Swimming

Georgiana didn’t like the sand on vacation and wasn’t so sure about the crabbies, either. So what did she like? Well, from the likes of her crabby mood all week–not much. However, she did really seem to love the swimming pool. Seriously, this is the happiest that I saw that kid all week: (doesn’t she look so adorable in her little sunglasses?)

This picture cracks me up. She is intentionally going over to give Kelsey a big, wet hug. I love her little wet footprint trail across the patio.

I tried to get her to pause from her swimming for just a second for a quick photo op with aunt Cake. She obviously wasn’t having any of that.

Evie, of course, enjoyed herself as well:

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Crabbies

Oh what happens when Mimi and the Aunts are in charge? On vacation specifically. We get hermit crabs of course!

My older brother, Blake, and I had hermit crabs when we were younger, so we knew a little bit about these little guys before we bought them.

However, with two little kids in tow, everything gets so much more entertaining.

Georgiana couldn’t really decide what she thought of them.

She liked watching them.

She was also quite curious about them.

Then she would decide she wanted to hold them like everyone else was doing.

But then she would kind-of freak out if you put it in her hand.

But once you put them back on the ground, she would act as if she wanted to pick them up.

Then she would get all wild on us and try to smash them with a jar lid. Or occasionally try to stomp them with her feet.

She laughed and seemed to be getting a kick out of it.

She would sit again and watch them more, but if they got too close she would shy away pretty quickly.

And make exasperated facial expressions.

She also pulled her legs up and away from where they were walking on the ground.

Jill tried to entice her into holding the “cabbies” (as G called them) but G just gave Jill crazy looks.

Although I don’t blame her. If Jill was looking at me with this same look, I might give her a crazy look back too. 😉

Evie, of course, was super excited about her new pets. Since chickens and a fish are the only other pets she’s ever had.

Evie even tried to get G to hold the little crabbies as well.

G returned the favor by promptly returning the crab to her sister.

Then she pouted as if this was all too much trauma for her to handle.

And she went on to find something else to play with.

But don’t let her fool you into thinking that she didn’t have a good time. She even showed us her toothy smile.

Since I didn’t make an appearance above, here is a shot that shows pretty much what I looked like the whole time. A little behind-the-scenes peek.

In case you wanted to know what a hermit crab looks like as it is coming out from hiding in its shell, this is for you: (if you scroll down real fast it kind-of looks like one of those moving flip-book things)

I think that’s probably more than enough of our hermit crab adventures.

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Kitchen Inspiration

I have more vacation adventures to share with you, but I thought I would take a break from vacation posts to bring to you a little bit of inspiration. Or at least show you something that inspires me.

I love looking at pictures of pretty homes, rooms, and decor. They never cease to stir up inspiration and creativity in me. However, sometimes they also make me a little sad that I don’t have the layout, time, or money to achieve anything nearly as pretty as them at this time in my life in my own apartment.

Although today I did stumble across this kitchen picture from one of my favorite blogs:


I love the pretty and relaxed feel of this room. It is colorful but subtle, country but classy with modern touches, and it just feels like such a livable space. I especially LOVE the island/table in the middle!

The more that I looked over this picture, the more I realized what I also loved about it was that a similar look is totally and easily achievable in my own kitchen! In our apartment we already have cabinets and countertops that look similar to these. We have stainless steel accent pieces like this kitchen (although not stainless steel appliances) and the few other accent pieces that we have are in a similar chartreuse color as the ones seen here. The breakfast table that we have in the kitchen also has similar legs to the ones on the table here too. We obviously can’t re-create everything in this picture in our space, but why would we want to do that? It is meant to give us inspiration and to take it and make it our own rather than copy it exactly.

Finding images like these that allow for reachable design goals are becoming even more of an inspiration to me than any images in designer magazines that I can’t even begin to try to achieve! Yay for achievable inspiration!

Check out more of Kara Paslay’s home and awesome design on her blog, here.

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Parasailing

I’ve been parasailing multiple times. I went once in Panama City Beach, Florida with my dad when I was like 10 or so. I went again in Gulf Shores, Alabama when I was 12 with my little sister Jillian (who was 7 at the time) and again with in Perdido Key, Florida with Jacky, our foreign exchange student from Germany we hosted my junior year of high school. That time I was 16 or 17.

Every time I’ve been, I’ve found it to be relatively relaxing. You are secured well, so you don’t really feel like you are going to fall and you are up high enough that it is relatively quiet all around and you can just see out over the ocean and the shoreline and it is all really pretty. One time I went right before sunset and that was really neat to see from so far up.

That isn’t to say I’ve never had issues surrounding my parasailing adventures. The time that I went with Jill, my mom, dad, and Kelsey also went out on the boat with us to watch. We all had to wade out into the water (My mom and dad had worn their clothes and got soaking wet) to get on this little raft-boat thing. It was similar to those inflatable like banana boats that they give rides on at the beach. We rode that out farther into the water to meet the real boat that we were going parasailing on. However, in order to get on the real boat, we had to each stand on the wet, slippery, flexible, pool-raft type sides of the little boat and climb into the bigger boat. The whole time waves were crashing between the two driving them farther apart from each other. It really is a horrible way for the parasailing people to operate. It is much more difficult than it sounds. Long story short, my whole family got into the bigger boat and when it came time for me to get in, a huge wave came crashing between the two boats and I fell off and into the big blue ocean. Luckily I could swim and had a lifejacket on anyway. I swam up and then had to try the whole thing again and luckily made it into the big boat the second time. Then I decided to let the same idiot workers fly me hundreds of feet in the air behind their boat. Lovely.

Anyway, I figured that after parasailing those 3 times, my parasailing days were probably over. I had done it and had no real interest of doing it again.

This year on our vacation Kelsey decided that she wanted to go because she had never been before. Jill of course offered to go with her. Dad made the arrangements for them to go and then talked me into riding on the boat with them so that I could take pictures. We all went down to the parasailing place (a booth on the beach) and once we got there, dad realized that it would be the same price to send us all three parasailing as it would be to just send Kelsey and Jill and then pay extra for me to go ride on the boat. Plus they offered to take pictures with a nice camera for you. So what did I do? I went parasailing again.

This time was oh-so-similar to the method used in my previous parasailing story, although this time we did in fact ride out on banana boats. We had to do the same boat-jumping technique and luckily no one fell into the water this time. We got out there and went out for a sail and it was the most uncomfortable thing I have ever done in my life. Never go parasailing with 3 people. We were incredibly smashed together with Jill in the front and Kelsey and I in the back. Jill seemed to have plenty of room, but Kelsey and I couldn’t even sit up straight. We had to lean slightly backwards the whole time and my back and ribcage still ache from the whole experience. Plus the wind kept swinging Jill back and forth in front of me, rubbing her scratchy harness thing all down my leg every time. My legs were all red and scratched up when I got off.

In addition to the uncomfortable position we were in, we were incredibly close to the shore. Like half the time we were floating over land instead of over the water. I had never done that before when parasailing, so it freaked me out a little.

Not only were we close to the shore, but we were also close to the ground. It was a windy day so instead of the length of rope taking us higher up in the air vertically, it really only took us farther out away from the boat horizontally.  Therefore we were close enough to the people swimming along the beach that we had time for a nice little chat with them from the air. We got close enough that I thought we might just knock a few people over. There was this one little boy who started running away from us because he though we might land on him. Then they dipped us in the water. We were in shallow enough water that we could have stood up.

They told us that it would only be a 7-9 minute ride so we were praying for them to pull us in soon. I don’t know how much longer I could have held myself in that ridiculously uncomfortable position. Although it seemed like we were in the air forever and that they didn’t have any intent to bring us in anytime soon. Again which made me worry. Why had we been in the air so long? Were they having problems and they couldn’t reel us in? I guarantee we were in the air for at least 20 minutes. Finally they did bring us in, thank goodness. We found out when we got back that Dad had talked them into giving us a longer ride since there wasn’t anyone else waiting to go.

It was definitely a unique experience, although I think I would have preferred a more relaxing one instead. I don’t think I have any desire to want to parasail again. I think 4 times in my life has been plenty.

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Week at the Beach

I’m back in New Orleans now, but I still have lots to share with you from our family vacation last week. It was such a nice time and it was fun to get to spend time with my sisters and nieces.

Here are some of the views from our condo:

The majority of our time we spent at the beach. Swimming, Floating on rafts, laying out to tan, collecting shells, building sandcastles, you know, pretty much your typical beach activities.

Dad was the only one I managed to get a picture of in the water.

It is so much more fun on the beach when you have kids with you. It makes collecting shells and building sandcastles much more fun. Evie had a blast!

Doesn’t she look so grown up in these pictures?! I can’t believe that baby is 6! Aunt Cake is getting old!

I had to get Jill to show off her shells too. Although I think that Evie actually collected these and just gave them to Jill to hold for safekeeping.

Fishie kisses! Perfect for a day on the ocean!

Silly girls. 🙂

And of course, no vacation would be complete without a day at the beach ending in snow cones (or snowballs as they are called in New Orleans). We walked to the snowball shop from the beach, that is why Evie still has her floaties on. 🙂

Georgiana did go to the beach the first day and seemed to enjoy it, although she wasn’t too crazy about the sand. She didn’t feel good most of the week, so she was in the condo most of the time. Blair and Mimi tried to take her down to the beach again, but she got this far down the walkway, saw the sand that lay ahead and sat down and refused to go any farther. Haha 🙂

Hope you all had a lovely week as well!

 

 

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Vineyards and Wineries

It has been a few days, my friends. I’ve had so much to share with y’all, but not the time to do it. I’ve been (and still am) on vacation! It has been nice, but still overwhelmingly busy! I left New Orleans to head to Nashville to visit with my older sister and nieces for Memorial Day weekend, then headed up to my southern Illinois home for the week to visit with the rest of my family and work on wedding planning. Last weekend, my parents, little sisters and I all drove down to New Orleans, part of us in my mom’s van and part of us in my car, to take my car to New Orleans! I’ve been without it there for the past two years! It will be nice to actually be able to go places on my own now! After staying there for the night and doing some quick shopping with my sisters, we all got into my mom’s van and headed over to Florida! Blair and my nieces headed down from Nashville too, so we are all enjoying the sand, the surf and the sun this week. In fact, I’m sitting on the balcony of our condo listening to the waves crash and enjoying the beautiful view of the ocean as I type. 🙂

Although this post isn’t to talk about the ocean (I’ll fill you in on that later). Let’s go back to last week and the busy week of wedding planning that I had.

One of the most important things when it comes to wedding planning is figuring out where you are going to hold the shindig. When it comes to our wedding, we’d thought long and hard about this. My real dream was to have a backyard wedding. Although, my backyard could use a lot of work to get it into prime wedding shape. Plus, we weren’t sure where to park people, if the yard would be too muddy at that time of year, and where would we put people if it is pouring down rain? All of those being slightly large problems when it comes to creating a low-level of stress on your wedding day. It was going to be too much work and stress to try to go that direction with the wedding. We also considered just having the ceremony there and having the reception elsewhere, but I didn’t really want people to have to drive to separate places for both. I thought it would be easier and more relaxing to hold all the festivities in one location. Plus we would still encounter the same issues of rain/mud/parking/etc. at home just for the ceremony. And have to find somewhere we liked for the reception and decorate that too.

So…we moved on to a new plan. We tried to think of any places close to home that have pretty outdoors and then indoor areas for the reception to be held. That is when it hit us. (Cue in title) Southern Illinois is slightly becoming famous for its abundance of vineyards and wineries! They would have pretty, manicured grounds outside (that someone else would be responsible for keeping in shape) and also indoor buildings and also outdoor areas that are specifically for events and special occasions! How perfect!

That idea began a string of craziness to try to head to as many of the closest wineries as we could in the few short days that I was at home. My mom, my older brother, Blake, and I all set out on this quest. We made it to 7 or 8 or so of them, all roughly within an hour or so of my house. (We barely scratched the surface of the wineries in southern IL though, the more we went to, the more of them we realized there were. I think there must be at least 30 or so in Southern Illinois!)

Of the ones that we visited, several were too small for the wedding (as far as the indoor area goes) or had pretty vineyards, but not really much more than grapevines. One we saw and liked, but it was way too over-commercialized and expensive. I wanted something a little more simple, but still pretty and with a pretty view out over the outside. Only one of the ones we saw really fit this bill and it actually happened to be the first one that we went and looked at.

Bella Terra Winery. It means “beautiful land” in Italian.

Want a tour of the place? Good. Here we go:

Here is the view as you drive up. There are rows of grapevines on the right side and pretty views over the hills on the left side. Along with a pretty white fence.

White fence and hill views.

You drive up, pass the building on the grounds and park in front of this pond.

Here is the building on the grounds. Pretty on the outside with a nice columned wrap around patio/porch.

The porch/patio on the side has a view over the pond in the back.

There is also a nice sized two part deck on the side in front of the pond.

There is also a built-in bocce ball court. Although I have no clue how to play bocce ball.

The front patio/porch is pretty big.

Looking back at the front of the building, there are pretty doors that open into the inside.

The views out the front are really pretty.

There is a white pergola with plenty of space for seating and entrance of the wedding party down the aisle directly from inside the building.

With really pretty views behind the pergola.

A view of the hills to one side.

Views of the grapevines on the other.

Walking through the grapevines is pretty too.

The grapes all neatly in pretty little rows.

The outside was exactly what I wanted. Beautiful. Loved the white fence, the views, the hills, the pergola, everything. Although everything has a few downsides. In this case, it was the smallish inside of the building and its not-so-pretty decor.

It does only seat about 120 people inside. (and we currently have many more than that on our guest list) However, it does have additional seating outside on the porches and decks, so we should be fine, unless it pours down rain. They also didn’t have our original date that we picked available. So we had to move the date to June 2, 2012, the next weekend. But as Bob pointed out, 6×2=12, so an anniversary date of 6-2-12 should be easy to remember.

Anyway, we had to act fast if we wanted to reserve the place, so after thinking it over and weighing all the options, we went for it! We reserved it and set our date for June 2, 2012! Yay! We know where we are getting married! Now it is so much easier to know that the date is officially official and we can move on to caterers, photographers, decorations and whatnot! (All of which I did talk to and research last week as well–in addition to wedding dress shopping!)

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Elephants

My Mamaw loved elephants. She collected pins and jewelry and things with elephants on them. I like them too. I don’t know if it is just because she did or not. But I think they are such amazing creatures. They are so big and so pretty. They are my favorite animal to visit at the zoo. I want to take a  ride on one some day.

Anyway, a month or so ago, I saw this little elephant guy on one of the blogs that I read:

I fell in LOVE. I wanted a little elephant just like this one. But in white. She got hers from HomeGoods, but New Orleans doesn’t have a HomeGoods. I looked all over for a little elephant like this. Drew even looked all over trying to find me one for my birthday. Neither of us had any luck. Until just the other day.

We were at Burlington Coat Factory the other day looking for ties for Drew. I had never been in there before and obviously as soon as I saw that they had a Home section, that is where I was. Guess what I stumbled upon:

They aren’t exactly the same of course, they are much more stylized than the inspiration one. But still cute. I wanted a white one originally, but I didn’t like this white one as much as I liked the black one. I thought the black one looked more like an elephant the way it was standing. The white one is sitting funny for an elephant. Maybe I’ll spray paint it later on. I’ll have to see once the decor in my office is all done. 🙂

Plus it was only $6.99! Pretty good for something I had been searching for!

So cute! Do any of you have special things or animals that you like? Do they have a special connection to somebody or some memory?

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One Year Away

****UPDATE—because of the venue we had to change this original date for the wedding to June 2, 2012****

It seems like just yesterday that we got engaged, right? It has been 5 months since then actually. On one hand, I’m just ready for the wedding to hurry up and get here and on the other hand, I have so much to plan and take care of before then, that I hope it doesn’t get here before I have time to get everything done.

It took us a while to actually decide on a date for the wedding, even though we were thinking May 2012 from the beginning. I’ve always wanted to get married in the Spring. It is such a pretty time, it is a time that symbolizes new beginnings, I love the plants and flowers blooming then, the colors I wanted for the wedding were all bright, spring-y colors, and it just fit in the best with our schedule. Both being college students, if we wait until the end of May in 2012 to get married, Drew will have graduated and will (hopefully) have been offered a full-time position (He works full time now and has several promising options through the places he works) so we will be okay financially as a newlywed couple. Not only will Drew be out of school, but I will be out of school for the summer as well. I will be out of school for at least two weeks or so before the wedding, to finish up last minute things and then we are free to travel to southern Illinois for the wedding and then go on a honeymoon without having to worry about missing school. We will then have the whole summer to get situated into married life and whatnot before the fall and I begin my senior year at Tulane.

When looking at it that way, that is really the only time that we have as an option. I don’t want to wait farther into the summer, because I want the wedding to be outside, and it is way too hot for an outdoor wedding in the summer. We briefly considered moving the wedding up to this fall, but we don’t have any breaks from school long enough to be able to pull off a wedding and a honeymoon. Planning the wedding will be stressful enough, I don’t want it to have to worry about it combined with the school season as well. The only downside to next spring is that from the time of our engagement it was a year and a half away. I’m starting to realize that wedding planning almost starts to drag on over that long of a period. I’d almost rather the wedding be sooner so that I can get the planning stuff mapped out and done with. Since the wedding is still a year away, there is a lot of stuff that I can’t really do yet as far as the planning goes. But it is all still hanging over my head as stuff I need to do.

Anyway, I’ll stop babbling on and on about it all. I’m getting ready to go home for a visit to hopefully get quite a bit of wedding stuff taken care of. My plans for the summer include getting as much wedding planning, shopping, and designing done so that anything I would have to do during the school year is at a minimum. We’ve already taken our engagement pictures (that I still need to edit and post!) and I’ve been working on a design for the save-the-dates and the coordinating invitations, thank you cards, and all the other wedding paperie. I’ll let you know whenever any other important wedding details get taken care of.

But back to the whole reason for this post. Did anyone remember the date we set for the wedding that I mentioned back in this post? May 26, 2012. Well guess what? It is May 26, 2011. That means our wedding is exactly one year away today! I can’t believe that on this day next year, I’ll be walking down the aisle!

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Our New Couch

Pretty big purchase huh? I’ve never had my own real furniture before. Especially brand new furniture. It is pretty exciting to actually be picking out furnishings for rooms other than just a bedroom. I told you all about our couch when we picked it out, here. Well it has been here a week and in that week I think it has gotten three times more use than any other piece of furniture in our house. Here are some pictures of it on the day it arrived:

Ignore the dark spot on the middle cushion. That is just a water spot. I had to use a wet rag to get a big dirty handprint off of it from one of the delivery guys. I wasn’t too happy about that. But luckily it came right off. So far the couch has handled minor little clean-ups quite well.

When we first looked at this couch we were a little worried about the color. We wanted something more neutral. However, so far I really like the color. It is pretty and soft, but adds a slight bit more interest to the room. Plus I think with mostly neutral decor and a few other pops of color, it will almost feel neutral anyway. Plus I’m a big fan of the color green.

I’m not a big fan of the pillows on it though. The colored diamond patterned ones are just horrible. Yucky fabric, yucky colors, yucky rough texture, etc… But I think they will be fine to recover with some fabric that I already have. The brown ones are okay, but I don’t really like the square/diamond pattern in the stitching. Plus one side is sewn up with completely wrong colored thread. But I can live with those ones for now. Maybe later I’ll recover those ones too.

This is the fabric that I already have that I think I’m going to re-cover the pillows with. You can also see the pattern in the stitching on the brown pillow better here too.

So far we really like it! I’m excited to see how much better it looks once we have the living room put together a little more. I’ve already got ideas for art on the wall above it and I hope to someday get a coffee table or tufted ottoman to go in front of it, small side tables on either side, a different rug, and some other furniture for the room. 🙂

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Empty House

I can’t believe that we’ve been in the new house a week already! It feels like we’ve been here longer than that. I guess because we spent a month and a half dreaming about it before we could actually move in. We’ve done a lot this week though. The previous owner left a ridiculous amount of nail holes, nails, and other hanging devices in every single wall. I took all those out, patched them up and repainted over those spots on the walls.  We got our new couch delivered! I planted the windowbox, we built shelves in two of the closets, we hung a curtain rod and the pink curtains from my old dorm room in my office, Drew took apart and fixed the dryer, the handyman came and fixed two outlets, patched up some of the walls, caulked around the tub and did some other minor repairs as well. My mom bought me a bed frame for the bed for my birthday, so the bed is no longer on the floor. We’ve gotten a good amount of our stuff unpacked and bought little various things for the house. I’ve also picked out nice and also inexpensive bookcases for the hallway and found the perfect desk that I’ve been wanting! (although they aren’t here yet) So needless to say, it has been a busy week! Drew has also been working all week and I’ve babysat and worked on several design projects that I have going at the moment. It does feel like maybe things are starting to settle down a bit.

However, let’s rewind a bit, shall we? Before all these things got done, we moved into an empty house. Would you like a tour of it before we moved anything in? I gave a tour of it, here, when the previous tenant still lived there and you can see the house will all her stuff in it, but since it will look totally different with our stuff in it, I think it is nice to start with a blank slate of pictures for comparison down the road.

Here we go:

Open the door and this is the view of the foyer. (For pictures of the outside, stairway, and our door, see the first house tour.)

This is the foyer looking back towards the door. I just love those windows and the hardwood floors!

The foyer has red French doors that open into the living room. See all the sunlight that fills the space? There weren’t any lights on when I took these pictures.

This is a view from the other side of the living room looking back into the foyer.

A view over to the side where the couch will be. (or actually, where it already is)


This view is from the same side, looking into the living room and on into the foyer from the hallway.

This is the hallway right off the side of the living room that runs all the way down the house. The kitchen is the first door on the right, the smaller bedroom/office is the second door and then at the end of the hallway is the laundry room. At the laundry room, the hallway turns to the right and straight into the bathroom with the second bedroom being on the left.

This is the view in the first door off the hallway–the kitchen. See, still lots of sunlight.

The kitchen is pretty big actually. There is room for our little round table and chairs under the window. The door open on the right is the pantry. However, Drew’s favorite thing about this room is the dishwasher.

This is the same wall with the pantry on it. The door closer to the front is a private stairway that goes outside. We are pretty much just using it for storage. You can see a view inside it in the old house tour, here.

The kitchen!

View into the smaller bedroom/office.

This is the far left corner of the room as you walk in. A nice little nook area.

The corner looking back towards the door.

Another look back towards the door, with the closet as well.

As you reach the end of the hallway, it turns into the laundry room.

Pretty basic laundry room. I’m just happy that we have one! This one is pretty big though. We also have our deep freezer in there now too.

The hallway then turns to the right and the bathroom is straight ahead and the bedroom is to the left.

Bathroom.

Pretty built-in.

Then you look into the bedroom.

From the other side of the bedroom looking back at the door, you can see Drew’s closet on the left and the linen closet on the right.

Another view of pretty much the same thing, but from the other side. You can see the bathroom door outside the bedroom door.

Goodness! That was probably more than you bargained for. But hey, now you know what we started with and can follow our progress as we decorate and make it ours! 🙂

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