Our thriftiest anniversary...

No, the title of my blog was not a misspelling of "fiftieth". C'mon people.. we're not THAT old. Lol. It IS our 9th wedding anniversary though. And I must say that it is by God's amazing grace and forgiveness that we've made it this far. :)

Our wedding was not your ordinary wedding. I passed out flyers instead of sending invitations. I even drew a map of how to get to the obscure place in the woods in which we were to be married. I LOVE DRAWING MAPS. Many people thought maybe the whole thing was an April Fool's practical joke. A few showed up late. One person was convinced that I walked down the "isle" to the music of Jimi Hendrix. Not sure what he was smoking. Regardless, we had ourselves a beautiful little hippie wedding. The land belonged to our friend's sweet parents, whom I felt became almost second parents and mentors to us. There was a perfect clearing in the woods and our friends and family formed a half-circle around us. I wore a simple white cotton dress (from Pangaea in Nashville) and a little cardigan sweater. Our pastor, (who also baptized us in a lake several months before) bravely at my request, attempted to perform most of our ceremony in Hebrew. We exchanged antiqued silver rings engraved with the Hebrew words "My Beloved is mine and I am his (hers)". I was all about Judaism back then. Everyone followed us to the barn afterward, where hours earlier it was cleared of goats. We had a yummy potluck and enjoyed our time spent with our closest friends and family. It was perfect in every way. J pointed out that the weather today was exactly like our wedding day. We were worried that it might rain, but it ended up being gorgeous outside. Thank goodness, because Plan B was to all squish inside the house or barn.

We have had many ups and downs since then.. and I mean MANY. But, we're not going to speak of those now, instead we will only remember that beautiful April afternoon 9 years ago today. Praise be to God for keeping us together this long! :) And the people all said, "Amen!"

As a way of celebrating, I decided to go thrifting. (Okay, okay.. I totally just made that reason up now as I was writing.) I did want to share all of my amazing finds with you though! A few of the items, including the tray, small bowls, and candle holders, came from a line of home decor they have at Big Lots right now, of all places! And they were all 60% off! The small metal pitcher and bucket holding our golf ball collection came from Target's $1 spot, and everything else I found at Goodwill! Happy Anniversary to me!!

We don't have anything special planned for the evening. We just got the boys to bed after being wound up from playing outside all evening. Now we're going to warm up our dinner (that we decided to wait and eat until we could have peace and quiet alone time together) and watch "Houseboat" that I rented from the library. Because, well.. that's what us old married people do. :) Ha, hopefully if we make it to 10 years we'll finally do something more elaborate and romantic. But for now, I have a papa panda, dinner, and a movie waiting for me downstairs. :)

Hope y'all have a lovely evening as well!