{a tale of five pictures}

Zack and I got married one year and 4 months ago. I have cherished my wedding bouquet ever since because it was the most beautiful bouquet I ever laid eyes on. I remember my mom, on the day of our wedding, saying, Honey, would you like to see your bouquet?

Gosh, it was gorgeous. White flowers, tons of white flowers, with a dash of orange. We had a very colorful wedding: orange, pink and green. Zack loves orange. I was so proud to carry an orange-speckled bouquet as I walked down the aisle with my dad.

As for me, I love the color green. It is my favorite! To even things out we added the most feminine color: pink. Not a blush pink, not fuchsia, but a solid, fun shade of pink.

To this day I still love our wedding colors. Through all our moves {this is our third city as a married unit}, I have babied my wedding bouquet. It's always sat on our dresser, the the vase of salt that represented our unity "candle" during the ceremony.

***

Zack and I are very different. He's tall, I'm short. He is patient, I can be persistent. He is loud, bursting with song in the morning, I am quiet. {I know, what a shock!}

But despite all our differences, we are so thankful for them. There have been countless times when we've told each other "thank you for being exactly who you are."

We celebrate our differences daily, because it's those differences that make us a strong and happy team.

***

Zack and I dated for four years by the time we got married. Four years of memories; three of them college memories.

My maid-of-honor made this frame for us. It's filled with quotes, bible verses and stories from our dating years. It is a highly-cherished gift. I didn't know it would be possible to contain four years of memories, but I'm pretty sure she did just that :)

***

The Nester recently talked about grouping items around the home to easily decorate an area.

Plus, you can easily re-arrange that area later. {And if you know anything about it it's that I love to rearrange. Right Mama Gus?}

Hello, I know how to group!!!

Look at this: the items on the leather ottoman, the pillows on the couch {there's also a turquoise pillow back there!}, the college textbooks under the lamp. {Uhh... didn't realize my lamp lifter-upper would be a $360 item?! Yikes.}

The point is I know how to group! Ten points for Gussy, the sewing {and grouping} girl :)


***


Hello, three windows.

Hello three windows in our apartment that are the only three windows in our Minneapolis apartment.

Sigh.

Hello patience that has forced me to be creatively-patient with photographing.

Hello :)


***

RUFFLES.soft.COLORFUL.fluffy.RUFFLES.

{coming soon}

{our first anniversary: 06.07.09}

Our first wedding anniversary trip {married 06.07.08} started out with an adventurous drive to the family cottage. We wanted to save money but still do something we've never done before, which is stay at the cottage without parents -- or anyone else, for that matter. After hearing Z lost his job just an hour before we left we were more than ready to get out of town for a few days.

More than ready...

We spent four days in a town North of Grand Rapids. We had campfires, ate hot dogs over the fire, and enjoyed Root Beer Floats. We had fancy dinners were we devoured catfish, lobster and steak. We drank beer {responsibly}, enjoyed White Russians, slept in, played Monopoly, watched four movies, and went to the drive-in for ice-cream. We went to Pizza Hut, took lots of pictures, and swung on the deck glider. It was amazing :)

There was horrible, horrible rain and thunder/lightning the night of our wedding. Well, it was horrible for our guests. We loved it! The wedding reception was actually cut short because the basement of the country club was flooding. Yikes! Obviously God was super excited we were married, so he made a little extra noise up in Heaven ;D Obviously.

I thought it was pretty sweet. I have never seen lightening like that before. So, to keep the tradition going, the night of our first anniversary came with the same hard, loud rain and thunder. It was pretty humorous. I think it would be amazing if that happened every year. Nothing like going out with a bang!



I have no clue what I'm doing here.


This was Zack's favorite coffee mug. Please note the ridiculously large cereal bowl. His poor spoon can't even keep up with the bowl. Ugh.


Do you see my red barrette? It's really a headband, but Zack insists on calling them barrettes. Whatev.



Here's Zack, driving us into town. We rented lots of movies, went out to dinner, and got ice-cream. Since the weather was overcast or rainy for most of our trip we had a lot of time for movies. We watched You, Me & Dupree {always a fav!}, Last Chance Harvey, Finding Nemo, and Doubt. We loved them all! Doubt was especially good.

Here's Zack, sharing with me his future excitement over renting Last Chance Harvey. He's so excited he let out a shriek!

Here is me! Showing off a little sass, of course. But... what this picture doesn't show is Zack telling me, OK, now show some sass. He said that to me, I promise! :)

We love going to the cottage, especially because this is where we got engaged, just over 3 years ago during my birthday weekend! Lots of wonderful memories there :)

Zack + Gussy = L-O-V-E


Reenacting our engagement <3
07.03.06


YEAAHHHHHH -- 1 year of marriage :)



The beautiful view we enjoyed for 4 days.



I look so pitiful here! Clearly you can see I'm missing my sewing machine.
Poor Gussy...



I shouldn't admit to this, but I'm going to. We played Monopoly and I lost, and I was a poor sport about it :( Whoops. BUT AT LEAST I WAS THE IRON, RIGHT? ha ha. We both love Monopoly.


This particular game rocks because it is from, like, the 60's. It's super old and therefore THE BEST!





It was soooooo, sooo, so nice to be away for the weekend.


LOL! Zack insisted on carrying the camera on his belt. Of course I let him.




Driving in to down to devour some Pizza Hut pizza! YEAH!


We don't get to see views like this living in Detroit. Ya know, because it's the city.


Are you yawning? Letting out a whoop? Hmm...



Red barrette + purple sunglasses. Yo.



Zack made some rockin' fires during our stay at the cottage. I kept telling him to put more wood on. He would look at me like, WHY? And I just said, Because no one is here to tell us no!!!!!!! Oh, Gussy... :)




ROOT BEER FLOATS!!!!!!!!!







I'm sure I'll get in trouble for this pic:
XOXO honey ;D