A Year has Passed

As a means of celebrating our first wedding anniversary, I thought it appropriate to remember the vows we exchanged a year ago today...

Andy to Katie:

Katie,
You are everything I could ask for
In a friend, a woman, and a wife.
You are my best friend and the love of my life.

I promise to be there to celebrate your successes
To laugh with you in times of joy
And comfort you in times of sorrow.

I will encourage and support you,
Honor and love you.
I will respect our differences
And do my part to work through
All our challenges.

Katie, as I stand here before you
In front of our friends and family
Know this:
You have my heart,
You have my soul,
I will be yours and stand by you through eternity.
You are my love.

I love you.

Katie to Andy:

Andy, I knew from the moment we met that you were important to me. It wasn't long after we met that I realized you were my best friend. I spoke and you listened; I laughed, and you laughed with me; I cried and you supported me. From the earliest days of our friendship, I was never afraid to share my deepest thoughts and feelings with you, because I knew that would be there for me, no matter what. And that trust has never faltered.

As our relationship developed, I discovered that you are not only my best friend, but the love of my life. And I stand here before you today, Andy, because I am the happiest -- the luckiest -- woman in the whole world, because I cannot wait to spend the rest of my life with you.

I promise to sand beside you in moments of joy and moments of pain, to be your pillar of support as you have always been for me.

I promise to take care of you in sickness and in health, to never leave your side in times of weakness.

I promise to be the best mother I can be to our children. I want to nurture in them all the qualities that I admire and adore in you.

I promise to be faithful to you and honest with you. There is nothing in this world worth risking the trust that we have in each other.

I promise to be your best friend. Always. I promise to love, honor and respect you even when we disagree, because that is what best friends do.

I promise to be your partner in all thing, large and small. Apart we can succeed, but together we cannot fail. Together anything and everything is possible.

I love you with all of my heart, Andrew Magoun. Today and every day for the rest of our lives.


For those of you who wish to continue reminiscing, click here for our wedding slideshow.

Thank you

As you may remember, I ran the Falmouth Road Race this August to raise money for the Matthew W. Houlihan Foundation.  Well, the results are in and Team Houli raised over $16,000!  Thank you so much for all of your support.

In with the Old, Out with the New

Funny thing about owning a little old crooked house... whenever you see some other old crooked doodad, you think to yourself, "Hmm... now wouldn't that look cute in my old, crooked house." What you fail to realize at the time is that, while abounding with charm and character, your old, crooked house is woefully inefficient, and as this fallacy seems inherent in the old and crooked, you inevitably end up with a flawed, albeit charming, home furnishing/appliance/etc. Andy and I have fallen victim to this lunacy -- er, interior decorating dilemna. Here are a few of our recent old crooked purchases:

This dresser dates to the turn of the century, during the Arts and Crafts movement. It's gorgeous in person, with just enough dents and dings to make it perfect for our humble old house. It's also missing what must be the most underrated invention of the 20th century: roller drawers. Bummer. If centuries of young couples before us survived, I suppose we can, too.


We ended up buying this gem at the farmers' market... because after all, that's what one purchases at a farmers' market, 100 year-old luggage. (It's a long story...) We needed a good spot to store our blankets, quilts and afghans; this does the trick perfectly. Unlike our roller-drawer-less dresser, this chest boasts one of the biggest things to hit luggage since the burlap sack: wheels on the bottom.


And finally, these two little numbers. While we were in Michigan, I noticed some old maps in a local shop window and thought, "Hey! That's what we could do for our blank wall space on either side of the south window in our bedroom. Find old maps of Maine and Michigan, frame them and hang them..." I got a little into the idea, and I manged to find maps of Maine and Michigan from the same atlas publisher, with the same edition date, 1856. You'll remember from our earlier post re: the house's history that this house was built between 1852-1854. Pretty close. Neat fact about TC circa 1856? It was then called Grand Traverse City (after Grand Traverse Bay, a name that survives today). Michiganders may already know this fact, but it was all new and exciting to me.

**These pictures brought to you courtesy of our newly installed recessed lighting in the master bedroom. One recent purchased that is neither old, crooked nor inefficient.

Classy

For years, the way your drink wine has said a lot about you and your level of class (or lack thereof).   Has the wine been properly decanted?  Did you serve it at the correct temperature?  Do you use the correct glass?  Where was the bottle stored?  What?  You didn't get the wine from a bottle?  Well, at least you didn't have boxed wine.

We all know that boxed wine is synonymous with cheap wine.  Well, not anymore.  As this NYTimes article notes, boxed wine is moving from the world of dixie cups in college dorms to the tables of wine lovers.  In addition to being cheaper to ship (cardboard weighs a lot less than glass), boxed wine is also environmentally friendly.

After taking all of this into consideration, we decided to try some boxed wine.  We were (and continue to be) pleasantly surprised.  So next time you're looking for a little vino, check out the boxed section.