Anniversary Weekend: Limo, Champagne & ARIA
The first evening of our wonderful anniversary weekend, started with an amazing evening on the town! We checked into the same hotel we were married at and stayed at our wedding night. We were married at Ventanas which was packed with great new exciting wedding events which others will be celebrating for years to come. And connected to Ventanas is the great hotel, HGI Downtown. We were lucky enough to get the Presidential Suite for our anniversary, and it is definitely worth the stay!
Following check-in we got ready for our evening out. Paul reserved our favorite limo driver/service James with .... and we were on our way, limo, champagne and now onto aria.
This was one of several dinner options Paul had thought would be great for our anniversary dinner. We made a reservation for 9:15, and got there in plenty of time to hang out at the cool bar and lounge. It was a very cool experience and moving from the bar area to our dinner table was like transitioning from one very cool space to another even cooler space. It was quite the experience!
aria's menu changes on a daily basis, so you never know for sure what you may be in store for, but every bit of the menu that we experience was extraordinary!
We started with several appetizers, the Thin Sliced Smoked Atlantic Salmon (with red onion, capers crème fraîche, and crispy potatoes), Lemon Ricotta Ravioli (chanterelle, shiitake, sage brown butter and parmesan), and finally the Pan Seared New Bedford Jumbo Sea Scallops (with white corn, bacon, and parmesan risotto). It was all AMAZING! We were absolutely blown away especially by the first two, the smoked salmon just melted in our mouth, and the Lemon Ricotta Ravioli was such a unique and amazing mixture of flavors with the lemon, ricotta and sage butter. You would think this could not be topped, but the entrees were even better!
Paul ordered the Slow Braised Colorado Lamb Shank (with soft polenta, swiss chard, garlic parsley crumbs, and natural lamb jus) and I ordered the Painted Hills Ranch Natural Beef Short Rib (with shiitake mushroom risotto, pea shoots, sugar snap peas, and tender carrots). AMAZING! The Lamb Shank was so tender and moist and HUGE! We needed a to-go box for that, and I cleaned my plate, with a little help from Paul. The Short Rib was absolutely delicious, and accompanied by the unbelievably amazing risotto, I was in heaven! FYI the Short Rib is something they have chosen to keep on the menu for a long time now, so if you aren't keen on change, it's still a restaurant you should check out if not only to try that Short Rib!!!
Before leaving this amazing establishment, we inquired about the very interesting chandelier and apparently it was a piece that was commission specific for the restaurant and has been inquired about by many. I don't know that I need to describe is so much as just show you...
Following that amazing mean, we hopped back into the limo for more champagne and limo photo fun!
And finally, back to the hotel for a fun little toast of the evening and our anniversary! SO MUCH LOVE!
Married 1 Year + Together 6 Years = Super Happy!
Happy Anniversary Paul Paul! Our first year of marriage has been awesome! I feel like this has been one of our best years ever, and I can't wait to see what is to come in the future!
You have been an amazing husband and best friend, and I am so in love with you! We have had a lot of fun this year with traveling, getting things settled in our home, our careers and our relationship and I think this first year has been the beginning of a lifetime of wonderful and amazing moments!
I love you more than words will every show!
Here's to an awesome first year of marriage and many more to come! I love you!
Anniversary Weekend: We Love You MacBook Pro
This is definitely a Happy Anniversary to US both! While I have been grovelling for a new Mac for some time now (since I have been working from a 12 year old Mac Power Book), this brand new MacBook Pro will be a gift that both Paul and I will cherish for years to come.
It will not only help me not to go bald (tearing my hair out with the PowerBook), but it will allow me to help Paul with his business sites, and me to BLOG which has become a new addiction of mine.
And of course I'm finding so many things to talk about, including this fabulous Anniversary Gift! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH Paul Paul! I love you and together with this awesome new machine, we will embark on our second year of marriage with excitement and pleasure! Hehe And I know we will do so many great things together for years to come.
You have to check this baby out, isn't she a beauty (yes, she is a she, because she is magnificent). Maybe Paul and I should give her a name! Maybe Anni - short for Anniversary?? I know it's cheesy, but isn't that what Anniversaries are all about??
Definitely stay tuned, cause we have a lot more to come with a weekend full of fun!
Loving My Pinterest!
So I've had an invite to Pinterest for some time now, but hadn't taken the leap cause I knew it would be another thing that I would truly become addicted to and I was right. But with the constant stream of COOL stuff that I find EVERYWHERE, I need a resource to hold all these cool things I would love to have, try, and do, so I'm in it and collecting and adding new things daily to my boards!
I imagine my account will be huge not too long from now, and it will be a great resource for any and all ideas I've got for our life! Not only that, but I imagine it could be a very good "hint" resource for Paul when it comes to knowing all things I'm into and loving right now! Couldn't hurt!
I've found several ideas I am ready to implement soon. I think my first project will be this one...
But another very cool one that both Paul and I are loving is this! I image this one will be further down the line as we don't really have a bar area for bar stools YET, but it will happen, and these puppies will be in the picture of our bar/living space.
But this isn't just a resource for home decor ideas, it's about anything and everything you can imagine! Whether it's a frame of mind, a frame to put on the wall, a frame you make, or a place to go so you can put it in a frame... you can pin it!
It's like the new "there's an app for that", but now it's "pin it!"
And to top all of the fun decor stuff we will be implementing hopefully soon, I'm also in absolute DIY mode, and Pinterest has totally been feeding my "to do" list of things I KNOW I can make, and they WILL be so cool you'll want to pin them. I think I may start with the Christmas ornaments... It is that time after all.
Either way check it out!
Vote for Sunday Alcohol Sales TOMORROW!!!
How many times have you gone to the grocery store on Sunday and picked up a bottle of wine or case of beer, gotten to the register and realized during check-out... "DANG IT it's SUNDAY!" Well it's happened to me more than once, and I'm not really absent-minded, I just don't think about those things all the time cause it's really unnecessary!
Georgia is one of only three states that does not allow alcohol sales on Sunday, and it's finally time things change! This will be the first year that we have been able to decide on this issue ourselves, and I am hopeful people will get out to vote! This is not a primary election, and I'm sure there may be more pressing matters on the ballot than this issue, but I personally get the impression people will care about this! And they will care more about this than the other random local votes on the ballot.
About 100 Georgia cities and counties are holding votes on whether to allow stores to sell alcohol on Sundays. The referendum is the result of a lengthy battle in the state legislature over whether municipalities should have the right to decide on the issue. This has been a very controversial issue, and you can rest assured that there will be as many people out voting against it as there are for it.
If passed the Sunday alcohol sale referendum will allow convenient stores, grocery stores and liquor stores to sell beer, wine and liquor on Sundays. I know it's not a primary election or anything, but there is definitely good reason to make the trip to the poles tomorrow! Read more about it here!
The Annual Perdue Halloween Party Returns... hehehe
Since I've known Paul, he's prided himself on throwing fun filled Halloween Parties. Last year we missed it as we had a lot going on and were actually traveling, but the Annual Halloween Party has been re-instated and I think it was a hit! There were a lot of awesome costumes, from Cleopatra, to Quagmire to Sponge Bob!
This was Paul and my first Halloween as a married couple, so we decided to do something fun! We were Barney and Betty Rubble from the Flintsone's! All of our friends had wanted us to do this costume for years, and we finally gave in. And we even were about to find something that suited Chunk - He was our little Chunkasaurous!
Check out some of our fun pics! This is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are more at the gallery link below... Next time you should consider coming out!
Check out the full gallery here!
The Chunk Pumpkin!
Desi and Tristan came over tonight to help decorate for our Halloween Party tomorrow night - and have dinner with us (Paul cooked up an amazing roast!)! Anyway the decor was not going to be complete without The Chunk Pumpkin! This was my first ever attempt at carving a pumpkin and while it was harder than expected, I am very pleased with the outcome!
Our friends Natalie and Michael Webb sent us a template cause it looks just like our dog Chunk. I was so excited save the stencil for over a month in my inbox waiting for the right time to execute our work of art!
Paul started out by cutting the top (lid) and cleaning out the inside. He started to do the set-up or the stencil, and cut out the nose and first ear and then I took over the rest! You can check out the template above and see some photos of the process below. Chunk even stayed by me while I made his pumpkin portrait! I'm so excited, it turned out awesome!
Such a beautiful Chunk Pumpkin! If you've got any cool pumpkin art, I'd love to see them. And if you have recommendations for what we could do next time, I'd love to try them out!
Happy Halloween and check back soon as we'll be posting more fun pics from the fun weekend ahead!
Oktoberfest 2011, What a Blast!
Every year we go to Helen, GA for Oktoberfest, unfortunately last year we didn't make it out because we were busy planning our wedding, but this year we didn't let it slip and it was totally worth it! We had such a great time. We headed up to Helen with Kristin (Andrus), Curtis, and Natacha.
We were very excited because our VERY pregnant friend Kristin (Kneeland) was all about it and checked with her doctor far in advance as she wasn't letting her pregnancy stop her from doing anything! She's 9 months and a week pregnant and she was out having fun! She is quite the trooper, I can only hope that when I'm in her shoes, I would wear it as well! And if she had the motivation and energy to be there, there was no way we could miss out.
We had to work the Sugar Hill Fall Festival, but decided to dip out early to head up to Helen! I strategically mapped out route to avoid traffic, and we were absolutely successful. It was actually pretty nice because it was a gorgeous scenic ride and we were moving the whole time!
Once we go there, we walked a bit, mostly to get to the restrooms, and then we headed over to Margaritas' (we like to call it Paul's cause that's the place you see from the road), and they sell the big plastic cups that say Paul's on them. We actually had several other friends there to meet up with like Denise and Sean (who just had their little girl Catie)! She was adorable, and not allowed in the bars or course! They even asked, and the response they got was no one under 21! haha
Kristin's husband, Patrick, and Robin also made it out and it was very nice to see them! And we also had a couple other friends, Natalie and Micheal who we hung out with and drank with for a while!
It was such a fun time! Kristin (Andrus) and I even took some time to walk around to a few shops! Had to stop in Hansel and Gretel Fudge Shop. Kristin bought some yummy Pumpkin Pie fudge for her friend Jamin, and we got a taste. It was delicious, and they only do that flavor in October (maybe into November) so if you're up there you should check it out!
And I couldn't leave without stopping by the shop we bought our awesome dog Chunk from. They of course were selling puppies again, and had an Rat Terriers this time. I couldn't resist, I had to hold him, although he was already sold! I wasn't about to buy another dog, he was NO CHUNK!
We headed back to meet up with our group, had a couple more drinks and then headed out. It was totally a blast! I can't wait until next year!
Who Says You Can Only Wear Your Wedding Dress Once!?
I was married almost a year ago, and not more than a month before my wedding, my good friend Yarden was also married. We spent a lot of time together in the process of planning our weddings and after it was all done, we thought "this can't be the last time we wear these awesome dresses and shoes!!!
So we agreed that we would plan a photo shoot where my husband Paul (the photographer) would photograph us throughout Atlanta in our awesome dresses and shoes! We originally thought we would do it in the spring, but time kept passing and we never made an official date! But it worked out because this past July another very good friend of mine, Desi, got married to her long time love Tristan! And so now we had three gorgeous woman and three gorgeous dresses waiting to be stars yet again!
You always hear about groups of brides getting together for a night out on the town, but never have I heard or seen really awesome fun photos, and that's exactly what we've got!
Thanks to Paul (my wonderful husband and AMAZING photographer) and our friend Natalie Webb (who has been cranking out some awesome work since her recent break into the photography world). They both have an amazing eye, and I have to say it was hard to narrow it down to the 30 or so pics I included in this post! So definitely check out the full gallery!
We had such a blast, I would totally do it again! Check out the online gallery here, and definitely email Paul is you're interested in doing a shoot like this, he can even include a limo!
Thank you so much Desi, Yarden, Paul and Natalie, this was awesome!
A Georgian Terrace Maternity Shoot to Remember!
Paul had his first Maternity Shoot yesterday with a previous client. He had worked with Paige for her vow renewal (wedding ceremony) in Peachtree City at the Wyndham Peachtree Conference Center, and she loved those pics so much she called him up for her maternity shoot!
Paul met Paige at the Georgian Terrace Hotel downtown Atlanta, just in front of the Fox Theater, and the had an amazing shoot! Paige will surely be even more impressed this time around.
Check out some of these gorgeous images, this is just the tip of the iceberg!
You should definitely get in touch with my Paul Paul for our next shoot! He does it all and he does an awesome job!
Check him out... paulperdue.com
