FINALLY a quick update on Spunky (isn’t the first child always ignored and neglected?!).  [Well, Spikey was really the first!]

November 14th, 2011 – the last documented mention of Spunky on the blog ::GASP:: (Me and Lisa from her and Seth’s 36 Hours of Fun!!!) 

Yesterday – July 24th, 2012

Check out those ridiculously pale tree stumps AND THEN check out Spunky (holy overly-pregnant-and-swollen monster legs — yikes!).

Hopefully you can tell that Spunky has grown quite a bit and is looking more and more like a real palm tree!  We are very proud!  It was quite windy when this photo was taken, so Spunky was definitely one with Willow Smith — “I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth…”

Please, for the love of the [dry] earth, check out our HORRIBLE lawn.  We’ve had NO working sprinklers all year.  The HOA has been working on it (something about salt water in the well), but for now – we have very burnt “grass.”  Gross. This drives my poor husband to CRAZYtown on a daily basis!

Happy Dr. Appointment Day Hump Day – I’ll keep y’all posted!

xoxo

 p.s. I fulfilled my fish & chips craving last night at Pearlz downtown.  YUM!  We headed to Bakehouse for a decaf frappe afterwards and then sat at Waterfront Park by the pineapple fountain for a while.  A perfect pre-baby date night…love my hubby! ♥

Beach Count: 77  

Pool Count: 32 

High Temperature: 96° 

Lisa and Seth came in Friday night at 6pm.  We had approximately 36 hours to spend quality time with them (we hadn’t seen them since June) AND show them around Charleston for the very first time.  Nooooo pressure.

thirty!six!hours!

This is how we do it…

(no pictures – sorry – I was too busy staring into Lisa’s eyes catching up!)

{My eyes were closed in the pic of Scott and I…shocker!}

Don’t get between girls and their cupcakes!!!  But seriously, the boys like them too.  ;)  We got 2 cotton candy, 1 chocolate peanut butter, 1 black bottom, and 1 pumpkin.  Y-U-M!

Lisa and I thought this was adorable, so we had to take a pic  =)

We had a great dinner!  Here is the only picture of the 4 of us…I failed at getting rid of our red eyes.

We had a FANTASTIC time with our guests and cannot wait for them to visit again – for 48 hours or more!!!  

Lisa and Seth – 5 more weeks until we see YOU in NEW YORK!  LOVE YOU!!!

Until then, 5 more days until my brother in-law arrives and 7 more until my brother comes to Charleston for the FIRST TIME – YAY!!!!

After that, more great friends will visit for the 2nd time in January…we LOVE visitors!!! 

p.s. Christmas came early for my husband…I’ve been voiceless for 2 days!!! ::Thank goodness for blogging!::

p.s.s. How could I forget this picture?  Me, Lis, and Spunky  =)

Beach Count: 64  

High Temperature: 73° 

Yes, I made a Charlie Sheen reference.  Scary business.

But really, here is some serious evidence of “winning” in my life…

~ So, remember how I told you that Charleston is now Condé Nast Traveler’s #1 city in America?

Well, a new website with Charleston deals and vacation packages has been created in honor of this new title.  Check it out!  I found this very cute, very short video on their site.

~ Well since then, Charleston has been recognized yet again!  According to CNN, Charleston is the 3rd best city in the world.  No, I didn’t mean country.  World. BOOM!  #1 was Sydney, Australia and #2 was Florence, Italy.  Four US cities made it to the top 20 (Charleston, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Chicago).  Check out the complete list!

Me so proud =)

~ Charleston’s weather forecast is this…

72° on the first day of November?  I can dig it.

My hometown’s weather forecast is this…

Brrr!  A little mix of some white stuff up there tomorrow?  In October?  No, thank you!

~ Scott and I went to the beach on October 14th and it was the most beautiful day ever.  Hoping to get to the beach this weekend, if not just for a sunset! ♥

10/14/2011

~  Spunky is looking pretty sweet.  Growing like a ::ahem:: weed.  Question: Will spunky go dormant throughout the cold season in Charleston?

Girlfriend cannot wait to be all lit up for Christmas!

~ Asheville, NC is only 4 hours away (along with great friends)!  More on our trip to Asheville soon!

I shall call this: a teaser  ;)

Is anyone else obsessed with where they live?  Fellow Charlestonians?  Seriously.  I have a problem!

I hope y’all are having a great week.  Hurry up, weekend!

p.s. I missed you people!  Thanks for sticking around while I was busy blowing my nose like it was my job.

Beach Count: 62   

High Temperature: 75°

I missed our house anniversary.  By like a month.  Oops.  (Do I ever not miss an important inanimate object’s anniversary/birthday?  Ugh!)

To refresh your memory…

We started casually (yeah right!) searching for a house around July 27th of last year.  We bid on and *won* our house within days and then closed on this bad boy on August 30th.  We moved in Labor Day weekend on September 3rd (after our NY lives arrived on a large tractor trailer!).  For more details, click here to visit the old blog.

Aw, Scott is such a good sport!!!

Since then, we haven’t done a whole lotta huge changes to the place.  Trust me, we have some biggish plans.  Biggish in relation to dolla dolla bills more than in style or structure.  Here’s the breakdown…

What We’ve Done

• Painted both downstairs bathrooms (our master twice due to poor judgment and my eh–we-don’t-need-to-test-out-a-sample-first smarts) – 1 purple (what? we live in colorful and charming Charleston!) and one khaki (after the eye-numbing yellow mistake!).
• Painted the upstairs hallway.
• Had our carpets cleaned twice.
• Painted the front door and shutters.
• Tricked out our screened-in patio to where it feels like another room and not a patio
• Planted Spikey, then Spunky!

Yikes – notsomuch

What We’d Like to Do (If I were a fluent Pinterest-er I would show you some ideas, but just like Twitter – mama needs a lesson!)

• Our biggest dream project…hardwood floors on the first floor!
• Purchase a rolling, rectangular island to put by the big kitchen window (but roll out into the middle for big cooking/baking/beer making operations).  2 stools that fit under would be an amazing addition.  Those of you who know Scott know that lots of ganging up measuring and convincing have taken a toll on him and he has officially been worn down.  Welcome to the island bandwagon dear.  =)
• Put hardware on the cabinets in the kitchen and the bathrooms…I think.
• Granite countertops would be nice, but what we’ve got really doesn’t bother us much.  A backsplash below the cabinets would be awesome, though!
• Have the family room painted.  OR just befriend someone with a taller-than-ours ladder to get down all of the accumulating dust balls up there.  That would do it for me.  Those buggers drive me nutty.
• Buy a long table console or bench for the entrance area.
• Freshen up some paint.
• Find a new bookcase for the downstairs main area…haven’t really liked the the one we have now since day 1…oops.  I’ll fall in deep love with its replacement before purchasing [insert Scott giving me "the look"].
• Get something awesome to put on the wall above our bed.
• Lose the Hollywood/police interrogation light fixtures in the bathrooms – the ballet class mirrors, too!
• Put up more shelving in the garage to maximize our storage situation (it is quite a situation!).
• Put up horizontal blinds in our bedroom (because our curtains are quite see through and that is no good!).

Keep in mind, this is our 5-7 year house.  We need not go crazy.

If we never get any of the above list checked off, we’d still be happy here.  It’s our first house that is definitely our home!

As long as Scott’s by my side and we get the privilege of living in the city that we love (Charleston!!!) - that is truly all I need!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, HOUSE!!!

Beach Count: 61  

Pool Count: 18 ← It’s unfortunately time to retire this stat until the Spring…our pool is closed for the season!

High Temperature: 71° (woah – this was a shock to the system, but beautiful!)

1. TGIF!!!!

Haha – jk!

2. Look at Spunky!!!  She amazes us more every day!!!

GORG!!!

3.  Check out our weather forecast.  I’m excited for the perfect days (and a temporary cool down), but am honestly NOT happy about the cold nights!

Excited about those big ol’ sun balls!

4. There are a million Charleston events going on this weekend.  Charleston City Paper touches on many of them here.  I think we’re just doing our own thing, joining in on some fun with my parents and their friends who are in town for the weekend!  First up?  Downtown tonight for some true southern cuisine, y’all - yay!!!  You know I’ll report back  ;)

What do you have on tap this weekend?  I’m hoping for a lot of outside time and little inside/TV/computer time  =)

p.s.  It is officially official that my brother will be joining us for Thanksgiving in CHARLESTON – game on!!!  

p.s.s.  I don’t think I’ll go quite David Hasselhoff tonight, but MAN, it’s been a lonnnnnnng week!

Beach Count: 61  

Pool Count: 18 

High Temperature: 86°

I haven’t talked about Spunky in a while.  Yeah, remember her?  Our beloved 2nd shot at not killing a palm tree?

Well she is doing swimmingly…or breezily, I should say.  Her lovely frond mane is growing wild and free – just like her Mama’s hair (when she lets it flow).

Like a lion – roarrr!

Big Mexican-air-hair from our honeymoon ♥

Remember when this ray of sunshine entered our lives unexpectedly?  WHAT a whirlwind (I heart Chelsea Handler)!

Who needs a side by side?  Me, me!

Week 1 vs. Week 9

Not too shabby!  Especially when we’ve been neglecting her a$$ trunk, lately.  In attention, not water – Scott’s got that whole watering thing down to a science now.

Ugh – here’s Spikey’s SAME side by side [insert sad comment here].

Week 1 vs. Week 9

Yeah.  NO.  There really were 9 weeks between these pictures!

Well there’s our tree baby update.  She really is looking mighty fine.  I am NOT wishing the end of Summer and/or Fall away (believe you me), but MAN – I CANNOT wait to decorate that baby with some white sparkly lights!!!

HAPPY ALMOST WEEKEND! 

What’s on YOUR agenda?!

p.s. Off to Juanita Greenberg’s for dinner tomorrow night – can’t wait!!!  (Helllooo margaritas!)  Lots of other fun activities on tap this weekend   =)

Beach Count: 61  ← we snuck to the beach after work today – GORGEOUS!

Pool Count: 18

High Temperature: 88°

That’s it.  Spunky’s sleepy…and so is her Mama.

ZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZzZz

p.s. Upcoming blogs: Angel Oak, a Southern thesaurus entry, and the last installment of Flashback Friday (for now).  Stay tuned!

Beach Count: 57

Pool Count: 18

High Temperature: 97°

Spunky…and a little romance ♥

Stop looking at my little girl like that, ya sicko!  Haha!

Spunky is as healthy as ever; fanning out like the best of ‘em.  She has a few fronds tucked in to her lil hiney.  Don’t worry, dear.  Your father has plans to get up on a ladder and get you all situated.  (We don’t want those fronds to die!) There was a day and half of straight rain (which is unusual) last week.  This Charleston freak of nature helped out Spunky and our lawn around her…thank goodness.

Holy Randomness -

- We’ve already been back to Trader Joe’s.  8:30 at night is the way to go!  We’re pretty much obsessed with everything we’ve bought from there so far.  The Fruit Bars ($1.99 for 4) are a freaking slam dunk!

- My cry count during The Bachelorette 3 HOUR finale on Monday night was 5.  I am so happy for Ashley and JP!!!  Cry count during Nick and Vanessa’s Dream Wedding?  4.  Teen Mom this week?  1.  Yes, I find time to leave the house.  AND YES, I’m a loser…

- We hit Social for a date night on Tuesday (best happy hour in town!) and then did some walking around the Battery.  A blog about this with pics to come!

- We also went to Sullivan’s Island this week and learned that Shark Week is no joke.  Details to come on that, too…waaaaait for it!  ;)

- Along the Shark Week lines, we are going to a viewing of Jaws on the lawn at the South Carolina Aquarium in downtown Charleston tonight.  SO excited!

That’s only the tip of the iceberg.  I seriously need to blog everyday!!!  ;)

Happy Thursday!

p.s. Lunch today with the coolest blogger in town (literally!), Christina.  Yay!

p.s.s. Life is GOOD!  =)

Beach Count: 55

Pool Count: 18

High Temperature: 95° 

I’m majorly sleepy.

My parents’ stuff getting here from NY meant that 3 large bins of my childhood were arriving here, too.  That automatically meant cleaning out all existing bins and closets to make room for said binned-up childhood memorabilia.  Thank goodness we’ve had a couple of rainy days.

The really fun part was going through these bins o’ “I-still-have-that?”  Check out the mess below.  Get ready for some awesomely-dork-like-wow finds in a later post.  I’m scanning those babies in.  It’s going to be SO worth the wait!  (And you thought my blinking post was embarrassing!!!)

Meanwhile, take a look at Spunky Treester…

So she’s a little lopsided at the moment.  Give her time…nobody’s perfect!  I still think she’s GORG and growing on the regular.  Ahhh…ya know, it’s so nice not to have to worry about your little one alll of the time.  ;)

p.s. Notice Scott’s shirt in pic #1?  Someone’s excited that there’s actually going to be an NFL season this year…go G-Men!

p.s.s. Which pile do you think was the keep pile vs. the chuck pile?  Hmm…

Beach Count: 53

Pool Count: 16

High Temperature: 84°  ← There was a cold front up in herrrr – brrrr!

SPUNKY!

THANK YOU for voting.  It would’ve been NO FUN without your participation!!!

In case you didn’t check back to see the voting results, here was the breakdown…

And by a landslide (I’ve always wanted to say that!), SPUNKY was the winner! Nobody liked “Speedy.”  I don’t blame them; I was reaching.  Some additional name suggestions were: “Lady Liberty” (but you knew that one!), “Sassy,” “Sandy,” and “Scarah.”  Thanks again for your help!  I, myself, thought of naming her “Big Fat Showoff.”  But, as promised, I let the voting decide.  Now I get why parents say, “You can’t compare your children.”  YOU CAN’T!  Look at this beauty…

She is starting to spread her wings fronds and we are utterly smitten!  She has just taken off!  Many thanks to her father, my amazing husband, for his obsessive devoted early morning and late evening feedings waterings.  This little lady has been getting quite the intense TLC from her papa bear and boy is it wearing well on her!

More big news!  She is going to have a little (very little) sibling to grow with.  No, NO – one like THIS (a sago palm tree as opposed to Spunky – a sabal palmetto palm tree)…

…because he planted one of these peach pit looking seeds…

…into this space!

We’ll see how this adventure goes!!!

In completely irrelevant news – look at our pretty new wreath…

…and how pretty our crepe myrtle tree looked a week ago…

Cross those fingers that Spunky stays healthy!!!

p.s. Expect more voting opportunities on future big decisions!

p.s.s. We decided against the tree naming ceremony and for the pool today due to the near 100 degree weather Charleston had goin’ on.  Oh well – she’s too young to remember, anyway!

p.s.s.s. Any locals trying out for American Idol in North Charleston this weekend?!?!

Beach Count: 52

Pool Count: 14

High Temperature: 99°