Our Humble Abode #209

We are now 2 1/2 weeks moved into our new home and as much as it still is a work in progress we are definitely seeing it look like home. Here is a quick tour for you and as we start to get more things hung and settled in I'll have to update again.

We just got the porch furniture from Harrison's mom and dad on Sunday out of their garage and are loving it! We jokingly reference the porch as our humongous front porch because before officially moving in and my seeing the house we were discussing where we would put our grill and other things when Harrison's mom and dad informed us that we have a humongous front porch! It is nice and spacious or a front porch on a house. Not sure about it being humongous though....

By far the greatest thing about our house is how close it is to the church, Hocutt Baptist Church. Yes that is our church right next door where Harrison is interning with the youth. The church blessed us with this house and we are excited to see what the year here holds for us.

One of my favorite features of our house is our cute mailbox where we receive our mail! We don't have your typical mailbox at the driveway but instead our mailman comes to our side door and places it in our cute little box hanging on our house.

 Our friends Dave and Ashley bought a house not too far away not to long ago and conveniently both of our house numbers are 209 so we've now started our #209 trend together. 

 Here is our lovely den. We've been blessed by having a family from the church give us the couch set and we've added pillows and curtains are hanging but no ties and arranging yet.

 We've hung our picture frames and put pictures in all but one.... holding out for a wedding pic to go in that one! We did manage to paint this room its same color for a fresh touch up to wall marks and then painted our master bedroom.

 Master bedroom, haven't quite made it to hanging any pictures in this one just yet but we sure do love how the paint turned out....

 Our bedding we were able to get thanks to the many Bed Bath and Beyond gift cards given and I still have a little sewing and monogramming work to do but it's getting there.

Full bath.... this weekend's fun task will be building our shelf to put in to hold towels and such

 Here is our dining room... waiting on one more curtain panel and then still have to hang frames but we do love our little nook bookshelf

 This corner shelf I bought with my mom at an auction in college and it fits great in our dining room.

Here's our lovely kitchen. We still have a high table to add against the side wall and a project to make a chalkboard menu above it but I sure do enjoy cooking in it.

I also enjoy having the open window and bar to what's going to be our pingpong room for when guests are over playing and I am cooking.

Here's the view through the window... right now it's the wedding gift room and bike storage/laundry room but soon we'll get to it.

And here's our guest bedroom.... we're bringing in a drawer set tonight and still have to hang some things but we're slowly making our way to getting it done.

Thanks for taking the tour of our home! We still have work to do but are loving living here and the blessing that it is!

Brace face!

Tuesday marked the beginning of Harrison's mouth transformation as the braces went on! We drove up to Wake Forest's orthodontist office which is one of the 3 locations for the orthodontist Harrison's mom works for. I got the pleasure of sitting and reading the last book of the Hunger Games while Mrs. Laura worked away with the orthodontist putting Harrison's braces on. He was such a trooper and hasn't complained yet of soreness, tough guy that he is...

Here's our morning of before pics....

The braces will help fix his underbite that was worsened on one side from when he broke his jaw in high school and they used his braces to wire his jaw shut pulling his right side bottom teeth back out.

Here's a picture of Mrs. Laura hard at work putting the braces on....

And here he is, ladies and gentlemen "Brace Face" Can't think of a better way to fit in with the middle schoolers than to relive your middle school braces days!

Our main highlight of the day was lunch that followed at Mellow Mushroom with a few of our friends who are now in seminary at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary or who live in the area. It was a great time of catching up and tons of laughter as always!

Adventures while Cooking For My Wife

 Yesterday afternoon when we began thinking about supper plans, I quickly volunteered to cook for my lovely wife (yes, as you can tell, we are still in the newlywed-honeymoon phase). I do not have a lot of recipes that I know by heart but there are a few dishes that I would cook for myself when I was living as a bachelor the last two years and one of those is stir-fry. 

We had some chicken breasts in the freezer that I had been dying to thaw out and use and some bell peppers and onions just lying there looking bored in the fridge, so I felt compelled to give them some activity.  Earlier in the day I thought about picking up some Worcestershire sauce to add some flavor to the mix but I forgot and it was too late by the time I started cooking.

We had a pack of 8 chicken breasts in the freezer we had picked up last week and when I got them out of the freezer, they were one hard slab of chicken meat. I tried everything I could to separate 2 breasts from the other 6 but they were not having any of that. I ran them under hot water for a few minutes, put them in the microwave, got out a large butcher knife to saw through but all to no avail. So I grabbed a wooden spatula and used it as a pick and hit it with my fist to pry it open. Still nothing. So I went to my toolbox and grabbed my hammer and began whacking the back of the spatula as if I was splitting logs in my back yard. Still nothing. Well, I did manage to chip the wooden spatula. Oops.

Eventually, after more time in the microwave, they let finally let go and I was able to cut them up and add them to my vegetable mix. We received a rice cooker as a wedding gift so we decided to give it a try. The rice didn't turn out too great but it was edible. We also had a side of steamed vegetables that we prepared and just threw on top and mixed it in with the chicken, rice, peppers and onions. I poured some Texas Pete in while it was still simmering for some flavor and spice along with some black pepper.  

It turned out pretty well and we ate it out of bowls with our chopsticks to help with our homesickness and needing to fill the hole in our hearts (and stomachs) for Asian cuisine.   

Prayer Walks on Campus

I (Harrison) am working part time with the youth pastor at my home church at Hocutt Baptist Church in Clayton while we are here in the States for a short time. Seeing that school starts tomorrow for the Johnston County Public School system, Lauren and I had planned to walk down to the high school, which is only about a block-and-a-half from our house and pray over the campus. We call this a prayer-walk where we walk around each building and courtyard and sports field and pray for the teachers, students, administrators and staff members that work at or use each facility. 

So I mentioned it to the head youth pastor to see if he wanted to join us and we also made an announcement in the middle and high school Sunday School class which included the youth and the leaders. We had 6 altogether:  two ladies, a middle school student, the youth pastor, myself and Lauren. We met for a minute in the parking lot to read from II Tim 2 about God's command to pray for our leaders and  then we began.     

"...I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,  for kings and all who are in high positions..."

Also, one of the ladies who came brought some trash bags for us to pick up trash left from the football game this past week around the bleachers. We talked to the head football coach asking his permission as we were walking around and he was very grateful for us.

It is such an honor and a blessing to attend a church where the people care about and love the others in this community. Hocutt truly has a heart to reach the lost and to love on our local community! Lauren and I are both excited to see what the year holds as we are a part of the church ministry.

Seersucker, Bow ties and Cowboy boots

August 4th, 2012 Harrison and I said "I do" at my grandparents home where I spent the majority of my time growing up. My parents were married on the site 32 years ago this past June and the former house burned not long after. They rebuilt in the same location a brick antebellum home and my childhood dream of marrying there came true. 

Planning the wedding was quite interesting as I was in East Asia and depending on my family for all of the house prep and all, which they did an incredible job on and I am so thankful to have had them helping. I did get to fulfill my dream of having my dress made in East Asia too, with the help of my roommates Meg and Kelsey, Meg's mom Mrs. Becky, and some of our Spring Break visitors. I found a store in Beijing and they made it for me and mailed it to my apartment in CQ! 

The day I found it I said it was an outdoor, cowboy boot wearing wedding dress and that it was! Once returning to America, my mom and aunt helped add a few things to it and made it perfect! It was such a fitting wedding dress for me and maybe one day I'll have a daughter who'll want to use some of its lace on her own dress.

Harrison and all of his groomsmen wore blue Seersucker suits which was his request to be a part of the Summer Southern Outdoor wedding style and they were a perfect addition, all of the guys looked great!

Harrison's addition was that he wore a yellow bow tie which went along with the yellow bridesmaid dresses.

The Bridesmaids dresses were Yellow corn dresses from JCrew that honestly my sisters and I just randomly found while looking at other dresses and loved even though we were originally thinking we didn't want strapless dresses. For years I had always dreamed of my wedding day as all young girls do and thought of yellow dresses but when the time came I hadn't even looked at yellow until I saw these.

They looked so good with the suits and against the brick house and my sister Mallory did an INCREDIBLE job (as she always does) on the flowers! I gave her mostly freedom to surprise me and they were beyond anything I had even imagined! I loved them!

Now as you can imagine an outdoor wedding in the beginning of August is always hot and that was something we prepared for the best we could as I designed my wedding program to be on a fan and as my mom came up with the great idea of having drinks served at the wedding ceremony for guests which I think was a hit.

The ceremony was lovely and just what Harrison and I imagined, short too as Harrison timed it to be 24 minutes on his watch....

We also were "old fashioned" as some people might say now a days in that we did not see each other before the wedding which made for fun pictures on either side of doors and for a fun ride on the golf cart through the back of the house and around where people couldn't see me.... It was loads of fun!

After the wedding came photos of us two and with the whole wedding party and family while the guests headed to the Country Club for the reception.

This picture is by far our favorite that we've seen so far!

Then we were headed in and to the dance floor as the band announced the wedding party and then....

Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Smith!

Our first dance was to "History in the Making" by Darius Rucker

I have a HUGE LOVE for cheesecake and so I knew right away in the planning process that I wanted cheesecake as my wedding cake with a topping bar and that we did! 

Mrs. Patt Labbe helped by making a wedding cake for us to cut that was also cheesecake layered with vanilla cake and it was also incredible!

We then danced the night away with our Mo-town band "Heart to Heart" and had a blast!

When it came time for the singing of Shades with all of my Chi Omega sisters, tossing of the bouquet and the garter, Harrison surprised me and washed my feet. It was so sweet!

We then left the reception to dried flower petals, poppers and such... 

Our one chinese addition that I insisted on having was Chinese wish paper lanterns to be lit and released. There was a lighting malfunction as the lighter wasn't cooperating and so they weren't released until we had already passed but still they were a cool addition that I brought home with me.

We rode off in a wagon/golf cart not sure what to call it but it was cute and fun!

I must give credit to our amazing photographer, Brooke Glassford with Colorbox Photographers! As you can tell she did an amazing job and I can't wait to see more from her soon and share with you all.