Posts Tagged “mississippi”

Our house has two bathrooms, one of which has a regular tub/shower (the other has a shower stall). When we moved in, our tub surround looked like this:

It’s just a plain white plastic tub surround, but it had some issues, such as hair dye/paint stains:

… and sagginess/falling-apart-yness:

However! The previous owners also left us this:

They had plenty of leftover floor tiles from the renovations they had done in the kitchen and bathroom. Plenty! So!! Demolition began!

Apparently, when you put in those inexpensive plastic tub surrounds (which are just glued onto the wall, by the way), removing them is quite a procedure. It involves removing the plastic and then removing bits of the wall, layer by layer, so it’s like looking back through time to The House Before It Was Yours, then installing new drywall, THEN putting up the tile. Check it out!

The most recent wall with the swirly glue lines that attached the plastic:

The wall behind that…

In older houses like ours, there was plaster at one point, which was attached to these big planks of wood. The previous owners added the shower to this room, so it has a regular/modern wall with normal studs and drywall (I think there probably wasn’t a wall there before at all). Also, check out the awesome wallpaper that used to be in this bathroom:

Anyway! After all the time-travelly demolition, our new tile was installed, and now we have this!

Quelle difference!!

Remember all my little plant pots?

Well, while we were off gallivanting in Florida, the Garden Fairy visited our house. We returned to this:

Check it out! My tomatoes have stakes! There is mulch! There are now watermelon and marigold plants!!

AND the Garden Fairy also did this:

YAY!!! I am so excited. Now all I have to do is keep everything alive!! Thank you, Garden Fairy (aka Mom)!!

Also, I’ve recently learned that in addition to a couple of large pecan trees, we also have a fig tree!

And the fig tree is full of these:

I’m excited and hopeful!!

Hey, y’all. We went on a trip!

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It was just a couple of weeks, but we had many adventures and took lots of pictures. On our way, we met this rooster made of car bumpers in Brundidge, Alabama!

Now, prepare yourself for a victorious moment…

We now have photos of state signs for all 45 states we have visited! One giant, 45-image post coming soon.

Did you know that when you go to the Florida welcome center, they give you OJ?

Thanks for the refreshing and nutritious treat, Florida!

They take their citrus pretty seriously down there. When we went south, we drove down the coast so we could see this:

Then, when we headed back up north, we took a different route to avoid tolls (which, incidentally, they also take pretty seriously in Florida), and we ended up driving through a bunch of groves:

This kind of reminds me of that one ride at Epcot where you fly over orange groves and you can smell the oranges. Wait, what? Epcot?! I’ll get to that…

Anyway, we also met Swampy, the world’s largest alligator, on the road!

Florida takes its alligators seriously, too. More on that soon!

I have a confession to make.

I bought some plants.

It’s a dream of mine to have a functioning vegetable garden, but I’ve never really been in a good position to try it out. With our new yard, though, I’m hoping I can make it happen. Since I don’t know anything about anything and am completely intimidated by gardening, I’m glad that my mother is arriving soon and hopefully will take the lead on a gardening project!

For now, I picked up a few new friends at the Future Farmers of America sale a couple of weeks ago and put them into pots.

My dreams are in these pots, you guys.

Last weekend, Brian and I attended our first Crosstie Arts Festival. It was so great!

It’s a large festival with lots of artist tents, and the artwork is really excellent. We saw pottery, sculpture, paintings, photography, and many other media all living together in harmony. There was also great fair and regional food, plus this cool train for kids:

We had beautiful weather, too. Good job, Cleveland!

As part of this year’s festivities, the Delta Arts Alliance has an exhibit up at the Ellis Theater on Court Street of Floyd Shaman’s work (Floyd was an incredibly gifted artist who happened to live across the street from my grandmother!). If you are in Cleveland, please go check it out. It is a really fantastic exhibit of amazing pieces from the family’s private collection. Brian and I helped move the work from the Shamans’ house over to the Ellis — it was a very interesting experience to interact with the work in that way (touching, assembling, hoisting, etc.)! The exhibit will be up until May 15. You can stop by in the mornings or call DAA  at 662-843-3344 for an afternoon appointment. Don’t be shy! It’s worth it.

Hi everyone. Remember us? Sorry we haven’t updated in so long. We’ve been very busy with some major life changes.

First of all, we bought this:

That’s pretty crazy in and of itself, but what’s even crazier is its location: Cleveland, Mississippi. After being here a few months, Brian decided to attend art school (which he is loving) at Delta State University here in Cleveland, so here we are! We got the house at the beginning of February, and my mom and I went to Austin to fetch all our stuff from storage. Pre-stuff, our house looked like this:

Ahhh… so fresh, clean, and full of potential….

Now, our house looks like this:

Gah!! At first I had these really lofty ideas that we would be totally unpacked and organized in a couple of weeks, but those dreams were swiftly destroyed by the crushing force of reality and the fact that we have soooooo much stuff. Whoops! I’m no longer on a timeline, but someday before we move away, I’m hoping we can actually have people over comfortably.

Anyway, it’s all very exciting because we have lots of space and a yard with room for a garden and a fence to contain my canine sister Trixie when she visits, and I have a new stove and a laundry room and a lot of other fun homeownery things I’ve not had as an adult. We’ll share more about our new home as we slowly (but surely!) get set up!

Also:

Brian and I got married!

We met (at a Starbucks in Dupont Circle) on February 26, 2005, so we decided to marry on Friday, February 26, 2010. Brian had class that morning, so we chose a very simple, very small mini-wedding at the Alluvian Hotel in Greenwood, Mississippi, which is another little Delta town about an hour from Cleveland. It was a truly lovely, low-key affair, which was just what we wanted. My parents attended in person, and Brian’s mother, sisters, nieces & nephews, and brothers-in-law attended via Skype. Hooray!

Our ceremony (performed by a Justice of the Peace) was just about 3 minutes long, and then we said goodbye to our web conference guests:

… and went to Giardina’s (the Alluvian’s restaurant) for dinner, cake, and champagne.

Then Brian and I spent the weekend at the Alluvian for our mini-honeymoon and enjoyed the amazing Alluvian Spa and many of Greenwood’s other exciting attractions, including downtown Greenwood:

Note the dentist office with the Coca-Cola ad!

We also visited the Cottonlandia Museum:

And that was that. It was a perfect weekend! Thanks, the Mississippi Delta!

More adventures to come!

This was just a quick trip, but we went off the path a bit to do some exploring. We went up to Bishopville, S.C., to check out Pearl Fryar’s topiary garden — both because my mom recommended it after seeing the documentary A Man Named Pearl and because we certainly couldn’t resist anyone who shares a name with our Pearl. This Pearl apparently has no training in the art of topiary, but he just felt moved to start doing it and suddenly he was doing topiaries for the whole neighborhood and people were making movies about him. The garden is just in his yard and is quite extensive. In fact, his work is everywhere on the whole street:

Then on Pearl’s actual property, the topiaries just go on and awesomely on:

That’s just a small corner of the yard. Amazing!!

After that, we decided to head over to Congaree National Park, home of the continent’s largest old-growth floodplain forest, champion trees, swampy goodness, and so many mosquitoes that they have this sign:

Eek. As you can see, we were pretty safe to go enjoy the park, so we walked for a bit out on the elevated boardwalk through the forest.

I really loved Congaree even though we only spent a tiny amount of time there. The air was sooooo fresh (thanks, trees), and there was this lovely balance of silence and lots of thriving forest activity sound (woodpeckers, squirrels, falling leaves, etc.). Plus we got to see a bunch of cypress knees:

The next day was Halloween and we spent most of it at the wedding (which was, after all, the point of this trip). Look at this beautiful location:

We had a great time reconnecting with old friends and making new ones. Plus, the bride and groom left on a boat as we all stood on the pier ringing tiny wedding bells. So lovely!

We headed out the following day and didn’t make very many stops because we had some lame, rainy weather (the worst for a meandering road trip). However, we can always make time for a giant Solo cup:

I mean, come on.

So! We are back in Cleveland, Mississippi, for now. Further bulletins as events warrant!

Hey, y’all. We’re on our way up to South Carolina for what is sure to be a delightful weekend including a lovely wedding! This is going to be a quick trip, so we each packed one tiny little bag and shared a garment bag and that’s it. Quelle différence! Packing, getting into our en-route hotel (a lovely Ramada Limited in Douglasville, Georgia), etc etc etc is a million times easier without a stuffed-to-the-gills Pearl. She’s got room to spare this time!

We’ll update more when we have more fun tales to share. Today was just driving; the most interesting thing we saw was a bowl of Halloween candy at our hotel’s front desk.

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay in updating the blog. Hope none of you thought we were still stuck in Vicksburg! We’ve been home just over a week, and of course I have a backlog of photos to post from the journey.

First of all, we went through Louisiana, and I owe you this:

Also, remember how I mentioned that it was snowing in Vicksburg? Well, here you can see some snow falling on the Super 8 pool (which was open, of course, since the day before had been 80 degrees or something!):

We did eventually get to Jackson and had to continue recovering from being sick. I had a little relapse, etc. I won’t bore you (or gross you out) with the details… but it did, unfortunately, prevent us from attending most of the events we had come to Jackson to enjoy. Alas! We still had a really nice visit with my aunt and uncle, and they took us to a very cool art event hosted by the Mississippi Museum of Art’s New Collector’s Club. It was a talk and studio tour at NunoErin studio in Jackson. They make very cool swamp-inspired, interactive artwork with thermoactive materials — basically, furniture, pillows, and wall panels that change color when warmed by body heat. Here is one of the artists demonstrating how to use a hair dryer to get the color change effect on some wall panels:

It was fascinating and really fun. Thanks, NunoErin!

Eventually we got back on the road to DC… and I have a few more state signs for you, including the elusive Virginia sign!

(By the way, we went through a little corner of Georgia, but they don’t bother to put up a welcome sign there. What gives, Georgia??)

In Virginia, we stopped at the Natural Bridge Exxon and saw this tiger:

It’s a far cry from the Itasca Wampus Cat, eh?

This tiger was made by Mark Cline, a fiberglass artist whose work we always see everywhere. In fact, we have several stories about Professor Cline… but they’re stories for another time.

Anyway, we’re moving to Austin. Wait, what? No, seriously. We are. I got a job. We got an apartment. Movers are coming a week from Tuesday. Soooo things are pretty busy and crazy. But we’ll keep you all posted as much as we can. Keep checking back!!

Well! We’re going to have to tell you more about Austin later. We had a bit of a development. We were supposed to leave Austin on Friday morning and head to Jackson, Mississippi. Instead, on Thursday night, we were both up all night with a horrific stomach virus. I’ll spare you the details, but trust me, it was not pretty. We had to stay an extra night in Austin, and then we tried to make it to Jackson yesterday — and we almost made it, thanks in no small part to a refueling stop at my aunt Catherine’s in Shreveport, Louisiana. But when we got just outside Vicksburg, we became concerned that the place we were headed in Jackson might contain some new and terrifying strain of the virus we had just endured. Plus, IT WAS SNOWING (!!), so we decided to stay put. So, this morning I’m writing this from the Vicksburg Super 8… and we will be going to Jackson (for real this time) later this morning. We’re both feeling significantly better, but still far from fabulous. Being sick is as awful as littering!