Friends! John and I are back from an extended week of Christmas celebration — a few days in Minneapolis with my family (and the new niece!), a few days at home, and a few days in Connecticut with John’s family, the highlight of which was celebrating 41 years of marriage for my in-laws. Even though the new year officially starts on Wednesday, I’m looking forward to a few quiet days before things really pick up on January 6th — time to reflect, organize, clean, prepare, plan, and dream. My first order of business is to take a look back at 2013, because it was a truly marvelous year.

We kicked off the year with some unseasonably warm weather which allowed us to get out and explore (and eat some delicious food along the way!). I also made my first loaf of homemade bread, and published the first four posts in my Marvelous Money series, something I’d wanted to do for a long time. To be continued in 2014! I also posted our first house search update.

In February on the blog, all of my posts except one were devoted to telling the story of our wedding (you can find them all here). Thank you again for giving me the space to do that! We celebrated Valentine’s Day with dinner at home and a first viewing of our full-length wedding film. In between, we enjoyed lots of golf course strolls (sometimes even in the snow!) and scheduled inspections on our contracted house (number two, for those counting).

March brought house guests from the North and the first magnolia blooms! We celebrated Easter with chocolate peanut butter cheesecake and dyed eggs; I gave you a second house search update.

We did a few other things in April (started our garden in pots, went for a few hikes), but by far the most notable was our honeymoon to Nevis. We spent a week on that blissful Caribbean island, first at Montpelier…

…and then at Nisbet Plantation. A perfect getaway! Also worthy of mention: I wrote one of my favorite posts of 2013, Pet Nicknames :)

Oh my May. I traveled for work three times and we finally closed on our house (final update here).

In between packing boxes and painting walls we squeezed in strawberry picking, a drive to Saxapahaw, and a camping trip with friends. I then wrote a post about our tips for these sorts of everyday adventures.

In June, we finally said goodbye to our first apartment and hello to the farmstand directly across from our new neighborhood. I also took a magical trip to the Biltmore for a work conference and we saw Zac Brown Band in concert.

We also spent a weekend in my favorite place on Earth (the island in Maine where we have a cottage) for my grandmother’s memorial service.

In July we celebrated John’s birthday as well as that most famous of Southern holidays, Cow Appreciation Day. We also went blueberry picking twice!

The highlight of our month was a week-long trip to Michigan over the Fourth of July. I shared many more photos from our wonderful week of hiking, biking, kayaking, s’more-ing, and water skiing here!

In August we got to partake in many of our favorite outdoor activities, including a Durham Bulls game and lots of hikes. We also hosted a particularly adventurous dinner party, which was a highlight of our year!

We also took a ten-day trip to New England, stopping in Boston to stay with dear friends from college and attend the wedding of another college friend and then on to Maine for a stay at our island. So fun that we got to host Meredith and Michael at our special place! I shared a few more photos here.

Just a few weeks later we were back North for another friend’s wedding. It fell on the same weekend as our first anniversary, which we celebrated a few days later with a quick trip to the beach. We also welcomed my sister-in-law and future brother-in-law down South for a weekend in Asheville over Labor Day!

Gosh, we don’t slow down, do we? Our second giant balloon of the year marked the spot outside my sister’s baby shower in Minnesota (yay!). We also made ham biscuits at our church’s Fair booth and explored a corn maze with visiting friends from Massachusetts!

Our garden continued to impress us even as we left it behind for a weekend trip to the Crystal Coast with John’s parents and aunts. We finished the month by carving pumpkins with friends and welcoming 109 trick-or-treaters to our door (wow!!).

My parents came to visit for the launch party and to baby me after I got my wisdom teeth removed. We celebrated a year of monthly tennis dates with dear (and very pregnant) friends. Beautiful fall hikes were taken and an amazing experience was had at Hillsong with other dear friends. To cap it off, we brought home our very own and long-awaited Bucky just in time for the Christmas season!

December was especially sweet, between meeting Tegan and Perry and all the Christmas traditions we’ve come to love down here and up North.

2013 was a great year.

I loved working through Lara’s goal setting steps last year, and am doing the same this year! Part 1 involves taking an honest look back, so in that spirit, here are five things that did NOT work for me this year:

1. Between my busiest year at work and by far my busiest year in my shop, too often I felt like I transitioned directly from my commute to my craft table to my bed, with a brief stop at the dinner table in between. I am exceedingly grateful for the extra income (in fact, it helped us tick off some major financial goals), but I don’t want it to come at the expense of what matters most.
2. Out of all my daily habits for 2013, exercising was one of the ones with which I had the hardest time. I sit far too much and it’s just not healthy.
3. I did a better job with reading and absorbing the Bible this year but have been feeling listless in my prayer life.
4. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I’ve made much progress at responding to personal emails promptly. I love and value my long distance friends but did not show them this through my response time.
5. Perhaps because I had less free time this year than in the past, too often I caught myself saying “hurry up!” or rushing on to the next activity or moment for no particular reason.

And now, ten things that worked for us, or that we made happen, in 2013:

1. We bought a house! We persevered through a challenging process and worked together with patience. In the months since, we’ve supported each other in new responsibilities and expectations.
2. We ticked off some other major financial goals this year. We paid off all of my student loans, six years ahead of schedule, and are on track to pay off both of our car loans in the first half of 2014, leaving us with just our house payment.
3. On that note, I am really proud that I finally started my Marvelous Money series. Financial literacy is one of our biggest passions and it has been a delight to share with others.
4. I have a long way to go, but I became bolder in sharing my faith this year. We were able to realize a big goal we set for ourselves on our journey to greater sacrificial giving.
5. We continued making strides in healthy eating. Small changes like adding a spinach salad to every meal and switching whole wheat flour and brown rice for white made us feel good about what we’re putting in our bodies.
6. 2013 was marked by adventures big and small. We are pretty good at creating our own fun and loved sharing that joy with others.
7. I was so happy to continue in a job I love. It is an enormous blessing to know the work you’re doing every day matters.
8. My shop! I was able to be a part of so many sparkly celebrations this year, it kind of blew my mind.
9. For living so far apart, we saw a LOT of our families this year. We are exceedingly grateful that they come to visit us, and grateful that we have the resources to visit them.
10. Our marriage continues to be our greatest treasure. We know how lucky we are to have each other, and we don’t take each other for granted.

Friends, it has truly been a delight to be a small part of y’all’s lives this year, and to have you as a part of mine. I’ll be back tomorrow with more on my plans for 2014!

I’ve made fall to do lists for the past three years, and 2013 is no exception! My general goal in life is to enjoy each season as it’s upon us, and these lists help me do just that. John and I kicked things off yesterday (the first official day of fall!) with a visit to Millstone Creek Orchard to pick apples, so we’re off to a good start with this year’s list!

— Pick apples
— Make apple cider donuts
— Go to the State Fair
— Cheer at a high school football game under the lights
— Decorate our front steps with pumpkins and mums
— Order Christmas cards
— Try Monuts Donuts (yes, two of my “to dos” involve donuts)
— Invite friends over for a soup night
— Deck our mantel with something fall-y
— Make pumpkin chocolate chip muffins
— Hike somewhere with beautiful leaves
— Hand out candy to our first-ever trick or treaters!!

What are you hoping to enjoy before December 1st? To me, that’s when winter begins :)

There are a few things I hope you’ve picked up after reading this blog for any amount of time: namely, the joy of fiscal responsibility, a deep appreciation for goals of every stripe, and a conviction that donuts are delicious. Also, this:

Kelly Cummings

YES! We are the kind of people who use our wedding china on a daily basis. The people who crack open the letterpress stationery for a quick note. And yes, we are the people who throw adventure dinner parties.

I’ve been reading the blog Oh Happy Day for years, and Jordan is the one who initially introduced me to the idea of an adventure dinner party. As far as I can define it, it’s a meal shared with friends and the trappings of an indoor occasion — table, chairs — on public property. So, a fancy picnic. I was immediately taken with the idea, as I have a deep love for creating memorable experiences for the people I love. I put it on my 101 list almost three years ago, finally checked it off (hooray!!), and would now like to share a few tips I picked up along the way.

1. Choose your location wisely. It must be said: don’t dinner party on someone’s private property unless you have their permission. Duh. Also, don’t break any laws, and I’d suggest not choosing a location that expressly forbids picnicking. In fact, I’d look for a place that DOES encourage it — because really, an adventure dinner party is just an elaborate picnic, so if picnicking is allowed, you should be in the clear. Try also to find a location that has parking close by, since you’ll be hauling a fair amount of stuff from your car. Also, a bathroom, especially if two of your friends are pregnant.

Once you’ve found your location, make a scouting trip before the big day — even if it’s a location you’re familiar with, you’ll see it with new eyes. We chose the NC Museum of Art’s Art Park as our location (we took our engagement photos there). Here I am on our initial scouting trip in our chosen spot:

There was even a path mown to it!

2. Plan a moveable menu. The more food that can be transported and stored at room temperature, the better. Bonus points for anything that packs down tightly and requires few or no utensils. We chose chips and salsa as an “appetizer” (just served them out of the bag and jar, respectively), and Cobb salad as the main course. We brought the pre-washed spinach and arugula in the boxes it came in, and all of the other ingredients — hard boiled eggs, turkey, bacon, tomatoes, avocado, blue cheese, vinaigrette — in mason jars. Guests could assemble as they pleased. We also packed watermelon mint lemonade in Weck jars and fruit skewers in a 9×13 pan with a lid.

3. Make your packing list and check it twice. You’re going to be (kind of) out in the middle of nowhere, so there’s no running back to the kitchen when you realize you forgot plates. Walk through the entire event in advance and make sure you have — and pack — everything you need. Think about clean-up, too. Among other things, we brought mason jars for guests to drink out of (with lids, so that we could just screw the lids on at the end of the meal and not worry about rinsing them or drips), wooden forks, plastic plates (I figured they’d be less likely to blow away than paper), and bug spray. We packed everything in our cooler and my oversize Bean bag.

4. Get the right equipment. Because we could see ourselves doing this again, we bought a tote-able 6-foot table and two folding chairs from Home Depot to supplement the six folding chairs we already owned. Renting would also be an option. So would buying from Craigslist if you leave yourself enough time. We already had a surplus of mason jars, but they’re pretty cheap at Walmart.

5. Invite the right guests. You want people who will relish the experience, and be excited about something different… not think the obscure location and mysterious lead up are a hassle. Guys, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have friends and a husband who appreciate things like adventure dinner parties!!

6. Have fun with it. You’re creating an experience for your guests, so layer on the fun touches! Keep the location a mystery until the last minute, or text clues in the days leading up to the party. (I’d recommend giving them an estimate of how long it will take to drive to the location, though!) Bring a tablecloth. Send invitations in the mail. Order up a giant balloon to mark your spot. On that note, make sure you have a car large enough to transport said balloon — I have an SUV, and had to fold my seats down to fit it in! It wouldn’t even fit through the doors of our house!! We bought our 36″ balloon from Party City, and it was $6.29 to inflate it with helium.

I modified Amy Moss’s invitation template and had them printed at FedEx Kinkos — so cute!

Post-dinner we loaded everything back into my car, then walked over to the Museum’s outdoor showing of Moonrise Kingdom. We packed dessert boxes for everyone in turquoise berry baskets with cinnamon sugar kettle corn, chocolate chip cookies, brownie bites, and gummy bears :) One other note on food preparation — if there was any dinner party to take food shortcuts on, this is it. All of these goodies were purchased from Whole Foods!

7. Roll with it. The weather. Oh me oh my the weather. There were a plethora of angsty text messages flying between my and John’s phones the day before and the day of our dinner party. Suffice it to say, we didn’t definitively call holding the party outside until about an hour before the arrival time, BUT the weather turned out to be beautiful! We had sun!!

Also, make sure you’re okay with attracting some attention. There were bike riders and walkers moving past our location, and at first I was a little self-conscious, but as soon as everyone arrived they faded into the background. Remember, they’re not judging you, they’re either curious or want to BE you! :)

Finally, be flexible. When we arrived at the park, we discovered that the entire field had been mowed, meaning our private circle was no more. We made a quick decision to relocate under the tree, and it worked out wonderfully.

8. Clean up. Leave your dining room for the night better than you found it. Duh.

Friends, what do you think? Would you host an adventure dinner party? Have you ever purchased a giant balloon? :)

Goodness gracious, it’s been more than two weeks since my last post. I don’t like to comment on that sort of thing, because I try not to set up expectations for myself about how often I post, BUT, since I have been gone so long, I thought I’d do a quick update on what we’ve been up to.

The day after I wrote my August goals post we flew to New England for ten days. We spent the first evening with two dear friends from college in Somerville, and the next morning we took a long walk around their neighborhood. We even saw my parents’ first apartment — in an old schoolhouse!

That evening we joined many more friends from college at the wedding of another alumna. I was horribly, horribly homesick my first year of school, and Laura is the first person who made me feel at home at Wheaton. I am forever grateful to her and was so happy we could be there to celebrate with her and her new husband!

An early teaser from their photographer, Tyra Bleek:

As you can see, they had beautiful weather, and that turned out to be a theme of our trip, thankfully! We spent the next week in Maine, and enjoyed some of the most perfect conditions imaginable. Lots of tennis, walks, good food, games, and one very special visit from our friends Meredith and Michael. A highlight of our trip for sure! You can see their recap here.

A few more of our snaps from the week:

Yes, that’s a gigantic double rainbow!

Since coming home we’ve hosted our small group for dinner, went out for a big dinner with my team at work, and tonight is our adventure dinner party! (Fingers crossed — the weather is still looking a little iffy.) So many good things and so much excitement — but I will say we’ll be happy to lay low the rest of the weekend :)

Back with more soon!