Meet the Maids

Jeanne
Jeanne is my maid of honor and is well-qualified after performing the duties for her sister a few years ago. On move-in day freshman year at Centre, I heard someone say the girl across the hall was from New Jersey, and I knew I needed to meet her. Little did I know that it would lead to many years of friendship. I've taught Jeanne how to pump her gas (it's illegal in New Jersey) and tried to impart a little Southern charm, and Jeanne has taught me what icing is (other than cake frosting) and what it truly means to have a work ethic. Jeanne is getting ready for her final year at Ole Miss law school, and because her parents now live about an hour from Nashville, I get to see her on all her school breaks. Law school has also given her great tidbits of info that she loves to share, like whether I would legally have to return the ring if Jake and I broke up.

Jeanne and me at our prom party where we recycled our dresses from high school. Apparently they don't wear bubblegum pink in New Jersey.

Lauren

Although Lauren and I both grew up in Owensboro and went to the same high school, we didn't become friends until we were dorm neighbors at Centre. Now that we both work in communications (Lauren at the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort), we share a lot of on-the-job tips and commiseration. She is absolutely the most organized and meticulous person I know. We also have a passion for rollercoasters and spent 12 hours at Kings Island last summer. (I'm hoping for a repeat visit this summer!) We often meet up at my favorite place in the world, Kentucky Lake, but Lauren was also my travel buddy halfway around the world to India.

Christanna

Christanna is also a hallmate from freshman year (although she was down at the other end with arguably the world's craziest roommate). For sophomore year, I needed to live with someone else going abroad, Jake said "Christanna seems nice," and we were roomies for the rest of our college career. I actually never saw Christanna sleep after sophomore year (junior year she literally always went to bed after me and woke up before me, and we had our own rooms senior year), but I have fond memories of waking up to the sound of her crunching on granola. She will forever be my hero for eradicated the mouse that had infested our apartment - it was writhing on a glue trap, I was hyperventilating, and she was able, with only a few shrieks, to get it into a trash can and out onto the front porch. Now she's done with her first year of medical school at the University of Louisville, and I love that she's knows what I'm talking about when I say I'm writing a really cool article on necrotizing fasciitis.

This is Christanna at our prom party in her Goodwill monstrosity. This is the true essence of Christanna, but here's what she really looks like:

Leah

Without any real sisters, I have adopted Leah as my own. I especially love that she always wants to play games at Hill family gatherings. She just finished her sophomore year at Center, and Jake and I take pride in telling her what classes to take and what professors to avoid. She's made the extremely good decision to study abroad in London next spring and we hope we can make a visit. She has also just made her debut as a performing artist in Centre's bluegrass ensemble and I heard many rave reviews.

I had to include this pic of all the Hill children because it's the perfect family photo, but Leah's the pretty one.

Grab Bag

I just realized how long it's been since I've posted, but I'm sure you can imagine how busy things have gotten for us! My official mac dashboard countdown says the wedding is in 36 days, 20 hours, 13 minutes and 39 seconds.

I've been settling into the new house in the past few weeks. It came through the Nashville flooding with just a little water damage in the kitchen, and compared to the other the other folks in town who are ripping their houses down to the studs and have all their worldly possessions in a muddy heap by the curb, we made it just fine. I'm actually supremely pleased in our little house - if it survived nearly 20 inches of rain, I think it will hold up perfectly for us! (If you want to read some horrific survivor stories, check out our staff blog at work, Get the NAC.)

I did such a great job packing and moving, that I'm having a little trouble motivating myself to unpack. And it seems like every time I get some boxes emptied, somebody else wants to throw me a party and give me tons and tons of wonderful, awesome, incredible gifts. One of the seriouds hazards of getting married is all the packing materials - boxes, tissue, and those pesky peanuts that get statically charged and want to cling to everything.

I had a wonderful shower thrown by my coworkers on Nancy's even more wonderful new deck. That was the night before the flood and we talked about how it was going to rain the next day and be such a drag. Little did we know! Then I headed to Owensboro for a shower thrown by all the sweet ladies at my church, St. John United Methodist. Four generations of the Hawkins/Hundley/Hast family have gone to that church, and all these ladies have watched me grow up and been so kind and loving over the years. It was great to go home and spend time with them.

Then last weekend, I got to meet all the great women in the Hill and Curry families that I'm marrying into. Jake's mom had the superb idea to get together and meet all of them before the wedding, and it was a really fun afternoon. She was sneaky and quizzed me on trivia about Jake, and I'm ashamed to say I only got a 75% on the test! Here's Cindi with the incredible quilt she made for Jake and me:

I hope the blog posts will become more frequent now. I will definitely be providing some directions and things to do in the area over on the right side of the page. Jake and I also want to introduce you to our wedding party because we have truly fabulous friends and family that will be standing up there with us as we take the plunge. And if there's anything you really want to know about, make a request in the comments!

Finally, since it's that time of year, I leave you with a funny instance of symmetry I discovered while going through my photos. The first is me and Jake graduating high school, and the second is college. I've been carefully scrutinizing them to see if we actually look any older, but I'm skeptical. What do you think?

Répondez s'il vous plaît

Invitations are arriving at homes across the country! The invitations are a custom letterpress job from Hound Dog Press in Louisville. I gave them some very vague instructions over the phone, and the design they came up with is absolutely perfect. Each card was hand pressed on their 19th century equipment. Letterpress was one of the first wedding things I fell in love with. I knew the handmade, vintage quality would be perfect for our "down on the farm" event.

Check your mailbox!

The Best Part of Any Wedding

The cake of course! Jake had two dozen (that's 24!) cupcakes delivered to the office on Friday to celebrate my birthday, and I'm not sure I've ever been more excited. Although I really just wanted to bury my face in them, I shared with coworkers and even put leftovers in the freezer (the gift that keeps on giving!)

Cake is my absolute favorite food (and yes, I consider it a food), and wedding cake is the absolute epitome of cake. Needless to say, our wedding cake is going to be fantastically delicious. I don't want to reveal everything, but we found a fabulous new bakery in Danville that was excited to take on my great expectations - The Twisted Sifter. They have supremely moist cake and we picked out perfectly summery flavors - classic white cake with fresh strawberries, lemon cake with blueberry filling and a deliciously festive champagne cake. Jake's groom's cake will be a very manly bourbon chocolate.

The only downside is that due our outdoor wedding in June, the cake will have to be covered in fondant. I was given the choice between a little fondant to peel back or a cake that had melted onto the floor, and there really was no choice. But the Twisted Sifter fondant is a special marshmallow fondant, and it really is quite good.

Let us eat cake!

Home is Where the Weed Wacker Is

More homeowner developments. We bought lawn machinery yesterday!

We don't have a huge yard and wanted a reel mower (an old-timey one with circulating blades and no motor), but our yard is too steep, rocky, and inconsistently bare and weed-filled, so we went with a traditional push mower and weed wacker.

We got everything from Lowes from a nice man named Jesse. My parents had bought us a reel mower as a housewarming gift, but when we looked at the yard together, decided it wouldn't work out. Anyway, many thanks to Mom and Pop Hill for getting us started.

So after we got the equipment, filled our fuel tanks with unleaded (for the mower) and mix (for the weed wacker), and put the wheels on the mower, I fired her up.

We were initially just checking to make sure everything was in proper working condition, but after it was started I just wanted to mow.



I wasn't at all intending to mow a lawn that day, so I wasn't dressed for the occasion and safety-minded readers don't need to worry about me sporting chacos while operating a lawn mower ever again, but it was just so exciting.

To make things more exciting, while I was mowing, my mechanically-inclined future bride assembled and started our weed wacker.

Soon thereafter, she trimming in the front yard and scared up this little critter, who in turn scared her up to the front porch.



I don't know the first thing about snakes other than I idolized Indiana Jones as a kid and adopted his aversion to them, but I put on my husband face and continued the yard work undeterred. If anyone knows what type of snake this is an has any opinion about whether or not I should kill it the next time I see it, let me know.

In the end, we mowed everything, weed wacked about half of what needed it, and called it a great day. I'm already planning future landscaping projects.

See you in June!

No Place Like Home

Jake and I took the plunge yesterday and officially closed on our new home. I don't want to say too much in case weirdos are reading, but it's in East Nashville and has a great view of downtown from the backyard. The house was built in 1915 but completely renovated by two young guys with some really neat touches. You'll have to come visit!

PS - Happy birthday to Jake tomorrow! Here's a flashback to his awesome soccer cake two years ago.

Okonomiyaki

Ever since coming back from our great spring break excursion, everyone wants to know, “how was Japan?” Obviously, it’s a tough question to answer in time in which most people are interested in listening, but without fail I make sure to include mention of our favorite meal: okonomiyaki.

Often described (ridiculously) as “Japanese pizza” or a savory pancake, it’s far, far more than that. Like many foods, it changes from region to region, but we had ours in Hiroshima, a city known for (among other, less auspicious, things) its okonomiyaki.

This delicious dish is prepared entirely on a big, hot griddle. It starts with something akin to a crepe. After the batter is poured and spread sufficiently thin, a huge handful of shredded cabbage is added and a healthy portion of bean sprouts. At this point, the mass is easily six to eight inches tall. Spices are added and the heap is topped with two slices of pork that looks a lot like bacon, but is about three times a wide. Then, this entire mound of food is flipped to cook the pork and cook down the veggies.

In the meantime, the chef is nearby grilling some already cooked noodles on the griddle. You can choose from Japanese udon or Chinese mein. Les and I are udon people and chose it both times, but mein seemed to be popular among others.

After the pork is cooked and the whole lot has been compressed with a spatula, the pork/cabbage/bean sprout/crepe pile is placed on top of the grilled noodles.

Next, an egg is cracked, yolk broken, and the whole thing spread to cover about the same area as the crepe originally did. After a moment of cooking, the pork/cabbage/bean sprout/crepe/noodle mass is placed atop the egg, the entire stacked is flipped, brushed with a delectable, spicy-sweet red sauce, and served.

If you ever stumble across this creation on a menu in Japan or anywhere else, we highly recommend it.

See you in June!