BUSY.

This weekend has been CRAZY!  It started off Thursday with our anniversary.  We didn't have a lot to spend this year, so we had mexican at home with some beers.  Technically the fourth anniversary is supposed to be flowers of some sort (who comes up with these ideas?!) so I counted our new front yard update as our major present to each other.  I made this super yummy, home-made-ish salsa Thursday too.  We also made plans to see our favorite band, Zac Brown Band, in September with two of our good friends as a future gift to ourselves.  But more on my love of ZBB another day, in another post...

I also found THIS gem at the market this week-the beer gods are OBVIOUSLY smiling down at me.  I've never found this beer in anything bigger than a 12 pack before, and it's my favorite summer beer :)

Enough about Thursday and on to Friday!  Friday went on as usual for me.  Hubs took Thursday and Friday off to celebrate our anniversary (lucky...).  I got finished with all my clients and met Andy and my parents at Tropical Liquers, where they'd been drinking for a couple hours already.  We left there soon after and went to a "Volunteer Appreciation" party which was held at Inside Columbia Magazine.

I'd previously been to this venue when it was still a bar (back in my sorority days).  I had the idea in my head that since a magazine had purchased this facility, that the bar/kitchen area would be something else.  I was SO WRONG.  It had a full kitchen where food was being prepared on the spot--beautiful, amazing food.  There was fresh sushi being hand-rolled in front of me, fresh, custom-trimmed pork loin with multiple sauce choices, cheeses, caviar with mozzarella and pesto, and fried pork and mushroom risotto balls.  

And there was wine.  Beautiful, delicious, wine.  More choices than I could ever imagine!  There was a game that we participated in attempted to participate in during which everyone guessed the type of wine they sampled.  All the wines were local and made near where we live.  We sampled at least 20 wines and made some new friends!  

I'd say the fact that hubs got wine on ANOTHER shirt means the night was a success.

Saturday, we woke up early and worked on putting up our pool.  We have an above-ground pool that was an anniversary gift to ourselves.  I think this is the third summer we have had the pool.  Every summer, the pool is a HUGE deal at our house.  We spend SO much time out there and booze a lot in it.  It's a ton of fun.  However, last year we found a leak and the water got gross at the end.  So putting up the pool on Saturday was a complete NIGHTMARE.  We had to re-level the area AND we found multiple holes to be patched and had to scrub the pool on hands and knees.  On the bright side?  The back yard looks amazing.  On the not-so-bright side?  I was SO tired yesterday.

I even took a little nap in the hammock for a few minutes after all the work!  

Later that night, my long-time friend and maid of honor in my wedding came to hang out/booze.  It's been at least two months since I've seen her, so catching up is always a good time.  I managed to get a measly two pictures from last night--go figure.  I guess we were having a good time?

And then, today.  We woke up early again--early for us, anyway (9 AM ON A SUNDAY IS EARLY FOR ME).  We had coffee and I decided I wanted to get to work on painting the kitchen.  Our kitchen is pretty big, and I knew this was going to be a huge amount of work.  It took us both around six hours to do the entire kitchen today.  But it is painted now, and I look forward to getting the backsplash tile installed so we can be done with this nonsense, at least for now.  I empathize with anyone who has lived through a renovation, because our kitchen was utter chaos while painting today.  

Here's the update so far, including the clutter and the attempt at cleanup: 

The color doesn't seem as dark now, so I hope it dries a little lighter than it was in this picture.  More to come!

Frank and I hope your weekend was as great as ours was!