Prim's First Beach Trip

Another couple of days just happened that were just too good to make me want to go back to work on a Monday morning... also, I just realized how weird that sentence sounded once I typed it out, but I'm too lazy to reword it or even change to a whole new sentence, so let's just roll with it, mmmkay? :) And let's just hop right into the weekend recap, where my brain has to work as little as possible...

Friday night, Jeff's youngest brother and his wife were in town from Texas, so we went over to my in-laws house for some quick pizza, and then they treated us all to a night at the movies! We saw "Noah," and we actually really liked it. Now, please hear me say this - it is NOT 100% scriptural. There are parts of the movie that are just blatantly wrong, or not the way the story happens in the Bible, but that happens a lot when Hollywood spins their take on a Bible story. However, it was still a really good movie.

Saturday, Jeff helped one of his coworkers move into a new house. So I stayed home to do all the little wifey duties around the house - laundry, dishes, straightened up a couple rooms, went grocery shopping, played with Prim and her rope, and did a few other things. Then I got to watch a couple episodes of Parenthood on Netflix before he got home. For dinner we walked to Chili's for dinner (we live less than a block away from one), and then Jeff fell asleep on the couch around 8:30 :) I put him to bed around 9:30, and I continued watching more Parenthood!

Sunday we decided to take Primrose to the beach for the first time! We decided to try out a new beach, so we drove about two and a half hours over to Santa Rosa Beach, which is close to Destin. We did end up driving around Destin a bit, and had a late lunch there at The Shrimp Basket. Then we went back east a tiny bit to Santa Rosa Beach to enjoy the sand and sun for a while. The beach was gorgeous, but we decided we still like our usual spot at St. George Island best. It was good to explore a new place though!

The skies were blue and clear, and the water was absolutely gorgeous - but it's still freezing! I walked in the waves a tiny bit, but barely let it get up to my ankles. Mostly we just sat in our chairs enjoying the great outdoors, and laughing at Primrose. She was so funny, because she really just wanted to sit in our laps, even though we brought her little bed for her to sit on.

Well, it turns out, she HAD to sit in our laps anyways, because Walton County requires a permit to have your dog on the beach, or you get a $100 fine! Well, the Sheriff that came to talk to Jeff was feeling nice I guess, and told us that as long as we kept her in our laps, we wouldn't have to leave, or get fined. So she sat in our laps for the last hour, which she loved of course anyways :)

Everything was fine in the end, but I guess we'll have to check to make sure doggies are allowed on the beach next time we go somewhere. Oopsies! At least that Sheriff was feeling generous yesterday, right? It was kind of chilly with the wind blowing like crazy, so we finally packed up and got the car all loaded up again.

We stopped at Wendy's on the way home and fed Primrose some nuggets for dinner, since we forgot to bring some food or treats. And I'm sure she didn't mind, because she devoured those nuggets! But since we ate lunch so late, we just waited till we got back to Tally to grab some Chinese on the way home to share. And that was so yummy. We unpacked, gave Prim a bath, showered, and then crawled in bed pretty early after a long, fun day.

It was a great weekend, and I'm glad spring and summer are finally on their way here! It's not completely hot yet, and that's good for now, but I'll be so glad once it's full-blown summer and we can spend the whole day soaking up the sun and just enjoying life in Florida! I love it here :)

Sunny Love,
Halie

High Five for Friday: Week 3

It's Friday morning now, and I'm just clinging to the hope that work flies by today, because as usual, I'm ready for the weekend! (Not like there's ever a Friday that doesn't apply, but still...) This past Monday I didn't feel like writing a post, so I didn't recap my weekend. And since not too much happened this past week, today's High Five For Friday (with Lauren Elizabeth) post will be a mix of last weekend, and a little bit from this week as well...

1. Seriously you guys, my doggie is the cutest girl ever! Look at her squishy little face sleeping under the pillow :)

2. Last weekend, my Mama and I had a little day-date together, and it was such a nice day. We had lunch at one of our favorite local spots, Hopkins, and sat outside to enjoy the nice weather. Then we ran some errands, including a "grand tour" of the local Hobby Lobby. (That means we walked up and down pretty much every single aisle.) And somehow, I made it out of there spending under $20 bucks. Amazing right? I know, I know. 

3. I absolutely love making us really yummy Saturday morning breakfasts. This past weekend, I made "open-faced" ham, egg & cheese biscuits. Well, they only turned out to be open-faced because I had prepared too much eggs and ham to all fit inside the biscuit. But it was delicious!

4. Have you guys heard of The Little Free Library? I only just heard of it a couple of weeks ago, when I stumbled upon the hashtag on someone random persons Instagram. But they're so cool! It's just a little "take a book, return a book" kind of deal, but they put them in the cutest little baby book-houses! Last weekend, my Mama and I found the two here in town, and I got some great books. (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea {hardback, Reader's Digest copy!}, The Cricket in Times Square and Hansel & Gretel, A Little Golden Book.) Can't wait to see what other things I find the next time I go back! If you like books as much as I do, you should check out their national map and see if there's one in your town.

5. I watched "Frozen" twice this past week, and it was so stinking good. Once on Wednesday night at home with Jeff, and then on Thursday night with my whole family on family dinner night. When I watched it at home with Jeff, I was singing at the top of my lungs to every song, but I tried to refrain from such dramatics with the whole family, because some of them hadn't seen it yet, and I figured they might want to hear Idina and Kristen rather than me ;) It's just so stinking good!

So that wraps it up here for the past weekend/week and my high fives... This weekend we were going to go camping, but it turns out it's supposed to thunderstorm pretty much all weekend. So we're postponing the trip, and hopefully we'll go next weekend instead. If the weather isn't too nasty, I might do some garage sale rummaging in the morning with my dad. Otherwise, I'm sleeping in and being lazy on the couch all morning. And then we're crossing our fingers that it's sunny on Sunday afternoon, because we want to head down to the beach for a couple of hours! So here's hoping that happens. 

Hope y'all have had a good weekend, but that you have a great weekend! I'll be back on Monday to pick up right where we left. Peace out friends.

Sunny Love,

Halie

Free Shutterfly Honeymoon Album

Shutterfly albums are kind of the bomb. I even made one using our engagement photos and others of our relationship, to create our wedding guest book, and it turned out perfect. Last night, I made one of our honeymoon in Cancun, and got it free with a special code! I only had to pay about $9 for tax and shipping, and it should be here next Friday. I am so pleased with how it looks on screen, and I can't wait to see it in real life next week!

Unfortunately, the code expired last night at midnight, but next time they send on out in my email, I'll be sure to share the code with y'all, in case you're interested in making one too!

Soon, I'll actually share a couple of posts with our honeymoon photos, but these can tide you over until then :)

Click here to view this photo book larger

Click here to create your own Shutterfly photo book.

Sunny Love,

Halie

Bicycle-Themed Wedding Shower

I am so freaking excited to finally start sharing some of my wedding posts! I kinda stopped blogging last August right as all the fun was starting, so pretty much nothing made it to the blog. And now it's finally time! So get ready, because there will be about 20 or so come at ya. I'll try to space them out (if y'all want me to), or I can just send a flood of them a couple days in a row. We'll see how it plays out.... But regardless, I can't wait to share all the lovely wedding things with y'all!

My very first wedding shower was thrown by some very special women -- my sister Megan, my Grandmother, my Mama, and some amazing helpers - my "Aunt" Jane and her daughter Amanda. ("Aunt" Jane is my mom's best friend, and not an actual relative, but she might as well be sometimes!) They hosted the shower at the University Center Club at FSU. I knew they had been working hard on the decorations for a while, but I didn't know what they were doing. So I was thrilled and surprised to find out that they had incorporated some amazing bicycle decorations, to match our wedding theme!

Sister, Grandmommie, me, Mama

Me, "Aunt" Jane & Amanda

My Granddaddy actually took apart an old bicycle, cleaned it up, and then painted the wheels to match my wedding colors! It was so amazing, and I was so impressed! They they attached pretty flowers and sparkly pieces as well. They also used the seat, the pedals, the handlebars, and even bought a brand new basket all as the centerpieces for the tables. And come to find out, practically my whole family got involved in making the centerpieces - my Papa, Aunt & Uncle all ended up helping and I was so touched they all had a hand in it! Amanda made homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, and little purple pieces that look like bicycle gears. So cute!

Blog-friend turned real-life-friend Angie :)

It was a seriously beautiful shower, and I'm really glad it was the first one. It was a great way to kick off the wedding festivities, and my sister, Grandmother and mom did a wonderful job with everything! I was so touched they took the time and energy making my shower match my bicycle theme. They put so much hard work into it, and it really showed. The guests all loved it, and thought it was cute. And of course I loved it too! (And the great part is I got to keep all the cute decor, and recycle it for the wedding too!)

Thank you again to those lovely ladies in my life, who hosted such an incredible shower for me!

And I'm linking up with Kristyn at Chits & Giggles today for Wedding Wednesday!

Sunny Love,
Halie

High Five for Friday: Week 2

Friday's are always the bestest. Everyone is just in a better mood, things seem a little more jolly since the weekend is so close, and there's only nine short hours of work to get through until you're free for a couple of days. (Minus one glorious lunch hour in the middle of the work day.)

I want to join in with Lauren again today and celebrate Friday with a couple of virtual high fives, and highlight some of my favorite things from this past week :)

1. Jeff and I started Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University class on Tuesday night, and we're both pretty excited about it. Wednesday night we sat down and did some of the homework, and we're both feeling ready to really accomplish some of our debt and get our budget under control! We can do this!

2. My sweet little Primrose, always ;)

3. Making my springtime bucket list for the next few months. There's lots of fun things on the list, and I'm looking forward to getting to do some of those things. I think my goal will be to do at least one of those things this weekend..... but which one should it be?!

4. The new Cascades Park down by our house is really pretty! I took Prim on a walk around the park yesterday to check it out more, and there's so many cool parts of it! The beautiful waterfall feature is just one of the cool things, but there's really so many more!

5. Instagram :) Seriously you guys, I love Instagram! I didn't do as many of the photo-a-day prompts this week (because some I didn't like, and some I just couldn't think of anything), but I still like to upload some random pictures anyways, so this is a mix of some of the photo-a-days from the week, and some "regular" IG photos.

Top L: "Letter" S is for springtime! // Top R: I just liked the light // Bottom L: yummy sammie // Bottom R: Cropped.

Tonight my aunt and uncle are having us all over to their house for a cookout, to welcome home my cousin on his spring break from seminary in New Orleans. So I'm really excited about a big yummy dinner with my family! We're a pretty crazy family, so I know we'll all have a good time together. Then tomorrow I'm looking forward to lunch and Hobby Lobby shopping with my mama :) 

Thrown in to the other bits of the weekend will be the usual house cleaning, and maybe some time spent in the sunshine as well - because time in the sunshine is always necessary at this time of the year. Hope y'all have a great weekend, and I'll be looking forward to reading the recaps on Monday! :)

Sunny Love,

Halie

Springtime List

Happy first day of spring ladies! Isn't that an exciting thing to hear? Well, for me it is anyways. Because down here in Florida, it actually does feel like spring, even when a lot of the country is still suffering from this past winter's crazy attitude. Sorry to those that applies to - feel free to move down to Florida and enjoy our loveliness!

Spring in Florida doesn't really last too long, because by mid-April, we're practically already experiencing some full-blown summer temperatures. But nonetheless, I want to make sure we take full advantage of these next few weeks while the weather is practically perfect in every way (we watched 'Mary Poppins' the other night...) and really make the most of spring time. So today I'm doing a copy-cat post from one of my favorite blog-friends, Miss Erin at Love, Fun and Football, and sharing a spring bucket list!

1. Finish hanging pictures and cute things around the house. After more than five months of marriage, just this week we finally started hanging things, and I want to get that finished! And I'll probably swing by the good ole' Hobby Lobby to grab a couple more items this weekend, because I got an email this morning that home accents are 50% off this week. Score!

2. Spring cleaning, of course! This past weekend I got a little start on it, but there's still a lot more to accomplish... The BIG one we want to tackle is our spare bedroom, because right now it's a disastrous dump zone for anything and everything. And it's a nightmare for my OCD self, so it's got to go. Immediately, if not before.

3. Go to some concerts at the new amphitheatre that just opened by our house! Actually, I won't have to try too hard for this one, because I've already won tickets to the very first concert! Tracy Lawrence will be here on April 12th, and we get to go for free - awesome.

This is our new little amphitheatre, from the grand opening of the park last Friday night.

4. Have a picnic in the park date. There are tons of parks very close to us. Some within walking distance, some within biking distance, all within driving distance :) I can make us yummy sandwiches, pack some veggies and ranch dip, with some sweet treats as well. We can throw a blanket in the car, and just enjoy the great outdoors!

5. Attend at least one weekend afternoon FSU baseball game. The tickets are only like $8 a person, and we get to sit in the sun, eat a hot dog, and watch some baseball? Sounds like a good deal to me!

6. Eat out at a restaurant we've never tried before. Even though Tallahassee sometimes feels like a small town, there are still tons of restaurants all over the place, and new ones popping up all the time. I'd love to start trying new ones more frequently, so let's start this spring!

7. Go camping again. Back in the fall we bought a big tent with some of our wedding gift cards, but we've only used it once! We went camping back in November, but then haven't been since then. And I really want to go again. So we need to pick a good weekend, and head to a local state park for some quality time enjoying nature and each other's company :)

8. Start exercising again regularly. I've been off my game ever since we got back from the honeymoon basically, and I really need to get it under control. I've definitely gained weight since the wedding, and that's GOT to go! Time to get active again, and what more perfect time to do it than in this beautiful spring weather?

9. Shop around for some patio furniture. We have a front porch and a side deck on our current house, so there's lots of space to hang out outside. Except there's nothing on our side deck right now. So I really want to find a cheap little patio set for out there! So I've started looking around on Craigslist and stuff. And even if it's in bad shape or something, we're both pretty crafty and I'm sure we could fix it up to look real nice.

10. Go to the flea market or some garage sales. This will actually help with a couple of our other things as well, like finding more cutesies for the walls, and maybe even some patio furniture. Plus, I just like browsing around and seeing what treasures I can find - especially when you can get things for so cheap! Also, I love adding to my book collection this way :)

Can't wait to get started on some of this stuff! It's going to be a good spring, I can tell already. I mean, it's our first spring as newlyweds, our first spring in our precious turquoise house, our first spring with little Miss Primrose, and just so much more! I'm really excited right now, and it's actually killing me to not be outdoors even as I write this! Ready to start enjoying this Florida springtime, and ready to get some things accomplished!

Sunny Love,
Halie

Easy Peasy

If you're an old PP&P follower, and are just now seeing this pop up in your BlogLovin feed, make sure to join along with me on my journey again :)

The awesome people at BlogLovin made everything extremely super easy peasy for me, and transferred all of my old Penguins, Pasta & Polka Dots followers over to my new Life in the Sunshine profile. Awesome-sauce indeed! Now I don't have to work quite as hard to market my little bloggy-blog all over again... thank the lord for that small blessing!

Just wanted to get this quick post out there, in order to get a post in  your feed today - at least I'm being honest about that, right? I'll be back either Thursday or Friday with some actual content to read, or at the very least some pictures to look at. Promise. Until then, happy hump day :)

But if you'd like to get caught up on my last few sunny blog posts, check those out here:
--I made Irish food for St. Patrick's Day dinner at home with the hubby
--Recap of last weekend, in true blogger fashion
--High Five for Friday

Sunny Love,
Halie

New BlogLovin' Site

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Just trying to get things all straightened out still.... i've heard BlogLovin can transfer everything over for you, but I haven't tried that yet. I think I will contact them this weekend to see about that, but in the meantime, you can of course follow the new blog yourself! :)

Irish Deliciousness

Good mornin' folks! (I'll try not to shout for any of those with a headache...it is the day after St. Patty's Day after all, and you just never know...) We did our St. Patrick's Day very low key this year (well, most years we do actually), but last night we didn't even leave our house! My husband's heritage is Irish and Scottish, but he usually identifies himself more with the Irish side. I mean, he's got freckles everywhere, and his beard comes in pretty red-ish, so he does look a bit Irish, right?

Well, I guess you can't really tell in this picture, but this was us last night in our kitchen :)

So anyways, he loves all things Irish usually, and especially the food. When we go out of town, we try to find an Irish pub or something so that we can eat ourselves some Irish food, and we both always really enjoy it. So last week, I decided I would make something special, and treat him with our very own Irish meal, right in our own home! So I found this super easy recipe from Pinterest for traditional Bangers & Mash. It seemed easy enough, and I actually already had almost everything I needed in order to make this yummy recipe.

For those that don't know, "Bangers & Mash" is just sausage links and mashed potatoes. And then you make a thin brown gravy with onions to serve over both of them. Well good news ladies, my Irish experiment turned out so stinking delicious!! It was actually really easy to make, it made our house smell so good (hello sausage-smelling-house for the next day or so!), and it was so dang filling.

The only change we made to the recipe, was instead of using red wine for the gravy, I used one can of Guinness beer, because hello that's Irish too, and it was still really yummy. I think the red wine would have been just as good, but the hubs requested the Irish beer, so I went with that instead. Also, I think that might be one of the first times, if not the only time, that I've used all four burners at once in our new house - random fact, right?

So with the bangers & mash, we also had green peas, and Irish soda bread that I bought from Winn Dixie. I honestly don't know much about the bread (except that it has raisins in it, but it's not sweet), but it tasted really yummy sliced, toasted, and with a bit of butter smeared on top. I couldn't finish all of my food, so Jeff gets a tiny bit of bangers & mash for a repeat at lunch today.

Seriously guys, so good. I'll probably make it for us more often than just once a year for St. Patrick's Day, because it was just that good. And really, there's no special ingredients or expensive items, so overall, it's a pretty cheap meal. And that's certainly a selling point for us with our budget! So if you like sausage and mashed potatoes, we'd highly recommend you give this traditional Irish meal a try, because I really think you'll enjoy it!

Oh, and then after dinner, we watched Jeopardy and HIMYM as usual, but then Jeff found some list of good Irish movies, and we found one on Netflix that ended up being really good. So check out "Waking Ned Divine" on Netflix sometime, I think you'll enjoy that too :) And I'll just leave you with one more picture, because we have a ton of these cute little clovers all over our yard this spring!

Sunny Love,
Halie

Partly Sunny Weekend Recap

So remember how I used to name every single blog post with a P? Well you might not, but I did...but then it got too difficult, and I re-named my blog anyways. And now that I can start it with whatever letter I want to, it still ends up starting with a P... Old habits die hard, right?

Anywho, it's nasty and rainy here today in "The Sunshine State," and rained pretty much all day yesterday as well, but I'm not going to let that affect my mood! I have already decided I'm going to have a good day anyways, despite the eleventy billion inches of rain it seems like we've gotten....This past weekend was a good one though, and in true blogger fashion, I'm gonna tell y'all all about it, of course :)

Friday after work, Jeff and I came home from work to wash up some dishes, and straighten up the house a little bit before our friends Robert and Dabney came over. Then once they got there, we all walked about a quarter of a mile down the road to check out the grand opening of the new Cascades Park, thats right by our house! It's going to be a pretty cool park, because they have an amphitheater and they're going to have concerts and stuff there pretty frequently. They also have some pretty little ponds, with big water fountains and waterfalls in them, and it's just a neat place!

The tall building in the background is the State Capitol building!

After we wandered around checking out the park for a while, we walked over to a restaurant close-by for some dinner. We had yummy food and lots of laughs and fun conversations, and just had a good time! Then we went back to our house, and had planned to play some games, but some of us (Robert & Dabs...) started falling asleep in the big comfy chair...

That's Gus, and he's her big doggie :)

Saturday morning we went over to my in-laws house to help them clean out the garage, and take stuff over to their newly rented storage unit. Well luckily for us, it's big enough that we were able to store a few of our things in it as well, since we don't have much room in our tiny little turquoise house! So that was nice of them to share some space with us :) After dropping off a huge donation load at Goodwill, we went home to gather up stuff, and then we headed down to the coast for a day at the beach!

The sun was nice and warm, but it was only about 70 degrees and very windy, so it was actually a bit chilly. We stayed for a couple of hours though, and then met up with Robert and Dabney, and a group of their friends, at a super yummy BBQ place for dinner (Hamaknocker's) on our way back to town. We then quickly went back home to change clothes and grab Primrose, and then the three of us went over to Dabney's house for some more hang out time. We attempted to all play spades, but we didn't all know what we were doing, so that didn't last too long....

Sunday morning we accidentally overslept and missed going to church (oopsies!), so instead we got busy on some chores around the house. I washed dishes, cleaned out leftovers from the fridge, started laundry and cleaned up the side deck/porch all while Jeff mowed the lawn. Together we got a lot done in just a short amount of time, and the outside of the house looks so much nicer now. Then we got cleaned up and headed out on some errands. I was craving a sandwich for lunch, so we stopped at Jimmy John's, and that proved to be a delicious choice.

The Italian Night Club, on whole grain bread, with hot peppers added. So yummy!

We went to Costco and Walmart, and then by that time it was absolutely flooding. So we decided to hold off on grocery shopping, and went home to enjoy some "movie rest" time. We watched "Big Fish", which we've both seen before, but it was a good movie for the kind of chill mood we were in, and we both enjoyed seeing it again. I then ran to the grocery store real quick, and came home to make turkey chili and cornbread for dinner. Yummy!

And then we finally got around to hanging up some pictures and stuff on our walls at home! We've been married for a little over five months, and Jeff lived in the house for a month before that, but somehow we just never got around to hanging much. Well finally I got the bug, and it was all I wanted to do! And it looks really good now :) We aren't done, and still have lots more to hang up and decorate, but what we've done so far looks great! I'll have to do a little home tour for the blog over the next few months as we get things more settled.

Today is St. Patrick's Day (like y'all needed to be told, right?), and so to impress my half-Irish hubby, I'm going to attempt to make us an Irish meal tonight for dinner! So I found this recipe for Bangers & Mash, and we're both pretty excited to see how it turns out. I also got a thing of Irish Soda Bread from Winn Dixie yesterday to go with it. So it won't be a healthy meal, and it's definitely not our usual Meatless Monday, but hopefully it will still be really yummy!

Hope y'all had a good weekend, and that you have a good St. Patrick's Day today!

Sunny Love,
Halie

P.S. - Anyone know of any weekend recap link-up's that still happen? I used to do quite a few, but now I don't know that they exist anymore. I want to link-up!

High Five for Friday: Week 1 (of my return!)

Morning :) Still trying to get in the habit of actually blogging, rather that just reading other blogs, and playing around with my settings endlessly. It's tough starting over from scratch, but it's also fun... Anyways, let's just get to it, shall we?

1. There is a new park opening up right by my house today, and we're really excited about it. It has a small amphitheater stage and seats and there will be concerts and cool stuff happening there. It's only about a 5 minute walk, so I'm sure we'll spend lots of time there in this gorgeous Florida weather. The other fun thing about it is that we can hear the sound system from our front porch, so we'll be able listen to the music for free sometimes, if we don't feel like actually going to the concert some nights. Cool huh?! Tonight there will be food trucks and popcorn, so we'll definitely go down there and check it all out!

2. I stinking love my husband. :) Like for real y'all, he's so sweet and cute, and being married is just super fun. I know you're not all super stoked about mushy-gushy stuff on the internets, so I'll keep this point brief, but I just wanted to send him some virtual love this morning!

Don't worry, wedding pics will most definitely be shared on here in the coming weeks....!! :)

3. I started watching Parenthood on Netflix this week, and it's so good so far! Usually, Jeff and I always watch tv series on Netflix together, but I also like having something that I watch by myself, for those days where I get home from work way early than he does, or on a Saturday morning when I can't sleep past 8:30 am, but he can sleep 'til noon.... Anyways, this one was a good choice for me, and I can't wait to get into it more.

4. I am obsessed with Instagram. This obviously isn't news to anyone I'm sure, but I'm just throwing it out there again. I've been participating in the daily photo prompt challenge sponsored by Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim, and I love it. I've actually decided to make it my goal to get featured in her Fab 4 one day. That would just be so exciting for me!

Prompts: Top L: Fresh / Top R: Something good / Bottom L: 10 am / Bottom R: oops, that was just a regular IG pic..

5. It's really fun getting back into the blog world. Slowly but surely I'm working on getting it all together and back up and running (almost) the way I was before. It's tricky, but I'm working on it!

Well that's all I've got for you lovely folks today, but if you want, you could go check out the other High Five for Friday posts with Miss Lauren Elizabeth, because that's where I'm linking up today!

Sunny Love,
Halie

Back to the Habits of Blogging

Good morning! It has honestly been so long since I've really blogged, I feel like I hardly even know where to begin....But alas, here I am this morning trying to figure out how to get back in the swing of blogging again. I'm trying to get back in to reading all of your blogs again as well too, because I wasn't even doing that for the longest time. I read a few last night as I "followed" them from this new blog, and realized how much I missed some of your lovely blogger faces! I'm excited to reconnect again and get back into this little world :)

I did a lot of "work" for the new blog last night, but mostly it's stuff on my side of things that you won't even notice. I got my settings all set the way I like them, and got the rest of my posts imported from the old blog and published here now. There is still a LOT to be done, and it will probably take me a while to get it all under control, but I'm steady working on it.

Question though -- I'm trying to get a BlogLovin' set up for this new blog, and I have NO IDEA how!? Anyone have any tips or instructions for that? I don't remember even the smallest thing about how I did it before...

I also have to figure out my commenting/reply-back business, because I think now that my Google+ account is associated with my Blogger, I'm one of those dreaded no-reply bloggers. And I definitely don't want to stay like that for too long! Tips or suggestions on this issue folks??

Also, now that I have a new blog, I freaking cannot WAIT to share lots of stuff from the wedding and honeymoon! I have 16 drafts currently just sitting there, waiting to be published full of pictures and luncheons and all sorts of lovely wedding-y things :) So once things are more in swing around here, I'll start publishing some of those!

That's really all I have for today, I just want to try to get myself back in the habit of writing and posting regularly. So cheerio for now lovelies ;)

Sunny Love,
Halie

Returning From My Blog Hiatus!!

I'm back in the blog world again!!! Well technically, I've had to start all over again (almost) from scratch, but I'm still back! I'm back with a new title, which I'm loving so far, and I'm back with my desire to blog again. Things look pretty plain and simple around here for now, but hopefully soon I can get a customized blog design going on. I think my husband and I are going to attempt that ourselves, so we'll see how that goes! For now though, I'm just trying to get everything in order....

Here's the deal, back when I first signed up for Blogger it was in 2009 as part of a photojournalism class. We kept a blog, and "turned in" our assignments each week by posting them in a blog. So that's how this was originally born. Then I created Penguins, Pasta & Polka Dots under that same account in 2010, and it flourished for a long while. I eventually got tired of the name and started trying to update... The issue here is that meanwhile, I got my first Gmail account with my new married new, and decided I wanted to combine and streamline all of my Google accounts.... But my blog was set up on an old account, and the only way I could accomplish getting it under my new Gmail address, was to export it from the old blog, and import it to this new one. So I was (thankfully!!) able to transfer all of my posts and photos (actually, I think it's still transferring as I'm writing this), but none of my old stats or followers were transferred...

So I'm back to zero page views total, and zero page views on any of the individual posts, and zero followers on BlogLovin' or via GFC. So I'm starting at the very beginning again, and I guess some would say that's a very good place to start. :) So anyways, if you're here because you've hopped over from PP&P, I'm seriously SO GLAD you've come to join me here! And if you're brand new to my blog for the first time, then Welcome, and I'm SO GLAD you're here too!

Things will continue to change and evolve here over the next few weeks until I can get everything functioning properly, so just bear with me for a while, will ya? In other words, this is my official "Please Pardon Our Dust While Renovating" sign.

In case you forgot though, you can find me being much more active over on Instagram, because honestly I have a slight obsession with IG... :)

I'm soooo looking forward to getting back in the swing of things here in blog land! Glad to be back!

Sunny Love,
Halie