I meant to post this a few days ago, but here’s the picture of me in the completed water faerie costume at the Ren Fest last weekend.
Now to get started on my Dragon*Con costumes….
I also posted some pictures of downtown Nashville in the Nashville folder and photos from our Memorial Day cookout.
My goal is, over the course of the summer, to take pictures of many of Nashville’s landmarks and cool architecture. I started today by taking a trip out to Centennial Park. I realized that, although I’ve been living in Nashville for almost a year and I lived 45 miles away for over 18 years, I had never been to Centennial Park. So I grabbed my camera and drove down West End to the park.
I walked around the one-mile loop twice while I was there and snapped a bunch of pictures of the Parthenon. I also took some pictures of a few of the cool trees that are in the park. These are all in the gallery. Hopefully, over the course of the summer, I will be adding to this gallery.
Ben and I are going to the Ren Fest tomorrow, and then (hopefully) going out to the Frist Center on Monday. So I plan to take some pics of the outside of the Frist Center and of Union Station while we are there.
My brother Chris’s wife Michelle was having some problems with high blood pressure, so the doctors decided to go ahead and give her a C-section. She was about 34 weeks pregnant at that point. So, my first nephew, Alex Michael Winn, was born last night weighing 4 lbs, 9 oz. Chris says both Alex and Michelle are doing well. Here is the picture he sent:
Alex is their miracle baby. They were told that they would never be able to conceive children, and they were about halfway through the process of adopting a baby boy from Vietnam when Michelle discovered she was pregnant last fall.
I’m glad everyone is doing well. I can’t wait to meet him!
I’ve been working on the wings the past couple days, so here’s some new pictures. I’ll be finishing it up tomorrow night. I still need to go over with paint on the opposite side and do some touch-ups where it got smeared a bit.
Day 5 picture:
Day 6 picture:
First of all, Jason and Becka’s wedding went extremely well and was very beautiful. There are about 95 pictures in the photo gallery for your viewing pleasure. I have the full sized versions if anyone wants prints. My new camera did very well on its first outing. 
Ben and I arrived in Knoxville at about 10 pm on Thursday night. He went to the Manplex for Jason’s bachelor party, and I headed over to Jason’s parents’ house for the bachelorette party (pics of that in the gallery as well). The party was pretty fun. We drank screwdrivers and lemon drops and watched a video of Jason as a baby. I had to keep hiding Becka’s cell phone because she and Jason kept calling and texting each other.
Friday morning, I got up and Jason’s dad made Karen and I some blueberry pancakes. After we ate, we got Faithe up, and all left. (Becka had already left to go to her hair and make-up consultation at Belleza). I found Ben, and we left to go to the rehearsal. It was scorching outside, so we tried to keep the rehearsal short and sweet. After a few hiccups, we finally got the whole thing down. Then Ben and I went out to the mall to pick up his tux.
On our way there, Ben nearly hit another car that was in his blind spot. Then after we got there, we were nearly side-swiped by another car who wasn’t watching where he was going. Luckily, both incidents were only near misses.
After we picked up the tux, we went back out to Jason’s parent’s house for the rehearsal dinner. They had gotten Little Caesar’s. Yummy! I haven’t had Little Caesar’s since moving to Nashville, since the closest one to my apartment is in Franklin and it seems silly to drive all the way out there for pizza. Then Ben and I went back to the Manplex to take a nap.
When we woke up, we headed out to Matt and Karen’s house. Ben passed the road and decided to do a U-turn in someone’s driveway. Upon backing out, the car went a little too far and slid into what we thought was a ditch. We got out of the car to find it hanging off a 6 foot drop! If we had gone any further back, the car might have fallen off and flipped. Ben called some people and a few people came by to help. They tried to push the car back onto the road, but it just slid back further. So, to avoid being killed or the car being destroyed, we decided to call a tow truck. Luckily, Matt had AAA and let us use it.
We finally made it to Matt and Karen’s house, where we watched some episodes of “Friends” (hey, it’s just like home!) and then eventually passed out.
I got up bright and early Saturday morning, and Becka came to pick me up to go to Belleza. I had my nails, hair, and make-up done there, which took about 2 hours. Then Becka and I headed out to the Laurel Theatre (where the reception was going to be held) and got dressed. I had given Ben my camera to take pictures of the guys getting ready, so I took some video footage while Becka and I were getting ready. Finally, we headed out to the Knoxville Museum of Art.
The girl doing the photography (also a guest) was running a little late (she forgot her camera), so the wedding started about 15-20 minutes late. But once it did, it was over pretty quick (someone told Becka it was about 8 minutes long). Although the day had previously been overcast, the sun came out for the entire ceremony. It went well, without any snafus.
We all headed over to the theatre for the reception. Jason, Becka, Ben, and I were all seated at the table on the stage. Ben was enthralled with his “Best Man” champagne flute. The food was very yummy (especially the deviled eggs…I must have eaten about 20 of them over the course of the day). I took lots of pictures of the cake cutting and dancing. I got asked about every 5 minutes when Ben and I were going to get married, lol.
After the reception had died down, we all went home to change clothes. Since the theatre was rented out until dawn, the plan was to come back and play Guitar Hero and finish off the keg. Ben had left his car at Jason’s parents’, so he and Jason went off in that direction, and I went back with Chance and Kelley. After a little while, we got a call from Ben that he had a flat tire. We met up with him at Calhoun’s, and after the tire was changed, we drove out to Wal-mart. Unfortunately, their tire place had already closed for the night, so we left the car there to come back for it in the morning.
Then we headed back out to the theatre. We played some Guitar Hero and helped clean up the place. Finally, we headed back over to Chance and Kelley’s to sleep.
In the morning, we went back out to Wal-mart to get the tire fixed. We watched “Hoodwinked” back at their apartment and then went to pick up the car and head back to Nashville. We stopped briefly in Crossville to tell Ben’s mom Happy Mother’s Day.
I’ll try to have the videos up at some point this week. I really need to get Firewire put in my desktop so it’s not so much of a pain to do it (I have to use Tera, which takes forever since she doesn’t like to work).
I’d never seen the whole thing (just bits and pieces, mostly of the Rose Adagio), and I’d been wanting to for years. So we made the 3.5 hour trek down to Atlanta and back yesterday for that purpose.
The ballet was absolutely enthralling. The Rose Adagio was wonderfully executed. Carabosse was the best and most beautiful evil fairy I’ve ever seen, and the pas de deux between Aurora and the Prince in Act III blew my mind. I was lost in the music and the dance nearly the entire time. It seemed at times the dancers were actually creating the music with their dancing, instead of it being pre-recorded. I had to stop myself from giving Aurora and Prince Desiré a standing ovation in the middle of the third act. The sheer beauty of it brought tears to my eyes.
It was my anniversary present from Ben. I did some research and finally decided on a Canon Powershot A550, which is a 7.1MP budget camera (though my bank account laughs at the word “budget”). So, I would love to do a Day 5 update on my Faerie costume, but I haven’t got the stockings in yet to do the wings. Therefore, I have nothing really to take pictures of, so I thought I would treat you to this lovely picture of my TV.
And you can tell I need to dust.
So our anniversary was on Tuesday. We went to the Melting Pot downtown. Neither of us had ever been there before, so it was quite the experience. And very, very yummy.
For our first course, we got the swiss cheese fondue. They gave us three or four kinds of bread to dip in it, as well as apple slices, cauliflower, carrots, and celery. It was really yummy. I was full just after this. I got a glass of this really awesome Riesling and Ben got a glass of scotch.
Then Ben had a salad for the second course, which I of course skipped. He said that was really good.
For the main course, we ordered the Surf & Turf, which came with two lobster tails, 2 cuts of filet mignon, and Portobello mushrooms. They also brought squash, potatoes, and some other kind of mushrooms, and some different sauces. For the broth, I can’t remember what all was in it, but it was citrus-y, which the waitress recommended would go well with the lobster. They bring everything out raw and you cook it in the broth in the pot on the table, which takes about 1-2 minutes for each piece (they are fairly small pieces). I just ate the filet mignon, which was so good and even better after I dipped it in some teriyaki sauce. Ben looked like he was in heaven with the lobster. We had a bottle of Malbec to go with this, which was meh, but I don’t really like red wine. The manager came over to complement us on our choice in wine though.
Then for dessert, we got the Yin and Yang fondue, which is half dark chocolate and half white chocolate in a yin yang shape. They gave us strawberries, pineapple, banana, pound cake, cheesecake, brownies, and marshmallows (regular and some coated in Oreo) to dip. Best. Thing. Ever. Words cannot describe the wonderful things that happened in my mouth. Bananas in white chocolate, good. Cheesecake in anything, awesome. Brownies in dark chocolate, *cue angel’s chorus from above*.
Yes, I highly recommend it.
