Celebrating Our Second Wedding Anniversary

Each year, Nick and I like to visit the Fonthill Museum, where we had our wedding.  It's fun that we can visit and remember the day and actually have a purpose for being there, since it is open to the public.

Last year we went on a behind-the-scenes tour of Fonthill, which was built by Henry Chapman Mercer as his home.  He built the entire structure with poured concrete to protect his artifacts that he collected from his travels around the world.  The structure was finished in 1912.  The behind-the-scenes tour, and any tour at Fonthill, is fun because to visit the 8 bedrooms and various drawing rooms, you have to wind up and down the 32 staircases that Mercer included in the design.  Pressed into all of the concrete are his artifacts, including tiles that he picked up from around the world and his own tiles, made at the Moravian Tile Works, which is located next door.  Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in Fonthill, but check out Atlas Obscura's page on Fonthill for some pictures and more history.

Since we had already toured Fonthill a couple of times, Nick and I decided to tour the Tile Works this year.

It was equally as fascinating as Fonthill but we got to take pictures!  The first stop on the tour is a large room that, like Fonthill, contains Mercer's artifacts and tiles.  I could have stayed in here for hours looking at everything.

We got to sit in front of this huge and amazing fireplace while we watched a 17-minute video on the history of the Tile Works, which included a demonstration of how the tiles are made.  The Tile Works is still in operation today and they use the same exact methods that Mercer invented back in the early 1900s.  It really is fascinating how they use molds to make traditional tiles, as well as the mosaic tiles that Chapman was famous for.  Chapman was commissioned to use his mosaics to design the floor of the Pennsylvania State Capitol building.

There were even more artifacts hanging above the fireplace.

After the video was finished, we proceeded up a very narrow staircase to a room that displayed some tiles and further explained the history of the Tile Works. Even the staircases have tiles on them.

Here is one of Mercer's famous mosaics next to the cast that was used to make it.

There were shelves stacked high with tiles, giving the impression of what the storage rooms would look like when Mercer was alive.

We then weaved through some hallways holding kilns.  Next we descended down a spooky and narrow staircase to a room where artisans were making tiles for the present day. 

In a cellar beneath the tile-making room was the clay storage room.  It had a gravel floor and was pretty humid, which kept the clay nice and moist while it was stored.

On the ceiling of the clay storage room was this saying, displayed in tiles made at the Tile Works.

We weaved through another hallway of kilns and an explanation of the firing process until we reached a showroom of the different tiles made at the Tile Works. 

The showroom was beautiful.  Many of Mercer's tiles told famous stories, such as stories from the Bible or classic folklore.

Even the exterior of the Tile Works features Mercer's tiles.  Aren't the chimneys and Spanish-style roofs beautiful?

We found an old bird's nest in one of the window nooks!

I love how the trees are reflected in the window panes.

After our tour at the Tile Works, we headed next door to Fonthill for a short walk around the grounds. The drive up to Fonthill is gorgeous and made for an excellent backdrop for our wedding photos.

Next to the main house is the carriage house.  The upstairs is decorated with tiles just as Fonthill is, and served as our very awesome cocktail hour location.  As I mentioned yesterday, our guests were able to mill about the grounds and visit the inside of the carriage house and its balcony, as well as the ground floor of Fonthill Museum.  Near the end of the cocktail hour, Nick and I were able to make a quick visit to the museum!  Our guests really enjoyed being able to see the inside of Fonthill and were also thankful to get inside for a few minutes since it was a chilly October evening!

The Fonthill grounds are filled with gorgeous old trees.  I absolutely love it there.

We even spotted a woodpecker!  He was going to town on this hole, which appeared to have been formed when a branch snapped off.

After our visit to Fonthill, we headed across the street to the Cross Keys Diner.  It's pretty small, but we love its classic diner food and hometown feel, even if it's not located in our town.  They make the best grilled cheese and we always split a black and white milkshake.  While on vacation, we realized that "black and white" flavored milkshake must be a regional thing, but it really is the best choice for a milkshake—it's vanilla and chocolate.  Yum!

We then ventured into Doylestown proper to visit Quilt Art: International Expressions at the Michener Art Museum, the very first showing of the exhibit in the US!

Photography isn't permitted in the exhibit, but it was awesome!  If you are in the area I highly recommend that you visit before it leaves on December 31.

Even though we have visited before, we also took a walk around the Michener.  One of our favorite spots in the Michener is the George Nakashima Reading Room, which was constructed after the death of the famous woodworker.

The lighting and the clean lines of the furniture make it such a peaceful place to sit. While we were relaxing, a museum tour came in so we stayed and listened.  George Nakashima had a woodworking studio in New Hope, PA, which is a short drive from Doylestown.  He and his family were sent to a camp in Idaho during World War II, where he started making furniture.  Eventually he gained a sponsorship from Antonin Raymond and he and his family moved to New Hope, where Nakashima worked on Raymond's farm.  Soon he opened his workshop and the rest is history.

In the 1970s, this chair would have cost around $600.  Today, it is worth about $10,000!  Have you ever sat in a $10,000 chair?  I have and it is VERY comfortable.  We could have sat there for hours without having sore butts.  This man knew what he was doing.

Nakashima also made sure to keep the elements of the wood that made it unique.  Most furniture retailers would refrain from using pieces of wood with cracks or holes, but thinking that each piece of wood had its own personality, Nakashima kept those elements to give the furniture character.

Once we left the Michener, we were in need of a short nap before we headed downtown for dinner at Tinto.  Jose Garces, the newest Iron Chef, has a bunch of restaurants in Philly and we had been to almost all of them except for Tinto.  Nick and I love to order the tasting menu at his restaurants because we get to taste the dishes that the chef hand picked.  Tinto was good, but it wasn't nearly as good as our favorite of Garces' restaurants, Distrito, which is Mexico City themed.  We get an amazingly delicious meal every time we go there and the atmosphere is fun too.  

After all of that culture and good food, we returned home happily exhausted.  We'll have to come up with something good to top this anniversary celebration next year!

Our Second Wedding Anniversary

I can't believe it has already been two years since Nick and I got married!  Our wedding was at the very beginning of my crafting era, but we did incorporate some items to make the day a little more personal.

Most of the pictures in this post were taken by our awesome photographer, Misty Dawn Pfeil.  Check out the blog post for our wedding for more pics!  And while you're at it, you can check out our engagement session that we had in downtown Newtown.

We had our ceremony and reception at the Fonthill Museum in Doylestown, PA (you'll learn more about Fonthill and its designer/owner Henry Chapman Mercer tomorrow).  As soon as we set foot on the grounds we knew it would be perfect.  Doesn't it look awesome?

It looks even better in Misty's photos!  The cool thing was that we got to have the museum open for our guests to check out during cocktail hour.

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

This is a little off-topic, but I know you wouldn't forgive me if I didn't include a picture of my dress.  I absolutely loved the back of my dress.  I liked the front and I loved the lace straps, but the back is what sold me on it.

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

Nick and I were excited to incorporate things we love about the Fall into our wedding.  We made all of our table centerpieces by potting mums into terracotta pots.  Nick then set up a rig to display some of our favorite books to act as the table markers.

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

We printed out library cards to help our guests find their tables.  Originally we tried to use a typewriter to type onto real library check-out cards, but it was too hard to get them perfectly aligned between the lines so they were legible.  Instead, I took to Adobe InDesign to copy the design of the library cards and then inserted all of the text into the template.  This was MUCH easier.  I found the curvy toothpicks online.  They are meant to label hors d’oeuvres.

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

Back when Nick was a reporter, he did a story on a woman who carved pumpkins competitively.  We contacted her to see if she'd carve a pumpkin using the logo that we developed for the wedding and she agreed!  This lovely sat outside of our front door for a couple of weeks after the wedding.  We had the fanciest pumpkin on the block!

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

All of the bouquets and boutonnieres were Gerbera daisies, so we ordered a few extra to scatter amongst the cupcakes.  I found our cupcake stand online (unfortunately I can't remember where).  It was a simple cardboard stand.  We printed our programs on our computer using craft paper, so I kept the tops of the stand tiers plain and glued purple ribbon along the sides of the tiers.  And oh yeah, the cupcakes were the most delicious cupcakes we have ever had.  The good thing is that they are from a local bakery so we can order some whenever we want!  We also ordered a small round cake for the top of the cupcake tower, which my mom wrapped up like the apocalypse was coming so it would taste just as fresh on our one year anniversary.  It worked!

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

Lastly, I made small clutches for my bridesmaids and flower girl using the Itty Bitty Bag pattern that I found on BurdaStyle. They were surprisingly easy to make, even though I was pretty new to sewing at the time.  I made one for myself too and still keep it in my giant work bag in case I need to run out anywhere during the day. I especially love the green button.

Nick and I were so happy that we got to put our own stamp on our wedding day and that we had such a skilled photographer to document everything for us.  We were a little slow in sorting through our proofs to compile an album, but we should finally receive it in a few weeks.  The cover will feature one of our favorite photos from the day, shown below.  We can't wait to look through all of the pictures again!

Photo by Misty Dawn Photo

You may have noticed that I haven't showed my wedding ring. This wasn't an oversight!  You'll have to come back and check it out for this week's Pretty Things Thursday!

Visiting Our Nation's Capital, Part II

(In case you missed it, here’s Part I, in which we visited the National Museum of Natural History and dined at Founding Farmers.)

The next morning we had brunch at Busboys & Poets, a restaurant devoted to Langston Hughes.  If you don’t know his story, Langston Hughes got his big break by dropping some of his poetry in the lap of a poet who was dining at the restaurant where he worked as a busboy.  Who was the poet?  One Nicholas Vachel Lindsay.  Weird, no?  I indulged in a mimosa and French toast while I enjoyed the laidback atmosphere of the restaurant.  Sometimes brunch places are a bit too snooty, something Busboys & Poets definitely isn’t. 

Sunday’s main agenda item was a visit to the relatively new museum, the Newseum.  The idea behind the Newseum is a bit different than any other museum that I’ve been to.  Basically they take a look at how media covers certain events.  From their website: The Newseum “educates the public about the value of a free press in a free society and tells the stories of the world's important events in unique and engaging ways.”  Pretty cool, huh? 

You start out by viewing an orientation video in the basement of the Newseum, before moving on to the G-Men and Journalists exhibit.  This exhibit, obviously, focused on the FBI and how they handled some of the most notorious criminals in history: gangsters, spies, bombers, etc.  I was surprised at how many big news stories I had forgotten about, like the DC Sniper and Jayson Blair.  They had the Unabombers actual cabin on display!  (Speaking of the Unabomber, I never knew that he got that nickname because he targeted universities and airlines.)  There was a small section on the Waco, Texas incident, which has fascinated me since childhood.  My parents didn’t allow me to watch the TV movie since it probably wasn’t the most appropriate thing for a 9-year-old to be watching.  I can’t pinpoint why it’s so interesting to me, but I guess it’s the combination of my fascination with cults (and how people get sucked in) and conspiracies.  I didn’t know until Sunday that the Davidians set the fires and not the FBI (although this is debated, I believe the FBI on this one.  David Koresh was a total nutter).

From the basement, you take a glass elevator to the top floor of the building, where there is a terrace with awesome views of the city. 

The first exhibit that we saw on the top floor was Covering Katrina.  We had some exposure to what life in New Orleans looked like during and after Hurricane Katrina from the news and, when we visited New Orleans in September, Nick and I saw an exhibit at their art museum featuring photographs of New Orleans during and after the storm.  The Newseum exhibit featured news footage and interviews of members of the media and artifacts from covering the storm, including flood-ruined cameras and reporters’ notebooks. 

While weaving through a few floors, we came upon a huge gallery of the history of news coverage.  There were a million front page newspapers from the beginning of newspapers up until present day, including this old Philadelphia Inquirer from during the Civil War.

Then we arrived at the 9/11 Gallery.  The gallery included a timeline of the day’s events, a tribute to the only journalist to lose his life during the attack, and a short film that featured interviews of the journalists who covered the attacks in New York, along with their footage.  There was a single box of tissues in front of a two story wall covered in front pages of the newspapers around the world that covered the attacks.

The Newseum was slightly emotionally draining for me.  Seeing the devastating footage of September 11^th and Katrina started to weigh on me.  Even though they are completely different situations, both are overwhelmingly sad. When I look at what happened in New Orleans, I can’t help but think, “We did this to ourselves.”  And that is awful.

The Newseum wasn’t wall-to-wall upsetting though.  One of my favorite exhibits was The President’s Photographer about the White House photographer who is able to catch the President in his everyday life.  We were introduced to the exhibit by a video on the huge 100-foot Big Screen Theater.  One of my favorite images featured in this exhibit is of Barack and Michelle Obama taking a freight elevator up to the inaugural ball.  There are times to be serious and there are times to be silly and there are times to just simply enjoy the company of those around you, and I think this exhibit does a good job at reminding us of that. 

Image Source

To drill this point home, the President’s Photographer was followed by a small exhibit focusing on the First Dogs.  I loved this.  Hands down my favorite out of this bunch was Bill Clinton with Socks on his shoulder.  Are we surprised that in an exhibit focusing on dogs I choose the one picture with a cat in it?  I think it’s a little weird that they strapped a leash on him and walked him around like he was a dog.  Nevertheless, I love a good cat and owner picture.

Image Source

We also got a chance to view the Pulitzer Prize Photography Gallery, which got a little heavy at times.  Being a photojournalist seems like a pretty tough job.  There is a fine line between having to do your job—in this case, capture a moment in history—and act as a human.  Some of the photographs depicted awful situations, including homelessness, famine, and war.  Next to the photos was a description of how the photographer got the shot.  Next to one picture of a young, starving African girl with a vulture lurking in the background, the description told of how, after taking that heartbreaking shot, everyone asked the photographer why he hadn’t picked the child up.  The photographer was so emotionally wracked by this that he took his life less than a year later.  It’s very easy to make judgments about situations looking in, but having to live through the situations, document them, and then deal with the reactions by many is a very difficult thing.  I definitely don’t think I would be able to emotionally handle that job.

After hours of attempting to remain composed, I was sufficiently hungry for a late lunch.  We headed over to Matchbox in Capitol Hill for some absolutely delicious brick oven pizza.  Mine came with double pepperoni, and the pepperoni was toasted perfectly so the edges were crispy but the middle was still warm and chewy.  For dessert we shared some doughnuts covered in powdered sugar and a little cinnamon.  It was the finale of our very delicious food tour of DC and it didn’t disappoint.

Since we still had a little time to kill before heading to Union Station to catch our train home, we drove over to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.  And it’s right across the Tidal Basin from the Washington Monument.  How nice of the folks in Washington to think of perfect photo opportunities.

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is impressive.  We couldn’t recall something as big and classy existing elsewhere in this country.  His statue is huge too!  There weren’t too many people around when we were walking to the Memorial, but when we got up to the portico we were surprised to find a bunch of school tour groups hanging out.  On a Sunday?  It was pretty packed, but the sun going down and a nice breeze blowing through provided for a relaxed viewing of this beautiful structure.  The strange thing is that the Memorial is open until 11:00pm.  I would love to one day see the Memorial at night.

We cut the viewing of the Memorial a little short to allow enough time to get back to Union Station.  After a short wait in line, we were back aboard a lovely Amtrak train headed back to the City of Brotherly Love.

With good planning, we were able to pack in a lot during our short stay.  But there’s still so much that we want to see!  I predict another weekend trip to DC sometime in 2012.  Perhaps we’ll make a theme out of our trips and go the next the world will supposedly end.