i love crowds.

Ladies and Gentlemen (if any gentlemen even read this blog),

Fall is coming.  

We all know that.

But let's just take a moment and revel in that fact....

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Breathe in deep,

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take it in,
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now release.

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Ah!

That was good, wasn't it?

Now, I need to get something off of my chest.

I love people.

I love people watching.

I love crowds.

I love traffic.

I love big cities.

I love festivals.

I love fall.

I REALLY love fall festivals.

In fact, I want to go to a festival or gathering of some sort every weekend until my little crowd loving heart (or pregnant feet) cannot take it anymore.

This weekend my mother, hubs, and I went to the Atlanta Arts Festival at Piedmont Park.

(once you are pregnant it it a must that you hold your belly in every photo)

We enjoyed fine art, visiting with my uncle (who was one of the featured artists at the festival), fajitas from Figs & Honey, gelato from Honeysuckle, and music by The Whiskey Gentry Band.

Despite what my face is saying here, we were really happy to purchase two INCREDIBLE prints by Kendra Baird.

Her work really spoke to us.

We bought one print for EJ's room and one for ours.

We are finally making some headway on EJ's nursery and this lovely mustard is no doubt included in her color scheme which I was so worried about picking.

Next stop...this one 

http://www.theatlantachilicookoff.com/

$10 for all you can eat chili, cornbread, and Brunswick stew! 

Yes to that...but with all of that chili I think we'll be riding home with the windows down.

Who doesn't love a little before and after?

Once upon a time, by the light of a harvest moon...

...the husband and I 

went to Home Depot to acquire some antique white paint.

We went home to parent's home to do a project on a piece of furniture that my sister got for us.  Her mother and law likes to collect things and store them in her garage.  When my sister spotted this lovely find in the garage she new I would love it and fix it up real nice like.

Every time I go antiquing I always envy all of the shabby chic furniture.  I thought to myself, 

"How hard can it really be?"

So, I googled the directions on how to shabby chic a piece of furniture and got to work.

Take a break and eat a Banana Split.

Meanwhile, my sister was working on a beauty of her own.  Her friend Ashlyn made the stencil to go around the table.  It looked beautiful.

Ok, back to our project.

Only sand the parts where the piece of furniture could have been bumped or hit or rubbed up against.  This is what makes it look more authentically vintage.  I used a medium grade sand paper to rough up the edges.

The deets:

I'm in love. 

Then we brought it home and I fell more in love.

We found this glass knob at Hobby Lobby.  Oh, my beloved mustard color.

So, now we have a brand new gorgeous piece of furniture for the cost of paint and a door knob. Thats the bomb.

What's not the bomb: getting to my video recording session Sunday afternoon and realizing that I still had paint on my legs.  Good thing they only filmed from the waist up.

8 Glorious Things

Bussiness first:  ONE MORE DAY TO (ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY!)  You know you want some cute new earrings!  We will announce it sometime in the evening after I am done babysitting : )

I need to share a few reasons why we have one of the happiest marriages EVER! (But don't a lot of us?  And isn't it the best feeling in the world to feel like you are the only couple in the world that happy?)

1. John will jump out of the shower and warm a towel up for me in the dryer. As soon as I turn the water off he runs to get it out of the dryer and then throws it on to me.  It feels like a big warm hug. (Sometimes I will do the same for him.)
2. We laugh together everyday. Hard.
3. He plays me love songs on the guitar while I fall asleep.
4. He loves absolutely everything I cook, and makes great faces to convince me of it.
5. We like to go antiquing together.  We find cool things like this...

(someday I want a drawer full of mismatched silverware.  who said uniformity was cool??  We found these on the way back home from our trip to The Ranch.  It was Sunday so we didn't buy them but they were any 10 pieces for $6! :( )

(oh mustard chairs, get in my house)

(we want one of these over our bed)

continuing on now...

6. We pray together every single night.  He says one then I say one.  It is wonderful to hear what the other one needs and is grateful for. (Thanks for the suggestion Pres. J.)

7. We have gchat conversations like this:

me:  hola
i cant seem to ever get to the laundry

i really just want to curl up and watch a movie with you tonight, thats all.

 jmurph34:  ME TOO!!!!

OH PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE!!

i need that!!

 me:  me too!!!  imagine that soft blanket...me on your chest

sounds like heaven

 jmurph34:  can we drink hot chocolate?!

 me:  hmmm...yes!!!!  lucky you i bought chocolate chips today!

 jmurph34:  yea!!


So, last night I found Alton Brown's Hot Chocolate recipe and made this:

Now we have homemade hot cocoa to keep throughout the falliday season. (thanks for the word e.day!)

I have to be honest...not Alton's best work.  I'm not going to pretend that was the best thing I have ever tasted. That hot chocolate left a funny aftertaste in our mouths.  It was super smooth but not sweet enough.  We like sweet and we're not ashamed.

So, this cocoa needs some tweaking. At least it looks cute with our falliday decor.

And lastly...

8. We are both happier than we have ever been and it just keeps getting better.  So happy in fact that NOTHING gets us down.  Ever. Although many may try, we don't even care.  We never knew life could be so sweet and it's the honest truth.

First Official Tunes and Spoons GIVEAWAY!

Today I went and bought something for you, yes YOU!  This is our thank you to you for reading our little stories and sharing our lives with us.

We are having our first official GIVEAWAY!  We love hearing from you guys and for that we have something special for one of our readers!  We will randomly select one winner from a hat.

Here is what was so carefully picked out at the City Antique store next to our house this morning.

A beautiful pair of vintage mustard yellow earrings.  we will also include a beautiful pack of recipe cards just like this...

I cried a little that I will be giving these away because of my obsession with this color and vintage earrings.  However, it's a special find and I want YOU to have them!  If you don't have your ears pierced, no worries, these are clip ons, its just how they wore them in the good Ole days.

(they kind of look like breakfast eggs here huh?)

(beautiful details on the sides)

In order to be eligible, here is what you need to do:

1.  Become a follower of our blog.  Write us a comment letting us know that you are a follower and if you already are then let us know that too.

2. Leave us a comment about your TOP 3 FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT FALL. Mmmm..fall.

3.  Send us a recipe at tunesandspoons@gmail.com and write us a comment letting us know you left us a recipe. (we might even feature your recipe!!)

4.  Grab our button and paste it in to your HTML on to your blog.  Leave us a comment letting us know you did that too!

5.  I suppose you could blog/or facebook about it oo but it's not required.

So potentially you can leave us 5 different comments.  Just do the ones that apply to you, if you don't have a blog and cant get our button, we totally get that.  We are so excited to see who all is out there.  We love our readers and would love to get to know you all more!  So, tell us you are reading, we think its cool to blog stalk.

We will announce the winner on Wednesday October 6th!

Good luck Spooners!

Operation France and Breakfast for Dinner

Last night we had FHE, like most Monday nights.  It was great.  We finally figured some things out.  John and I have been seriously thinking about doing a study abroad to France for a while now.  We have been praying and pondering if it is the right decision for us for this coming summer.

We sang the perfect hymn for the night, "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go, Dear Lord"

We had breakfast for dinner.  That is always one of our favorites,  John says, "I could literally eat breakfast anytime of the day."  We had:

Pancakes:  We mixed it up a bit with fresh chips of strawberry, 3/4 cup of sour cream, and a dash of vanilla in the mix.  Then we garnished with fresh strawberry slices on top.

Bacon:  Cooked almost til done in pan then we put it on a plate in the oven at 175 for about 5-7 minutes to give it more of a crunch.  Really that is the best way to eat bacon.

Hashbrowns:  John cooked these in the leftover bacon grease!  YUM!  Then of course he added jalapeños and salt and pepper.  They were better than Waffle House.

We already have our fall decorations out, most of these came from my girl's weekend with my family.  I love the holidays so much.  I feel like everyone is so excited with the anticipation of fall just right around the corner.  It is trying so hard to be here.  Just a few more days I hope.  "Come on Fall, you can do it!!"

In honor of our night I went to the European Market here in Roswell and got us some European chocolate.  It was divine!

For our activity we had planned on doing research for French programs and scholarship opportunities but that kind of didn't pan out.  So, instead I did a project that I have been obsessing over for about a week.

Thank you to (THIS LADY) for the inspiring idea.  You can see better directions on her blog.

I made a really cool earring holder.  This is so much better than throwing them all in one bag and having to search for the match!

My husband surprised me two nights ago with an early birthday present.  Seriously, we both can't wait for anything.  He was too excited and I was too curious so I let him give it to me.  

He gave me a beautiful pair of 1.4 carat Citrine Studs.  I LOVE them!  He said he thought they looked a lot like my beloved favorite color...mustard.  Now I have a beautiful new place for them to go.  Good job honey...good perfect job.