my dad is awesome

That's pretty much the consensus at the Ostrander house. While he was visiting he changed our furnace filter, the windshield wipers in Justin's car and hung pegboard in the garden closet section of the studio. He's the best!

My parents came to visit the weekend before Thanksgiving. Sadly, Justin was out of town for most of the time, but we still had fun. They got in Friday night and we headed over to the Nashville Night Market. (It's a new thing the farmer's market is doing about once a month. Some of the vendors come out from 6-8 on Friday night.) It was pretty cool. Sample city!! I wish we hadn't eaten dinner before we went. We could have eaten for free. We sampled some amazing apple cider, sausage, popcorn, sweets and other things. We also picked up our meat order from Weldon over at Emerald Glen Farms. They also had the best apple cider ever.

Saturday we went to Great Harvest bread. The manager gave us so many sample tastes of things, we were stuffed before we even paid for what we picked out. A stop at Whole Foods was a must as well as to Trader Joe's. That afternoon we also went to the Frist Museum so they could check out the Chihuly exhibit as well as "The Birth of Impressionism". The best part was the Children's area. :) We played with blocks, created our own stop animation, drew a mannequin from different angles and drew each other's faces through a glass wall with dry erase markers. This is my drawing of Mom. Not bad?

Both Saturday and Sunday we worked out in the studio some. Mom and Dad helped to clean out the garden closet and Dad hung the pegboard and helped me figure out the best way to hang everything on the wall. Justin and I had tried to hang the pegboard before, but our sad little circular saw wouldn't cut through the board. Turns out, no matter how powerful your battery is, the saw won't cut if every other tooth is missing. Oops. Thanks for pointing that out, Dad! :)

Justin came home Sunday early afternoon and we ate a late lunch before taking them back to the airport. After dropping them off, Justin said, "Your dad is awesome!" and I said, "He totally is."

Hotlanta

Well, Atlanta wasn't hot but it was still fun! We headed out early Friday morning after dropping Riley off at her best friend, Tito's house. :) We pulled in around noon, just in time for Justin to set the stage. We were pretty much lazy all afternoon and didn't take advantage of anything Atlanta has to offer-lame us!

The theater the guys played in was a Fox Theater and was amazing!! It had a super cool balcony and the ceiling looked like the sky.

It also had sort of a middle eastern theme:

The guys played a great show! We stayed in Atlanta for the night and headed to Chattanooga Saturday morning. The drive was so pretty with all the colorful trees. The leaves are still on the trees further south. Chattanooga was the "wives show". Everyone on the gig who is married had his wife out to the show. That was really fun. Katherine (David), Haley (Kyle, bass player), Rana (Erich, drummer) and Erin (Josh, merch guy) all drove out Saturday. We also had some good friends make the drive to see Justin play. It was so fun to have everyone out.

happy fall, ya'll

Ok, I know I've been majorly neglecting this blog. For the first time since moving to Nashville, we actually have internet in our house...that we paid for!! WOOHOO! So, that combined with the fact I just got a brand new MacBook Air means hopefully I'll be blogging much more often. There's a lot to catch up on. Let's see if I can hit the high points:

My little brother is married! YAY! We're all so happy to have Jessie in the family.

Justin is out playing with David Nail this fall. They're opening for Lady Antebellum on the Need You Now tour. And no...you cannot have tickets to the KC show.

I got to see my best friend, Meaghan on my trip to Connecticut. And....she's pregnant!!

This weekend I'll be with the band again (I even have a lanyard with my name on it. I'm kind of a big deal.) for a few days. The guys are playing in Atlanta and Chattanooga and most of the wives are coming to see the show. It will be lots of fun.

I'm so looking forward to the holiday season and it generally feeling like fall. Nashville's a little confused on that scene. The highs this week have been in the 70's. In November!!

2 important things

#1 My brother is married!! I will do a big wedding post soon...promise.

#2 Justin was on national television!! If you live under a rock and haven't heard about this yet, you can watch him here and here.

my garden...

...is amazing!! If I do say so myself. I have green beans, carrots, various herbs, strawberries, tomatoes, green bell peppers, jalapenos, cucumbers and zucchini.

Also, we are leaving tonight for Kansas. My little brother is getting married! I'm so excited. :)

bridal shower

Sooo...I'm a little late in posting this especially since the wedding is only two and a half weeks away. AHHH!! So exciting! Anywho...I went home a while ago to help my mom and Abbe throw Jessie (future sis-in-law) a shower. We did a pretty bang up job, I'd say. It was really fun to see all the family come together. We've actually known Jessie and her family for a long time, like since before Aaron was even born. Basically Jessie's dad farms the land that was my great Grandpa's. It's kind of confusing unless I go into the whole story (which I won't unless you really want me to.) Enjoy the shower in pics:

My mom decorated the tables with vintage table clothes, pics of the cute couple, flower vases and CANDY! Each table was unique. Such creativity!

Wedding cookies. The squares are monograms of their initals, A, J and D.

We made these paper fans to put over the mantel out of scrapbook paper.

Sisters!

Bride to be and the Moms.

The whole crew. Don't judge the camera angle to harshly. I balanced my camera on a folding chair and managed to fit everyone in!

Breaking the Silence

A lot of you also read my sister-in-law, Abbe's blog. If you don't, she posted today about what they've been going through the last 6 weeks. Please just read and pray and be aware. It has been a very very difficult time for all of us. Please pray for them and encourage them.

All Doll(ed) Up.

Girl's weekend

This is really late in coming, but I celebrated Memorial weekend with my college girlfriends in St. Louis. We were missing some of our group, but still managed to have a blast!!

We stayed at a bed and breakfast in St. Charles. The outside looked harmless enough...

but the inside was a little Victorian creepy. The girls decided they needed to try on some of the decor. :)

We went to the botanical gardens.

Saw a movie and ate some FroYo. Can you guess who's is who's?

And some got their noses pierced! I really wanted to redo mine, but wasn't sure I'd be allowed at work. :(

We had a fabulous weekend of catching up and talking and playing. Everyone's already planning on coming to Nashville next year. Yay!!

sleep talking

So I talk in my sleep. Not always. But usually when I fall asleep on the couch watching a movie or when Justin wakes me up after not being asleep long. It been happening more often lately. I'm coherent enough to sort of remember it. Basically what I think I'm saying is not what I'm actually saying and so I get really frustrated when Justin doesn't answer me correctly. He emailed me the other day a conversation between the two of us. Enjoy.

you: so who was in the bag?

me: ummm...what?

you: (frustrated snort) you know...who's in the bag, and who's out of it?

me: (suppressing laughter) what do you mean?

you: (still frustrated) yes you know lol. (yes, you literally said lol)

me: oh wow.

you: (silence. you fell back asleep)

we are nashville

i love nashville!! i'm amazed at how this city has joined together to help each other. we are now getting some national news coverage, but it took quite a while for the media to realize what a disaster we have over here. a blogger (who usually writes about hockey, i think) wrote an amazing article that was kind of a rally cry for nashvillians. it's become our slogan as we're getting through the tough clean up. check it out.

justin and i went out and helped on saturday. it was unreal. we completely gutted a family's home. we either packed up or laid out all their belongings depending on whether they were still wet or not. a couple guys were crawling around in the very small still soaked crawl space, pulling out insulation. nasty, nasty job. when we had to leave they were starting to rip up the floors and the drywall. the homeowners were overwhelmed with the amount of help they had. the man said, "i've never had this many people in my home for a party, let alone to help me clean up after something like this!"

we're still conserving water and hoping the other water treatment plant will be up and running soon. the river finally fell below flood stage a few days ago. (flood stage is at 40 feet and the river crested at 52 feet.) today the tide "loads of hope" trucks arrived and they'll be washing, drying and folding flood victims clothing using their own trucked in water.

if any of you want to help, you can donate $10 to the nashville red cross by texting "redcross" to 90999.

major damage

Well, things are pretty bleak here in Nashville. You may not have heard about this, because the national news thinks there are other things more important. Nashville got over 15 inches of rain in about 48 hours. The Cumberland River, which twists throughout Nashville has overrun it's banks. It crested last night at 51 feet. It has flooded downtown, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ol Opry, the Titans stadium and many other places. The Opryland Hotel has 10 feet of water in it and all the guests had to be evacuated. The death toll in metro Nashville alone is over 10, I think. Our house is fine, but the street behind us is still flooded. There are two water treatment plants in Nashville. One has been compromised due to flood waters and has been shut down. They are sandbagging the other in hopes to save it from being flooded as well. We are all being asked to conserve water.

Ariel view of downtown:

Wide view shot of Broadway, downtown:

The Grand Ol Opry:

One of the areas hit the hardest, Bellevue:

I-24:

i need a boat

As I'm typing this, my house is shaking from thunder and I can barely hear myself think due to the sound of INCREDIBLY hard rain on my roof. Most of our landscaping in ruined. I'm so worried my garden is ruined!!

Yesterday my friend Rana and I were on our way home from a baby shower in Spring Hill (45 minutes away) and everyone suddenly came to a stop on the highway. We figured it was a wreck due to the rain. Well, it wasn't. There was water covering the highway across the barrier in the middle so high, it would have been over your head if you tried to walk through. We ended up turning around and going the wrong way on the highway after sitting in the parking lot that was I65 for an hour and a half. It took us over 4 hours to finally get home. It was a nightmare. At least we weren't on the other side of town. Look up "Nasvhille I24 flood" on Youtube and you'll see a video of a mobile home floating down the highway. Eight people are dead so far. I guess it makes my worry about our yard seem a little less important.

i need your help!

Ok, all you creative types out there. Now that I've finally finished my CD shelf, I need some tips on how to decorate. What should I put on top? What should go on the wall above? Should I put anything in the really skinny shelves? We can move things around on the shelves themselves some too, if we need to. Here are some pictures of the rest of the room, so you can get an idea of the style.

This is looking into the den from the living room.

This is standing on the fireplace looking back into the room.

And again, the shelf and wall above. The door to the right is the storage/laundry room.

do it yourself project

i bought this shelf at the flea market a while ago and just got around to finishing the project. when i bought it, it was 8 feet long!! I thought it would fit on this wall, but as you can see, it overlaps the storage room door. when the fam was here, helping build the studio, i had dad cut it in half for me. we shaved off about a foot, and now it fits perfectly! i drybrushed it with some golden yellow paint and viola! i still need to finish loading it up with all our CDs, but here's the finished project!

Justin's weekend

This weekend Justin is going to

and staying at

and playing with

at the

grandma, maggie and wynonna

I love them! Aren't they the cutest??

Totally met her last night.

i don't know the difference between lizards and frogs

we have a pond next to our deck in the back that we've been cleaning out. it's really really gross and it's covered in inches of poopy sludge at the bottom. (yummy mental picture, huh?) i bought a pond pump to get all the water out and we'll be using it to make a little waterfall when it's all nice and clean. anyway....in the process of cleaning it all out, we've discovered that we have one ginormous frog. it's at least as big as my fist. really grosses me out. so, when i saw a bunch of little guys swimming at the bottom of the pond, i assumed they were tadpoles and we would have little frogs jumping around every where soon. they were still in the long tail, little back legs stage. well, i'm dumb. they're actually newts! so we're saving them in a bucket and are going to dump most of them in the creek down the street. there are just too many for our little pond. so i feel really smart now!

newt on the left, tadpole on the right













here's our pond, mostly drained and still full of yucky sludge.

hard work

these pics aren't taken from the exact same angles, but I think you get the idea. Justin has helped some, mainly with the things I think are too gross, like fishing dead frogs out of the pond. But most of this clearing has been my blood, sweat and tears. Ok, maybe just sweat, but still. Eventually this will be a beautiful perennial flower bed. We are keeping the pond, but cleaning it out and eventually running a pump to a little waterfall feature that I found when I cleared out a bunch of the decorative grass (which I HATE!)

BEFORE




AFTER