Straight from the udder

We had a very Blacksburg-y weekend last week. We went to Bollos for coffee on Saturday morning, then to the farmers market for tomatoes and fresh milk straight from the cow (first time trying this), then we spent the afternoon on our canoe down the New River fishing and swimming. The water is perfect temperature right now!




The milk was funny to try because I had this weird idea that it would taste like liquid sour cream. I know, eww! I was nervous to try it. I don't know why I thought that. It was a little yellow-er than regular milk, but tasted totally normal, just creamier than our 2% that we buy at the store. Apparently it's much better for you. We felt like we were dealing drugs at the farmers market when he told us he couldn't legally sell it to us. He awkwardly said, "Uhh, yes, we do have milk. We don't sell it... we take donations. So I will take your $20 here........and will give you $20 in change back......aaaand then you can do what you like as far as donating. Here is a quart of milk."


Speaking of homemade things, I even tried my hand at the "5 minute artisan bread". Turned out better than expected!

Bathroom tour

If we owned this house, I would blog about all the fun fixes we would make to the house.

But we are renting it. So we call someone when something goes wrong. Sometimes this is great and we are thankful, other times it's a little frustrating.

Anyways, our bathroom is slightly outdated, but I like the tile. Kate says it's cute and vintage. I guess you could say that. It's just that floor that really gets to me, especially with a big crack by the toilet.


But since it's our only bathroom, we are renting, and we love our house, we are fine with it.

Moving on, for at least 6+ months, the tile in the shower was really loose (like, push-on-it-and-it-might-fall-right-off-the-wall kind of loose). Plus, the grout was old and black in some areas. I was a little grossed out by it and wondering if we're breathing in black mold or something. I looked it up online and it seemed like it could be a serious problem for the owner if the water damage went through to the walls (which I'm pretty sure it did).

We called in a work order to our realtor and waited. While we were on our cruise in June, they had a contractor come over. I thought they would just fix the water damage behind the tile (essentially replacing that part of the wall) and redo the tile. When we came back, he had removed the tile and put up vinyl siding in place of it. I think it was probably the cheapest way to go, but I think it looks good and much cleaner. I'm definitely happy to shower in there.

A little added bonus (not) was that the contractor forgot to shut any doors while doing the work, so from our bedroom to the kitchen (aka our entire house) was full of a layer of white dust. We got back from the cruise and deep cleaned for a day. It's probably good because we needed to. Sometimes it feels good to do a real deep clean of the whole house together (*together=key word).

(Sorry this is not a great picture, but you can see the black areas in the grout)

New shower:



The joys of renting are definitely calling someone when something is broken, having someone else fix it, and not worrying about it.

Is it weird that I'm telling you about our bathroom shower? I guess if you read this, just make sure the tile in your shower is not soft. It could be a problem.

Love

I love these stamps. You should ask for them when you're buying stamps at the post office. The postman told me they go pretty quickly.


I wish we had these for our wedding invitations! ...Oh wait, no, I wish we got with the times, saved our money on stamps, and did an online RSVP. But these are terribly cute. I love the colors.

They kind of remind me of the pot of zinnias I have out back.

Sad to say

If you're into gardening, this may interest you. If not, go ahead and save your time by not reading this :-)

All of our tomato plants are diseased. We started noticing that they weren't looking very good. Are we watering too much? Are we not watering enough?


A few days ago, I took close up pictures and inspected the plants. Then I went online and researched images on Google and read About.com about tomato problems.

It turns out they have tomato leaf spot (or Septoria leaf spot). It's very common for tomatoes. Supposedly, it doesn't affect fruit but it does affect leaves and stems, so it affects how much fruit we will actually get. Bummer. At least we are swimming in cucumbers.

All I've done is pull off all the spotty foliage and dying stems in hopes that we may still get some tomatoes.

Dionne and Daniel: Married!

Last weekend, we went to Ocean Isle, NC for Dionne's wedding. First of all, I have to show you the super cute engagement photos that they got.


This one is perfect because their entire dating relationship was long distance. So cute!


The wedding on Friday evening was beautiful. The weather gave us a scare at the last minute, but it ended up being perfect. It was my first beach wedding experience.


The music was fun and unique. Really, the whole wedding was unique just like Dionne.


I absolutely adored Dionne's dress. It looked amazing on her. She was so beautiful! AND she had the perfect hair for the windy weather.



Daniel and Dionne go so well together. It was a blessing to be a part of such an awesome day.



Meredith and I had a fun time being there for Dionne and enjoying every moment from the "bridal tea" laying out and lunch at the Tiki Bar next door, being barefoot during the ceremony, to the pinatas at the reception.

Is Meredith not one of the cutest pregnant ladies ever?


We even got a picture of the Crush ladies. History: We were on a women's flag football team called "Crush" almost all of college together. We won the championship our freshman year. No big deal.


While we were there for the weekend, we rented a house with a bunch of friends. It was SO fun to all stay together. It was a cute house just a couple blocks from the beach, a golf cart to get around, and its own dock right out back on the intercoastal waterway.


It was such a perfect day on Saturday. We woke up, went to the beach all day, came back to the house and made a huge dinner together, walked to the Ocean Isle Creamery for ice cream, then watched a movie together. My Dad, Kim (his girlfriend), and Aaron (my brother) came over to cook dinner and hang out. Dad directed people chopping and prepping. We had a lot of fun making dinner.



More photos here.

Floyd Jamboree

We went to Floyd for the Friday Night Jamboree a couple weekends ago. Floyd is an awesome little town just 25ish minutes from Blacksburg.



We didn't pay $5 to stay inside the store and enjoy the jamboree, but we did walk around and enjoy the random groups of people playing bluegrass/country outside. This group was really good. The guy with the fiddle had just driven up from Raleigh and never met these other guys-and they sounded so good!! It was like they just picked it up no problem. Really fun.


There was a little market with homemade things like tie dye, pottery, rain sticks, and carved wood.



I think we'll be back there soon. Bryce's dad loves bluegrass. I can't wait. I want to get Bryce to dance with me at the jamboree.

Cruise

At the end of June, we went on a 4-day cruise vacation. We went with Brett and Rachel (Bryce's brother and his wife). It started in Miami, went to Key West for about half a day, then to Cozumel, Mexico for a day, then back to Miami.

We had a great time exploring Miami beach for a couple days before we left on the cruise. We started our Miami experience at a Cuban restaurant in Miami beach. It made me miss the sweet plantains we ate all the time in Venezuela!



The coconut shrimp at Bubba Gumps restaurant is soooo good.



The cruise itself was very relaxing. None of us had ever been on a cruise. The food was good and it was really nice to do absolutely nothing.


We sun bathed on the waterslide deck almost the whole time. It was fun watching all the kids. The cruise was a lot more family-friendly than I thought it would be.

We enjoyed a couple comedy shows, a dancing/singing show, and really good break dancers.

It was really fun to dress up for the formal Captain's dinner.




The ship decor made us feel like we were high rollers especially at night.


Our room was bigger than I thought it would be. We were in the VERY front of the ship (the last room at the very end of the hall). It got a little noisy and I think we could probably feel more rocking than other parts of the ship. BUT truth be told, we kind of liked being rocked to sleep.




We had a fun time in Key West renting bikes and riding around the area for a couple hours.




Key West has true free range chickens all over the place. They go wherever they like and are actually protected by law.


The line to get back on the ship (it was a little like sheep being herded)...



In Cozumel, we went on an excursion with Carnival on a catamaran boat for snorkeling and an hour at a beach with blow up water toys. I think it was worth doing an organized excursion with the ship rather than trying to find one on our own (which I initially wanted to do). It was really fun and went by too quick!






It was a really fun vacation. I was nervous that I would be seasick, but it was fine, even the one day when we definitely felt the boat rocking quite a bit. I think that 4 days was a good amount of time for us to be on the cruise. We decided that cruises would be most fun with a bunch of friends altogether. We also decided that a cruise isn't our preferred vacation, we'd rather do our own thing and explore where we are at our own pace and try different restaurants out, but nonetheless, we had a great time!

So, Bryce and I actually DROVE to Miami from Blacksburg. All 14 hours of it. The drive home felt a lot longer than the drive there. We did have some great moments on the ride back to the Burg. They mainly consisted of this:


Bryce proclaimed this "the best Big Mac he has ever tasted." So I had to take a (big) bite. And it was in fact the best Big Mac (of the 2 that I have eaten in my life).


I had a smoothie and a hamburger. Did you know a hamburger is mainly just bread and meat? It looks pretty measly compared to the Big Mac.



This is weird and makes me regret my decision.

This was an awesome sunset that we enjoyed (while in traffic) over Lake Norman.