First Anniversary

Yesterday, John and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. This involved buying new plants to replace our dead, "heat-resistant" plants in the front yard. We stayed away from any plant that was not labeled as "desert," and ended up with some Texas sage, desert spoon, Mexican bird of paradise, and red yucca.

I wanted to create a special dessert for tonight, since our wedding cake was long gone. We got to keep the top layer of our wedding cake, but had no easy way for it to survive the cross-country move. So on moving day (about two weeks after the wedding), my family and I all enjoyed the cake as a farewell. I had my eye on these key lime truffles I had found on Pinterest. John and I both enjoy a good slice of key lime pie, especially John. He is a citrus fanatic. I went with plain store-brand vanilla sandwich cookies for this recipe. It was half the price for double the amount of cookies. Good thing, too. John came in from planting and helped himself to quite a few of the cookies while I was making them. I also bought the wrong amount of white chocolate - one pound instead of two. And I opted for the vanilla candy coating instead of white chocolate chips. Cheaper, duh. It turned out to be just enough, since I left the bottom of the truffles uncoated to make them easier to transfer.

Still, they turned out amazing!

 No pretty decorations needed - these taste wonderful

We found a new restaurant in Scottsdale to try called Village Tavern. It was a great experience. John absolutely loved his seared tuna. My thai chicken salad was huge, and pretty good - a blend of different flavors that worked well together.

Dinner pics 

I also coerced John into taking some anniversary pictures with our wedding date frame. My aunt created a beautiful frame for our wedding shower that showcased the date. We used it at the wedding and have kept it in our house. She said we could replace the numbers with photos, but I like seeing the date as a reminder. Unfortunately, our cat Pepper knocked it off the piano and broke one of the corners. I was able to salvage most of it; it just has a rounded off bottom corner now.

Displayed at our wedding

Pictures to come. I haven't had a chance to get them off the camera yet.

After dinner, we watched the ceremony of our wedding and enjoyed the truffles.

Anniversary, part two is coming up tonight. We will watch the reception video and fill out the questionnaires I created.

I wanted a series of questions we could answer each year on our anniversary to create a record to look back on. I searched online, and the only ones I could find were extremely long and detailed series of 50+ questions, or misogynistic in nature (Wife question: "How can I help you as the leader of our family?"), or dumb/leading questions. Some I liked, so I compiled my own.

Here are the questions:
1. What do you look forward to the most in the future?
2. What do you fear the most?
3. What was your biggest accomplishment in the past year?
4. What was your biggest struggle in the past year?
5. What things do you enjoy doing the most with me?
6. What is one personal goal you have for the next year?
7. What is the best thing about our marriage?
8. What are three things that make you most happy right now?
9. How would you describe me to someone who has never met me?

10. What is your favorite memory from our wedding? 

Along with a list of favorites: 

Food
Color
Month
Movie
Book
Hobby
Name for a girl
Name for a boy

You can view the PDF document I created here. This picture below shows a screen shot.

Gifts to come. John's custom gift has not yet arrived, so we are waiting to exchange gifts. I have it on good authority that I will be so surprised by this gift, so I am a little antsy waiting. I hope all our anniversary celebrations will be this special.