Our Second Anniversary

We sort of started celebrating our second anniversary a month early. :) John surprised us with a trip to the symphony, and was thrilled when he saw that tickets were available on the 25th! The only problem was that it was the 25th of June. So, we kissed in celebration of 23 months of marriage, and saved the rest of the celebrating for another month. :)

Lawn seats at a summer concert was an excellent idea for a date with a baby. Gemma was happy to lie out on a blanket listening to the beautiful music of Tchiakovsky. I could easily nurse her, and nobody batted an eye when she made a few noises. Sweet memories.

One month later . . . we planned a dinner to Outback, thanks to gift cards from John's brother's company for helping them out (in a very small way!) at a recent convention! Perhaps there will be more on our visit with Steve and Abby later . . . so much has happened. :) Outback is special to us because it was at an Outback in February 2008 that we officially became a couple. Friends from church even volunteered to come to our house to babysit Gemma, which was awfully kind of them!

My gift to John was a chocolate peanut butter pie, the recipe for which I found through Pinterest. (Such a fun, addicting thing Pinterest is, isn't it?)

My gift to ourselves was finally framing our wedding portrait for our room. It ended up being a much less expensive project than I anticipated, too, which is always nice! Shutterfly probably isn't the best place to get wedding prints made, but I had a coupon code to stack on a gift card, and it's been two years! I was not going to wait any longer. This 11x14", one 8x10", several 5x7's and probably about 100 4x6's cost us around $11 . . . not bad.


The second big hurdle was finding a frame that I would want to remember with my wedding portrait forever. That was a little daunting! Baby and I decided to visit Michael's and investigate both their custom framing and off-the-shelf options. It helped that they were offering a 40% off promotion on both options!

I was torn between two. We'd already had a black and white portrait printed, so I wasn't sure if I should pick a frame, like this, with warm tones, or if I should choose one with more black in it. I was also unsure about the wide off-white matting. I really liked this frame, though!

And then I had an idea! I've also been wanting to make our vows into some sort of plaque or wall-hanging. I could write them out on that white space, breaking it up with the black lettering! I love calligraphy and decorating with words. What I ended up doing was just freehand cursive, not calligraphy, but I still think it came out nicely. :) The top and the bottom have the words to the questions to which John and I answered "I do," and the sides have the "with this ring" parts of the vows. (And, if at the risk of sounding totally money-obsessed, which I hope I am not, this frame ended up costing about $10 with the listed discount plus a "15% off your entire order" coupon! So . . . )

I think it's fair to say that John liked it, too. :) And we had a wonderful dinner at Outback together . . .

It's my goal to wear my white going-away-dress for every anniversary! (It even worked last year when I was 20-some weeks pregnant, thanks to the empire waist!)

"And now one kissing!" I love you, sweetie!