Wine Night!

Our friend Sayle and her wife Jodi are in town this weekend and they were kind enough to invite us to their friend's house for a little get together! Sayle owns and runs a wine education company called Wine Savy NYC, so she knows almost all there is to know about wine, though she would never admit it herself :). Refinery 29 recently interviewed her about the best wines to drink now that it's summer. Isn't she a genius?

They had the most beautiful spread and, of course, the most amazing wine. We are suckers for a good charcuterie board and the ones they had last night did not disappoint. We ended up staying for almost five hours just chatting and laughing with everyone, feeling like we've known them forever and like we were just catching up. Actually, the cool thing is that they've all known each other since they were five years old and have remained close over the years. How crazy is that? 

Also, have you ever had pickle pops? It's just pickle juice that you put in the freezer and they become freezer pops. They're really, really salty at first but after a few seconds they're delicious. Our sweet host Blair had an entire box of them!

This was all of us! Thank God for self-timers and cellphones.

Last but not least, this was by far our favorite wine of the night. Absolutely delicious. Okaybye.

Neighbors

(PJ and our next door neighbor Jane admiring her new plants)

Our neighbor Jane has been our neighbor since the 1980's. By that, we mean she was Thomas' family's neighbor before she was ours, so she's always been a constant in our lives over the years. When we bought the house back in May of 2016, we immediately started brainstorming with her on ideas for fixing it up (she's an interior designer) and started to become close.

PJ and Jane bond over their mutual love of plants and flowers and are always spitting our names of random plants that Thomas has never heard of. Last night, while we were working on restoring a new furniture piece we found on the side of the road, we noticed she was outside and called her over to ask for her opinion on color. We went over all the different ways we could use the piece and some color options and that conversation somehow turned into talking about plants. PJ always gets excited when that topic comes up :).

She showed us her front and back yard and how well her grass was doing and some new plants she put in some pots she's had for a while. The weather was just about perfect as it was nearing sunset, and her grass felt like a soft rug under our bare feet. She promised to let us know when her fig tree produced later this summer so that we could have some figs to make a couple of new recipes.

It got us thinking how grateful we are to have her as a neighbor, even after all these years. She has always been nothing but sweet, kind, gracious, and helpful towards us. She helped us stage our house for the pilot and we borrowed a lot of her furniture (we even borrowed her huge antique Persian rug to stage the dining room with- you can see it in our last post) from her house and her sister's house who lives down the street. She was the one who told us about that estate sale a few weeks ago and we went with her to look at all the pieces. She always has the most creative ideas on how to use certain items in a home, and naturally, her own home is so cozy and well decorated.

We don't ever really think about it, and maybe some times we even take it for granted, but we feel blessed for all of our neighbors who have accepted us into the neighborhood without a judging eye. They've all been so welcoming and sweet, which isn't always the case, and could have easily been the complete opposite, given the fact that we live in the south and there aren't many gay couples in the area. There are a few, though, and everyone seems to get along well. Very grateful indeed.

Also feeling grateful that her yard is so pretty because this is what we see when we look out our dining room windows and while we're on our back deck. Why can't our yard look like that?!!

The Fence

We’ve been meaning to post this for over two months now but sometimes life happens and you completely forget. Do you know what we mean?

PJ built a fence around our backyard a few months ago so our big dogs could freely run around without getting out and bothering the neighbors. It’s been such a game changer and they’ve really loved it. BUT, our grass was suffering from it. Badly. Like, there’s almost none left back there. A far cry from what it looked like a year ago (already!!!) when we moved in:

So, in an effort to get it back to its former glory, PJ began fencing in part of the side yard that runs the whole length of our house for the big girls to stay in during the majority of the day. This, plus planting some grass seed should do the trick in making our back yard welcoming again. We also plan to remove the brick patio some time soon and just do grass there. It's beautiful, for sure, but our yard is small as is, so this will at least give us some more grass to walk on. We'll relocate the bricks somewhere else. They are bricks we saved and cleaned from the chimney we took down in our kitchen while renovating, so we won't be getting rid of them anytime soon :).

You can't tell from this picture, but they're SO EXCITED!! See the dirt with all of the little footprints in it? That's almost what our entire back yard looks like, but with little patches of green scattered throughout. We aren't even gonna show you. Maybe one day when we have a really nice "after" shot haha. 

Until then :)

Wine Night + Dancing

Last night we enjoyed a glass of wine on the back deck while finishing up something we’ve been working on the last couple of days. We usually only drink red wine (okay read: always) but last night we decided to finish a bottle of white we opened and man. It was delicious. The weather was perfect, the wine was chill, and life was good.

Once it got dark, we moved inside and poured A red cab we picked up that night. Then we turned on Usher Pandora radio and proceeded to dance for the next couple of hours. Have you ever had a random dance party with your love? It’s actually really fun to dance like crazy people to old bops that were popular when you were in middle school. You should try it!

We normally listen to Bossa Nova radio at night/when we drink wine, but it was nice to switch it up last night for something different and unexpected. Like one of our favorite quotes says: “You have to be the kind of person who can make the best out of a Tuesday.”