Library Love: I Want To Live In The South Books

I recently discovered a new favorite genre of books, and I call them, I want to live in the south books. They have several different things in common: female characters, family secrets, history, a southern setting, and occassionally a bit of magic or some ghosts. Also, they are generally by one of two authors: Karen White and Sarah Addison Allen.

Of the two Sarah Addison Allen books, I am most likely to reccomend The Peach Keeper, though I checked out another one by her today that sounds pretty good. And of the Karen Whites (some of which are not on here, I must add--the library must have not tracked them), my favorite was Falling Home, followed closely by The Lost Hours. Her "house" series is also good, which starts with The House On Tradd Street. Can you tell I'm a bit in love?

The peach keeper. Allen, Sarah Addison.
The beach trees. White, Karen. 
The girl who chased the moon. Allen, Sarah Addison. 
Learning to breathe. White, Karen. 
The memory of water. White, Karen. 
The lost hours. White, Karen.

Library Love: YA Books

A neglected blog during the week means Friday treats with extra posting! I still have several categories left in my I Love The Library week (as well as a book to pick up at the library!) so we'll get started bright and early this morning!

I still love to read Young Adult books, and I've found some good ones at the library recently, so I would recommend all of these titles.

Bumped. McCafferty, Megan. 
The summer I turned pretty. Han, Jenny. 
It's not summer without you Han, Jenny. 
Everything I needed to know about being a girl I learned from Judy Blume. O'Connell, Jennifer

Library Love: Chick Lit

There is something about summer that makes me want to read beach/pool reads, and so most of the books you see below have been checked out this summer. Some of them are more serious than others, while others look at the powerful career route that I'm not quite sure I would have ever survived had I head down that path. I would say the top pick for me is Kindred Spirits by Sarah Strohmeyer, but you all know my love for her books based on some other posts.

Kindred spirits. Strohmeyer, Sarah. 
Little pink slips. Koslow, Sally 
Last night at Chateau Marmont. Weisberger. Lauren
Immediate family. Goudge, Eileen. 
The divorce party. Dave, Laura. 
Wedding season. Fforde, Katie.  
Boy meets girl. Cabot, Meg.   
I think I love you. Pearson, Allison
Girls in trucks. Crouch, Katie. 
Men and dogs. Crouch, Katie.  
Love : a user's guide. Naylor, Clare
The second assistant : Naylor, Clare.
The first assistant : Naylor, Clare

Library Love: DVDs

It seems like it's been forever since I've talked about what I've read/done a book review. Recently, I discovered that the local library keeps a record of everything you've checked out, a reading history. Just another reason to love them! This week, I'll go over what I've "checked out" lately (I believe this is since March), broken out into different categories. Today's category is the DVDs I've gotten from the library, because I think it's awesome how big of a selection is available. Once netflix charges us more for DVDs, we'll start having a "queue" at the library instead, because those are free...

I'd also like to note that the only one I requested was Modern Family. Everything else was an impulse grab. I was really surprised I was able to find all of these without requesting them! And most of these are probably from this summer, rather than since March, so even more impressive.

Coco before Chanel. 
Everybody's fine. 
Fool's gold. 
Remember me.
Salt. 
Black swan. 
The lovely bones. 
The kids are all right. 
Modern family : Season 1.
Toy story. 

Our Wedding: The Book Theme

Even though I'm sure most of you have seen these details in person, I wanted to go over some of the book-like details we incorporated for our wedding. We actually had a lot of ideas we didn't use as to not go toooo book-y, but here's what we did.

For simple outdoor decorations, my mom made these paper-flower balls. We ordered the styrofoam balls of the internet, covered them in seam binding (off etsy) and then punched paper flowers and affixed them to the styrofoam balls with yellow-topped pins. We found the shepherd hooks on craigs list.

Our guest book was an old card catalog drawer, and we used the same punch as the flower balls to cut up more paper and affix the flowers to the corners of 4x4 pieces of cardstock. Guests each wrote a message on the cards.

Our programs were fans to help battle the Nebraska heat, even though it was actually a really nice day. They had a quote from Shakespeare on them.

Here is version one of our centerpieces. The books were borrowed from a friend and also purchased from a thrift store. We covered them in vintage wallpaper, bought off etsy, so we were able to bring in some color and also not have to worry about getting book titles that went with the wedding or looked pretty. The tables were assigned by letter--the frames are from Ikea and then the insides are just black cardstock cut to size with large cardstock letters, found on sale at Archivers, the best store ever. The little flowers also came from Archivers, not on sale.

The books sat on colored scrapbook paper. Our fabulous florist Melissa from Blooms and Bouquets came up with a wonderful concept for the other third of our centerpieces--she covered a vase in book pages (Alice In Wonderland from the Target dollar section) and filled them with carnations. We actually kept two because we loved them so much.

Not as much book-related, but I kind of loved our cake. Our cake topper (the smallest one) had the same quote from Shakespeare as the program on the back of the dress. The other two cake toppers are Nathan's parents and my parents, and we also included wedding photos of all of our grandparents and parents on the table.

Other book-related details were bookmarks as our favors, cut just from scrapbook paper, and then our save the date, which was inspired by a bookplate. A lot of people, including me, questioned the book-theme, but I thought it turned out even better than I imagined!

Our Wedding: Looking Back

Yesterday we talked about the beginning of the wedding, and today, we'll skip to the end. Check out my thoughts on wedding planning as a wedding graduate on A Practical Wedding here.

Tomorrow afternoon and the rest of this week, we'll talk about all the in between and the day itself.

Our Wedding: The Proposal

Last week, I found out that the post I wrote for one of my favorite blogs, A Practical Wedding, should run sometime this week! So, because I've always intended to write about our wedding on the blog, I'll take the opportunity this week to go all wedding on you.

To start out the week, let's go with the proposal. I wrote this for our wedding Web site back when it happened--almost two years ago now.

My sister Stephanie came to visit in March and told Nathan that my ideal proposal was on a beach at sunset, with dolphins in the background and antique champagne glasses that had been sanitized and champagne to celebrate. Nathan tried to recreate this with some Lincoln style. He proposed at sunset on 09-08-09 in front of a koi pond (that had a golden fish--much better than a dolphin, because we had looked for it on our first date). He had an iPod playing the first song we danced to playing and had an amazing speech prepared. As he went to bring out the picnic basket (strategically placed by Kaitlyn) before he got on one knee, we noticed that a small child named Elisha had been digging through it. The dad noticed, grabbed him, and made a quick exit. Nathan got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, and I said yes! We had antique champagne glasses (thoroughly washed) and Korbel champagne.