Nashville Wife

Sending Paintings to NYC

June 15, 2019 18 Comments

Most of you know that Mr. Handsome makes oil and acrylic paintings as a hobby. We have enjoyed traveling around the Nashville area to different art shows and town festivals to sell his works of art. He has also displayed his paintings at coffee shops and other venues across the city. He started with landscapes and has since branched out to a variety of other subjects, including musical instruments, ships, abstract paintings, animals, and skylines. And for Christmas, he painted a portrait of me.

For the past couple months, he has been working on paintings to display at a venue in New York City. After many nights spent burning the midnight oil, he finished yesterday. This afternoon, we packaged the paintings up into three large boxes and dropped them off at UPS. It was kind of bittersweet to say goodbye to two dozen of his best paintings, but we are hopeful that some will sell. And it’s exciting to be able to say that he displayed his art in New York City. Little Buddy enjoyed laying on a blanket on the floor while daddy did many of the paintings.

Our Fantastic Faucet

June 12, 2019 19 Comments

At the request of my readers, I have posted in the past about products that make life easier for me (Magic Erasers, makeup removal cloths, and our baby sound machine are some of the most recent ones–I still use all three of those). While washing dishes one day day, I realized that another such item was right in front of my face, something I use many times a day but rarely stop to think about its practicality: our kitchen faucet.

In our first four years of marriage, Mr. Handsome and I have lived in three different homes. The first two were rentals, and this one is our first purchased house. In our first place, we had a small, shallow kitchen sink with an old-style faucet that spun 360 degrees. There was no backsplash, and behind the sink was our living room, so you could technically spin the faucet 180 degrees and release water onto the living room carpet. Not exactly a practical feature, unless perhaps you had a big stain on your carpet that needed to be washed.

In our second apartment, we had the same small sink but with a fancy faucet. Not only did the faucet have a high arch, but it also had a retractable head. It was so …

The Woes of Breastfeeding

June 8, 2019 58 Comments

One of the many things that I have learned since having a baby is how much work it takes to breastfeed. Before I became a mother, I got the impression that it was a fairly simple process that didn’t take much time or thought. Sure, it was common for ladies to have challenges at the…

“Hater” Comments

June 4, 2019 55 Comments

“You know you’ve really made it when you have haters and critics.” (Mr. Handsome) Later this month, I will celebrate my 10-year blogging anniversary. My blogging journey started in June 2009 with a simple summer recipe blog, and while that website is no longer live, I now have three additional blogs that are going strong….

St. Louis Vacation

May 31, 2019 25 Comments

I think it’s safe to say that Mr. Handsome and I are officially “zoo people.” So far, I have written posts about our trips to the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere (including Little Buddy’s first visit), the New Orleans Audubon Zoo, and the Memphis Zoo. Recently, we took a St. Louis vacation with Mr. Handsome’s family…

Cadillac Mountain at Sunset

May 29, 2019 11 Comments

Have you ever visited Acadia National Park along the Maine Coast? Last fall, after exploring Boston and the upper and lower sections of Old Quebec City and before doing our Maine lighthouse tour, Mr. Handsome and I made a quick stop at Acadia National Park. We arrived just as the sun was beginning to set….

Sleep Training

May 24, 2019 112 Comments

Happy Friday! As Little Buddy approaches his five-month milestone, we want to hear your thoughts on sleep training. Since he was born, our routine has always been to wrap him up in his soft blanket, turn on a TV show, and let him fall asleep all cuddled up to us. (Mr. Handsome is usually the…

Baby’s 1st Beach Trip

May 21, 2019 30 Comments

In celebration of Mother’s Day, we took Little Buddy on his first vacation, down to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. It required more work than our pre-baby trips, but we really enjoyed watching him experience the ocean for the first time. And I know I would have missed him terribly if we hadn’t taken him along….

Our Splurge-Worthy Favorites

May 18, 2019 46 Comments

Since you are are an avid money saver, is there anything you think is worth splurging on or that you don’t feel as bad to spend a lot of money on? Mr. Handsome and I had some good laughs over this question. It also lead to a discussion about our favorite flavor of ice cream….

Boston at Sunrise

May 15, 2019 4 Comments

Hope your week is going well. To brighten your day, I thought I would share five lovely photos that my youngest sister-in-law took. For those who don’t know, Mr. Handsome has six younger siblings. Four of them are well past college age, but the two little ones are still in high school (although one is…