Ready for Her Close-Up

My heart melted today when I saw these glamour shots of Allie.

Just too stinkin' cute!

Instant Upgrade

Our shower project has been long and involved. I know we'll be happy we did it once it's finally finished, but we've started to drag working on the last few to-do items.

To take a break, we turned our attention to a quick kitchen upgrade last night. Earlier in the week, Amazon offered a new faucet as its Deal of the Day. The price was great and the faucet looked just like what we had been considering installing for a while, so we went for it.

Here's what the old faucet looked like:

And here's the new faucet:

It took J about 40 minutes to get the old faucet out and the new faucet in - much appreciated instant gratification!

At Last, Tile

It's been a long road getting the shower ready to start tiling. We've done demo, put in new plumbing, installed cement board, leveled the floor, added niches, installed a waterproofing membrane, and done a bunch of other little fixes within these steps.

At long last, we've gotten to the point of actually adding tile!

Before we started tiling, we sorted the tile. Any tiles that were broken to the point where we couldn't even use them for cuts were rejected, along with any others that we didn't like for some reason. If tiles had a chip or crack near the edge, we marked the flaw with painters tape to remind us which part of the tile to cut away when we made our measurements.

Since we're using ceramic tile that has a stone look, there are patterns used throughout the tile. We sorted all of the tile by pattern and put each in a separate pile. This helps us make sure that we don't have repeating patterns next each other as we install them.

The hardest part of getting tile on a wall is starting the first row at the bottom. This row absolutely has to be level because all of the other rows will build on it. Since the shower pan slopes towards the drain, it's not a level surface to build from. To solve this problem, J built a wooden base to put on the shower pan that's level across the top.

Once this wooden shelf was added, it made it easy to get the first row of tile perfectly level.

After the first row was up and we got measurements for the cut pieces, we got into a rhythm. I am the official chooser of which tile pattern goes where as well as the measurer of cut pieces. J is the tile saw operator (because it freaks me out) and mortar man. And Allie is the licker of interesting home improvement supplies.

And just like that, the tile is going up!

Memory Lane

After I wrote our anniversary post, it got me thinking about old photos of us. I had a feeling that somewhere in my stash of old photos were some around the time we started dating.

Sure enough! Here's our photo from the Winter Ball which was about two months after we started dating.

The guys who went with our group looked particularly handsome all dressed up.

The thing I remember most about Winter Ball was dancing to "Hey Ya" by OutKast which had recently been released and was extremely popular.

I also remember the song and video being played A LOT at the University of Florida's Reitz Union in the food court.

Six Years

Yesterday was our sixth wedding anniversary. We're also approaching our twelfth year together as a couple... whoa. It doesn't seem very long ago that J lived down the hall from me in our college dorm and we would walk to/from physics class together.

This is one of the oldest photos I have of us, circa spring 2004, taken by our friend who was participating in Dance Marathon.

Here we are leaving our wedding six years ago. I love that we're able to see so many of our family and friends in this photo, including J's young cousins who have grown so much since then!

And here we are just about a month ago.

For our anniversary, J got me a beautiful bouquet of roses and a new bracelet.

We enjoyed the day in Virginia Wine Country. Winery tours hold a special place in our heart since we honeymooned in Napa and Sonoma.

A usual favorite winery of ours was offering brick oven made-to-order pizza. We split a margherita pizza - it was so delicious!

Another winery we'd read about online also proved to be a great place. They offer a wine tasting with food pairings and have the lightest, most refreshing sangria I've ever had.

Thanks to these wineries being dog-friendly, Allie got to come along for the fun! She got a lot of attention from the winery staff and other visitors.

Allie even got to see a pony for the very first time! She liked it pretty well until it snorted and then it was not okay to be around.

It's been a wonderful six years. I look forward to many more years and memories to come!