Painting and Wine Tasting

I'm really excited to share a couple of projects I have been working on lately! I am not an artist so I was a little nervous to take on painting, but these projects are ones that even non-artists can do. The first project is one that I am planning on hanging in the kitchen.

I am really happy with how they came out and they were fairly easy. If you have the patience to trace the state outline and then paint in the lines, then you can make these!

This is the second project I have been working on. I had a custom a wall vinyl of Romans 12:12 that I am going to place over the painting once I am happy with it. It isn't quite done yet and is waiting for me to put the finishing touches on. Eventually it is going to hang above our bed.

Yesterday we went out to Arrington Vineyards to taste their wines and have a little picnic. Their grounds were very nice and had many picnic tables for people to use. I have to say though, we were underwhelmed by their wines. Also at the tasting bar it seemed like they were just trying to pour quickly and get the groups done as fast as they could rather than engage the people who are tasting. However, Gavin and my expectations were fairly low going in and they were met. I don't think we would take people who are visiting out there unless they really wanted to go to a winery.

In other news we bought Gavin a guitar!! He is loving having a guitar in the house again and I am loving listening to him play.

Thanks for reading!

Music City Indeed!

Nashville's nickname is the Music City and this month Gavin and I truly felt like it lived up to its name! In the last two weeks we went to three amazing concerts here in Nashville.

The first concert we went to was a Tyrone Wells concert. We had seen him live before, so we knew we were in for an amazing show! The concert was at a venue called 3rd and Lindsley and was more of an intimate setting which is awesome for concerts. Tyrone did not disappoint and put on a phenomenal concert! We even got to meet him again after the show!

The second concert we went to was put on by one of the local country radio stations as a benefit concert for St. Jude Children's Hospital. The concert was a bunch of country songwriters telling the stories behind the song and performing them. The talent of all the songwriters blew me away! Now it was obvious why some of them are only songwriters and not singers as well, but most of them were pretty good. It was awesome to hear the background behind why the songs were written as well. The radio DJ who organized the event, Amy Paige, mentioned that it might become an annual event and I truly hope it does!

The two sets of AMAZING songwriters!

At the beginning of the night the MC announced that there would be a special guest later in the show and it ended up being Christ Young! Gavin and I were really excited considering they hadn't advertised that there would even be a special guest at the concert.

The last concert we went to was the second night of Rites of Spring which takes place on the Vanderbilt campus every year. There was a whole night of concerts, but the main reason we went was to see Mat Kearney. As with Tyrone, we had seen Mat Kearney before but were still looking forward to another great concert. Well, Mat didn't disappoint us either! He put on a great show and we were in the very front for it! Need to Breathe performed after Mat Kearney and was the last of the night. However, after they played Something Beautiful we decided to head out and beat the crowd leaving. I didn't really know many of Need to Breathe's songs, but a bunch of the people around us did and I guess they are a lot more popular in the south.

All in all it was an amazing month of live music for us here in Nashville! Gavin and I are loving the music scene around here and are really trying to soak it all in. As always, thanks for reading!

He is Risen! Amen!

Happy Easter! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday rejoicing in the fact that Jesus paid the ultimate cost for each of us and then rose from the dead to be seated in heaven! It is celebrating times like these that makes me think I should make it a priority to be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus every day of my life. For it is through Him that we may have life!

The young marrieds group that we have joined at church had an Easter egg decorating afternoon a week before church. Everyone was asked to bring a side and I decided to bake and decorate a cake. I got the idea of how to decorate it off of Pinterest (of course) and ran with it. All of the decorations were made out of chocolate melting wafers and it was fairly simple. Also I am happy to report it went over really well with everyone. The cake itself was lemon cake with strawberry filling and homemade buttercream frosting. Yummm!

Gavin and I had a great day yesterday celebrating Easter with our new church family and just the two of us at home. After we got home from church I had a few surprises up my sleeve! I had played Easter Bunny earlier in the week and made us Easter baskets as well as picked up some plastic eggs to have a little egg hunt. We ended up hiding eggs for each other around the apartment and had fun reliving our childhoods. 

For dinner I made rack of lamb with thin parmesan potatoes and green beans. It was my first time cooking rack of lamb, but Gavin and I thought it came out really well! I made a fresh herb crust and then roasted it in the oven. We even got a little fancy and broke out the china for dinner. Overall, it was a great Sunday celebrating the work of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection!