It's about time . . .

All the greats have had one . . .

Tom Selleck

Sam Elliot

Alex Trebek

Jason Giambi

Gene Shalit

Hollywood Hulk Hogan

Tricky Dick Tricholson

And now is my time:

 It is only the beginning, but I feel like this mustache (that my wife is not the craziest about) is the best way to lead into "no shave" November. I also feel like this is just a mustache time in my life. So all I ask is that my bottom lip does not get upset that I am keeping the upper lip warm.

Around the House

As Keith and I continue our job search, I still have lots of time to hang at home. We're both pursuing new opportunities and are patiently awaiting our next big leap... where ever that may be! I guess that I should mention that I'm not completely unemployed as I may have made it seem. I do still work part time at a local historic society giving tours to Philadelphia School District classes. This was a perfect job for me while I was still in grad school when I could only manage 20 or 30 hours a month, and thankfully now that I have more time I'll be able to work some more hours. Not an incredible amount, but still enough to pay the bills and give us time to make decisions about what would be best for us next. I get to hang out with kids and talk about history which are some of my favorite things.... AND I get to do fun stuff like attend battle reenactments haha If anyone reading this lives in the Philly area and wants something fun to do on Saturday: check out revolutionarygermantown.org and come hang out with me as we watch quirky old men reenact a Revolutionary War battle. It's always a little bit funny and makes me love my job a little bit more. If you do want to come... definitely give me a call. Regardless I'll have some pictures to share of the whole event after the weekend.

Another thing I would like to mention: I am throughly in love with our panini press. Such a great investment. I usually don't pull it out unless Keith and I are both around but today I could not resist making myself an awesome sandwich for lunch. What it included? turkey, pesto, mayo, sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese and spinach. Such an amazing combination of awesomeness. Stop by my house sometime and i'll make you one :)

Unless you've been to our apartment, it's hard to get a really good idea of what it looks like inside because we've only shared just a few snapshots. Something that I've been meaning to share is one of my favorite things about our apartment. Our incredible wall calendar! If you've ever been any place I've lived in the past 5 years I'm sure you've seen it, and probably written on it.  It's one of the greatest and most practical gifts that I've ever received (thanks mom and dad!). It was a high school graduation present and I've had it hung in every dorm room or apartment that I've lived in since. I'm pretty sure that I would be lost without it now. It used to be a place to doodle (and a place for my awesome roommates to leave me funny picture messages haha) but Keith and I use it now to plan out our entire monthly schedule including what hours we're working and when bills need to be paid. It makes remembering things incredibly easy. Granted, I love love love calendars and organization, but this is a fun way to decorate our room (it's 5ft by 5ft!) and even though it seems to be all business these days, I always try and add some fun and festive things.

Like! Our little jack-o-lantern family haha

As you may have noticed... Theo has a pretty important event coming up this month. His first birthday!!! I'm sure you can already tell, but I'm much more excited about it than he'll ever be haha I can't wait to use it as an excuse to go through every picture we've taken of him and spoil him with some treats. He'll never know the difference haha

Happy (it's almost) October everyone!

Weekend Update

(yes I know that it's Tuesday... but Keith had yesterday off and I didn't feel like returning to the computer yet)

Here are a few things that went on this weekend (and Monday too!):

- Friday night Keith worked until 10 so I had "family dinner" with some friends from our church and learned how to play poker (and got an awesome recipe for spinach balls).
- Saturday I spent the day with some friends from church out in Amish town to see my friend Darlene's sister perform in a show. She was an awesome dancer, and afterwards we had dinner at an extremely yummy local restaurant.

- Sunday we picked up some items that we had ordered from Crate and Barrel which proved to be harder than planned and resulted in a much much needed afternoon nap haha
- Later on Sunday we headed over to Dan and Aly's for some BBQ/football watching hang out time. (The Titans won so my husband was in a great mood haha)
- Monday we got our beautiful guest book from Janelle! It was so fun to read all your awesome comments and see the pictures you drew for us haha. Janelle did such a great job binding all the small books together into one. I loveeeeee it!

- Monday I also found out that I didn't get the job I had been waiting for. Bummer. BUT! I still have my tour guiding job, and I've scheduled myself a pretty full October. Job search continues!
- Monday evening we finished up some laundry and grocery shopping, and since I was pretty bummed about the job situation Keith treated me to some Pei Wei for dinner and I got a fortune saying that I will be offered an incredible opportunity in the coming days. Fingers crossed!

Also: check out my fancy new license!

September has been a pretty crazy month. I'm not to upset to say goodbye, with hopes that October will bring with it a new job or at least some clarity about where Keith and I are headed next. I'm definitely looking forward to some more great Fall weather before Winter settles in!

A New Arrangement

We finally hung up some pictures in our living room! It only took us a year to get our house settled, but it feels nice to be able to show off our awesome friends and family when we have people over. This place is finally starting to feel like a home :)

Grilling in the Dark

Keith's dream come true! A real grill that is all his own! Dan got Keith this wonderful gift last weekend and we finally got a chance to fire it up in the back yard last night. It took Keith a little bit longer to put together than planned so by the time we got to actually cooking the food it was unfortunately very dark out :( Never fear, we got some flashlights out and still managed to have a truly amazing tasting dinner (and we both smelled like camp fire for the rest of the night... Keith's favorite).

Keith's new toy

Our backyard as the sun went down

Fabulous veggie skewers! Potatoes, squash, tomatoes and red peppers! 

Firing up

Yum yum yum

Our faithful grill master (who promised that he will only grill 3 meals a week ;) haha)

Some Important Instructions

Keith and I as well as our wedding photographer and friend Chris Moody want to share our wedding photos with you! Sorry to have kept you waiting for so long, we had some epic troubles with our external hard drive which set me back a little bit.

BUT! HERE THEY ARE!

Every single photo, meaning lots that I haven't been able to post yet, so please take a chance to look at them! We're so excited and proud of the great work that Chris did.

If you click here you'll be directed to my mobileme gallery where you'll find albums of all the wedding photos. If you're interested in getting copies of the files for these photos we ask that you make a note of the file name under the photo and then send Chris an email with your request.

His email address is: cmoodyphoto@gmail.com
In the subject line you can write "Richards' wedding photos"

Because of the wonderful job that Chris did for no payment what-so-ever, we're asking that everyone who makes a request for photo files make a donation to his paypal account. This is going to be a pay what you would like type situation, so whatever you feel is best for the amount of files you've requested. Nothing outrageous, something like 25cents a file, less or more, again.. whatever you see fit. By no means should you feel like you HAVE to, but we would appreciate everyone showing Chris how much they enjoyed his hard work on these pictures.

In order to make a payment to Chris' paypal account, you'll need to create your own account if you don't already have one. Then you're going to click on "send money" and put in Chris' email address which is again, cmoodyphoto@gmail.com. You will then enter your credit/debit card info and it will be safely sent his way.

Thank you all so much for all the amazingly positive feedback on the wedding photos and our wedding in general. We are so pleased that we were able to share that day with so many people :) If you have ANY questions at all about the photo request process please don't hesitate to ask me. Feel free to leave a comment, or email me any time.

Now here are some photos from set up for your enjoyment!

The Office

Today I needed to take a little break from everything on my to-do list for a little bit after the hectic morning that I had. After dropping Keith off at work I headed up to the DMV to try and correct my incorrect license but ended up waiting in line just to walk out in tears. The whole Pennsylvania Department of Transportation makes absolutely no sense at all but in the end... I will NEVER have to go there again in my life. The jist? I filled out my application to change my name exactly how I was supposed to and paid for the processing and new card but when the confirmation arrived in the mail they chose to print the wrong name on it. I called the DOT yesterday and they assured me if I went to the DMV I could change it just fine, but when I got up to the counter they told me that in order for them to put through the change I would need to pay again. This immediately made no sense to me, and I had myself all geared up to fight with them about it.... but of course my terrible girly emotions took over and I started to tear up. I just left and cried in the car for a few minutes haha. Main point is: I didn't bring the check book because I hadn't intended on needing to pay anything, so I had to drive another half hour home to get it and then head back to the DMV to start all over again. What's done is done, it's over, I have a new license. I'm officially Dana Richards, AND my new picture is way better than my old one.

I celebrated on the way home with a hoagie and a nice big soda. It tasted like victory.

Then when I got back to the apartment I planted myself on the couch to watch some reruns of The Office which could cheer up anyone.

This little quote from Pam brought a smile to my face :)


"When you're a kid you assume your parents are soul mates. My kids are going to be right about that"

<3

Out with the old! (horray horray horray!)

Today is a very excited day for me, and this is why: It feels like forever we've had these terrible Glad reusable containers... that always smell bad, pick up the color of any food you put in them and that I can't ever seem to have matching lids for. Yesterday thanks to Crate and Barrel's 10% off coupon, and a couple gift certificates I have achieved a small but very meaningful kitchen victory... NO MORE AWFUL PLASTIC CONTAINERS FOR LEFTOVERS! We now have these beautiful glass bowls with airtight lids that can double as serving bowls if we ever need to feed and army of people or bring something to a potluck dinner. I'm obsessed. Now I never need to be nervous about the harmful effects of microwaving our food in cheap plastic and the inevitable germs left behind when they never seemed to come clean. I'm pretty excited to share with you some of the other amazing goodies that we picked up at the store yesterday... but for now I'm going to revel in the awesomeness of these containers (and find a place to put them in our seriously lacking cabinet space ugh). It's the little things :) Today my mission is to clean up our house that I've been neglecting since our trip to Boston and fight with Pennsylvania some more about them insisting on printing the wrong name on my new drivers license. Happy Tuesday!

Check this out!

Our good friend Janelle Siegrist did a little wedding feature on her blog this week that you definitely need to check out. She put up some of Chris' amazing photos and I got the chance to write a bit about how all of my wedding planning came together and some more background on all the decisions that I made in order to make our wedding such a special day. I'm so so so glad that I got to share all of this with Janelle because she is one of our only friends who knew Keith and I each separately before we got together. Keith and Janelle went to college together at Belmont University, and before I ever met him, she and I became friends through our mutual friend Ryan. She is awesome! Thanks so much Janelle!!

Click here to take a look!

Boston Adventure!

On Tuesday or Wednesday evening Keith approached me wondering if I wanted to take a weekend trip to Boston since he had Saturday and Sunday off. At first I thought... that's crazy! We can't take a trip so last minute! But the more that I thought about it, we really had no reason not to. I messaged a family friend that lives there to see if she was ok with us crashing and once we got things lined up it was a no-brainer... Boston here we come! Of course, I should mention, the main reason for this trip was because Keith and our friend Dan really wanted to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park. As baseball fans I guess there's nothing better than visiting historic ball parks, and Aly and I were happy to indulge them. So we woke up before the sun and got on the road Saturday morning. Boston is about 5 and a half hours from Philly, with way way way too many tolls haha we made pretty great time though and managed to avoid traffic thankfully. We got to town around noon, just in time for some lunch with our hosts. My mother went to college at Cornell and met an amazing group of friends who has done such an impressive job of keeping in touch throughout all these years. Her great friend Ruth (who was the maid of honor at their wedding, my middle name-sake and shares the same birthday with me) gladly hosted us even though we contacted her so last minute. She works for the National Park Service in Boston and actually lives in the Historic Boston Navy Yard right on the harbor. It is SUCH a cool place to visit because you can see the USS Constitution from her doorstep, and since there is only a row of five houses you feel like a VIP among all the tourists walking by. Ruth and her husband T took us out on their boat for some lunch and a ride around the harbor, and with the AMAZING weather they were having, it was a perfect way to spend our time.




After getting some time to hang with Ruth, T and their daughter Anneli, we headed out on the Freedom Trail to check out as many Boston sites as our feet would let us before getting the subway down the the baseball game.






And then on our way to the game we stopped for some bar food and Sam Adams beer. Mmmm.

Baseball! Our seats at Fenway were definitely fine for buying them as last minute as we did... but 98 years ago they did not build stadiums so that every seat in the house was a good one haha We were lower level, but under the very large overhang with lots of poles in between us and the pitcher, so it was tough to see at times. Still, the boys enjoyed themselves throughly, and Keith bought me cotton candy, so I was happy too haha.







After the 7th inning the boys wanted to go a adventure through the stadium, and we ended up finding ourselves some much better seats. Even though we cheered our hearts out for the Sox, they didn't win... regardless, it was a pretty fun experience and I'm glad that we got the chance to be there. (Now I just want to watch Fever Pitch really badly haha)






Our ride home after the game was a little bit crazy. There were SOOOO many people trying to get back on the subway to get home, which was expected, but also preposterous how many people they allowed to pack themselves in each car. Lets just say... we all got pretty close haha



Even though it was one of the longer days I've ever had, we had SUCH a great time. Everything worked out perfectly and I think it was a great way to introduce Keith to the city of Boston. Of course now he's in love (mostly because of the beer haha) but I'm sure we'll be back again soon! This morning we woke up to coffee and bagels thanks to Ruth, and after some conversation we hit the road back to Philly. Getting home was not QUITE as smooth as getting there, but through all the traffic and tolls we finally made it to our doorstep, and Theo welcomed us with lots and lots of purrs.

We are SOO thankful to Ruth and T for hanging out with us this weekend and also to everyone who gave us wedding gifts so that we could buy our awesome car :) We love being able to take last minute road trips and really look forward to taking so many more!