"I got floe in my teeth."

As I write this, Ben is going to get me a beer out of the fridge, because he's sweet and I feel like having a beer. It is freezing in our house right now, so this is asking a lot. We have a space heater, which we have been keeping in the office and have consequently camped out in here for months. It's like being dipped in an ice bath everytime you open the door. Thanks for the beer, love.

Things in the little green house are going well. We've been working pretty hard these last few weeks and I'm looking forward to my pseudo Spring Break next week. I say pseudo because I'm working half the week, but that's beside the point. I'm off to Philadelphia to visit my parents this weekend, and am so excited!


In other news, we won FIRST PLACE in trivia! Each week, we go to Twains and make a valiant effort to win something, anything, really. And we won! It was amazing! Below is a picture of me being excited about it. This is Jeff and Ben celebrating. Again, we have the "I'm doing something funny and I'm amused with myself face." I actually really love it when he makes this expression, as much as I pretend to hate him and his stupid little face. Wait, did I just say that I love it? So confused.
Also, I forgot to tell you in my recap that we went to the cabin, looked at the waterfall, got soaking wet, and had a great time. And then it snowed.
That is all.

update part 2

Okay, so from late January on...

Around the beginning of February, I went to Orlando for my annual work meeting. Below is a picture of Elizabeth, myself and Stacey. We all went to Tech School together and are from Texas, Georgia and Colorado, respectively. I love these girls because we're all so different (location being a big part of that, actually), and yet we have so much in common because of our jobs.
After I got back, we spent a great few days in Athens looking at chapels/reception sites and found one! Below is the Day Chapel at the UGA Botanical Gardens. It is absolutely beautiful.
This is the inside of the conservatory at the botanical gardens - where we will be having the reception for our wedding. I get so excited just looking at it!
In early March (on my birthday, actually) we had a toga party. As you can see, we went all out on our fabric. Erin is rocking the lilac, I am continuing the gold theme (see the post below with my gold tights), and Karen is very tropical. The three musketeers, we be.
Ben and I went skiing with my family for a weekend (you can see the trails on the mountainside) in Stratton, Vermont. It was awesome! This is where I found out that I truly loved Ben because I kept wanting to vomit every time he fell. I guess you don't know you love someone until they make you want to vomit when they get hurt.
I'm sorry I don't have more pictures from the trip. Like I already said, it was awesome.
We had an impromptu cookout last weekend, which are the best ones because although the food is random, it always ends up being delicious. Hmm...what do we have here? Above, you see hot dogs, an avocado salad, roasted fennel and carrots, grilled portabellos, and asparagus. Below, we have Anna's famous blue cheese and bacon deviled eggs, a tasty pasta salad (in the background), and before you an array of peppercorn crusted steaks with gorgonzola chive butter.
Jealous? ;)
Above is a picture of my front room on Saturday morning, and I just thought it was so lovely I had to take a photo. The light shines into the room and it's so quiet and peaceful in here. I made a cup of coffee, sat on the couch, and read wedding magazines. Birds chirp. It is amazing.
Oh! Hey there Jasper! Here's a photo that got stuck down here for some reason - this was at the cookout. He matches the floor. I love this dog.
Lastly, I felt I needed to show you all this fabulous chair that my future mother-in-law gave me. I have two of them, they are antiques, and I will throw myself in front of a moving car to keep them in my life forever.

OKAY you are finally caught up on our lives. It is March 23rd, and I vow to be better about this blog. [insert "yay" noise here]

massivo update

Hey blog! Fancy seeing you here. As I sit here on this lovely first day of spring, drinking coffee, and working in my office, I decided it was time for an update. So, I'm going to attempt to bring it all together in one post.

Where do we begin? I'm going to update you as quickly as possible, starting at Halloween. I was really excited about Halloween this year for several reasons.

1. Couple costumes!

Well, that's really it. I also just like Halloween. Below is a photo of us in front of our fireplace. Can you guess who we are? That's right, Don and Betty Draper, from the AMC tv show Mad Men. I knew you'd get it.
Okay, obviously I am not Betty Draper (aka January Jones) and Ben and John Hamm aren't exactly twins, but I thought we looked cute and went for it. I found my dress and he found the pipe at Kudzu antiques market.

The next day, we decided to have a cookout for the Georgia/Florida game. The weather was lovely, lots of folks showed up, and Georgia lost the game. Aside from Georgia losing, it was a great day. Below is a photo of Daniel and I trying to take a picture where it looks like we're holding the camera, however my sister is taking the picture. We are idiots.
In mid November, my parents moved out of their house. This is a photo of the foyer. I took several pictures before the movers came, and cried accordingly. I have so many happy memories of life in this house.
This year, we hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our little green house! Both my family and Ben's family were there, as well as Stacey and Myles and Jacy. It was actually pretty fun, considering I'm a list-maker and a planner, as evidenced in the photo below.
We decided to do a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but then do a "twist" on it with new interpretations. For example, we made cranberry sauce (traditional) and onion and cranberry chutney (twist). Personally, I thought it was a resounding success. Our families fit together well, which is a sign of things to come, I feel.
Oh yeah, I voted.


And then we witnessed history...











Reagan came to visit. I regret the day we got that ball out. Man, he wouldn't leave us alone!




Mom turned 50!









And we ran out of candles, so Ben improvised. I love the look on his face. This is his, "I'm doing something witty and I'm amused with myself" face.






We threw an Ugly Christmas Sweater party in December, which morphed into a classy cocktail party. The gold tights were a hit. Take a look at my dollar store tree. Not bad, eh? Christmas was great. I will find photos from my sister and post them, if I remember. We went to Philadelphia to visit my parents in their new home - the house is so gigantic I have my own wing!

Christmas vacation also involved an amazing day of snow tubing with Ben's side of the family. They are really great! It was a fun, relaxing few days in Ohio. I hope we get to go next year.
We also went and visited my family for an evening. The Olive Garden treated us like kings. Below is a photo of my grandmother, aunt Chris and her 3 adorable children, Ellie, Avery and Jake. I think Ben is taking the picture and my uncle Bryan must be in the bathroom or something.

Hey everybody...
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Many thanks to Anna and Gregg for taking us in.

In January, over MLK weekend, Ben and I went to Charleston. The photo above is from the first morning we toured the city. I cannot even begin to explain how cold it was that day. I can, however, explain how much I enjoy the photo above. I enjoy it.
Oh yeah! We got engaged that weekend! ;)

Above is the first photo we took after he proposed. We are so happy. That's all you need to know.
This last photo of the post doesn't bring us exactly up to speed, but I ran out of photos. This is me and the girls. Elizabeth, Anna, Lynnsey and Amy. We went to the lakehouse in South Carolina for a weekend (in January) and enjoyed ourselves immensely. Anna and Lynnsey are new additions to our little green house, and our lives, and frankly, I adore them.


So there you go! You're up to speed, sort of. Life, in short, is beautiful.

Just beautiful.

guess who's coming to dinner?

I love the idea of having someone over for dinner and just having a relaxing evening of talking. But somehow, that never really happens. Well tonight it did! Our friends Daniel and Ben came over to see the house and I offered to cook dinner. The picture below makes me happy because you can feel that everyone had a cozy supper and just left the table. I also am in love with our Williams Sonoma tablecloth even though it's too big.

Our meal consisted of a Herb Pork Loin (you can sort of see the green specks on top of the pork), and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes. Why am I capitalizing everything?

I really thought I overcooked the pork, but it ended up being delicious. This picture was taken after we had demolished half of the 4-pound loin and a good 3/4 of the potatoes. I'm happy to report that Ben (not my Ben, Daniel's Ben) loved the pork even though he hates pork! I was so proud. The pork kind of looks like those "Beef. It's what's for dinner" print ads where the beef loins are gigantic mountains. The pork looks like a mountain, and the potatoes look like...potatoes.

The picture below shows my test recipe, given to me by my mother. It's roasted butternut squash, sweet potatoes and red onion. It was delicious. I'm going to make the rest of it into a soup on Thursday night. I've never had roasted butternut squash before, and I officially love it. My Ben loved it, which was a surprise, because he doesn't like sweet potatoes.

And below, is dessert. I don't know quite what to say about this dessert other than it was DISGUSTING. I followed the recipe exactly (it's supposed to be Individual Pumpkin Mousse) and it backfired. I took the first bite and warned the boys that it wasn't up to par, and they agreed. This represents exactly how much dessert we were able to eat.

We went to Jake's instead. :)

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead...

Hey there. I'm Lauren, and yes, I'm driving while eating a banana. And smiling for a photo. I was trying to make a gleeful face because I just bought this camera. Very exciting stuff.

Hey there. This is Ben. I hate these sunglasses he wears, but regardless, this is Ben. Nice face, honey.

I've decided to start a blog about life in our little green house, because life in the little green house deserves some sort of record. Twenty years from now, I'll want to look back at our young beautiful faces and laugh. Well, I won't have aged much because botox will be coursing through my veins.

Anyway, today Ben and I decided to go out on an excursion. Actually, I made Ben go out with me on an excursion. We've been cooped up lately (mainly because of money), and since there are very few "fall" things to do in Decatur unless you have children or money, I was anxious to check out this festival. I read about it in the Decatur Dispatch, which every good Decatur citizen reads.

The 3rd Annual Church Street Fall Fest was today, and it was a nice little event. Basically, they take over one city block in downtown Decatur and put balloons up. Other than that, I gathered no real change from any other Sunday on this street, in these shops. Can we just talk about this apron? Adorable.

Our first stop at the Fest was to Java Monkey - my favorite Decatur coffee shop. It has a very similar vibe to Hot Corner in Athens: Emo kids hanging around and pretending to study. I used to be one of those Emo kids, except I was a fake Emo kid and actually did study. I love the window of Java Monkey - look at that mischievous face!

I purchased an iced latte, because it was a lovely day and I felt it would be one of the last times I would be able to drink an iced anything this year. Ben ordered a water, which I didn't feel deserved a picture. However, my delicious iced latte made the cut. Armed with coffee, we jaywalked across the street to Taste. Taste is the "foodie" shop here in Decatur, although some may argue that Cook's Warehouse wins. I think that Taste has better gifts while Cook's Warehouse has all the unique kitchen gadgets Alton Brown recommends. Both are great. Regardless, Taste was hosting their Bundt Cake Battle today at 2:00, and guess what? We got to taste test!

Here's the picture of the Bundt cakes. The winner was Chocolate Lover's Dream Bundt Cake (the black looking cake on the right), with the Key Lime Pie Bundt cake coming in second (it's the yellow one in the middle of the table).As I was taking the picture of the cakes, I said, "I'm taking a picture of the cakes, since they're so beautiful!" And then I said to the girl, "Don't worry, your face isn't in the picture." Apparently that came across as an insult (Ben goes "woah" behind me after I said it)...the girl didn't take to kindly to me after that. Whoops.


Here's Ben looking especially young. He was taste testing. His only request was for the chocolate cake, and here he is eating it. You can see the wall of cards behind him on the left - there are some great cards at this place. Ben bought one for DeeDee, his grandmother.




This is him eating a bite of the Key Lime Pie, and the big piece was the Chocolate Hazelnut Mousse Bundt Cake. Ben describes it as "umm...I mean, they were all good. I thought it was the least good of the three on my plate. That double-chocolate deluxe thing or whatever was amazing."
That is a direct quote.

After the Church Street Fall Fest (good fun, but not as big a deal as I was hoping for), we headed to the Kudzu Antiques Market! I love this place; it is a gigantic warehouse of antique booths. We needed Halloween costumes, because we're attempting to be Mr. and Mrs. Draper from Mad Men this year.
I found a costume, and he found a prop, but that's all I'm saying because I'll post photos of our costumes when we actually pull them together.

It was 4:00 by this point and we were hungry, so we decided to head over to the Dekalb Farmer's Market for some groceries. I love the sign for the farmer's market because it makes me feel like I'm going to Epcot. I wish there was Epcot-esque music playing as you entered the market. That would be nice.


This is a photo from inside the Farmer's Market. I have to tell you that this place is a madhouse on weekends. Ben HATES the farmer's market during the weekend. Another quote:

"It's like a bunch of spastic children racing towards whatever their eye catches first."



I don't particularly mind the farmer's market on Sunday, but I do understand why Ben doesn't like it. There's no flow to the place, like a grocery store. It also has a very peculiar smell to it, but that's beside the point. I took a photo of all the amazing fresh herbs they have. Can't you just smell them? Ah.
All in all, it was a good day. The weather was nice, I got a new camera, and we got out of the house. Anyway, that's about it for now. Thanks for being a part of our first post! Ben may get on here from time to time and say something...we'll see.

Off to watch Mad Men, our new favorite show. I'll post about that later!