Glass sculptures and baby birds

We've had a great weekend with my mom and stepdad in town. Some amazing dinners out at our favorite restaurants and a very productive weekend as far as wedding planning is concerned. Here is a list of the restaurants we visited, if you're ever in Nashville looking for somewhere excellent to dine:

-City House (amazing food using many local ingredients - a twist on classic and Southern food)

-1808 Grille (a new restaurant in the Hutton Hotel where our wedding guests will be staying)

-Marche Artisan Foods - (great brunch and the location of our rehearsal dinner)

-Rumours East (our very favorite wine bar and neighborhood restaurant - try the mussels!)

-Shalimar (best Indian food in Nashville! - now open on Sundays...yay!)

In addition to eating, we also stretched our legs a bit yesterday and visited Cheekwood Botanical Gardens. They have an amazing exhibit going on right now with artwork by glass artist Chihuly. He designed the sculptures for the space and they're brilliantly hidden among the beautiful landscape at the gardens and in the mansion. The exhibit runs through October 31st of this year, so we're excited to suggest this to our wedding guests as something to do during their visit. Visit chihulyinnashville.com for more information. Here are some of the beautiful pieces:

Lastly, we've been watching our little birdie friends this weekend. They are in a tree right outside our kitchen window and are at eye-level in their nest. It's been so fun to see them grow so quickly!! This little birdie left the nest yesterday. He was protecting his brothers and sisters from the crazy lady with the camera, before he ventured out into the world on his own. He's so adorable!!

Here he is peering out from the leaves after he attempted to fly. Good luck little guy!

Happy Memorial Day everyone. We have a relaxing, uneventful day planned. Lunch with a good friend who is visiting in town. And that's about it! We will probably grill something for dinner and just enjoy the day. Enjoy yours, too!! xoxo

Oops...

Apparently I haven't blogged about my finished crocheted baby blanket yet! I thought I had. Again, I've already posted pictures on flickr and Facebook, but I would love to have them here on my blog as well. Sally already received the blanket and I think she was very excited and happy :) I'm so pleased with the finished product and it really was so much fun to work on. Thanks again to Lucy of Attic24 for creating the original, the inspiration for this one. Her blog is SO lovely...please check it out if you haven't already. Currently, she has me really really wanting a caravan of my own to decorate and take on weekend camping trips. I'm a bit obsessed. I think Pinky is tired of hearing about it. Think I can add a caravan to our wedding registry?? ;)

You've Got Mail project and finished shawl

I ran across a very interesting project today on Facebook...it's called You've Got Mail. A guy named Carl, in Austin, TX, has started a project promoting the art of correspondence. He's encouraging people to send him real snail mail, hand-written notes, cards or letters or even random objects. He once received a coconut in the mail! He's compiling this into a project and I believe will present it as an art piece at the end. I wanted to send him something that spoke to my interests and as I was looking through my knitting stuff I realized I had one sock that I knit a while ago on vacation. I didn't love the yarn color and I probably will never get around to making it's mate.

SO, I tacked a handmade postcard to the sock, put some stamps on, wrote Carl a little note and put the sock in the mailbox to go out tomorrow. I believe our mail carrier will have one of three reactions: 1. not take it (I obviously hope this doesn't happen- I put almost $1 worth of postage on it! and yes, I'm still using Christmas stamps in May); 2. be annoyed that people try to send random stuff through the mail, put the sock in the mail bag, but only after running over it with his/her mail truck; 3. (this is the one I hope for) that it will be hilarious and make his/her day or at least give them a bit of a laugh. We'll see! I think Carl responds to you with a written note when he receives a piece of mail. I'll let you know. I hope to hear from him! Check out his Facebook page here if you're interested in participating. Let me know if you do!

Now, onto other knitting related items. I finished my striped shawl. I have posted photos online, but haven't blogged about it yet, so here it is! I love the color combo and how the overall product turned out. The crocheted edge was fun to do and I am making a point now to do more stripes in my knitting.

I hope everyone has a lovely Memorial Day weekend. My mom and stepdad are coming to visit. Yay! Sorry family, but it's about freaking time someone came to see me! It's been almost 2 years since ANY of my family came to Nashville. Family fail. Let's see if we can make the next two years a little better, shall we?? xoxo

what I'm working on...at the beach!

So...tomorrow at the CRACK of early morning (I'm talking 4am!) we're driving down with some friends to Gulf Shores, AL. There's a music festival there this weekend called the Hangout Music Fest. We're SO excited to head down for the festival AND for almost a week a the beach! We are very lucky to have friends whose parents have a house on the beach in Gulf Shores. Score! Thanks Sloane and Jess!!

Anyway, since I will have a lot of car time and a lot of beach time in the next few days, I wanted to have a great knitting project to work on. I searched through my Ravelry queue and found this lovely piece of work to make:
Isn't it so beautiful?! I love her color choices. The pattern is "Sedna's Shawl" (Ravelry link) by Mary Lena Lynx. Trying to be a good girl, I went through my yarn stash to find yarn for the project, instead of heading to the yarn shop liked I wanted to. I found 2 colors of one of my favorite yarns, Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool. I LOVE the brown and cream stripes together! I'm not sure what I'll do for the edging, but I'm thinking maybe a mustard yellow or a teal. We'll see! Here is my progress so far:

I'll try to post some entries from the lovely shores of the Gulf. I hope the oil spill will not hurt the trip, but the good news is that the proceeds from the music festival are going towards helping the clean up of the spill. I will not be emotionally prepared to see any oil covered animals while I'm there. I hope it doesn't come to that...leaving one disaster to possibly head to another is not exactly putting me in 100% vacation mode, but maybe our beer money spent at the festival will help save some wildlife in the gulf. I sure hope so.

In other news, we will be helping Nashville's continuing efforts to conserve water by being out of town! We're still staggering showering and trying not to do lots of dishes or laundry. The second water system is still not up and running in Nashville. Please continue to help out if you can. So many people are still in such need. I helped out at the Disaster Center at East Park Community Center yesterday and many people that came in truly lost everything. We had them fill out questionnaires so we could help them get supplies and some of them were at a loss for what to ask for...they needed everything. Please donate time and/or money if you can. I'm hoping we'll get our Nashville Flood t-shirts in soon. You can order yours here: www.nashvillefloodtees.com

Our beautiful city is under water

Over the weekend, Nashville got caught under a super storm that dropped 13 inches of rain over the course of a few hours. Much of our downtown, Shelby Park, Opryland, Bellevue, Franklin, and many other areas are completely underwater. So many had to be evacuated from their homes over the past few days and many more had to be evacuated from Opryland area hotels. The Grand Ole Opry has water up to the stage. Many many friends of ours have had 5 ft or more of water in their basements. We are fortunate to have been on a hill on our little street in East Nashville and have not suffered any losses. So many have.

Link to more photos:

http://tinyurl.com/29ujatt

Please visit the following websites if you'd like to help send money for groceries, clothing, necessities if you live outside of Nashville. I went to sign up with a local group this morning to help hand out food and all of the shifts had already been filled. Our city will definitely beat this thing...we are a strong, wonderful community of people. But, we sure could use outside help as well.

http://www.nashvilleredcross.org
http://www.hon.org
http://www.salarmy-nashville.org

Thank you so much for any support you can provide.