homecoming blast from the past.

with the end of homecoming season nearing i thought i would post some homecoming pictures from my high school years. however, with the move, i'm pressed for photos! so here's one.

very strange, huh?

till death thursday ; our wedding

on monday, october 24, 2011, i will have been married for ONE WHOLE YEAR! yowzaaaa. so for today's till death thursday, i'd like to share a bit more about our wedding!

i honestly don't remember how we decided we were going to get engaged. all i know is, we did.

i just realized that i explained our engagement in my how we met post. well, here's the excerpt from that post!

"on my first black friday shopping trip, i picked out my ring. i pestered him constantly about when was i going to get it. there was an incident around christmas where i was bugging him about my presents. he told me to go upstairs and not come back down until he told me to. he told me to put my hand inside of a box. i thought, oh my god, it's going to be my ring! nope. he was just trying to teach me a lesson about snooping for presents or something. naturally, i was really upset. i know he didn't mean anything by it. but when you get your hopes up for something like that, it's intense. 

he's a browns fan, i'm a steelers fan. that season, i knew my team was doing very poorly. when the two were playing each other, i sensed we were going to lose. he insisted we wouldn't. so we made a bet. if the steelers lost, he had to propose to me within a week. well, they lost.

a short time before christmas, we wanted to spend a night together alone and drink and just relax. since we both lived at home, our only choice was to get a hotel room. he proposed that night! the rest is history. i planned our wedding all by myself. we're still happily going!"

planning my wedding by myself was a big deal for me. i had to prove to myself and my family that i could do it. i found cheap invitations, DIY centerpieces, and didn't use real flowers among about fifty other things that help to cut the costs. during this process, i found that i really would enjoy a job as a wedding planner. there was dumb drama and annoying people but that day was awesome.

although we aren't religious, we had the ceremony at the church i attended when i was young. i was so afraid that i was going to trip because of the heels and the dress! 

our reception was at a place called the davis center, located in the rose gardens at mill creek park!

our first dance was to "chasing cars" by snow patrol. i really wanted "i will follow you into the dark" by deathcab or "as lovers go" by dashboard! (i swear my music taste isn't this bad) 

my second favorite part of the reception was this thing my sorority does. at wedding receptions, the bride and groom are in the middle of a circle made up of your sisters and they sing a song from our preference ceremony. it's really touching. after that we did my favorite cheer. DEE DEE DEE DELTA ZEE ZEE ZEE ZETA! sorry. it just comes out. 

joe loved shoving the cake in my face!

however he was super embarrassed to do the garter thing. i basically beamed my bouquet at the ceiling. that was a total fail.

as i think that i said before, we did our honeymoon in cleveland just to get away and relax. i took him to the ocean for his first time the summer prior to the wedding so we kind of got two!

seeing all the gifts and cards and support we got really overwhelmed me, i was so touched. i love everyone in my life!

trip to target!

i had a managerial accounting test on friday. part is online and part is written. i missed 7 questions in the online portion. i'm pretty disappointed about that. i second-guessed myself on some of them. and of course the right answers were the first ones i had. after that i headed to target to get a wedding card and gift card for tomorrow. i decided since i sucked at my exam, i'd do some retail therapy. i found that a lot of cute things i'd seen before in the jewelry department that i'd liked were on sale!

sunday playlist. apple edition.

in honor of steve jobs, today's sunday playlist is mashable's list of songs that defined apple's marketing.

the propellerheads - take california

jet - are you gonna be my girl

caesars - jerk it out

U2 - vertigo

(GAG ME!!!! i hate U2)

feist - 1, 2, 3, 4

(this may be my favorite)

CCS - music is my hot hot sex

(I TAKE THAT BACK. this is my favorite one! i listened to this song on repeat for all of the summer of 2008!!)

chappo - come home

orba squara - perfect timing

matt costa - mr pitiful

erik friedlander - yakima

a sweetest's day wedding!

today we're attending the wedding of a fella we used to work with! when i received the invitation, i didn't even realize it was sweetest's day! congrats joe and amy!

so i thought i'd share a few photos from our wedding weekend!

morning of.

honeymoon elevator!

till death thursday ; 15 things to do before you have kids

all the couples i have known that got married and then had a child within or around the first year they were married, have since separated and been divorced. i firmly believe that you need time to be a couple before you become "the so-and-so's" -- it's a big deal. you really need that time to see what each other is like. get a puppy or a cat first. that'll demonstrate how your spouse will be with children, to an extent. 

also, everyone says that the first one to two years are the hardest. i think that couples should wait until that crucial time is up to have a baby. but that is totally just my opinion! if you make it past that time frame, you should be pretty good! that gives you enough time to work out (most) of the kinks and see if this is something that can really last. joe and i both came from divorced parents, so it is really important to us that we and our children don't become statistics. 

so here is thenest.com's list of 15 things you should do before having kids to really fulfill that time alone together! let's face it, once you have kids, you're on lockdown for 18 or more years, depending on how many you have!

- go on a wine tasting tour at the vineyard.

- do something risky! like bungee jumping, sky diving or swimming with the sharks!

- complete your bar/restaurant bucket list!

- appreciate the bathroom alone.

- try to be empathetic towards parents with kids freaking out in public; yours will do the same.

- take a road trip!

- be spontaneous while you can.

- have a movie day and  night in bed in your PJs!

- have "boozy" lunches with friends.

- feed your minimalist side. the nest describes this one as basically enjoying your chaos-free years.

- have morning sex. ow ow!

- be the last ones to leave the party

- fly first class.

- wear fancy, dry-clean-only clothing while you can.

- take a career risk!

summer recap.

this summer was a pretty good one for joe and i!  i did summer school for the first time, joe and i went to a pens game in the spring (i still count that, though!), we went to see bright eyes, TWICE, and i think the most important thing is our buying the house!

wishlist wednesday > cool halloween decor!

here are a few things i would LOVE to have this year for our yard for halloween. however, we are getting the keys on the 22nd and we have so much to do that we'll barely have time (or money) to really decorate for all hallows eve! don't worry, though, there will be some decor!

all of these are from target since i'm obsessed! they're all moderately expensive ($20-$100!) hence, why it is a wishlist!

obsessed.

black cats and halloween are like peanut butter and mallow fluff

this would look perfect in my yard.

aw!

this is perfect for me. i'm all about zombies.

yes, this is a HUGE yard decoration. LOVE IT!

tasty tuesday

this week for tasty tuesday i'd like to share with you a mckee family favorite. my grandma johnson used to make this, passed it down to grandma mckee, who passed it down to aunt ruth, who passed it down to me. it's yummy!

Corn Casserole


1 can whole kernel yellow corn, undrained
1 can cream style yellow corn
1 (8 oz.) carton sour cream
2 eggs, beaten
1 box Jiffy corn muffin mix
1 stick butter, melted


Mix all together and pour into large, lightly oiled casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for 55 to 60 minutes.


i always just grease the dish by rubbing the butter stick around in it before i melt it!


if you try this recipe, let me know how you liked it!!

monday playlist

since i flaked out on sunday playlist, here's a monday playlist.

bright eyes - triple spiral

the pixies - where is my mind?

rammstein - rosenrot

queens of the stone age - go with the flow

this may be my favorite qotsa song ever.\

bright eyes - shell games

dead boys - sonic reducer

municipal waste - born to party

the replacements - can't hardly wait

sorry for the redundancy of artists. i don't have my entire itunes on my phone to ration space. but next time i'll keep it in mind that i should skip over a certain few! 

happy birthday mollie! 2 years old!

it's my mollie's 2nd birthday! i'd like to share the story of how we got her.

mollie is on the left. that's her half-sister, lacy on the right!

i'm not sure if our destiny to get mollie began when two of our family dogs passed away or when the yorkie we got first didn't work out. i'll tell both and try to keep it short!

i guess it all started when our dog, tiny, who we had since i was six passed away in the summer of 2009. shortly after that, my grandma (who lives with us) decided it was time to have her poodle, lady, put down, as she was starting to really get old and miserable. this left our schnauzer, maggie, all alone for the first time since we got her in winter of 2007. my stepdad swore he'd never get another dog ever again because he really took it hard when tiny passed. however, we could all see that maggie was really, REALLY sad. so in november, joe and i came home from november rain one night and my mom and stepdad brought home lacy that day from a breeder in salem! she was so cute!

later in november, joe and i started looking for an apartment. apartment = puppy time! when we had thought that we found a place (which eventually screwed us over) we put money down on a dog. i found her in the paper. she was a yorkie who was being "retired" and sold for $100. when we brought her home we discovered a laundry list of things we were not made aware of. she clearly had not had a bath for a long time, she had fleas, she was NOT potty trained (even though she was 5!), she was kept in a crate her whole life, terrified of tie-out chains, and SHE WAS NOT FIXED! you can imagine our frustration. we attempted to call these people and they ignored our calls.

i was still living at home so i couldn't have a dog with fleas around our 2 family dogs. i wasn't on winter break yet, so i didn't have time to be potty training a dog. to make matters worse, she was menstruating, too. i tried to find a place that would take the poor girl. even angels for animals wouldn't take her! i knew that if i took her to the dog warden, she would immediately be put down. i couldn't do that. i ended up finding a place that would take her in for the simple cost of what it would take to get her fixed. i cried all the way to the place and cried all the way home after i dropped her off. i knew they'd find someone who could give her the rehab she desperately needed. her name was cassie and i always wonder where she is.

after that awful experience my mom suggested that we get a pup from the breeder that lacy came from. this is how we found our mollie. mollie and lacy have the same dad but different moms!

mollie and lacy

mollie, maggie and lacy up front!

mollie is clearly the best and cutest dog ever. i've never had a dog like mollie before. i would do anything for her. she loves us to death but gets kind of sketched out by strangers! so if she's never seen you before or isn't used to you, she'll bark her head off like she thinks she's a german shepard! she would never hurt a fly, though.

before her first haircut

after her first haircut!

halloween 2010!