One of my dearest friends will be getting married soon.  I am so thankful that I was able to coordinate this weekend so that I am able to throw her a shower while I am in Austin.  It gives me such unexplainable joy to do things like that for those I love.  It’s going to be a wonderful evening.  AND I’m going to get to see old friends AND meet another friend’s newborn baby. I’m not sure if I have expressed my feelings about babies on my blog too much, but if you know me, you know it is no secret that I love babies. 

So tonight as I am still avoiding packing and laundry and stressing over which cocktail dress to wear to our awards banquet (an annual work conference is the ultimate reason for my trip to Austin), I am stopping to remind myself how thankful I am for those I’m about to be reunited with.  I miss them daily and though their lives are carrying on nicely without me, they always have a special place in mine!  I can’t wait to see you Tiffany, April, Priscilla, Jessica, Avalon, Brooke, Lauren, Lauren, Lydia, Caitlin, and the many many others!!!!!  Yipee!!!  (OH! and I get to see my mom for a day too.  ALWAYS a plus!)

I looked up what the “traditional” wedding gift for the third anniversary should be.  Leather.  We’ve never followed those “wedding anniversary gifts by year”, though I do think it would be sort of neat. So, this year we’re going to the Trail Blazers/Lakers game here in Portland on Thursday evening to celebrate our three years.  We’ve never been to a game here before and we’re very excited, though through an ordering mishap on my end, our seats are not so great.  Oh well.

Regardless, I am so thankful that God answered the prayer I had been praying for years.  He gave me my William, and after 9 years of dating, I finally became Mrs. William Bryant.  Best.  Day.  Ever.  Happy Anniversary sweetheart.  I love you to the moon and back.

July and August marked a new home, new city, new job, new school, new friends, and a new kitty.  We celebrated our birthdays in September and October with new friends and finally were able to go home to see family over both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  My prayer is that we handled 2011 with as much grace and poise as possible, but if I’m honest with myself I know that has not always been the case.  Through and through, my sweet husband has been my strength and I would not have made it through this year in one piece without him.  He experienced more breakdowns (from me) this year than one man should ever have to live through (God love him).

And after all of that, after the tears and homesickness and fear like I’ve never known, God has granted peace.  2012 will be a wonderful year and I am thankful to be here to see its beginnings.

“Give me a chance, I want to change my ways, because I can’t live here and look the same. Let me look up, let me look to Your face, and set me in my place, oh Lord, set me in my place.  The day is dawning and I am just rising, I pray my strength won’t fail, I pray my strength won’t fail.  The day is dawning and I am just rising, I pray my strength won’t fail, my strength”.

Happy New Years from Mr. and Mrs. Fancy Pants!

Screen shot from my phone of the SFERRA App.

Rarely do I find an iPhone app that I am just crazy about.  I like apps, don’t get me wrong, but I am not one that has 6,000 apps on my iPhone.  My tried and true method is (now make sure you take note of this, it might change your life) if I download it, use it twice, then forget about it, probably isn’t worth my time.  Genius, I know.

All of that said, I have found the most wonderful app!  It is a Southern woman’s DREAM!  Well maybe not all Southern women, but a large majority of us.  Like any good lady from the South, I have several sets of dishes.  I swore that I wouldn’t be this way when I got married, but I am.  Sadly (or not so sadly). So, because I am finding myself with china galore, I make sure that we use it!  Because why else do we have it!?  My weakness, though, is not for dishes or china.  It is cloth table linens.  Don’t ask me why, how, when, or where…I just love them.  And yes, every time we sit down at the table for dinner, we use cloth napkins.  None of this paper towel stuff.

Now, back to the app.  I was looking back through my November 2011 edition of Martha Steward Living and happened upon the above picture.  I am certain I missed it the first go-around otherwise I would have purchased these already.  I ventured to SFERRA‘s website to check out these amazing linen napkins and what doth my eyes see?!  OVER 100 COLORS OF 100% LINEN NAPKINS.  (in multiple sizes no less!)  Man was I excited and I hadn’t even happened upon the good part yet!

I am perusing their site and noticed that they have a free iPhone/iPad app!  It’s called Linens by SFERRA and it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.  (Download it here)  The app allows you to coordinate your table linens to match perfectly with your dishes and china.  You take a photo of your dinnerware, touch any color on the image and instantly get its match from SFERRA’s 101 colors of Festival table linens.  It.  Is.  Amazing.

The pictures above are from me messing around with two of my sets of china.  You can see that they give you several coordinating options to choose from.  If you don’t like those selections, you just touch a different part of the dish (i.e. another color or area) and a whole new set of options come up. You can select up to 3 coordinating colors and buy them right from the app!

Their dinner napkins aren’t quite in my price range, however they have two sizes of cocktail napkins. (this I know because I noticed a 6×6 square napkin in the photos on the website but they weren’t listed to buy, so I called their support line and they added the 6×6 option back on the site.  SO if you end up buying some 6×6 napkins, I’ll take the credit for it! )

I ended up purchasing two sets of 6″x6″ napkins: one set in Curry, one set in Grey.  (Which happen to be the colors pictured above in the Martha Stewart add–Martha does know best…)  BOTH colors were recommended for my sets of dishes so they’ll work with both!  That’s all I have for today…just one great app that just coordinated my new cocktail napkins with my dishes perfectly.  What more could a girl ask for!?

Have I mentioned how much I love these ladies?!

I had been looking forward to our next supper club for weeks!  And like always, these ladies never cease to be amazing and fun.  Casey and Ashley co-hosted our December supper club in the Pearl district in Downtown Portland!  Our significant others were also invited which made it SO fun!  All of the girls were able to make it except for our sweet Camden who had given birth to her first baby the day before!  (Woo Woo Camden!  We missed you!)  I am sad to say I did not take a picture of all of our food!  I’m not sure what is wrong with me!  It was a spread like you’ve never seen!

The theme was surf ‘n turf!  Ashley made an incredible pork tenderloin and Casey had fantastic salmon!  I brought bacon wrapped green bean bundles (a family favorite) and a mushroom and rice dish.  We also had roasted potatoes, candied yams, a spinach salad with pecans and pears, AMAZING cornbread, and spaetzle!  I had never had spaetzle before but I loved it!  We had a bread pudding dessert and peppermint bark that was melt in your mouth good.  And after typing all of that out I’m regretting once again that I didn’t take a picture!

William had met a few of the guys before, but I am so glad he got to met the rest of the gang. Everyone mixed and mingled so well…not sure why we wouldn’t but it is wonderful how well we all get along.  We do all share one important thing in common…the South (well other than Shannon and she’s our Northerner that we love dearly).  One thing is for sure about Southern women, we’ve never met a stranger!  There is so much personality in the room when we all get together–makes for a wonderful time!

Funny side note, this picture pose was not my idea, however my mom has a photo just like this of her and her sister and some of their cousins at the beach years ago.  They have tried to recreate the picture a few times at different family gatherings and it always made me laugh.  Now look at me…doing the can can pose myself, WHICH I might add was no small feat in that pencil skirt!  And I would like to give a supreme shout out to Miss Courtney who has an excellently pointed toe in this picture!

A good time was had by all!  Already looking forward to January’s dinner!  Love love LOVE these girls!!!

Funny side note about Mrs. Ashley who I’m posing with in the above picture.  Her and her husband are amazing and we love them so much already.  But, when we were first meeting we realized that we have some really good mutual friends!  Ashley grew up right down the street from one of my little sisters in Pi Phi from college, AND Alex is in a program car dealership owners with a good friend of mine from home!  Texarkana is a small place my friends…but we get around apparently!  (in a good way!)  Small, small world!

Here we are! Days 6-10 of gift giving.

I’m telling you, ABC Family has ruined the phrase “25 Days of Christmas” for me.  Don’t get me wrong, I love it that they play Christmas movies for the entire month of December, but I cannot hear “25 Days of Christmas” without expecting something having to do with a Harry Potter Weekend or Harry Potter network television premiere to follow.  Ah well.

I apologize for being MIA for basically all of December.  It was busy.  Very busy.  But we’re back to the grind after traveling home to see family for the holidays.  I wanted to make sure I finished posting about William’s 25 Christmas gifts so today we have days 6-10.

• Day 6: A Kitchen Sink!  He was so confused by this gift.  I found it at Next Adventure and it’s basically a collapsable kitchen sink for camping.  I thought it was great.  He was quite confused and humored (thus his face in the picture)
• Day 7: New undies!  And yes, I made him pose in them.
• Day 8: A new bow tie!  I love a man in a bow tie!
• Day 9: NIKE store gift card.  I have no doubt he’ll have NO trouble finding something to spend that on.
• Day 10: This is Washington D.C. by M. Sasek.  It’s not a holiday without an M. Sasek book for his collection.

**Please note his attire on day 10.  This was the night of our Redneck Christmas party and he made himself a make-shift package by sewing a bow on his sweatshirt.  Festive.

I had several reasons behind wanting to do this.  I start celebrating Christmas the day after Halloween. Thanksgiving is a nice hiccup in the middle, but basically to me all roads are headed towards the most wonderful time of the year.  We have a house rule, however, that I am not allowed to talk about Christmas (and if I do I am not to expect William to share my enthusiasm or get my feelings hurt should he not share my feelings) prior to the day after Thanksgiving.  He, and 90% of America, like to enjoy Thanksgiving before Christmas sets in.  I thought starting him off unwrapping presents on Dec. 1 might get him all excited earlier!  And it seems to have worked!  Ha!

We’re through day 5 (thus the 5 golden rings title)!  He’s collected some goodies!  I’ve snapped a photo of him every day so I can document everything.  How precious is this kiddo?

So I don't know how to use Photoshop or Illustrator or anything of the like...so this is my attempt at showing you Days 1-5 out of Word! Probably should have my husband teach me a better method, huh?

• Day 1: New scarf (Really needed because it is so cold here!  I actually had this as Day 21′s present but moved it so he could be using it sooner!)
• Day 2: His FIRST Alabama tshirt!  So proud.
• Day 3: Tooth ornament (Tradition!  I give him an ornament every year, and how fitting that this year’s is a tooth as he is still missing his!)
• Day 4: Pocket-knife/camping tool (He’s really needed one of these as well–every time we go to the airport they confiscate his pocket knives)
• Day 5: Shoelaces!

I’ve picked out exactly where I want to have the tree.  I think we need a tall, skinny one.  We have pretty high ceilings so I’m looking for an 8 footer.  We’ve got sunshine in the forecast for Portland tomorrow (shocking for this time of year) and we’re headed out early!  We’re going to have breakfast at our favorite spot and then head out!  Cannot.  Wait.

On another note, I start decorating our home tomorrow for the first time alone.  My mom has been with me every year to make our apartment Christmasy and wonderful.  This year I’m on my own and there is SUCH pressure!  Mr. Fancy Pants is helpful for the tree but decorating isn’t his cup of tea.  I’m not sure if I have mentioned it before but Mr. Fancy Pants has a serious glitter aversion.  I have to limit the amount of glittery decor that enters our house in December or he’s not a happy camper!  Not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but the words Christmas and glitter are almost interchangeable (not in the meaning or what they stand for–that’s not what I mean, it’s just EVERYTHING has glitter).

This is also the first year for me to do a count down of Christmas presents for Mr. Fancy Pants.  I’ll dedicate a couple of posts to this but for your previewing pleasure, I’ve included days 1 and 2 captured below.  One the first day of Christmas his true love gave to him…a Pendleton scarf!  And on the second day of Christmas his true love gave to him…an Alabama tshirt!

I started him out with good ones.  All of them aren’t so fancy.  I bought 25 gifts and stayed (almost) at my budget.  So expect to see some funny stuff over the next 23 days.  I thought this would be a fun change to the norm, and we have to travel to Texas with every gift we’re giving this year, so I was thinking ahead!  We’ll only have to travel with the last 3 of his gifts!

T-minus 1 week until our annual Christmas party!  We will miss all of our Austin friends this year but are excited about the plans for the celebration!  AND Mr. Fancy Pants finished our Christmas card today and it’s off to be letter pressed.  He never ceases to amaze me.  I hope everyone has survived the Thanksgiving turkey coma and have pulled on their Christmastime britches!  We sure have!

Invite for our “Italian Night” Supper Club!

I was looking forward to our next Supper Club from the day after our first one ended!  We had such a good time!  Camden, our mommy-to-be, offered to host the second supper club because her first baby is due soon and she wanted to host before he was born (SO sweet of her by the way).  She picked an “italian style dinner party” as her theme.  Pasta and bread?  Sign me up!

The way we do our rotation, the month after you host, all you have to bring are beverages.  So I wasn’t in charge of any food this go around.  But boy can those other ladies cook!

Camden was so generous to offer to host before her baby was born.  I can’t imagine getting ready for a baby and throwing a dinner party at the same time but she did it like a pro!  One of the best parts of doing this in each other’s homes is seeing where we all live.  I’ve enjoyed getting to know these ladies so much but seeing them in their environment and their own home makes it really fun as well.  And let’s be honest, what Southern lady (and I mentioned in my first post that a lot of us are from the South) DOESN’T like an excuse to whip out all of her fancy china and serving pieces!?

Well Camden put us all to SHAME with her china.  We joked all night about how we were going to steal it.  I am fairly certain she still has all of her plates, but LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE!  As a side note, when I got married I swore that I wasn’t going to be the lady with all of the dishes.  I was going to be practical.  All I needed was one set.  HA! Hilarious!  I’m worse than any one I know.

For our dinner, Camden had pasta with two different kinds of sauce: a traditional Bolognese and a creamy gorgonzola.  To.  Die.  For.  She also had prosciutto wrapped asparagus.  Casey brought bruschetta–probably some of the best I’ve ever had! Shannon brought a wonderful salad with pears, nuts, and goat cheese.  Larissa made chicken marsala that was insanely good.  And Caitlin brought these chocolate cookies that for the life of me I cannot remember which cookbook she got them out of but they were incredible!

Needless to say, at the end of the evening I was quite full.  I cannot remember if I had mentioned this before but we’re going to make a little cookbook of all of our recipes!  Not sure how long we’ll go before we put it together but I am hoping a good while!  More time with the girls and more recipes!  I am in charge of photos so the handy dandy tripod made the trip to the supper club as well.  I promise I DO leave home with out it–though you never know when you’ll need a tripod!

Our next supper club is our holiday party and is going to involve girls and dates/husbands!  REALLY excited about that one because we’ll get to meet everyone’s significant other!  The theme is “surf and turf”!  I can’t wait!  SO thankful for these ladies!

Cannot. Wait.

Alright I left something off of my list from my post yesterday.  THE PORTLAND BAZAAR!  In it’s inaugural year, this project of Grace Bonney of Design Sponge is sure to be AMAZING.  Inspired by The Brooklyn Flea, Grace, Matt Pierce, and Greg Hennes, are pulling together 50+ local Portland artisans to showcase and sell their work at Sandbox Studio during the bazaar.  Among the mix are woodworkers, metal workers, designers, chefs, etc.  Read this description and tell me you aren’t DYING to go!

To kick off the very first Portland Bazaar, we’re holding a curated holiday fair on December 10th and 11th at Sandbox Studio in Portland, Oregon. Our goal is to celebrate the high-quality handmade work being produced in Portland’s incredible creative community. In addition to offering a curated selection of vendors in a wide range of categories — clothing, accessories, home goods, books (Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis will be at the Reading Frenzy booth to sign copies of Wildwood!), music, vintage wares, fine art, food and spirits — the Bazaar will also offer live music performances from local bands, unique demonstrations and classes, including whiskey & gin tastings and DIY workshops on how to make holiday wreaths from Portland flora taught by our own Amy Merrick (stay tuned for class times/signups)!

To complement the excitement happening inside the Bazaar, the street in front of Sandbox Studio will be closed to traffic and lined with some of Portland’s finest food trucks. We aim to provide each and every guest with not only great holiday gift options and DIY ideas but also tasty snacks and drinks.

–Copy from DesginSponge.com

What makes it even better is some of my favorite local shops are being represented!  OMFG Co., Adler & Co., Bridge & Burn, Pigeon Toe, and Reading Frenzy!

Oh my goodness gracious I just cannot wait!  And as a semi-related side note, Grace Bonney is my hero.  I would seriously LOVE to be her little minion.  Whatever she’d need me for, I’m there.  Would never happen, but a girl can dream right?!