17 Apart

Crowdsourced: Wedding Photos

2013-06-19T14:35:00.000-04:00

It's been 2 1/2 weeks since the wedding and we finally feel like things are starting to feel like normal again! While we excitedly wait to see the final shots from our wedding photographer, it's been so much fun to see different glimpses of the big day pop up across our Facebook and Instagram feeds from different friends and family that helped us celebrate.

Today we thought it would be fun to share a collection of shots all taken from the phones and cameras of those friends and family members! It's so fun to see the different elements and shots everyone seemed to capture and exciting to get a peek at the day from their point of view since it went by in such a quick blur for the both of us!

These photos roughly take you through getting ready, guests arriving, portions of the ceremony, transportation and some of the fun we had at the reception — enjoy!

Guests arriving and getting settled at the ceremony site, the Edgar Allen Poe Museum garden (don't we have great looking family members, ha!):

Portions of the ceremony:

Headed to the reception — keep in mind it was 94 degrees that day, my fantastically teased hair completely flopped by this point but we all had a blast as we were able to get some of the cold craft cocktails we'd dreamed up with The Roosevelt for the reception:

We hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into our big day as much as we've enjoyed seeing all the pics pop up from our friends and family. We'll be excited to share many of the final shots when we get them and break down all the big and little details from the event in a much more robust wedding post!

Keep up with 17Apart's Wedding:

Real Wedding Board | Our Wedding Posts

Beach Eats: Pimento Cheese Wars

2013-06-18T10:06:00.000-04:00

Saying that Tim and I are big fans of pimento cheese might be a bit of an understatement. Tim makes a tried and true version we love and you might recall my favorite dish from last year's Broad Appetit being the fried pimento cheese fritters. Related — we were bummed to miss this year's Broad Appetit, but were booking it to the beach for our honeymoon instead.

While honeymooning, we picked up a tub of pimento cheese spread during our first big trip to the market and all I can say is, our snack creations seemed to get crazier and crazier, each outdoing the last.

Things started out rather tame with a healthy dollap of pimento cheese on a wide, thin cracker:

Nothing wrong with that, delicious!

Then, things clearly went up a notch when we discovered a jar of pickled jalapeño peppers in the fridge:

Kicked up, yes!

If that weren't enough, on day 3 of the honeymoon after Tim made bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast, this happened:

Yes folks, that's a jalapeño, bacon and pimento cheese topped cracker there.

We are ridiculous...and perfect for each-other.

Discover More:

Fried Green Tomato BLT's with Pimento Cheese | Twice Baked Potato with Pimento Cheese | All Recipes

P.S. — Anyone spot Basil's nose in that second pic trying to get a taste of his own?

Sparkling Mulberry Summer Cocktail

2013-06-17T18:16:00.001-04:00

For those that do not follow along with my food blog, E.A.T., we not only get to try some amazing food, we also get to enjoy a cocktail or two from time to time!

You might recall we recently foraged for mulberries and ended up making this rosemary infused mulberry simple syrup — which in turn allowed us to create this rosemary infused mulberry Prosecco:

Ahhh....so good and so fresh.

This was just one of many recipes we're looking forward to sharing from our little foraging stint with the mulberry tree. Find the full recipe for this cocktail here.

Weekend Basics: Dads & Grads

2013-06-17T12:59:00.000-04:00

It was a big weekend for us with milestones and celebrations for my son's high school graduation and Father's Day all falling within the same weekend!

We started the weekend Friday evening hitting up a Blanchard's coffee tasting at Ellwood Thompson's where we learned more about their partnership with Thrive Farmers and how certain food pairings can really bring out different flavors and tastes in the coffee you'd never expect:

Saturday we were up and out early along with my parents to attend my son Brandon's high school graduation:

It was such a surreal and proud moment at the same time. Brandon walked across the stage with a huge smile on his face and more accolades and honors than I can list. I could not be prouder of him at this stage in his life and am already looking forward to all the college prep work we'll be doing this summer as he begins the next stage at JMU this fall.

On the drive home from the graduation, we hit up a few roadside country sales (which are always the best — remember this one?) and came across some of the coolest antique industrial sets of metal letter and number punches:

These are the real deal and newly listed in the vintage shop here.

Since my parents were with us for Brandon's Graduation, we planned a Father's Day cookout at our house that evening and had Mary's dad over to celebrate too. We had fun firing up the grill and having a low-key family evening around the table.

In garden news, the summer plants are coming along! We've been having fun seeing the beginnings of tomatoes, some squashes and let me tell you how well the grapevines are doing — we'll update on all of those plants soon, but over the weekend we enjoyed still being able to take a pair of scissors out back and snip fresh arugula leaves from our trough planters for the salads we'd be making:

And! Our mouse saga has finally come to a close (yes, it's been a saga). After many months of teasing Mary for thinking there was a mouse or mice in the house, she has finally been vindicated. We decided to do a seasonal clean of the fridge, which involved pulling it out from from wall and as you can probably guess, once we did, we had a little surprise waiting for us that was past its prime. We decided not to take a photo and while we were sad this little guy didn't make its way into the live trap I'd set over the winter (so we could set it free), we were glad to finally have an answer to the puzzle.

We hope each of you had a nice summer weekend and Father's Day!

P.S. We just started season 7 of Dexter on Netflix! We don't get Showtime so are always a season behind, but are stoked to finally be catching up. We can't believe season 8 will be the end — are you watching?

Matching Tattoos: Honeymooning

2013-06-14T10:20:00.000-04:00

As some of you might know, Mary and I talk on and off about getting some sort of coordinating tattoos. Though it's something we'll probably never do, it's always a fun topic of conversation and inspiration. I've talked about getting a butcher knife along the inside of my forearm or some other variation of hungarian foliage and we like the idea of coming up with something that could play off one another in some way.

On the way down to the beach for our honeymoon, there was one Tattoo shop that stood out along the drive back and forth from the cottage in Salvo, NC. It was a combined tattoo and garden planter center — weird combination, right? In any case, we laughed and joked every time we passed by it that finally getting those matching tattoos we've talked about for years would be a great way to commemorate the honeymoon.

Don't worry, we didn't do it. But, all of our honeymoon's tattoo talk inspired today's long overdue return and roundup of couples' tattoos we love:

Each image, their source & more designs in Mary's Tattoo Files Pinterest Board

For now, it's still just a fun topic of conversion between the two of us, but who knows — maybe one day we'll surprise ourselves and all of you!

* Find more of our favorite matching tattoos here *