It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Some husbands bring home flowers--mine brings home pumpkins. A few weeks ago, I was on the phone with Andrew while he was driving home from work and he passed a pumpkin patch. I got a little excited and rambled on about getting a pumpkin to sit outside our door because it's fall and I love fall...you get the idea by now...

So this past Friday, my sweet husband showed up at the door with a pumpkin in hand! He said, "I picked out the prettiest and most expensive one...it was $3.50." It must have been a fancy pumpkin patch :) For now, it's greeting our guests as a pumpkin, but we've got plans to carve it once it gets close to Halloween. Our apartment complex is full of potential trick-or-treaters and we've got to be ready for action, so stay tuned for the Castrodale Jack-O-Latern!

Dear Great Pumpkin, I am looking forward to your arrival on Halloween night. I hope you will bring me lots of presents.

-Linus Van Pelt

i love thursday

Thursday is my favorite day of the work week. I love it because when I get home from work, I know that tomorrow is Friday. And Friday means that the weekend is almost here. Knowing that just puts me in a good mood. The other reason I like Thursday is because it means Pub Thursday at my office. I'm ridiculously spoiled having this as my first job, but at 4pm we have Pub Thursday, complete with an array of pub snacks -- pretzels, chips and salsa, guacamole, bruchetta (is that a pub snack?) and cheese balls. I never appreciated cheeseballs until I worked here. But something about being able to be a grown-up and eat cheeseballs at work is something to write home about, you know? So I love Pub Thursday.

But my FAVORITE part of Thursday is what Andrew and I have coined...LEFT OVER THURSDAY! It means that there is no cooking, only cleaning out the fridge from this week's meals. It's awesome and I highly recommend it. This week, because all of our leftovers took the form of lunches, we only get the homemade chicken noodle soup that simmered to goodness in the crockpot all day yesterday. Which is fine by me, because the gray sky I see outside my window right now just screams "chicken noodle soup". And yes, I'm blogging at work. What can I say, it's Pub Thursday and everyone has officially stopped working for the afternoon.

I'm looking forward to cuddling up with some chicken noodle soup and my sweet husband. And the best part is, we got the final disk of Friends: Season 1 in the mail today--courtesy of Netflix. It's going to be awesome.

Happy Thursday, one and all...

fall is here

It's true. I saw some trees shedding their green today in preparation for this season that I love. And this past Saturday, courtesy of my sister-in-law, I had some pumpkin soup. Indeed, fall is here.

As I write this, I'm sitting at the kitchen table watching my sweet husband cook dinner. He got off work early (a rarity) and so I get this special treat. We've got the windows open because it's a delightful 65 degrees outside and our Fall Festival candle is spilling into all the rooms of our apartment. Mixed with the smell of what's in the oven, I'm in heaven. Also, Daddy is coming over tonight to help Andrew lug our new dryer up the stairs, so all in all, it's a good evening.

If you were to come over right now, you'd be greeted by a wreath on the door. Inside you would find pumpkin-colored hand towels hung over the handle of the oven, a leaf-shaped tray in the middle of the table and an arrangement of fall flowers that Mrs. C helped me assemble standing near the fireplace. It's happy here.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
-George Eliot-

a few of my favorite things

In the few months that our house has been completely decorated--it didn't all come together until May--I've come to cherish a few things. They are all mostly gifts that people have given us, but seeing them displayed in our home, each with its own spot, makes them seem much more special...

My best friend, Martha, gave this to me as a birthday/housewarming present. It says "May this home be filled with love and laughter." It hangs right by our door to greet us and our guests and we enter. Martha is living overseas for the next year, and I miss her a lot -- I love having this little reminder of her friendship.

There are two very cool things here. The two books are recipe books that belonged to Andrew's Great Great Grandma Wilson and Great Grandma Castrodale. His Aunt Anne bound them as our wedding gift. What a treasure! The wooden cross came from Jerusalem - my grandparents brought it back from their trip to the Holy Land in February. Both of these gifts have such sentimental value and I love having them displayed on the table in our living room.

Here sits the best conversation peace in our house! A friend from Andrew's church, Lee, who has been living in South Korea, sent these as our wedding gift. It is the culture there to have wooden ducks like these displayed prominently in a couple's home. If the ducks are facing each other, it means the couple is getting along. If they are turned away, it means they are fighting and it serves as a warning to any guests. So far, there have only been threats of "turning the ducks." We love our ducks!

Go Heels! This is the front page of the UNC student newspaper from the day after we won the National Championship in 2005. I had it framed for Andrew as his graduation gift and this is what inspired our Carolina room. We love it!

This recipe box came from my sweet mother who had everyone in our family and Andrew's handwrite some of their favorite recipes. Not only do I have a stack full of awesome meals ready to be made, but I have them in my precious family's handwriting. This, I know, I will treasure forever.

This precious piece came from my Aunt Rita when Andrew and I got engaged. It's called "Promise" and the tag attached to it said, "Hold dear the promise of love." It sits on my dresser in our bedroom and it's a sweet reminder of how much I adore my husband!

Isn't this beautiful? My Nanny Johnson has cross stitched one of these for everyone in our family who has ever gotten married. I always admired my parents' and am now blessed with my own. This is absolutely priceless and I love having it in our home!

So there you have it...a few of my favorite things! I wonder how many little treasures will find their way into our home over the years. I love being sentimental :)

Countdown to Fall

Our home is anxiously awaiting the start of fall! I've had such fun time waiting for September 22, the first day of fall and the shopping bags are there to prove it. After two visits to HomeGoods, I found too many good deals to pass up on and now there are some new dish towels, a table centerpiece and a wreath just waiting to make an appearance. And then there's the Yankee Candle -- probably what I'm most excited about. Many of my favorite memories have some sort of smell associated to them: Black Mountain, where my mom's family is from, smells like flowers; Andrew's parents' house smells like Christmas year-round; I will forever associate my mother with the smell of her Lancome perfume...etc, etc. Do you get the picture? Anyway, I decided that I wanted our house to have a smell during fall and the holidays. I presented Andrew with this idea that we could have a candle that we lit during fall so that we could have a smell associated with our fall memories. And when our kids come home from college for Thanksgiving, they will smell the fall smell and immediately feel like they're at home. Cheesy? Yes. Do I care? Absolutely not.

So off to the Yankee Candle store we went in search of our fall candle. And there we found Fall Festival: "A luscious autumn medley of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoa, maple, walnut, citrus and caramel." It's delicious and I can't wait to light it!

Stay tuned and in about two weeks you'll have a glimpse into the our first fall :)

Six Months?!?

Believe it or not, we've been married for six months today. It's so hard to believe! Six months ago, we had been married for approximately 5 hours and everyone was cheering on the Heels while we watched the Carolina-Duke game -- which we watched in the lobby of the hotel with about 50 screaming Carolina students AND we won...when we get married, we bring good luck!

In honor of our six month anniversary, we decided to make a list of six things we know about each other that we didn't know before we were married. Enjoy!

What Page knows about Andrew...

• He does not believe in expiration dates. If it isn't growing something or it doesn't smell, he eats it.
• He snores when he sleeps on his back.
• He's the most encouraging person I've ever met -- whether it's when I'm doubting my outfit for the day, feeling inadequate and insecure, or questioning the paint color.
• He's really good at folding fitted sheets.
• He HATES tangled cords.
• And I already knew he was sweet, but he's still just as sweet as before.

What Andrew knows about Page...

• Don't wake her up.
• Don't suggest WHEN she should wake up...or how...or why...
• Don't do anything without a plan.
• Make sure she knows she's loved.
• She's as sensitive as I am insensitive, as emotional as I am emotionLESS and as sentimental as I am practical. We believe this is by design.
• I could only come up with 5 things. And I'm sorry.

...oooh, marriage :)

veg (věj): vegetable; to vegetate; to engage in complete inactivity; to rest

That's the plan for this weekend. We've been out of town for the last four weekends and while we've enjoyed every bit of it, we're looking forward to two days with no commitments. I think I might start a new book and stay in my pajamas and maybe organize my closet. It looks like Hurrican Hanna is eyeing NC for a visit this weekend also, which is fine with me because any chance of rain makes the idea of being lazy even more appealing. Andrew and I will kick off the weekend with our ritual date night on Friday and then at bedtime, we'll turn off the alarm clock. Oh, how glorious that sounds :)