Celebrating Two Years

It has been a whirlwind Wedding Week around here and we have been so thankful to all of you who have taken the time to hang out and enjoy it with us. Seriously, yesterday was so much fun- chatting with you about the video, laughing about some of the questions, and learning more about you guys too! It was so cool to hear how a lot of us have similarities in our personal lives and relationships. Thanks again for sending in those questions for The Shoe Game and then tuning to watch how the video came together. We had a blast making it! (If you missed it yesterday, you can watch here!)

It’s funny how sometimes excitement and energy from the blog carries over into our personal lives. This is probably because most of what I blog about is directly related to what is happening in our world at any given moment. This week has been a rush of excitement on the blog, but also a rush of energy at home. It’s been a happy week. We’ve been on Cloud 9, just enjoying our own little party. But also, our house is in disarray. There are A LOT of projects happening, which means that our rooms are displaced. One thing about living in a small home (which we love) is that there are no rooms to just shove “stuff” that gets displaced when a project is happening in another room. With no garage or basement or really and spare (in that we don’t need or use it daily) rooms, there is nowhere to hide things when they have been forced out of their normal space for projects. That being said, our house is a mess and in some ways it feels like we’re living out of suitcases until we can get things back in order.

So yes, there is energy happening at home. Some really good, some kind of stressful, but it definitely feels like we’ve been on the move this week. In a weirdly good way. This probably doesn’t make any sense. 🙂

In all of the shuffle, though, we really hadn’t officially celebrated our anniversary and because we were busy on the actual day, we decided to celebrate last night. I’ve told you before that we alternate who plans the surprise each year- an idea we got from our cousins- and since last year was Mitch’s year, it was my turn to decide and plan what we were going to do.

Since we had taken some vacation earlier in the month (you can read all about that here) and had treated ourselves to fun activities and meals out, the thought was that for our Anniversary, we’d do something low-key and try not to spend a lot of money doing it. One of the things we had planned on doing during our time off and never got the chance because it was SO.DARN.HOT. was going camping! Can you see where this is going? Because we never got to do it for real, I decided to surprise Mitch with some camping with a twist… a good ‘ole fashioned BLANKET FORT.

After he went to work yesterday morning, I gathered every sheet, pillow, and blanket I could find and began constructing our “campsite” (in the Spare Room) for the evening.

Something stirred in my heart that made me wild with childhood excitement and I could hardly stand to sacrifice even one bit of fort making, so I added as many bells and whistles as I could think of. It was like I was living out a dream that I couldn’t get enough of. I couldn’t stop and couldn’t slow down. My imagination soared in ways that it hasn’t for a very long time. I am going on 26 years old and I set out with reckless abandon to construct the very best fort I possibly could. It was liberating to dream and create like that again.

I really wanted it to be special, so you better believe I decked that thing out in twinkly Christmas lights, pillows galore, and layer upon layer of billowy sheets. For those of you engineer-minded folks who are questioning my process… I tied one corner of each sheet to the ceiling fan and then used thumbtacks to secure them to the ceiling. Because we have popcorn ceilings, a few pinprick holes make no difference at all. For the first time since we moved here, I FULLY EMBRACED having popcorn ceilings.

I even lugged the TV and DVD player upstairs so that we could watch a movie “under the stars”. Even cooler than the movie, though, was the virtual campfire (complete with pops and crackles) that I was able to stream from YouTube. We actually spent most of our time with the campfire in the background because it was just so peaceful.

That evening, before Mitch got home, I hurried to make some lemonade, prep some things for dessert, and finish up a few last minute touches upstairs. When Mitch came home, we went for our usual walk around the neighborhood and then made dinner. Dinner was really special because we used a meal from our Blue Apron kit this week! I’ll have to share more about our experience with Blue Apron later, but here’s the bottom line(s): BA is a service that sends you ALL the supplies to make three delicious meals at home all by yourself. And let me tell you… the meals are TO DIE FOR. We’ve had two so far and both have been outstanding. It’s like going out to eat in your own home, so it was a perfect meal to celebrate our Anniversary.

Up until this point, I hadn’t let Mitch see the “campsite” yet. I brought all of the food upstairs and set out the drinks and lit the candles (oh, and the campfire too). 🙂 Then he had to close his eyes- in true “surprise” style- and wait until I said “Open”.

His reaction was way better than I could have hoped. I think he knew that I was up to something, but figured it would just be some sort of “indoor picnic”. He said it was way cooler than he had anticipated.

It feels like I am ten years old, retelling this, but we had so much fun. It was almost magical… like those moments you remember as a child where it’s okay to imagine and be excited and amazed. We just pretended we were having dinner by the campfire with the stars overhead and truthfully, it didn’t take a lot of pretending. We felt youthful, childlike again. That was rejuvenating.

Dessert was yummy… pudding parfaits with smashed up teddy grahams, vanilla and chocolate pudding, whipped cream, and a cherry on top!

We spent the majority of the night just talking in our “tent”. There was nowhere to go, nothing to accomplish, no projects to attend to… just spending time. We watched through some of our home movies from the first two years- past house tours I’ve done, videos from vacation, etc. We laughed watching The Shoe Game again. It was so fun to watch Mitch have so much fun and get a little bit sentimental as we watched through… the best part was when he said, “This is so cool. I’ll never get frustrated with you taking pictures and videos again.” There’s something about taking time to enjoy and relive memories that is special. Especially when you’re doing it in a blanket fort. 🙂 #we’readults

We ended up just sleeping in our tent that night and with the window open and crisp fall air coming through, it felt just like camping. Had we not wanted to waste electricity by keeping the TV on all night, we would have kept that campfire roaring too. 🙂

Happy 2nd, Mitch… there’s no one I’d rather camp out with. 🙂