Magic Hour Best Friend Photo Shoot

During college, I made the best friends I could ever ask for. These girls mean the world to me, and I'm so so thankful God blessed me with such great friendships, and what I hope will continue to be lifelong relationships. I love them all so much, and was just soooo glad we got to all spend time together this past weekend!

It had been almost four years since I had seen a couple of them, but things literally picked up right where we left off, and we spent some great time together over the weekend. One of our favorite times was between the wedding ceremony and the reception, because the light right at dusk was just perfect, and since we had some time on our hands, we decided to take advantage of it.

My wonderful husband was our photographer for the night, and he got some great shots of us, especially the wonderfully hilarious candid photos! :)

I plan to share another post with more of an actual weekend update, and of course some more pictures of the wedding itself as well. But for now, I just had to share how much I love these ladies, and of course this awesome set of pictures from our very own photo shoot.

Also, Google created this AutoAwesome gif for me of our jumping photos, and I'm in love with it ;)

Wedding Day Recap - First Look

Hello lovelies! Technically, it's still my weekend right now. Jealous? :) Well Jeff and I went to St. Augustine for the weekend to attend a friend's wedding. Since the wedding was last night, it was too late to drive back home. So we get an extra day off today! So for that, we're very grateful. And also because of that, I'm not doing a weekend recap just yet, but I've  still got something lined up for y'all - wedding photos!

The First Look....

I think pretty much everyone these days either loves or hates the idea of a first look. For us, it was great and we loved it. I was so glad I got to spend just a few minutes with my groom before everything got crazy. I was glad he got to really look at me in my dress. I was glad we got to steal a few quick kisses.  It also helped calm me down too. While we were so busy getting ready, I started to get anxious and worried about things not being ready in time, or about something just not getting done. But once I finally got to see him, all of that extra hoopla just faded away. I was able to just chill and relax, and try to wait as patiently as possible for the ceremony to finally start. 

It was really a very sweet moment for us, and I'm so glad we did it. Also, the photographer found this little spot for us, and the lighting was so pretty back there on that little boardwalk through the woods of the park.

My wedding present to him was a nice wooden pocket knife, engraved with our wedding date, and some sappy lyrics from one of 'our' songs by Perry Como. He loved it! Side story here: we had decided to just exchange small-ish gifts and not go crazy with anything big or extravagant. Thus, I chose this little pocket knife from Etsy. But he got a little excited and surprised me with a Kindle PaperWhite a few days before the wedding! Which of course I loved! And he was still just as grateful for my sentimental gift for him :)

I know not everyone wants to see their future husband or wife before the ceremony, because of that age-old tradition that says it's bad luck. But really, that's just a silly tradition, and if you want to do it, then do it. We loved it, and I'm so glad we did it that way! It was so sweet and we both loved those extra few moments together before everything got crazy. After that, we were able to take more pictures together, and also take almost all of our family photos, and that cut down on photo time post-ceremony a TON, which is what we wanted. So all-in-all, we loved doing photos first, and would do it the same way again!

High Five for Friday - Week #5

Today is one of those Friday's where I am just beyond excited it's the weekend. Why you might be wondering? Because after work today, Jeff and I are driving over to St. Augustine for the weekend! One of my old friends from college is getting married on Sunday night, so we are heading over to spend the next few days in St. Augustine. And of course I'm really excited for the actual wedding itself, but I'm also just really excited to see some old friends that I haven't seen in literally years! Some of my old friends still live there so I see them more frequently, but some of the girls have moved away and I haven't seem them in like four years, which is craziness! And I am just literally so pumped right now I can hardly stand it...

But let's get to today's post now, and talk about some awesome things from this past week, in celebration of High Five for Friday with Lauren Elizabeth...

1. We had some overnight guests on Wednesday night, and let's just say the house was a bit more crazy than usual... We loved having them though while their owners were out of town!

From L to R: Primrose (mine), Ace & Gus. They were all so sweet and fun!

2. Angie came to kick boxing with me last night, and she says she's gonna come back again! Working out is always more fun with a friend there with you :)

3. I took some time (OK, a lot of time) one night this week lining up wedding recap posts for the next few weeks. I uploaded all of the pictures into new posts, and now I just need to write some in each of them before they're ready to go. But having the pictures all in order and uploaded is the biggest bulk of the process, so it feels good to have that done. Get ready for a flood of wedding recap posts in the upcoming weeks!

4. I'm still having fun on Instagram doing the photo-a-day prompts and challenges, so you should come join me over there sometime :)

Top L: 4 things // Top R: Pop of Color // Bottom L: Sunshine // Bottom R: Entrance

5. We're having a pizza lunch here at work today, provided by the boss-lady, and I'm pretty pumped for that. Pizza is always a favorite, and when it's free it's even better!

Seriously you guys, I'm so freaking excited for this weekend I can hardly even stand it right now! I'm not leaving at lunch today, so that I can leave work at 4, so we can try to beat the traffic a little bit getting out of town. First though, we're dropping Prim off with Jeff's parents, who are going to keep her for the weekend. I know she'll be in good hands with them, but I'm going to miss that little snuggle girl so much while we're gone! (I'm turning into such a crazy fur-mama these days...)

I hope y'all have had a good week too, and that your weekend might be just half as good as mine! :)

Wedding Day Recap - Getting Ready

Howdy ladies! Today is is another wedding recap, and this finally begins the actual wedding day recaps! These photos are just a few of us girls getting ready before the ceremony, after we had finished up the final decorations that morning. The venue wouldn't let us put anything up before 8am that day, so we had to do it all that morning! (I'll do decor photos in a whole other post later, so we'll skip those for now...)

All ready to go with my bridesmaids! I'm cleverly hidden so that it could be posted to Facebook pre-wedding ;)

So there's the first recap post from our actual wedding day! I've got what seems like a million more lined up for the coming weeks. I think I might go crazy if I only post one a week, so I'll probably end up posting two a week until we finally make it to the honeymoon recaps! And hopefully y'all don't get crazy bored of all the wedding recap posts, because there will seriously be like so many more...

Pinterest Recipes I've Tried & Loved

Last night, I officially added a new dish into our regular rotation, after making it last night for the second week in a row. I found it on Pinterest a while back, and made it for Angie and I last week for our healthy girls' night dinner, and we both loved it. So I decided I needed to make it again last night for my husband on Meatless Monday, and he loved it too! So then this morning, I was inspired by Lauren's blog post where she shared some of her favorite Pinterest recipes. So I thought I'd do the same today.

Last night's delicious Mexican Quinoa, and also the picture I used for yesterday's photo-a-day prompt, "close."

Most of my Pinterest boards are food boards, because that's what I use it for the most. Of course I have some design and craft boards, as well as a few others, but the first like 15 or so are all different categories of foods! I like to keep it pretty specific so it's easier to find something when I'm craving something specific, or feel like making a casserole that day instead of soup or sandwiches. So for that, they all have their own board.

Well anyways, lets get to the recipe sharing!

One Pan Mexican Quinoa*
Crab Salad**
Ratatouille's Ratatouille
Slow-Cooker Lasagna Soup
Creamy Crockpot Chicken & Broccoli Over Rice
Loaded Mashed Potato Bake
Oven-Baked Chicken Fajitas 
Pepperoni Pizza Pasta Casserole

*The Mexican quinoa is what I made last night, and it's just sooo easy and yummy.
**I didn't use the radish in this, and it was still delicious. I also added in just a tiny bit of chopped up "tamed" jalapenos.

Lately I've been attempting to try a new recipe at least once a week, in order to add some variety into our usually super simple meal plan. So when I found ones that we love, we can add them in to the normal rotation. The ones I shared above are definitely some of our favorites (well I'm the crab stuff was just for me, Jeff doesn't like the 'imitation' crab...), and they definitely get repeated.

What are some of YOUR favorite Pinterest recipes you've tried? (The easier ones guys, not the ones that require hours of work and a bajillion ingredients please...) I'd love to hear what other people have already tested out and loved too!

Easter Weekend

I'm back this Monday for a little weekend recap. Last Monday, I was feeling really bad and nasty, so I took the day off work, and I also took the day off from blogging. Instead, I stayed home and read my book literally ALL day long. Didn't turn on the tv at all, and read for like seven hours straight. It was awesome. But this Monday, I'm feeling much better, and so I want to share some quick clips from the weekend. 

Friday night, Jeff was still on his way driving back home, so I went over to hang out with my parents. We went out for dinner, and then got some dessert on the way home. Then we just sat around for a few hours chatting and laughing and telling stories. It was fun, and a good time for me to spend with just the two of them. But I sure was excited when my husband finally got home around 9:30 that night!

Saturday was the laziest day, and it was so glorious. Jeff is now in love with Taco Bell's new breakfast, but I hadn't tried it yet, so we went out that morning in our pj's to grab some. They accidentally gave us an extra bag of food in the drive-thru line (we assume it was for the car behind us), but we didn't realize until we were back home, and then it was just too late to do anything. So instead we got to sample a couple extra items as well! And y'all, that breakfast crunch wrap was delish. Please no one tell me the calorie count on that thing though, because I do not want to know....

We then sat around watching some Netflix for a few hours, and then decided to go see a movie at the cheap theater. We saw "Monuments Men" and it was really good! I've always had a fascination with WWII and the Holocaust, but that was a whole new part of history that I had never known. It was really cool though. We then forced ourselves to make a quick grocery shopping trip, but then called it a day and that was about all! Except for dinner I made grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches on cheddar-jalapeno bread my parents brought back from a little local place on their vacation. And it was so delicious! 

And then Sunday of course was Easter! We went to church that morning at Engage Tallahassee, and then met Jeff's parents for lunch at one of our favorites - Marie Livingston's. I had a delicious steak with a baked potato, and loved every single bite of it. (And of course dripped some of the sauce on my dress with the very first bite....) Then we went to the in-laws house and hung out there for a bit. Jeff helped put together their new patio furniture, then we all had dessert out on the porch to enjoy the new stuff! 

For dinner we met my parents at Buffalo Wild Wings, and we just split one of those appetizer sampler's since neither of us was super hungry. But it was delish. Their garlic Parmesan flavor is the jam. I think I'd like to have that stuff on everything! We sat and chatted for a while after we finished eating, but eventually wrapped it up and we headed back home for some movie-rest time. We watched "12 Years A Slave" and man what an intense story/movie. Some parts were really hard to watch, but overall, it's a great movie.

I'm so thankful that the Lord died for us and ours sins, but even more importantly that he rose again on the third day! What an incredible miracle! I hope y'all had a good weekend, and fun time celebrating Easter. Happy Monday ladies :)