I am not afraid anymore...

Of all my canned goods crashing down on everything!  The house came with the wire racks in the pantry.  Our pantry is narrow and deep so some of those bad boys were holding up a good bit of weight.  I kept telling the BHW that if we heard a huge crash one night, we would know what it was!  He (being the sweetie that he is!) decided to build me some wooden shelves!  Here is the pantry before.

I know it doesn't look very organized, but I promise it kind of was.  At least it was about a year ago when I cleaned it all out, purged old things and organized it.  You can still see some of my very fancy labels I made!   That would be paper taped to the shelf. That was my tutorial for you!

First, we took everything out of the pantry.  I don't have any idea how I get all this stuff into that little pantry, but I did!  I went through everything and threw away anything expired.  

Hi, my name is Kathryn and I used to have a Longaberger addiction...

There is my happy little worker bee!  He even came home early on Valentine's Day to work on my pantry!  He sort of had to as he started the project on Sunday and it took a bit longer than he planned.  All this stuff was out on my counters and I had to get it off!  Baking cookies and making pizzas were interesting with no available space to work on!  

He had already cut the shelves and we had primed and painted them.  Bless his heart, he was coming down with the flu and we didn't know it.  He didn't feel great, but kept on working!

Here she is now all done and organized (for the most part!)  There is a lot to be desired in my organizational skills, but it works for me!  It just seems that I have more room and I don't worry about stacking cans toward the front or back so they won't collapse in the middle!  He did such a good job!

He also made my spice shelves that are in here.  You can see that post here.  I am a pretty lucky lady to have a handy husband!  Thank you sweetheart!  You really are the BHW!

And I had to just add this picture of my old girl, Murphy!  You can read all about her here.  I have been playing with my new lens and I just loved this picture of her!  Isn't she beautiful?  I love her!  

I am linking up to Kim's Wow Us Wednesday party at Savvy Southern Style!

A Valentine's to Remember

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day!  I know we did!  This post is coming a bit later than planned as the BHW has the flu, and I have pink eye!  It has been an interesting week!

Our Valentine's present for Jemma was a carriage ride through downtown Charleston with none other than Cinderella herself!   A local shop runs the carriage every month or so and the princesses are always there!  Snow White was handing out Valentine's!

Our neighbors also went and the girls were so excited!

Can you believe I didn't get a picture of the carriage?  Bad blogger!  It was round like a pumpkin!

They posed!

They talked!

They laughed!

Snuggling was involved.

I think she enjoyed it!

I think Cinderella did too!

For Valentine's dinner, Jemma asked that we eat by candlelight.  She loves history and wanted to know what it was like to only eat by candlelight.  It was a super quick tablescape so not a lot of fluff, but she loved it!  We used our wedding china on gold chargers from Big Lots.  We drank out of my crystal Heisey Minuet glasses.  Jemma thought it was all very fancy!!  

Heart shaped BBQ chicken pizzas were on the menu

I bought the candleabra at a street market in Germany.  They need to be cleaned, but I love the old tarnished look of them.  The only problem with them is they take bigger candles that I have a hard time finding in America!  I need to go on the hunt!

We also made  sugar cookies with homemade cream cheese icing.  I will never buy store bought again!   Due to a bit o' sassiness, one small child didn't get cookies.  :-(  Didn't stop mommy from eating a few one (very small one) after she went to bed!

It was a wonderful Valentine's Day and Jemma asked if we could eat in the big dining room by candlelight more often.  I am excited as we will use it as a time to teach manners!  Not to mention, she is totally adorable by candlelight!

Have a great weekend!

Happy Valentine's Day and a Mantle/Mantel

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!  This is a super special day to me as 17 years ago, a super sweet boy asked one really cute girl to marry him!  It has been love and hearts ever since!!  I also have a cute little somebody that makes every holiday super fun now too!  I am a lucky woman!

I have been obsessed with handprint art lately and for every holiday have been doing things with handprints or fingerprints.  For Valentine's Day, we came up with this.

So I took that and put it with these and came up with this!

The red dish thing on the right was my grandmother's.  It is an interesting piece as it has an Independence Day motif.  There are circles embossed/made into the glass.  One has a torch with a sunburst behind it and the other circle has an eagle with 1886 on it.  These are in a pattern around the dish.  I have a blue one also.  I have no idea where they are from or if there is a special purpose.  If you know anything about these, I would love to know!

I am off to a certain 5 year old's Valentine party and we are going to come home and make heart shaped cookies and heart shaped pizzas for dinner tonight!

I hope you all have a day full of LOVE!

Oyster Roast 2011

Have you ever been to an oyster roast?  Oh my!!!  If you love oysters, this is the place for you!!!!  It is a traditional outdoor party here in the Lowcountry.

 There are huge tables which are basically a piece of plywood with holes cut in each end.  Garbage cans are placed under the holes to hold the thing up.  Big batches of oysters are steamed in baskets and dumped on the table.  You dig in and toss your shells in the holes!  We love to have them on crackers with horseradish and cocktail sauce, but it appears to we are too fancy with it and we should just drag the oyster through some cocktail sauce and pop it in our mouths!

My friend, Laura in the pink, got caught by these sly young girls who had her doing the shucking and giving them the oysters!  She looked at me and said, "I don't even know these kids!"  This was our first annual Oyster Roast in our neighborhood last Sunday.  The weather was perfect!  We had D.J. playing music and a huge RV parked in the parking lot with a big screen t.v. playing Super Bowl pregame stuff. We had a great turnout and lots of fun!  

Meet my friend, Mandy, who is a southern belle at her finest!  If I want to keep up,  I need a monogrammed oyster glove and oyster knife.  I told you people we monogram everything!!! 

 I will have one next year!!!  

Beautiful weather, great food, wonderful friends... could it have been a better Sunday?  I think not!

Happy Blogaversary!!!

Today is my one year blogaversary!  

It has gone by so fast and I am so excited that I started this adventure!

I want to thank Debbie and Kim so much for really encouraging me and helping me get this blog going and started.  They were truly my inspiration to do it!

I started my blog as a journal to document our lives for our friends and family that live far away.  I throw some decorating in there and the occasional craft that we do, but for the most part I share my life. 

 For those of you who follow me, thank you.  

Thank you for letting me share this with you and for always being so supportive. 

I am glad you are here and hope you come for another year more! 

Love,

Kathryn