New Nephew

I forgot to post here that I am a new Aunt! This is Ian Sumner Hunt, my sister's first child! He is five weeks old in this photo. What a little cutie!!

They currently live in Mexico so I haven't gotten to meet him in person yet, but this summer I will switch into full-on Aunt Lisa mode. It's going to be awesome!

Early on, he looked so much like my Dad, but in this photo I think he looks a lot like my sister. So excited to get to meet him in person and spend some time with him!

Visitors!

One of the most fun things for us is to host visitors at our home in Nashville. There are lots of great things to do in this city and having guests allows you to re-visit the various historic sites around TN and see them again with fresh eyes.

This week's guests were Les's sister and brother-in-law who live near the Orlando area. I took off a couple of days to hang out with them (poor Les had to work), and we visited The Hermitage, the Jack Daniel Distillery, and the tiny town of Bell Buckle. We didn't quite make it to the Stones River National Battlefield or the Country Music Hall of Fame or the Frist art museum, but you have to make choices to either runrunrun or actually have some "hang out" time. We chose the latter.

They head back home today. We had a great visit and are looking forward to our next adventure together!

Here's a photo of them outside the Jack Daniel Distillery visitor's center. It's a really great tour and we had amazing weather!!

Spring in Nashville

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law are here visiting this week and we took a trip to The Hermitage today. The grounds are beautiful all year long, but I especially enjoyed the Spring scenery on this visit. I don't think we've ever been there this early in the year, so all the plants were just coming into bloom. The lilacs were tender and sweet-smelling, the daffodils were newly opened, the peonies were still closed but starting to unfurl, and each tree had little baby leaves. It was a rainy day, so everything was green and crisp and dewy. So lovely.

I grew up with dogwood in my front yard, so they have a special connection to Spring for me. My favorite Spring tree now is probably the Redbud (which are prevalent and beautiful here in Nashville), but for some reason I just couldn't resist taking a photo of these just-hatched blossoms.

Good Ideas Gone Wrong

This is what my living room looks like right now.

I just said to my husband, who was asking if there's anything anything at all that he can do for me, "Next time, remind me, before I embark in another curtain project, that I HATE CURTAINS!!!"

At this moment, I also hate IKEA and their stupid "hemming tape," which is not actually that much of an improvement over machine-hemming (and I've mis-placed the tape for these red curtains, which means I'll end up sewing them anyway); I hate IKEA's ridiculously long curtains (I just had to cut 3 feet off a pair, and I have taller than standard windows); I hate ironing, which just gives you lots of meditative time to thing about what an endlessly stupid idea all of this was; and I hate the fact that I'm 3 curtains in with 9 to go and I am already SO over this project.

At this moment, I'm really regretting the big IKEA trip I made as part of my vacation time. Instead of chilling for four days, I'm several hundred dollars poorer and have been slaving away, assembling things for the last four days of my stay-cation.

Ugh.

Capturing this moment to serve as a warning to others, but especially a warning to myself.