Thursday, July 19, 2012

Thankful Thursday

I'm thankful for the opportunity I had this past Sunday to share my LifeSong and LifeVerse at church! (Will be posting an entire entry about it soon!)

I'm thankful for a husband who works SO hard. I realize I say this almost every week, but summers are his busiest time of year, (obviously, for an A/C man in Charleston). He has worked tirelessly all summer, putting in no less than 10 hour, usually more like 12 hour days. 

I'm thankful that we have the ability to attach memories to songs.
(Example: Spice girls takes me straight back to 6th grade; Hanson, more like 4th grade. You get it.)
Feeling particularly nostalgic this week, I checked out "Reba, #1's" from the library. Popped it in my computer at work, and listening to her early 90's hits, I was immediately back in my mom's suburban on the way to Fripp Island to visit Grandma as a kid. I guess we always used to listen to Reba in the car? Anyway, I LOVE the feeling you get when a song takes you back to a precious memory. At the time, I thought nothing of the songs on the radio in the car - I was just ready to get to grandma's. After a stop at Belk's on the way in to Beaufort, of course. Those were such trivial things then, that now, I treasure SO greatly. Times have certainly changed; grandma no longer lives down there, and we rarely take road trips together anymore, now that we're all grown. So, thanks Reba, for singing to my past, so I can remember those times in my present.


David says "I'm thankful for a lovely wife who loves me even if I haven't shaved in 10 days."

His muskrat face better be thankful! ;)
Peace & Love.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Scrap Wood Sign

I've recently been helping my sister renovate her main Children's Ministry room at Church, and we're just about done! One mural to go {tomorrow}! Being the crafter I am, I'm always looking for scraps - and last weekend, during the clean-up - I lucked out with two long pieces of smooth wood and 2 rectangles that I can paint signs for my house on! I'm a crafter, not a builder, so I don't know what this wood is called, but it's about 1/4" thick and really smooth. 

Anywho, I decided to paint a sign to hang above my closet doors last night! Our room is Robin's Egg & Gray, and one of our favorite bands is Mumford & Sons, so I chose to do stripes, with Mumford lyrics - "Where you invest your love, You invest your life". See all my pics! 

Original board (already primer-ed white!) I decided to not do another coat of white, so it would have a little rustic feel, since it was a thin layer, it looked worn.

Measured and made tick marks at 1" all the way down.

My masking tape was just a bit too narrow, so I had to use 2 pieces to get it 1" thick. I made my stripes go from one tick mark diagonal to the one 2 inches over from the top one. 


Painted it blue & pulled off the tape!

I used to scrapbook a lot, and had these blue letters. You use the actual letter in the scrapbook, but then you have these great border stickers. So I decided to make those my words. (Cheater, I know)



For special words in the phrase, I freehanded these to make them stand out.

The finished product! Sorry the pic is so small, but the board's about 6 ft long, so it was impossible to get the whole thing really well. If you click on it, it gets bigger.

Will post a picture when Hubby actually gets it hung on the wall!





Thursday, July 12, 2012

Thankful Thursday


This week, I'm thankful for...

Disney Pandora Station, enough said. 

Date night last night with my hubby - dinner and a movie!

Getting to be Mrs. David Irvin for four months now :)

All my freelance opportunities lately!

Grace and patience from my freelance clients in getting their job to them. 

Having a husband with the strongest work ethic I know. 
And who listens to me whine that I miss him when he's gone so much.


David says "I'm thankful for air conditioning, because it creates a place to escape the heat and it provides me with a job".

I'm gonna go ahead and throw in there that he's thankful for gatorade too. 


Peace & Love from the Irvins.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Special Days!

We're celebrating two special days this week!

Monday was the first anniversary of the second-best day of my life - we got engaged! (trumped only of course by our wedding day...see below)!

Incase you haven't heard our engagement story, I pulled this off of our wedding website. Such a special day, and I may be biased, but I think I have the best engagement story of all time. :)

(Courtney writing) It was just after my Family vacation, which of course David went on as well. Vacation was at Lake Jocassee, SC up in the very top corner of the state. One of David's favorite things to do (and, it's growing on me too...) is to go camping in the North Carolina Mountains. So, David decided weeks before we left for vacation that we should go camping for a day or two after vacation since we were so close to the mountains. We camp a lot, so I didn't think anything of it, besides that it was a great idea.

The day we were set to go camping, the weather took a turn for the worst. The temperature dropped to about 60 degrees (yes! in July!) and it was pouring outside! Of course, at that point I just wanted to head home, but everyone was insistent that I go "because David is so excited about camping". So, off we went. We spent the day perusing around Brevard, NC, and when the weather cleared a bit, we headed for a campsite. We camped and had great quality time...and surprisingly enough the weather was perfect! It didn't rain and we got to enjoy a campfire and even saw some wildlife (no bears!). In the morning, we packed up and headed to hike some waterfalls, because I love waterfalls. So, off we went. David suggested "Why don't we stop by Target before we go see the waterfalls, so we can clean up a little?" (See, it had been about 2 days since either of us had showered...smart boy, knowing I'd want pictures of what was coming up!) So we cleaned up and drove a little ways to Hooker Falls, Triple Falls and High Falls. 

We got to the biggest one, which was breathtakingly beautiful (and breathtakingly cold!) and were there for a while, before I started getting antsy, wanting to move on to the next waterfall. I told David "I'm bored" to which he responded, "Don't be bored, just enjoy it for a little while longer". Then he asked me to sit down on a rock, and he sat across from me. He then pulled out some soap and began to wash my feet. Thinking it strange, and beginning to know something was going on, I asked why he was washing my feet. While washing, he said "Biblically, washing someone's feet is the ultimate act of service. And I want you to know I love you and I want to serve you for the rest of my life." Immediately I knew what was going on and screamed and put my face in my hands. He pulled the most beautiful ring I've ever seen out of his pocket and asked me to marry him. I began to cry, and don't really remember anything after that, but I said "Yes, yes yes!" and he put it on my finger. After this, he led me around to the side of the waterfall to show me a huge fallen log where he had carved "Mr. and Mrs. Irvin" into it! Turns out, he had come up for a day weeks before (told me he was working late) and been to all the waterfalls to scout out the perfect place!

When we left the waterfalls, we headed home to Charleston, where we were greeted by both families for a mini-celebration! It was a perfect day. I will never, ever forget that feeling!

Some pictures from our day:









The other special day we are celebrating is the best day of our life! It's our four-month-anniversary today! Yes, I'm reverting to celebrating middle-school-style-monthly anniversaries (remember how big of a deal those were!?) - because every month has been so special! Hey, you're allowed to do that in the mushy-gushy-love phase of your first year of marriage, right? :)


My favorite picture of the whole day!


Yay for love and mini-milestones - Here's to a life full of them!




Monday, July 2, 2012

LOST, Party of Two.

David and I have recently been engrossed in a "LOST" marathon. We don't have cable, so we decided to start a DVD series marathon. David vetoed Dawson's Creek (much to my dismay), and I vetoed Dexter, so we decided to purchase a new series! We're a couple years late climbing onto the LOST bandwagon, but man, what an awesome show! Now I know why everyone went nuts about it when it came on tv! Anywho, for the finale episode, David had had a long day at work, so I decided to make it a little more fun, and do something nerdy special to make him smile, rather than just watching it as usual. (As if cuddling up together on the couch isn't fun enough!) 

Nerd Alert: I got a little over-excited, ha! Who says you need a crowd to throw a party? :)

If you don't know anything about the show, the premise is a plane crashes on an island. The survivors quickly learn it's not just any island - strange things happen there. And many people have been there before them. They're trying to piece together the reason they're all there, because they know it wasn't just any ol' plane crash - "destiny" brought them to this specific island. 

So, I decided to turn our living room into the island!

But first, we needed to be on the plane that crashed. So I went online and found "Oceanic Flight 815" boarding passes you could personalize! (Apparently, creating a finale party wasn't only my idea - there was tons of stuff online to create a LOST party) 


I brought all of our plants in from outside (disregard the pots and towels to keep dirt off our white carpet - they did NOT have those in the jungle!) to make our little island. I even used our bamboo salad tongs, straw placeemats and paper plates, a basket (lined with a glass bowl) for salad and just used a towel as our tablecloth. 

I marked our globe with a flight path and put "CRASH" where the island was. (Told you, I went overboard...but we're not even done yet.)

One of the things in the show they discovered was that there were 6 Stations all over the island, where people had lived and worked - they found out it was called the "Dharma Initiative" and supplies were air-dropped onto this island for the people. So, we had to eat Dharma food for dinner!
Ok, that's just the drinks, but we also had salad, Dharma Mac & Cheese, and Mr. Cluck's Fried Chicken! (One of the characters owned a fried chicken fast food chain - so I found that label online too, and transformed our Food Lion Chicken into Mr. Cluck's!)

Our place settings - complete with Apollo bars! (The candy bars from the show.)

I even dressed up like Kate (the heroin) and her "I've been stuck on an island for months and I'm still super hot with my long wavy hair and tough girl attitude" look. David especially loved that! ;)

All in all, it was a huge nerdy success! David got to relax after work and have some fun...and he laughed at me, but also said I was the best wife ever, and thanked God for "an amazing wife who isn't afraid to be silly for me" during our blessing - so it was all worth it! We had a great time. Who says you need a crowd to throw a party?? I thoroughly enjoyed our LOST party of two.