has most of the pictures, which I'll post later when I get them from her, so I'll write more about it later and just share some pictures with you now:

 {Table Centerpieces.}

{Us with my brother and sister-in-law}

The 109ish-degree weather didn't keep Ellie from wanting to go outside, play with sticks, and climb our "Big Climbin' Tree. I didn't complain too much, it gave me an opportunity to take a some good snappies of her. Here's a few:

When it came time to eat, we played "How Many People Can Fit In Our Kitchen". Of course my siblings were first in line to play!!!

Andon put on every lei and hair clip he could find...

 

{So many cards, they barely fit on the mantel.}

I wish I had taken more pictures, but sadly I did not! Go figure! I know my sister took quite a few, and like I said I'll share those soon :) Thanks bunches to everyone who made my birthday this year AMAZING!

No Time For A Nursery

Pretty much every morning Mark and I take a walk before we go to work. It gets us goin' for whatever lies ahead. My bad ankle has been acting up, so this morning Mark was on his own. I always enjoy our little morning shenanigans through our neighborhood (we usually find a bit of money on the street or sidewalk, and I have no shame in admitting that sometimes people really do throw out perfectly fantastic things) but we've been doing a lot of work around the house and Mark is so much more the morning person, so I thanked my bad ankle for getting me out of it this morning.

When he came back from the walk he told me he saw a pregnant woman walking and said to himself "That could be Nichole!". I have to say that I think it is so incredibly attractive when he talks about us starting a family, BUT there are a few things that have to happen first. Laughing, I held up my left hand and pointed to my ring finger. "See this finger. There's something missing on it." "Oh yeah," he says, smiling ear to ear (he loves to talk about this stuff, but he is taking is sweet time with all the preliminaries!!!) "Yeah," I say "something that sparkles!" and then we are both laughing. It was a pretty cute moment. LOVE the idea of us being Mommy & Daddy, but still waiting for that whole husband & wife thing... 

Besides, I have absolutely no time to decorate a nursery right now! (Though, let's face it, if I really had to then I'd have Mark's butt up in my mom's attic getting down my baby crib faster than it would take our theoretical pregnancy news to make headlines on all of my family member's Facebook accounts... and that wouldn't take long at all!) I have enough painting to handle just with our bathroom and kitchen. Speaking of which...

Our friend Rob spent a bit of time with us this past weekend while his lovely wife was out of town visiting family. He had a super fun time with us too... installing our new kitchen tile! 

Mark and Rob worked super hard ripping up the old floors and laying the new tile. We let it sit for the night once I had dinner made (pizzas for the guys, chicken tacos for me, YUM!) and sat downstairs to watch a movie - at which Mark and I kept falling asleep, completely boring our guest. Sorry Rob! In the morning, the tile was grouted and Mark took probably a little too long to figure something out with the dishwasher (I don't even know what, I just know he was getting annoyed at the thing, ha ha) and then we ate waffles with fruit and whipped cream (and even bigger YUM!!)

It took two days to paint the walls in the kitchen... just the walls and ceiling. The wall tiles in the kitchen (currently a yellow color) are still needing to be painted. I really want to get this done before party day, but who knows at this point. The kitchen was painted in two colors: almond and orange. My sweet man had painted it those colors when he moved into the house in an attempt to match the orange, brown, and yellow 1970s vinyl floors. You gotta give him credit for that! ha ha BUT thank goodness he met me and we're finally getting our sweet little home updated to better reflect me us. Orange is not my favorite color.

Here is what the kitchen looked like BEFORE:

 

Here is what the kitchen looks like as of last night 

(Well, half of the kitchen, I'll post picture of the other side once I get the wall tiles painted):

It's MUCH better :) The trim, walls, and ceiling are all painted in Popcorn by Martha Stewart. (You should have heard the conversation Mark and I had previously about the different shades of white... HILARIOUS!) The ceramic tiles are a little dark, but that's why we chose white for the walls. It brightens the kitchen up brilliantly. That ceiling light has to go, though. Not sure what we are going to do there yet. The really sad thing about that light is that I can stand right under it without hitting my head. 

It's AMAZING what a little paint and some new tiles can do. So happy :)

Pretty Exciting Stuff!

So much can happen in three days :)

We went from painting bathroom wall tiles, to getting new bathroom wall tiles installed, and back to painting bathroom wall tiles. I can't seem to make up my mind when it comes to these little home projects. After Mark told me he'll just get me brand new wall tiles so I didn't have to do all that sanding and painting and re-glazing, I found this pin on Pinterest that's a one-step-and-your-done deal. Totally excited, I called Mark at work and told him about it. He called our floor guy (no, not our friend Rob, but the guy Ron who did our floors in our rental property) who said he knows someone who knows how to do that. Ron called today and said this guy had paint left over and is giving it to us FREE! We go to pick up the wall tile paint on Saturday :) I don't have high hopes that I'll get the wall tiles painted before party day, but I'm excited about the free house update. Mark should thank his lucky stars. My quick ability to change my mind just saved him some serious buckaroos! There's even more perks... this guy is giving us so much paint that we'll have plenty extra, so we are going to paint the wall tiles in the kitchen too! Whose a lucky lady? This lady right here!

Also, the bathroom art that I posted previously and made while doing arts and crafts with the girls while at work is getting a total re-do. Another thing I have changed my mind on, thanks to Pinterest. I'll post a picture once I get it done.

On the to-do list for this weekend, house-wise:

1) New ceramic tiles in the kitchen!!!

2) Scrub down patio furniture.

3) Give the patio furniture a fresh coat of paint so it shines for the party next weekend.

4) Clean out the shed. This should be typed out in that creepy font that you see in 1960s horror film titles.

5) Finish painting the kitchen.

6) Make the roman shade for the kitchen. Maybe.

The other day, Mark cleaned out the garage while I was making dinner. Space is limited, so when he put everything back into the garage it still looked cluttered... but he got rid of a lot and at least it's now organized clutter.

Onto something unrelated to home remodeling and decorating...

I'm going to be an old broad in 8 days! WHAT?!?! June is going by so freaking fast. In spite of the impending increase of age, I'm completely excited about my birthday. I love birthdays, mine and everyone's :)

We are also less than three weeks away from our little vacation! We usually take our vacation in the fall, but we wanted to go somewhere particular over the 4th of July, so we're cramming it in between our birthdays (they are exactly one month apart) and our anniversary.

We may be busy, but it's all pretty exciting stuff!

Bye Bye Tree Limbs, Hello Bathroom Floor!

Mark said it best Saturday afternoon as he looked around at the mess that was our yard and home and said "This has quickly turned into one of the most productive days of my life." Yes, it was a very busy Saturday at our house this past weekend. 

Here's why:

My daddy was over trimming down the massive tree that shadows our front yard. Mark's brother Michael was over helping us acquire mulch for my gardens. Our friends Rob and Katie were over - Rob putting in our new ceramic tiles in the bathroom and Katie keeping me company while I worked away at spreading mulch or trying to keep my daddy from killing himself up on the ladder. In the middle of all that, we also held a team meeting for our web design company in our dining room. CRAZY!, but it felt absolutely fantastic to get a few of the major items on our to-do list checked off. 

For me, the big thing was the bathroom floor. I really did not think that was happening prior to the party!! I was sooooo so so so happy when I got the text from Rob on Friday night saying he was going to be there first thing in the morning. 

You know me, every once and awhile I grabbed the Canon and took a snappy of whatever was happening in the moment. 

Here Mark is, shoveling the mulch down so I can spread it. They (whoever "they" are) say that if you put newspaper down before you mulch it'll keep the weeds down to a minimum. So we're giving it a good go and if it doesn't work we'll know for next year.

 

 

 Watching Daddy trim the tree was interesting entertainment throughout the day. 

He got our electric tree trimming stuck in one of the mega-huge branches he was cutting down. (Not his fault, the weight of the branch caused the saw to get jammed.) 

 

We tried several ways to release the saw, but here are my favorites:

I don't know what he thought he was going to do with this stick, but he tried it...

 

When that didn't work, him and Mark orchestrated a sort of "rope weight" using a long rope and a heavy bit of tree limb. Daddy threw the weight over the big tree branch...

 ...then he pulled the branch down using as much of his body weight as possible...

... and "Voila!" the saw released and all was right in the world once again. 

We have sooooooo much tree trimming to get rid of now. Our yard waste guys are going to hate us :) 

While all of this was going on outside, Rob was working away inside making my bathroom look beautiful. This room is starting to look like it's coming together. Here are the first BEFORE shots of the bathroom (the vanity and sink are new, that we installed about 6 months ago.)

 

Lot's of things will be changing in the next few months with this bathroom. For starters... NO PINK will be anywhere in site! I love pink. It's my favorite actually. But NOT for a bathroom. For now, the only thing pink is the tub and a few of the wall tiles - both of which will be getting replaced this year. (The new wall tiles are a surprise from my handsome man. I don't have to re-glaze after all! I get to go to the store, pick out something lovely, and then hire someone else to install them. Woo-hoo!) I can totally deal with the pink tub and not-so-appealing wall tiles just a little bit longer, especially since it means I get an even better bathroom upgrade than I was anticipating!

 

The first AFTER shot of our new bathroom floor and new WHITE toilet!

See! You can barely see the pink tub as long as we keep the shower curtain closed. It was incredibly difficult to pick out a grout color. After putting three different colors in the cart, I chose a bright beige color called "Biscuit" because they would of had to special order the "French Vanilla" that I really wanted and we didn't have time for that. We will also be getting a new medicine cabinet/vanity mirror and I'm going to be putting up some new shelving and art work on the walls. The upper portion of the walls have already gotten their fresh coat of paint ("Popcorn" by Martha Stewart, it's a creamy white color), so all that's left to do is hang up the cute stuff! Hopefully I'll at least get to that before the party :)

This whole "Turning our first house together into a Home together" thing is super time consuming, but also totally exciting. Bits of things seem to be happening instead of entire rooms changing all at once, but it's so much fun with each new little update. I'm completely enjoying this process :) We're so thankful for all of the help we receiving from family and friends this weekend!

 

Tuesday Night Goods

I got some new goodies for the house tonight :)

 

I finally found a pair of blue and white ceramic vases for the mantel! I've seen so many, and all of them were either too big, too small, too skinny, or too blue. The best part was that these sweet little things were 30% off. Score! I thought I would wait to find flowers for the vases, but the combination of temptation and a 50% off all floral sign was too much to handle... I picked me out some flowers. Yellow peonies and orange-red ranunculuses. Beautiful :) Yes, they are faux flowers. Right now I'm an over-scheduled working woman, and in a bit of time I'll be a busy housewife and mother, so if I need to "faux up" my house so it stays crisp and pretty with as little effort from myself as possible then so be it! I have no shame! I have good taste when it comes to all things faux. After I got a large corner plant my future MIL came over for a visit and exclaimed how beautiful it was. "Is that real!?" she asked, surprised because she knows I only put the real stuff out in the garden. I laughed and said "It's so fake it needs to be dusted!" When you know what you're buying, faux is beautiful, it's cheap, and most importantly... it's convenient. Just wait 'til y'all see my faux granite counter tops :) :) After finding the vases and the flowers, I pushed my cart over to the fabric section. I am so picky about fabric. There were hundreds, and I only liked two. Unfortunately, the medallion pattern that I was originally wanting wasn't available in the colors I wanted, so I had to find something else. This proved to be tricky. The backdrop in the photo above is the fabric I'll be using to make the roman shade for the window over our kitchen sink. The kitchen walls are going to be white, and so are the kitchen cabinets, and so I wanted the shade to have bold colors that will make the window pop. 

You're probably wondering why there is a dish brush and a broom and dust pan. Yeahhhhh. The wonderful love of my life keeps taking the kitchen broom to use outside when he's doing yard work. It grosses me out. Every time I sweep the floors I just keep thinking that I'm bringing dirt in instead of sweeping it up. So I got me a new one. One that WON'T be going outside! The dish brush is just because I realized last week that the bristles on ours were looking really sad and pathetic. Plus, it matched the broom! ha ha (It's my birthday month. That calls for a little self giving, right?!)

I was too excited to see what my mantel flowers were going to look like. I couldn't tell for sure in the store, so as soon as I got to my mom's I put one of 'em together. Here's what will be sitting on each end of my mantel as soon as I get home from work Wednesday evening!!!

{Vase}

{Flowers}

{Vase & Flowers}

The Yard Looks Good

There are exactly 18 more days until I turn the ripe old age of 26, and 19 more days until the big bash to celebrate the fact that I've lived this long. 

Our house was supposed to be DONE.... 

It's NOT! and it won't even be remotely close to completion come party-time, though not for the lack of working our arses off. Hours of time have been spent in the yard. We've had an unusually comfortable early summer this year and so Mark and I have been getting all the yard work complete before it turns into one of those normal even-naked-is-too-many-layers-of-clothing Missouri summers. The yard will look GREAT for the party; the house... will be clean! We've only managed to get half the bathroom painted (anyone have any experience glazing wall tiles?) and half the kitchen painted (bye bye orange!!!). New floors, new counter tops, new kitchen cabinets, and that fresh coat of paint that we were positive we'd bless our entire house with prior to June 30th will all have to make their way to the done-did list in July and August because I'm fairly confident that they are still firm items on the won't-get-to list. At least I've finally come back to reality and have more realistic expectations on the time this house redecorating will need. Very stupid of me to begin the process around the same time my 25-hour work week expands to a 45-hour work week. I don't score points for that...

So, a little of this and a little of that is getting done in between work, work, work, and that Terminator marathon that we had last weekend ----> So fun and much needed! All four gardens are planted and awaiting mulch. The yard has been trimmed and weeded. We cut a tree down - Mark with the saw, and me pulling it with a long rope to make sure it didn't fall on him. We dug up tons of foliage that traveled through our fence from our neighbors yard, and did a little grading to even things out. Oh, and the shed has been painted. There's a bit more plants (dreaded hostas!), two small trees, and a few large bushes by our shed that we'll be working on getting out throughout this week, and then on Saturday our patio furniture is getting a nice new coat of paint. Even though I'm a bit bummed that the inside is taking longer than expected, I do get a little giddy every time I walk out to my yard and see how pretty its starting to look. 

I did do a fun little project at work today. The girls wanted to paint canvases, so I tried to come up with a way I could use this as an advantage and get one of the many DIY projects I have in mind for the house. I decided to do some art for the bathroom...

I had seen a bathroom sign on Pinterest that said "Rise and Shine" on it and thought that it was so cute, but I wanted to do my own creation instead of buying it. So, using canvas, acrylic paint, and stickers I made my own little sign to sit on the shelf in our bathroom. First, I painted the entire canvas a golden yellow. Then, I placed the stickers where I wanted them (I had to use a paper puncher to get the tiny polka dots). Next, I painted over the entire canvas - stickers and all - in greige (You know, that grayish beige color that is oh so trendy right now?). Lastly, I pulled off the stickers. Voila! I got me some new, easy, cheap bathroom art.