Atlanta Braves Opening Night

We were lucky enough to get tickets to the Atlanta Braves' Home Opener for the 2012 season against the Milwaukee Brewers.  We were extremely excited about this for a few reasons.  First, and most important, it was the anniversary of when Stephen and I met.  It will also be a special night for us.  Secondly, who doesn't love Braves games and all the added excitement of the start of a new season?!  Third, it was Stephen's first time in a Suite at Turner Field.  It was such a great time and I love sharing new experiences with Stephen.  Lastly, Ryan Braun is on the Brewers team and we HATE him.  During the off season Braun was found guilty of using performance enhancing drugs.  He appealed it and miraculously it was overturned for pretty silly reasons.  He's the luckiest man in baseball.  I can't wait for his stats to drop off this year when he doesn't use his drugs.  The rest of Atlanta let him know how much we like him with a barrage of Boos every time he came up to bat or touched the ball.

Look how happy we are!  And look at that crowd!  Over 50k in attendance.

The National Anthem was sung buy Grammy winning duo, The Civil Wars.  I was a little hesitant at first when they walked out to the microphones.  He looks like a bizarro Johnny Depp and she was too cute to trust.  Then they started and it was beautiful.  They harmonize beautifully and there isn't a bunch of crazy notes added to their music - it's just them and a guitar.  The band is Joy Williams and John Paul White.  No backup band, just the two of them.  They opened for Adele her last tour and had a song play, in it's entirety on Grey's Anatomy.  Not too shabby.  Their second show together was at Atlanta favorite, Eddie's Attic.  They won TWO Grammy's this year - Best Folk Album  and Best Country Duo/Group Performance.  Man!  Not bad for a 2-person band.  And let me tell you, Joy lives up to her name. She never stopped smiling the entire time they sang when they came back onto the field for a short set before the Friday night Fireworks started.  Her smile is contagious.

I urge you to check out The Civil Wars.  I'll be downloading all the songs I can get my hands on.

I need HBO for Girls

We don't have cable television in our house.  We're okay with it.  It saves money, we don't spend evenings in front of a History Channel marathon on crayons or something similar and I hate Comcast.  If there was a way for me to get wi-fi in my house without using Comcast I would.  I definitely don't want to give them more money for cable.

Until now.  This morning in my 5 minutes that I watch The Today Show, Brian Williams' daughter, Allison Williams, was giving an interview about her new HBO series, Girls.  She's absolutely gorgeous, has an amazing voice and a beautiful personality (not to mention awesome dad) so I was intrigued to do more research.  PS - did you know she also graduated from Yale?  She's also written and acted in some Funny or Die skits.

Click here for the HBO official website with clips and trailers.

I need this.  I need this show in my TV Sunday nights.  Not sold yet - Judd Apatow is an Executive Producer.  The lead female actress, Lena Dunham, is also the Executive Producer, Director and Writer.  She doesn't look a day over 25 (She'll actually be 26 next month).  There is no way she's that accomplished and her she is with a show on HBO.  I looked at her IMDB page and I don't recognize a single thing she's been in.

I need a friend with HBO to set up a weekly date with me, at their house, so I can watch this show.  It looks like it's only been shot for 6 episodes, that's not too much to ask, right?

DH Stanton Elementary School is safe!

It's been a crazy 10 days.  We have attended 3 separate meetings attempting to convince our school board that the elementary school in our neighborhood needs to stay open.  Last night, after 11:30pm, the board voted to close some schools, but to save our school and 2 others.  What a long, hard fight it has been and it's such a relief that it paid off in the end.

Our school is in the very middle of the neighborhood.  Students walk to school in a neighborhood where some parents don't even have a car.  The school has been there over 50 years and is the cornerstone of our Peoplestown community.  The plan was to close the school and bus our kids between 2 other schools that are not walkable.  Not only would this be difficult on the children and their families but it would destroy the neighborhood.  Obviously I don't have kids but this was a very important decision.

Last night we attended the Atlanta Public Schools board meeting, us and 500 other concerned residents from around the city.  The meeting started late, 45 min late, and over 70 people had signed up to speak.  Each person was given 3 minutes.  If you do the math, that's 3 and a half hours of speakers if everything goes smoothly and on time.  Of course it didn't and at 9:15 I had to leave and head home.  Stephen stayed to represent our house.

When it comes to children of course there is going to be heightened emotions.  Some people who spoke cried, some yelled, some threatened the school board members.  One guy even got arrested when he got on stage to approach the board.  I don't understand these people.  There were a couple people who yelled and screamed and talked a lot about fighting for our rights.  Come on people - violence and treats aren't going to get us anywhere.  After a couple outbursts I was certain we'd be closed.  One gentlemen even talked about this decision leading to Atlanta seceding from the nation.  Really, sir?  I understand that a school closing is a terrible idea, that's why I'm sitting in the auditorium with you, but for it to get that far fetched, it only discounts any good point you may have made.

In the end the board had a very, very difficult decision to make and I'm beyond relieved that DH Stanton is staying open.

APS made a good decision.

Saturday Morning Landscaping

Stephen and I have a bunch of projects we want to tackle at the house.  We don't have an official "To Do List" because I'm afraid of what that might look like.  On that imaginary list was landscaping the front yard and with each of us getting out of work early on Friday, we decided to tackle the front yard.  We have a pretty nice hill from the sidewalk up to the house and mowing the grass there is always difficult.  Also, once the azaleas have bloomed and gone, there isn't much color in front of the house.

We didn't take a before picture this weekend, so below is the best we can do.  Imagine the snow isn't there anymore... but grass and dirt.  Nothing too exciting.

It's such a cute house, we need to accessorize more!  We started with digging up all the grass and weeds in the area from the bottom of the wall to the top of the stairs.  That area became our flower bed.  With the $100 gift card to The Home Depot from the Atlanta Braves we filled up the car with a bunch of perennials that would keep coming back each year and filling in the space more and more each year.  Instead of regular mulch we decided to use recycled tires that have been chopped up and painted to look like mulch.  This rubber mulch is definitely more expensice, but it doesn't blow or float away as easily as other mulch, it's more environmentally friendly and it helps with drainage.  It also doesn't attract ants!!  YES!

This is the mulch we bought, in red, from The Home Depot

Once we had the grass and weeds cleared away it was time to plant the flowers.  There was a lot of discussion between the two of us at this point in time.  I thought we needed more flowers.  I wanted organization.  We settled on the flowers we have in an organized chaos look.  I think it turned out fantastic.  But I won't lie, I can't wait for the flowers to fill in some of the open space.

Here it is, the finished product!  Look how great it looks!!  

The last picture is a close up of the mulch - you can't even tell from that close that it's tired.  But if you pick it up and handle it it's definitely obvious.  Pretty neat.

That was all the work we could do on Saturday before we had some friends over for dinner.  Sunday morning Stephen went out and scrubbed down the white handrails and porch and the look great!  They need to be repainted soon, so that's another project to add to our list.  We're also going to paint the house numbers to they stand out more.  Red?  Black?  Not sure yet.

Not too bad for a long weekend!

Easter Bunny Hummus

It should be no surprise that when we are asked to bring a dish to a party, Stephen and I will jump at the chance to try something new.  We were invited to our friend's house for Easter dinner and we wanted to bring something fun.  While flipping through The Food Network Magazine we found a picture of a neat way to server hummus - in a terra cotta pot with carrots.  HOW CUTE!  Stephen makes a pretty awesome hummus and i knew we could make it happen.  Here is how it turned out:

I found a plastic "terra cotta" pot at Target for $1.50 and after it was washed, we filled it with hummus.  We used about 4 of the large cans of chickpeas to get make this much hummus.  Then we found carrots with the greens still attached in the Organic section of the grocery store and we stuck those into the hummus after they were cleaned and the top layer shaved off.

Guests at the party didn't know what to think about it until we started digging in.  It's such a fun way to server hummus.  A few people, myself included, even pulled out a whole carrot and ate it Bugs Bunny style.  The rest of the plate was filled with fresh veggies that could also be dipped into the hummus.

Save our School: How APS is harming children & our neighborhood

Our neighborhood isn't the one you picture when you think of upperclass, suburban neighborhoods.  That's because we aren't.  You won't see home after home with white fences and BMWs in the driveway. We are a diverse neighborhood with working class families.  Many of our homes are single parent homes working hard to make ends meet.  Our homes aren't cookie cutter duplicates of the one next to it - we have character.  And the neighborhood is changing.  The crime is seeing significant drops, houses are being sold and young, married couples are moving in.  They city just spend millions of dollars to build a new park just a few blocks away.  It just opened in March.

Atlanta is in an education crisis.  It seems everywhere we look the city is trying to cut costs and close the most important aspects of the community.  Just yesterday MARTA released that they will have to make some significant cuts in the upcoming year, eliminating a lot of coverage and service.  What major metropolitan city can survive without public transportation?  Atlanta is also planning to close 10 public schools.  Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has been planning to close schools for months, the initial plan was announced in May 2011.  These schools were identified as having low enrollment therefore they aren't able to get the funding that larger schools receive and they are draining resources that could go to other schools.  They claim that each closed school will save $500k that will then be used to support the schools that remain open.

Since last Spring, neighborhoods of the schools that have been identified as ones that will be closed have been rallying together to convince APS to keep the schools open and to identify ways to keep them open and reduce costs.  There are some great plans out there - making schools more green, adding pre-K classes to schools to increase the numbers of students in attendance, and so many other plans.  The final decision to close the schools will be made on April 10, only a few days away.

The shocking thing, is that on April 1, the elementary school in my neighborhood was added to the "cut" list.  Never once had it been identified as an at-risk school.  Never once had parents of children in our neighborhood been given a reason to be concerned.  Never mentioned on a single list, the neighborhoods of Peoplestown, Summerhill and Grant Park didn't have to worry about DH Stanton Elementary School.  Until April 1, a Sunday, during Spring Break.  That's 10 days before the final vote.

APS is doing our neighborhood a disservice and acting unethically.  They say that the decision is based on economics.  This can't be the case - it wasn't the case for the past 10 months there couldn't have been a new development in a negative direction overnight.  If the schools closing were based on purely financial analysis, there is no way a school could be added at the 11th hour.

I had a Realtor friend of mine pull some numbers for the area zoned to attend DH Stanton.  In the past 24 months, 108 homes have been sold.  In the past 12 months, 54 homes have been sold and 16 homes are currently under contract or pending.  The neighborhood is growing, not declining, which means there is no way the financial situation in our neighborhood is declining.  Additionally, the 2012 census shows over 500 4-year olds in our zip code.  500!  Those are all upcoming Kindergardeners.  Our house doesn't have children yet but we'd love to send our kids to the school 2 blocks away.  I'm sure we're not the only household in this situation.  In fact I know we aren't, I met other couples like us last night at the rally to save our school.

I plan to stand up and raise my voice to try to save our elementary school.  This isn't a black or white issue, it's about classes.  Of the school closures, most of them are on the south side of town, the lower income areas.  These schools around me will be closed to help fund the schools further north, the upper income areas.

I plan to stand up against APS' plan to close DH Stanton Elementary School.  As a single, affluent, childless woman,  I want my future children to have the opportunity to walk to school.  I want them to be able to know the kids in houses around them; driving down the street any afternoon will show you that there are plenty of kids.  I want my neighborhood to be thriving in 5 years, it's definitely on it's way now, why stop it.  We have a new, state of the art park in the neighborhood where students of DH Stanton can play.  We don't have school bus traffic up and down our streets each morning because kids can walk to school.  Just last month we had a representative from the Governors office come to the Peoplestown Neighborhood Association meeting to talk about their plans for the neighborhood.

I hope that the board and Superintendent of APS hears our voices.  I hope they see the support the school has from the parents and neighbors in the area.  We are willing to support the school, please don't take it away from us.  Let's give our kids the chance to grow up knowing and loving their neighborhood.  The only way they will grow up to understand the importance of community is to show them what a community is.

Save D.H. Stanton Elementary School.

UPDATE:  I forgot to mention above that APS does not have a single plan in place for what they will do with our school once it's closed.  The very last thing we need in our area is a large, vacant building to be a home for illegal activity.  If the school is going to be maintained yet vacant, I don't see how that is saving money.  It will still need security, maintenance and utilities to run the maintenance.  If the school is closed and shut down completely, it will cost even more to get it up and running again.  Yet another example of the poor decision making of APS.

The Masters 2012

I was beyond lucky enough to get Monday Practice Round tickets to the 2012 Masters.  You can watch the tournament on television, but until you are walking the grounds at Augusta National, you don't quite understand how gorgeous it really it.  It truly is one of those places on the planet that can't quite be captured in a photograph.  During the actual tournament cameras aren't allowed but they are Monday - Wednesday during the practice rounds.  Lucky us!

We left for Augusta in the morning and got to town just at 11:00am and found parking pretty quick and headed through the gate.  One of the best things about The Masters is how well they treat their patrons.  If you get to the club early enough you can get free parking just outside the gate.  How rare is that?!

Going through security was a breeze and every person we encountered was more than pleasant.  NOTE: cell phones or pagers are NOT allowed inside the gate.  They do provide free phones in a few places inside so you can call home/work if needed but you'll be turned away at the gate if you have a phone on you.  I was very concerned with what to wear Sunday night.  Temperatures were expected to reach 90 degrees so I wanted to be cool, but I also wanted to be conservative and appropriate for Augusta National.  For guys it's easy - shorts and a polo shirt.  Hats are a-okay.  Flip flops are okay.  For ladies shorts and skirts are acceptable and we saw all types of tops from tank tops to long sleeve shirts.  I wore a sleeveless shirt, but I avoided the spaghetti straps that we saw a lot of around the course, it just didn't feel right.

Food at The Masters is also SUPER cheap.  I'm not sure I've seen food prices like they are at the tournament anywhere else, especially with a crowd of people who are forced to eat concession stand food.  All of our food was $17.50.  That's 2 beers, one domestic and one light, a sweet tea, 4 sandwiches and 2 cookies.  We were so full and happy.  Pimento cheese sandwich - amazing.  Cookies - Heaven.  Sweet Tea - just perfect.






We spent the afternoon walking around the course, watching the players practices their tee shots, practice multiple shots from green and practice at different places around the green.  We didn't get to see Tiger Woods because he played 9 early in the morning before we got there.

Above is just behind the green of the 10th hole looking up towards the tee box.  How gorgeous is that??!

Amen Corner was as beautiful as ever, even without the blooming azaleas.

After we walking the 18 holes of the course we headed over to check out the Par 3 course.  It was wide open with only a couple people wandering around the course.  They hadn't even roped off the fairways yet.  It was breathtaking to be on the course, in the absolute quiet, just me and Stephen.

The experience at The Masters was excellent.  There really isn't another word to describe it.  It was a day full of memories that we'll keep without forever.  I hope we get to go back soon.