St. Patrick's Day Parade~Uptown Charlotte

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

I couldn’t be more excited about celebrating St. Patrick’s Day today. It’s always one of my favorite days of the year. I’m making corned beef and cabbage for dinner and cannot wait to have a pint (or six) of Guinness at lunch. Ryan and I are also planning on taking in the parade and festival uptown on Saturday.

St. Patrick’s Day in the US, and all over the world, for that matter, has become more of a celebration of public drunkenness. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I’d probably be at the bar right now if I didn’t have to go into work today, but you know what I’m talking about….. the people that, regardless of their heritage, dress up like a leprechaun or scantily clad shamrock fairy, dye their hair green, and hit the local bar crawls and vow to get hammered drunk in the name Ireland, but have absolutely no idea who the hell St. Patrick is or what Erin go Bragh means. Because of this, I think the real meaning and reason behind the day gets a little lost, so I thought I’d throw it out there right quick.

In short, St. Patrick’s Day is a religious holiday celebrating St. Patrick who was a patron saint of Ireland. He brought Christianity to Ireland and introduced the concept of the Holy Trinity by using the shamrock as a symbol to illustrate and explain it. Several myths and legends also claim that he drove the snakes out of Ireland, but I believe that is more of a figurative assessment of his work to drive out Paganism and replace it with Christianity.

Now that I’ve bored everyone with the brief history lesson, I’ll leave you with an image to inspire you to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the way that’s the most fun…..Drinking an absurd amount of Guinness and getting some guy in the band to let you borrow his bagpipes. Sláinte!

Is the Grass Really Greener on the Other Side?

Let’s hope so, because dividing and conquering our yard seems to be the only hope. Obviously, the growing of grass is not exactly the most newsworthy of topics, however it will be a major milestone because Hanky and Jr. are really rough on our backyard. Yes, we do realize that we’re keeping farm animals in a fairly normal neighborhood backyard, but the space could possibly sustain them both if we gave it a fighting chance. Every spring our grass begins to grow in the bare spots, but goats are unable to resist any form of digestible vegetation, and they eat it up before it even has a chance to establish itself. So this year, we’ve decided to give the new grass a chance of survival by sectioning the yard off and keeping my little warrior beasts off of it. Wish us luck.

On a side note, Hanky does not appear in any of these photos because he is a little camera shy this time of year. He has already started to blow out his coat, looks a little ragged out, and is less willing to strike a pose for me.

6 Months.

Happy 6 Month Anniversary to my wonderful husband! I love you so much and can't wait to celebrate with you tonight! Here is a little reminder of our wedding day. xo.

The Mini Donkeys, Revisited.

I've blogged about them before, but it's a been well over a year since we've stopped to pay them a visit. Mostly because our fire for getting one was a little dampened when we realized how much grass they can take down in a single bite. I'm sayin', our yard has a hard enough time keeping up with Big Sexy and Juney Bug that I can't even imagine what a full fledge mini donkey would do to it. Still, we thought we'd check back in on them to see what they were up to and to see if they would bite Ryan again. We kind of wanted to know if they are serial biters with bad attitudes or if it was just a random act of violence. Either way, you need to know what you're getting yourself into when considering mini donkey ownership.

The Depot at Gibson Mill

We went went to Concord this past Saturday to check out The Depot at Gibson Mill which is the largest antique and designer mall in the south. I've been obsessed with antique and vintage pieces lately, so I was dying to see what they had for inventory. With over 460 booths, they did not disappoint. I swooned over just about every last damn thing that they had there, so keeping my enthusiasm and wallet in check was a little tricky. My mind was racing with inspiration for one redecorating project after another, so it was really overwhelming with all the choices at first, but I did manage to walk away with a few things without breaking the bank.
The best part of the Mill is that one of the tenants is the Auto Barn, which houses some of the baddest muscle cars this side of the mason dixon. They work as a storage facility and consignment shop so there is plenty of looking and shopping to do there as well. We definitely left there with a renewed enthusiasm for aquiring a muscle car. Maybe an old charger (I want a general lee to drive around Charlotte, while everyone else drives their bmw and mercedes) or maybe the Mach I that we saw in the showroom. Either way, it's nice to know where to go looking when we're ready to buy something completely bonafide.

From the antique and designer mall side........

What I brought home.....

This one is for a future craft project of sorts....

From the Auto Barn.......