More New Orleans Pictures

 Inside the Cathedral

Anyone interested in a fixer-upper?

 

 

After a full day of sight seeing My daughter’s fiance’s family threw a big dinner and shower for the couple.

Aren’t they adorable?

We met a lot of family and got kissed a lot too! It was a whirlwind trip and I think I stayed up till 2 AM every night we were there. That’s tough on my system. I’ve been home for a week now, getting over a cold, and finally feel like I’m recovering, but I had a wonderful time.

I can’t wait to have his family up here and show them a bit of Seattle. Especially the lovely mountains out here where I live.

-Lynnae

P.S. I have seen a sample of my daughter’s bridal pictures. OH MY Goodness they are gorgeous. I am so excited. I wish I could show you right now, but I am under orders to keep pictures of her gown off the internet until her wedding. I can’t wait to show everyone!!!

New Orleans Day One

We stumbled off the airplane not long before midnight, but technically it was Saturday, so I’m, including it with our first day.

My daughter’s fiancé is a great young man, so I was eager to meet his parents. They were very nice and we had a great time. After checking in to our hotel we headed down to Cafe Du Monde to get acquainted over beignets. My daughter’s future in-laws.

Posing with my two older daughters. Yes, there are beignets under all that powdered sugar!

My daughter was very excited to be with her fiancé again after not seeing him for over a month.

My second daughter also came a long on the trip. Here we are stopping for a photo break.

My new friend buying us a blackened catfish po-boy sandwich to split.  The food was HEAVEN! Our new family friends threw a couple great bridal showers for my daughter while we were there. Between their excellent Italian cooking and the New Orleans flavors all around it was a foodie dream come true. ( I know, calories! But I figured I compensated by walking in the heat for hours. I earned every bite).

And then………. according to my children I proceeded to take enough pictures of New Orleans to furnish Google maps with their street view feature. But I couldn’t resist all the lovely architecture and overflowing balconies.

 

 

On a side note, I did have to come home and buy some flower boxes for my porch. It seemed a little bare after seeing these beauties!

-Lynnae

Wedding Plans: Bridals

Yesterday was a big day in the wedding preparations world, which is pretty much the world I exist in right now. We met with the woman making the wedding cake, and she also brought some yummy cake with her.

Library at University of Washington

  It was also the day for my daughter’s bridal photos. So her hair was done and the trip to Seattle was planned despite it raining cats and dogs. I bought a huge umbrella and prayed for a sun break. It cleared up in time for her late afternoon photo shoot. I took a few photos for the scrapbook of her and the photographer. Joshua from Joshua Gene Photography was great and really fun to work with. Unfortunately for you, all photos of the bride in the dress are under wraps until the wedding day. But I did snap a few pictures of the lovely locations we visited.

Lovely garden that will remain nameless for the time being because upon leaving we saw a sign that said no commercial photography was allowed. Whoops!

As enchanting as all this looked, it involved rushing around all day, eating nothing except cake samples, and neglecting my other daughters. I’m grateful to my second daughter who stepped in when daughter number 3 was having a bit of a meltdown about her 8th grade project being more lame than anyone else's.  That’s life in the real world. We got home from the bridal shoot at 10 pm, I ate more cake, and then stayed up until 1 am cutting new holes in the album filler sheets for said project because I bought the wrong type of pages and my hole punch was lost.

It’s good that there’s always a little something to keep me grounded.

Tomorrow my good friend down the street is hosting a bridal shower for my daughter, and then the next day we’re off to more showers and parties in ..…….

New Orleans!

Stay tuned,

-Lynnae

P.S. The 8th grade project turned out more awesome than anyone else’s.

Intricate and Beautiful

Look at the lovely screen I picked up on my last trip to Hobby Lobby. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it when we were on a trip to Utah. We came home and I dreamed about it for the next two months. When I went back to bring home my college girl I made a trip to Hobby Lobby in Orem with my sister. I picked up a few iron easels for the wedding reception. I also saw ‘my’ screen again, and it was on sale. It’s a lovely green color that looks fabulous in my house, and looks great against white walls too.

Since bringing it home I have tried out several locations. I love this area in my living room, and it’s stayed here the longest, but I really would like it in my family room just so I could stare at it more.

What do you think?

-Lynnae

Vanity Project.

I was looking for a new vanity dresser for my bedroom. I couldn’t face another summer of getting ready for church at my sink in a busy, humid bathroom. But I was hoping to go the cheap route, with either an inexpensive new vanity dresser, (under $150ish) or a thrift store desk that I could fix up cute and add a mirror to.

But low and behold, one day at the thrift store I found a darling vintage vanity. It wasn’t a cheap desk to fix up, but it fell within my loose budget for a vanity. I was hoping for something with character that I could paint a charming white, or a sassy black, and it would look so good in my bedroom. I debated for a few minutes, and then, assisted b the encouragement of a gray haired lady who was also shopping there, I bought it.

All the way home I went back and forth between white and black paint. But you know what? The more I looked back in the rear view mirror, the more the sunlight caught that wood grain, the more I knew I couldn’t paint it- yet. There’s no rush. It’s great as it is. And I’m a sucker for a glorious wood grain. And, just like the white or black paint, the wood grain would look awesome in my bedroom. (That’s the beauty of having a turquois bedroom!)

So, for the time being the vanity will keep it’s grain. The wood is in great condition, except for the table top area, which I can cover until I choose to fix it. The furniture is sturdy, strong, clean and well made. I am so excited to ‘girly it up’, like a cross between Elizabeth Taylor’s vanity in “Whose afraid of Virginia Wolf”, and Molly Ringwald’s cheery dresser in “Pretty in Pink”.

This………

plus this……..

will someday soon be mine!

Other things on my agenda:

My Army Man husband has been gone for a month for training. It’s good to have him home!

Also, my daughter’s bridal’s are coming up, and wedding plans, wedding plans, wedding plans!

-Lynnae

Lovely Finds

I was at the local Ben Franklin store to get a few items for my daughters costume for the school play and ran across these lovely, old carved wood print blocks. They were in a bin in the back, dirty and well used and absolutely beautiful. I had to get a couple to display around the house.

They had a lot of other great things there too. I feel lucky to live close to a Ben Franklin store, and just need to get there more often!

Aren’t they gorgeous?

-Lynnae

Defending Jane

The following is my response to a Dartmouth Press article which attempts to guess why people like Jane Austen.

 Austen’s Power By Peter Blair

Did the author ever READ a Jane Austen Novel? There were many other novelists at the same time whose writings exhibited the similar cultural aspects. Austen stands out now for the same reason she did then, for those clever enough to read her properly. She is funny, hilarious even, but in ways that sneak up on you. Her insight into human nature is shrewd, sometimes painfully shrewd. Her writings show me that despite a vastly different code of conduct in society, human nature does not change at all. As you get to know the characters in an Austen book you recognize them as people you know and understand.
Jane herself said she did not write for 'dull elves'. In humor she is a forerunner to Oscar Wilde more than anyone. Her imagery is delightful, her symbolism is clever, and her sense of irony rewards the reader at every turn. For example, I find it fascinating that Mrs. Norris, arguably the most evil person in Austen's literary world, has many of the juiciest, most ironic lines aimed at her. It's as if Fanny is defenseless but Jane is not, and jabs that mean Aunt with a pen now and then.
  So when some see bonnets and costumes and romance, I see that and more. I see a wonderful balance between an incisive humor and a morality deeper than the social customs that define it outwardly.

-Lynnae