Cotton vs. Snowman Ornament

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Zac and I did.
We went to his parents home in Paducah, Kentucky and had lunch at his uncle's home with nearly 30 of my new relatives. It is amazing to be in a room with 30 people that you are related to and barely know a soul. Everyone was so welcoming and I felt at home.
We came back to Nashville just in time to see the Iron bowl game. (I don't need to narrated the results of that, if you are reading this then I know you have internet access and probably a TV and I am certain that you are well inform.) I all I have to say is "Woo-Hoo! War Eagle!.... BCS #1".
We spent the rest of our time just relaxing and catching up on the things that we have been wanting to do. Such as finishing putting up our Christmas decorations.... which brings me to my story.

Cotton as added a new nemesis to his list, right behind squirrels, birds, and his reflection in the mirror is the snowman ornament.

Last year we received as a gift two small snowman ornaments. I recently discovered that these ornaments have a light switch on them, so today I decided to turn them on for the 1st time. Immediately Cotton did not like this at all.
As you can see:

** Note: I tried to publish this posting a few weeks ago but I could not get the video to upload. I have tried again now, but still no success. I will continue to try and let you know when it is up loaded.

Oh well. (sigh) Sorry guys. **

I put the ornaments back on tree. But as soon as I was uploading this video guess what I saw Cotton capture. 

The flash makes Cotton blink.



Cranksgiving

On Friday Zac stumbled across a Twitter posting about bike ride/food bank charity called Cranksgiving. This event was a organized bike ride all over the downtown area where bikers gathered groceries for the area food bank, Second Harvest.
Saturday morning we packed up the bikes and set out toward Downtown to participate. What a fun event! Not only were we contributing to a great cause but we were able to see Nashville in a way we have not seen it before. Seeing and touring the city on bike was a brand new experience for me. I felt like I was being re-introduced to Nashville.

The happy endorphins were in high gear in combination of charity contribution and exercise. :)

Auburn Football Experience 2010

Right now I'm home recouperating from a weekend trip to Auburn. Since I have moved to Nashville it has been difficult to attend Auburn games on a weekly basis, so I have resorted to pick at least one good conference game to attend each year. This year Zac and I selected the Arkansas game. It and what an amazing game it was!

The stands are still full, even at the end of the 4th quarter.

Along with watch some great football we also spent some overdue quality time with family and friends. 

Zac and I with my parents, my sibilings and their fiances

 

Victory visit to Toomer's Corner

 After any Auburn victory fans roll the trees on Toomer's Corner. It is a great opportunity to take in the excitement and energy of the day and it provides for some great photo opportunities. Yesterday evening while out on Toomer's Corner we encountered a "Tall Bike." Now may of you may not know what a "Tall Bike" is; but it is not hard to figure out because the name isn't too clever. It is just a bicycle that is extremely tall (approximately 7 feet high). Is it constructed from two bike frames that are welded together. When I first moved to Nashville encountering a "Tall Bike" was about as elusive as encountering a popular musician: it wasn't an unexpected occurrence but when you did bump into one you had to tell all of your friends about it. However over the years the "Tall Bike" species has become endanger of extinction in Nashville. Therefore I was so thrilled to see one in Auburn I had to ask for a photo. As you can see they may have talent for mastering a high center of gravity, but they are a bit awkward in front of the camera.

Happy Trails to my Auburn "Tall Bike" comrade. Live long and strong and WAR EAGLE!

Diamonds and Campfires

Recent Facebook walk postings
Morgan Weant: i read your blog :)
Lynn Steller: you have a blog? what's it about?
Kelly Weant Cook: Nothing these days. I'm doing a crappy job at updating it.

True true. I'm not doing a great job of blog updating. In my defense it is time consuming. (Excuses, I know.)
These past 2 weeks have been great!

Last Friday my little sister got engaged! Tentatively they plan to have the wedding in early April. That means that my brother, sister and I will all be wed within 12 months.

Two weekends back Zac and I went with our friends on a camping and biking trip. It was a perfect fall adventure. This was my 1st time in my adult life I slept in a tent. Sleeping was alright, the ground was a bit hard and Cotton was a bit restless in the tent at times; but I was warm and as Zac says, "a cold Kelly is an ornery Kelly." 

This past weekend we were in Atlanta for Heath Hinds and Leslie O'Byrne's wedding. 

Mr. & Mrs. Hinds




Sporting my new shorter hair do.

Katie, me, and Laura



Nima, Zac, Blake, and Erin



PBR

The weekend before last Zac and I went with our friends Matt and Bethany Bratcher to the PBR event. Now for many PBR stands for Pabst Blue Ribbon but to a cowboy the true PBR is the Professional Bull Riders.

It was a last minute affair; we decided on Friday night that we wanted to go. Saturday we searched for decent tickets at a reasonable price, which lead us all the way downtown to the arena to purchase the tickets at the box office. Now, I may be dating how young I am but I have never had to go to a box office to pre-purchase tickets. I felt like the kids on Dazed and Confused, driving all the way to the city to buy my summer concert tickets the day after school gets out. 

The four of us put on our cowboy hats and boots and "pre-gamed" at Jim 'N Nicks Bar-B-Q (one of my favorite restaurants, which Zac refers to as "Kelly's Happy Place"). Then we moved to the arena to see the "Toughest Sport on Earth." It was so much fun. If you haven't seen the PBR you should check it out sometime on the VS. channel. It's hard to describe but fun to watch. 

Afterwards we tried our hand at doing a bit of honky-tonking a 'la tourist style, but we only went as far as the front door of Tootsies when we realized that this heat wave was way too hot to enter inside a over crowded bar. -- You know you are getting old when you start to reason whether it is sensible or not to enter a bar. *Sigh* So to recap: young enough to only know of Ticketmaster, old enough to rather drink wine at home rather than Jack and Coke in a dive bar.

Zac got a kick out of this: it's the PBR zamboni.

Weekend Project: Blue Woven with Chenille

Zac has this beautiful antique dining room table and chairs that he inherited from his grandmother. Well, all was beautiful except for the seat cushions. So I set out to find a new fabric to update our dining room piece. I found this beautiful woven fabric that was light blue and infused with mocha brown chenille yarns. The fabric's shade of blue was a perfect match to our everyday dishes and the brown chenille complimented the finish on the wooden chairs.

Immediately when I began this project I realized that these seats have been updated twice before me. I revealed fabric that probably has been covered for 40 years, or more. 

Dining room chair in the original form.

The finished result, featuring our matching dishes.

The residual was used for throw pillows for the living room, which is a open floor plan to the dining area. I was only able to complete two of the four pillows since I only had enough piping to trim half of the job. I have some more exciting ideas of what I can do to add to our pillow collection, but that will have to wait for another weekend!

I'm Back

Two years ago I started a sad attempt to blog. But the problem was that I didn't "get" blogs 2 years ago. I didn't read them, nor did I have the desire to post regularly. But now things have changed. I have been reading my friends blogs recently and I realized that I do have interesting things going on to write about, and by-golly I'm going to blog again!!

I just hope it is something that I can keep up.

So what has happened in the past 2 years? Well, let's see...

Zac and I continued to date. This past December he asked me to be his wife and on May 29, 2010 I did.

I moved into his 2 bedroom, 1180 squared-foot town home and we have been throwing ourselves into renovating and decorating. (Read: this place was in need of a woman's touch).

He and I still work at TSC and we spend most of our free time together either working on the house, entertaining the puppy or riding our bikes.

So those are a few high lights in a nut shell. Stick around and I'm going to do my best to keep you up to date as to what is happening in the Cook household.