july
We celebrated the 4th with free hotdogs and a side of beer. Sipped on tasty summer cocktails at Shuckin’ Shack. Admired all the cute (very teeny-tiny!) baby lizards in our garden. I made homemade vanilla bean ice cream, blueberry lemon muffins and baked a coconut cake with edible flowers from our garden for a book-cluber’s birthday. Our “what’s new” pick of the month led us to a delicious dinner with friends at Banh Sai.
august
We hosted a strawberry summer themed brunch complete with scones and discovered Northwest Land and Cattle with friends. Phil enjoyed a bachelor trip to the mountains in Asheville. We very much enjoyed attending our first ever Margarita Crawl in Wilmington! We finally made it over to Folks Café for our what’s new pick and we’ll be super bummed to see them go. I hosted my neighborhood book club and whipped up my first ever peach trifle for dessert. We ended the month with a very fun day trip with Rye to Raleigh where we explored the Flea Market at the State Fairgrounds and had lunch on the patio at Raleigh Beer Garden. They were SUPER dog friendly and even had a puppy themed menu where we ordered Rye his own hamburger – I might need to make a late post about this 😉
september
End of summer clearance deals led us to score a very cheap inflatable pool that we refer to as our “infinity” pool because we set it up an ‘infinite’ amount of times in our backyard (lol). We said “prost!” for our first local Oktoberfest at Leland Brewing and that inspired us to attempt our first batch of made from scratch pierogi at home! An impromptu date night took us to Wine Knot sky bar for Whitney Futrell’s art show where I was lucky to score an original piece. We also discovered the gem of South Front Tavern and experienced our first wine and oyster pairing at Flying Machine in Wrightsville Beach. In between fun weekend outings we managed to start refreshing our guest room with a fresh coat of paint and refinished the nightstands.
october
Our month started off with back-to-back celebrations for Ollie’s 9th “gotcha day” and Rye’s 6th birthday! To welcome the return of autumn, we hit up the pumpkin patch at NW Land & Cattle with friends where we siped apple slushies, snacked on apple cider donuts and picked out a few cute pumpkins for our front porch. Our favorite pretzels came to Brunswick Beer & Cider for a fun collab with an evening of unique beer pairings – our favorite! I baked another fun festive cake for a book club birthday. We stayed busy knocking out our long list of home improvements/projects and after we invested in a paint sprayer, we never looked back (lol!). In between home improvement projects, we took advantage of the “locals summer” and spent several evenings strolling quiet beaches and sipping cocktails at the bar at Koko’s. Our elephant ear bloomed for the first time! My “what’s new” pick was on point for the month and led us on a ghost tour of downtown Wilmington where we learned some very interesting history through eerie tales of ghostly encounters. I really enjoyed learning about the actively haunted dwellings and was surprised when my absolute favorite historic home was the last stop on our tour!
november
The last (and biggest!) project on our list to finish before the end of the year was an entry wall with antique hooks for coats. Nothing says “true love” quite like choosing to spend the weekend of our second wedding anniversary tackling that – which proved to be a tiny challenge when we discovered that our walls aren’t square (oops!), but we were successful! We also celebrated our anniversary (and the completed entryway, yay!) with a delicious patio dinner at Kipo’s, which also happened to be our “what’s new” pick of the month. We also savored lunches at Gnome Nom Nom and took Rye out to Brunswick Beer & Cider – also very dog friendly on their patio. The following weekend we hosted a house full of friends that brought yummy pies for our fourth annual Pie Party – we look forward to it every year! And we continued that theme and baked endless pies all month, some of which included mini apple hand pies and a new one, cranberry! We were also thankful to spend Thanksgiving locally with friends this year.
december
The baking continued into the holidays with endless batches of homemade cookies and we donned our ugly Christmas sweaters to watch the tree lighting at Town Hall from the balcony of Leland Brewing with cold beverages in hand. The festivities also included my first trip to Thalian Hall to see a showing of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. On Christmas day, we hosted friends for brunch and they reciprocated by having us over for dinner! While we missed seeing family this year, we were so grateful for cozier holidays in our home that didn’t involve us having to travel. Perks of NYE being on a Tuesday allowed for my “what’s new” pick of the month to bless us with $2 taco specials and margaritas at Tequila’s Waterfront for dinner. We rang in new year at home by prepping cinnamon rolls completely from scratch that present-2025-us really appreciated from past-2024-us. Lol
