The title of this post was going to be “cheeseburgers from heaven” when I had thought about writing it a few weeks ago. But it’s Mother’s Day today and the fact that I’ve been without mine for almost two years now hurts just a little more this weekend.

I had been thinking about my mom a lot one morning and on the way to drop off pup at the groomers, I turned on the radio instead of the usual CD. The next song played was “Cheeseburger in Paradise” by Jimmy Buffet, which I haven’t heard in years. I can’t say I like Jimmy Buffet all that much but I somehow know every single word from many of his popular songs thanks to my parents, specifically my mom. She always wanted to have a cheeseburger in a town called Paradise (there is one in Florida near I-75!) but we never made the detour on our many roadtrips together.

I found myself belting out the chorus with the windows open and just then, hearing that song at that moment, felt like a penny from heaven.

(Ryan, my dad, Lauren, me, and my mom in Oklahoma, probably 1984)

On a brighter note, I happen to be lucky enough to have three other women to celebrate this mother’s day—my gram, Tess, Eric’s mom, Susan, and my step-mom, Lynn. Having all of them in my life has made the loss more bearable.

Thank you all and Happy Mother’s Day.

Riesling is happy to be home!

We started this blog about a million 8 years ago in preparation for our wedding. We wanted a space to share the planning and excitement of the upcoming event with our friends and family who lived nowhere near us. Since then, it has grown into a healthy snapshot of our life together through multiple moves, home improvements, a mini schnauzer rescue, and extensive travel photos.

And perhaps unexpectedly, I’ve made several online friends whose blogs I’ve been reading for years; None of whom I’ve ever met in person.

One of the more surreal (and flattering) experiences I’ve had was this post. Her incoming link was how I found her blog a few years back and I’ve been hooked ever since.

So, upon planning our recent trip to San Francisco, I contacted Leah of agirlandaboy.com to see if she (and Simon!) were free any of the nights we would be in town. They met us for dinner in Oakland on Monday night and although we were all exhausted from a busy weekend—birthday partying and visiting with friends for them and us hiking and driving around—we had a wonderful time at dinner. We felt instantly comfortable with them (the glass of wine may have helped on my end, hee!) and there was never a pause in the conversation.

I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to travel as much as I do, and when it gives us the chance to finally meet people that we’ve technically known for several years, well, that’s a pretty sweet chocolaty icing on the cake.

Thanks again guys for the lively company and a very tasty restaurant suggestion! :)

We are on our way to San Francisco, and pup thinks she’s going - really, she gets to stay at Camp Bow Wow.

The day after we got back from Christmas, we bought this coffee table during a huge sale at Nowell’s Furniture. That would be January 3, 2008; we were hoping to have it for the Superbowl.

We just picked it up yesterday.

The furniture store called to say it was going to be an extra few weeks, but it took four months. Granted, the delay wasn’t entirely their fault, but they could have made more of an effort to ease the frustration. Like, say, free delivery? Instead, we got excuses, shrugging and transfer of blame. Because of this, I’ll definitely think twice before buying any big ticket items from them in the future.

With that out of the way, look at our new coffee table! Hooray!

We have been looking forever for a small glass coffee table (under 24 inches in diameter) that would fit with our sectional couch. The nice part about this one is that it swivels out to reveal three levels of glass that more than doubles the amount of table space when we need it.

And Eric says it makes the living room look bigger. :)

It’s spring again and that means another year of trying to score an heirloom sungold tomato plant from Craig and Susan LeHoullier. We got started too late last Saturday and by the time we arrived at 11am, they were sold out. Since I didn’t feel like driving out to their house in North Raleigh during the week, I was determined to arrive early enough this morning.

Now, I get up every morning around 7am to take the dog out and give her breakfast. Then she crawls back into bed with me and snoozes for a few hours while I work on my laptop. This morning, however, we left right after breakfast.

This is how she looked on the way to Raleigh…

I think pup was missing her morning nap.

We pulled in at 8am sharp and I am happy to report that I am now the proud owner of a tiny sungold tomato plant. It joins the Tiger Tom heirloom variety that we purchased last week.

They may be little now, but look what happened last year. :)

(Did I really say that I would only buy one tomato plant this year? Whoops!)

In other garden-related news, we will not have to buy any herbs this year, as illustrated by this photo that Eric took this morning.

This is what the deck box looked like just a year ago.

At first I wasn’t sure if I should post a business-related q&a on our personal blog, but then again, I spend most of my day working so you may as well know what the heck that actually means for me. Right?

Questions courtesy of the lovely marketing-mistress, Naomi, over at IttyBiz, one of my favorite small-business blogs. (Be careful, it can be a little raunchy over there. But in a good way.)

What’s your game? What do you do?

Website design. Graphic design. Blog design. I design stuff.

My favorite projects involve building websites from the ground up. I love organizing content and turning it into something functionally beautiful.

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?

I spent many years attempting to be creative in a university setting, taking on side projects and volunteering for more work when it was “interesting.” Finally, I realized that my freelance work was much more satisfying than my day job, so I quit. I’ve been running my own company for several months now and I love it. Love it.

I still can’t believe I am making the same, if not more, money working from home, doing something I adore. I am very, very lucky. Oh, and talented. Obviously.

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?

My customers are individuals and organizations with a desire to have a space of their own online but are lacking a means or direction to do so. I am often approached with something like, “Hey, I was thinking about getting my (insert idea here) up online but I have no web experience and I’m not sure what I need, can you help?” Yes! Yes I can.

I also do quite a bit of design work with a marketing consultant for non-profits. (Check Elizabeth out, I just redesigned her website!) We’ve recently worked on various print materials including business cards, brochures, mailings and magazine ads as well as websites with data-base driven features like blogs and galleries. She’s constantly pushing me to learn more things by volunteering me for stuff I’ve never done before.

What’s your marketing USP? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?

I’m nice and friendly!

While that might not make me unique, per say, I would argue that it goes a long way in a working relationship. I like to talk, sure, but I also enjoy listening to what you have to say about yourself and your business. Getting a good idea about you helps greatly when it comes time for me to design something to represent you. It’s that simple. Let me know what you have in mind and I will get back to you with a summary of the plan, a timeline, and a price breakdown.

What’s next for you? What’s the big plan?

I’d like to take on some smaller independent clients (for fun!) and continue picking up larger non-profit organization clients (for profit!). Within two years, I’d like to be in a position to support my family. That sound you hear? It’s Eric cheering. :)

We went to a schnauzer meetup this afternoon in Cary (NC) - Riesling burned some energy and we enjoyed the sunshine!

Friday was beautiful here in NC- 80 degrees and sunny- so we headed over to the Duke Botanical Gardens in the afternoon. They have a number of raised beds filled with tulips in the spring and this year we seemed to visit right around their peak.

and irises too

The garden allows dogs so Riesling got to strut her new haircut (and pink bandanna) around the grounds.

As usual, she got a lot of smiles and comments from folks. She’s not used to heat yet so she was panting heavily; of course, this didn’t slow her down too much, though she did stretch out on the cool futon when she got home.

More pics can be seen on our flickr pages.

We canceled our trip up to West Virginia this weekend because of a cold front bringing both chilly weather and rain. Not exactly great hiking weather.

So!

We decided to take a little time this morning to clear out some glassware that we haven’t been using to make room in our kitchen cabinet for our growing pint glass collection.

That is a lot of glassware for just two people!

We have 41 pint glasses (only a few are duplicates) but are always adding more as we visit breweries all over the country. Embarrassingly, we don’t have more than four of any type of wine glasses. And we love wine. Sorry, future guests! :)

Here are the shelves all organized and neat. Ahhh.

This effort led me to reorganize both pantries, another cabinet and one lazy susan. (Not you, mom!) Pictures of these are even less interesting than the ones above and have been omitted. :)