I’ve been MIA from the blog for a week for a good reason: I actually, legitimately had some time off from work, and not just any time but a Saturday off. That’s, like, unheard of this time of year for me.

Had I been left to my own devices, I would have lounged all weekend in my PJs, but the Modern Love Machine was having none of that. He was determined to throw a party, and not just any kind of party, but a cornhole tournament. I told him fine, as long as he did all the planning and told me when to be presentable for our guests, which he did.

I say cornhole assuming you have all spent some part of your recent life tailgating, but just in case you’re unfamiliar with the quasi-sport, here’s the Wikipedia explanation.

I realize I’ve not shared much of our new house with you, which probably has more to do with the fact that it was a mess for a few months. Since I went into full-on hostess mode on Saturday morning trying to help the MLM get the house ready, I figured I’d snap a few shots to share with you.

Here’s the dining table that we bought from an awesome local store back in July, all ready for the burgers and brats that would eventually be cooked and the chips and dip that would be arriving with the guests. It’s more money than I’ve spent on anything that I wouldn’t consider a life-altering purchase (house, car, college education) but we both adore this table so much. And it fits in our huge, squarish dining room.

The flowers I, um, borrowed from the greenway trail that’s a block from our house. The tablecloth came from World Market, as does much of my cheap decor. The window you see is part of a wall of windows, which, awesome, right? And the dark green walls I cannot WAIT to paint because I don’t like dark walls. Except that the MLM and I can’t agree on a color.

We have a sun room-like space at the back of the house. It’s how we access the back yard and the basement, but isn’t heated or cooled which means we hardly ever get a chance to use it. It’s big enough for my old dining table and a bookshelf of plants and has tons of windows and a sunny yellow color. But the coolest feature of the room is the chalkboard someone built into the wall, which served as a perfect spot for our cornhole bracket. Which I had to redo three times. Here it is in the second incarnation:

Here’s Lucydog, but you know her already.

Which brings us to the backyard, where the cornhole tournament is in action (BTW, I forgot to mention I WON, or rather my teammate, who is a ridiculous cornhole player, won for me.) The fence is just high enough to keep the pooches in but low enough to meet the historic zoning standards. That’s an apartment building across the street, where two friends of mine just happen to live.

(Sorry for the blurriness. I hate using the flash and have a cheap camera that won’t let me adjust the settings.)

We’ve been collecting glass spaghetti/jam/salsa jars to serve as centerpieces for our wedding reception. Because I am nothing if not cheap and refuse to spend ridiculous amounts of money on things no one will pay attention to. The glass jars will be candle holders. I thought it might be nice to use them for something besides the wedding, so I turned them into lanterns for our party. Direction on how to do that are here.

We have one tree on our whole property. While I wish we had tons more, I have to say our lone tree is quite an awesome tree. Very good for hanging recycled jar lanterns. Or a bird house or wind chimes, or whatever. Also, we have a garage. I never dreamed of having a garage, but we got really lucky. It doesn’t have an electric door opener, so we never park the cars in there, but it does make for good storage and a good place for the MLM to change the cars’ oil. Which he does, because he’s awesome like that.

So that’s it for now. Like I said, I, I mean my team won and since we started drinking at 1 p.m., everyone had left by 10 p.m., which, I love hanging out with my friends but had no complaints about being in bed before midnight.