Happy Birthday to…Mindy!

Oh, man, is it Friday already?! Dang, this week has been super duper crazy busy and we can’t believe that this is the first (& only) blog post this week?! Can’t remember the last time that happened. Well, since we’re not quite ready to share our next fun and fabulous wedding with you all, we’ve got a special treat for you today.

We were recently lucky enough to have a weekend off that just happened to coincide with Mindy’s big quarter-of-a-century birthday party. Sweet Mindy may look a bit familiar to longtime readers, because we were also lucky enough to get to shoot her & Eric’s gorgeous DC wedding a few years ago! We didn’t want our camera’s to feel left out, so of course, we had to bring a couple to document this momentous occasion. We snapped a few pics throughout the evening but mostly just enjoyed the wonderful company of friends and some of Mindy’s favorite foods, courtesy of Occasions.

Eric pulled out all the stops for this shindig–their wedding planner & friend, Jamie Sears helped him plan it AND he surprised Mindy with a super fun cake from Kendall’s Cakes, who just happened to have made their wedding cake, too. So sweet. Literally! They even had S’mores to toast over the new backyard fireplace. Have you ever tried adding peanut butter to the chocolate, marshmallow and graham cracker concoctions? OMG! How did we never think of this before?!?

Because this happy couple had also recently moved into their seriously gorgeous new home in the city, it was also a housewarming party! It was a perfect early Fall evening so we just had to get a photo of them in front of their new digs.

Kendall outdid herself on this one! Love the Anthropologie & Lululemon logos! Mindy clearly has *very* good taste.

Custom birthday glasses with one of Mindy’s favorite quotes did double duty as lemonade catchers and party favors. Such a cute idea! Kerouac fans will recognize it, which reads, “Be in love with your life. Every detail of it.”

Yummy comfort foods such as Deviled Eggs…

Sliders!

Fried chicken!

Lobsters rolls!

Time for cake & a little serenade for the birthday girl!

Such a FUN evening! Thanks so much for having us over to celebrate these wonderful milestones, m&e. Happy, happy birthday, Mindy and congratulations on your beautiful new home. We’re so happy to call you friends.

xoxo,
…a&b

 

Happy Anniversary: To Us!

Ten years ago this week was an eventful one for every American. It was doubly, or perhaps triply, so for us. While Monday, September 10, 2001 was just like any other day for many, it was also the day of Anne’s mom’s anticipated passing after a long battle with cancer. And of course with the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center buildings the next morning, we were thrust into an interesting predicament. Our wedding was scheduled for that next weekend, in New Orleans.

We decided, partly because the date, September 16, was Anne’s parents’ anniversary and thus important to us, and partly because we felt while it was important to acknowledge the loss of life, we should still, as the British might say, “Keep calm and carry on,” continue with our plans. (Anne’s Mom was adamant that we not move our wedding no matter what should happen with her health, but we still had a mini-ceremony at the end of August with close friends and family so she was able to see us get “married” (in quotes because we wanted our actually ceremony to still take place on the 16th.) Obviously the lack of available commercial airspace, individual and family concerns, and other 9/11-related issues kept about half of our loved ones from attending, and we ourselves had planned to fly from our home near Washington, DC. In order to make it to the courthouse in time to get the marriage license, however, we caravaned with our dear friends Scott (Bill’s Best Man) & Amy to the Crescent City. Anne’s maid of honor wasn’t able to make it so her brother Andy stepped in to be her “man of honor”.

You may have read about the wedding day in our  anniversary post from last year about the time we had our big blow-out celebration in Cabo. Yeah, we like to mix it up sometimes and have dessert first. Who says you have to have the big celebration on an even-numbered year, right? We do have some personal- and work-related travel coming up in the next couple of months about which we’re super excited to share afterward, of course, so stay tuned.

While this time of year is always a bittersweet one for us, we’re grateful to have dedicated ourselves to each other and to our relationship. Its strength is something for which we don’t ever take for granted. Next year, as if we didn’t have enough anniversaries, will be our tenth year running Holland Photo Arts as well. So big celebrations all around. Thank you, our dear family, friends, colleagues and clients for your love and support all these years. It means the world to us.

So a toast to us and to Anne’s parents. They would have been celebrating 49 years today.

Instead of sharing one of  “our” weddings this Friday, we thought we’d share our wedding! Here are a few photos from our day, courtesy of our awesome photographer, Johnny Chauvin. Snapshots are courtesy of friends. You might be able to tell the difference.

Friday night welcome dinner.

Rehearsal dinner on Saturday at NOLA. Best. Meal. EVER!

First sight! Yup, we did that, too…

So we could head out before the ceremony to do some fun portraits around the French Quarter.

This sweet clown decided Anne needed a more appropriate ring and bouquet!

Cafe Du Monde! PSA – don’t eat powdered sugar covered beignets in a dark suit. You’re welcome.

So much fun walking around the Quarter and getting to see smiles on people’s faces for the first time in too many days.

Our afternoon ceremony in the courtyard of the St. Louis Hotel. We were married at half past 2, same time Anne’s parents were.

Johnny caught Anne’s reaction when the minister asked if she would take Bill as her wife!

Our favorite photo from the day. Just Married!

Anne’s parents on their wedding day – September 16, 1962.

We didn’t have many details (the horror! ), but the ones we did have were almost all DIY. Anne painted several birdhouses that represented places we had been together and loved. El Convento hotel in Old San Juan is where we got engaged.

Adore this shot of Bill dancing with his late Mom and so happy she could be there with us that day.

Anne’s brother Andy and his now-wife, Jennifer!. They’ll be celebrating their own 10 year wedding anniversary next year!

Grand exit to bubbles!

Pretty sure you can’t get married in The Big Easy and not do a carriage ride around the Quarter! It was like our own personal parade that day. So cool.

Later that night we met up with the “young folk” for BBQ. Yup, eating BBQ in a tiara. And that is just one of the  reasons why B loves A.

Wow, did we really ever look that young? ;-D

Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you back here next week when we’ll have a another “real” wedding with you! Real, in quotes, because really, do people have fake weddings?! Oh, wait. Guess we did just that in August 2001. Ha!

Peace & Love,
…a&b

 

Adventures in Drywall – Part 3 or The Prepping

In our continuing series of Living with Renovations (a seemingly chronic condition for us now that we’ve undergone two big ones in the last 7 years), we share today some of the prep work before things got really nasty and really dusty. And we get to live and work here during the process. Thankfully, Steve and his team are great about keeping things as clean as possible, but we’ll be doing a good solid dusting of our computer gear here shortly.

Here, our electrician, Barry is installing new canned lights.

New door separating the 1st floor & 2nd floor. We’re really surprised by how much we like having it there. So much nicer opening a door than maneuvering through a narrow cat gate opening.

Dave gets rid of an odd “ledge” in the floor that ran the length of the wall under the windows and door.

Even the bathroom is getting a make-over. (Unfortunately, we didn’t get any before pics of this room, which is a bummer, but Steve and his team are too fast!) Michael is prepping for primer. Yes, the red will be going away. We loved it while it was here, but it’s time for a change to yet another cool color.

Doesn’t this kind of resemble a face? We think the room just might be happy to be being fixed up.

Bill’s old cubby office is getting turned into an exercise/storage area, so we added another big closet next to the one that was already there.

New TV built in. Hmmm, what is that pink doing there? They wouldn’t be, would they…? Nah….

Looks like Callie isn’t a huge fan of the cat gate either.

We can’t wait to share more with you in coming weeks as it really comes all together, and better yet, to have you over once it’s all done.

 

Adventures in Drywall – Part 2 or The Demolition

Welcome back to our ongoing little renovation project. (No, this isn’t damage from the earthquake or Hurricane Irene, thankfully. We were sooooo lucky as many of our family in Boston and friends and Richmond, were not. We’re so glad they are all safe though and that is the most important thing.) Last week you got to see some before pics and this week we’re sharing some of the demolition. We totally wish we could have gotten more involved with this part! Seriously, who doesn’t want take a sledgehammer or sawzall to something every once in a while? Anne especially wanted to take one to that tile! Bill got a chance to do so while decommissioning a navy nuclear power plant back in the 90s. It was a blast!

We’re going to spare you the “get everything out of the rooms” shots, because honestly, we didn’t have time to pick up the camera to document that special hot mess. Once we got the word that Steve and his team were ready to go, we only had a few days to clean all of that “junk” out of those before pictures! Thankfully, we had really awesome luck on Craig’s List and didn’t have to make room for a bunch of furniture elsewhere in the house until we could sell or donate it. Whew.

We also have to give a HUGE shout out to Anne’s brother, Andy, who came down one weekend and helped us clean out the storage room so we could put most of the stuff that we were keeping in there. Thanks, bro! (And don’t worry, we bought him some yum yum Peter Chang’s for his trouble. Soooooo good!)

On to the destruction! (she said to the tune of “off with their heads”.) Yikes, maybe she really does need her sleep.

Steve hauls away some sad-looking carpet. We’re pretty sure it was the original carpet from when the house was built in ’98 and it was really needing to be replaced.

Ah, the support beam. Here it has lost its drywall covering and looks kinda of cool naked. What do you think? Keep au natural or swath in a wood to look more like a wood beam? Or maybe paint it?

Callie makes one of her last appearances in the room before the cat gate goes up. Maybe you can’t tell, but she is surely disappointed not to be able to explore more, but seriously, we don’t want the “curiosity killed the cat” saying to be true!

Bye, bye tile!! Whoo-hoo!

Such a lovely site. Jeez, Anne, you really hated that tile, didn’t you? Actually, no, it wasn’t too obnoxious, just totally did not fit in with the rest of the house. The gekko was kinda cute, though. He may just make a future appearance sometime, somewhere. You never know.

Dave cuts out the old bookshelf to make room for the new TV space.

We’re also getting a new door in the process, which separates upstairs from downstairs. This helps keep Callie and her claws away from the nice furniture upstairs (and soon to be downstairs!) when she’s not supervised. She’s gonna love it! Not.

Oh, and also so we can avoid this…

Yea, she’s a major fan of exploring and snuck in again! So maybe that wasn’t her last visit. This (hopefully) is.

And….time for a nap. More pics of the office to come soon, but it’s still a work in progress.

Whew, we’re just getting tired looking at all that work get done. Hope to share more of “the during” next week and we’d love to hear your opinions on the beam!

 

An Afternoon with Bobby

We not-so-recently got together with Anne’s brother Andy, his wife Jen, and their little boy Bobby for a (hot!) afternoon of wine tasting (except for the 3 year olds) at Pippin Hill and hanging out by the Lake Reynovia dock. In a classic case of the cobbler’s kids (or in this case, nephews) having no shoes, we just now were able to get to posting a few images from the day’s fun festivities. Ah, life in the middle of wedding season. But better late than never, right? So here are a few of our favorite images of His Cuteness.

Oh, in case this isn’t enough Bobby adorableness for you (and really how could it possibly be?) you can see some of our favorite photo shoots with him here, here, here and his debut, here! Oh, my gosh, he’s getting SO big!