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 Rehearsal & Dinner

So I've taken a small break from blogging this week, which was kind of an accident, but I'm back at it again, and today I'm sharing another wedding update. The night before the wedding, our whole wedding party and family made the short 30-minute drive from town down to Wakulla Springs, to check out the place, find our spots for the ceremony, and do the usual quick walk-through for the next day. We also brought all the decorations and unloaded them there for the night. 

After about an hour, we were all finished at Wakulla Springs and so we headed back to Tally for the rehearsal dinner! Jeff's mom (and some helper-friends of hers) set it all up in the fellowship hall at their church, and did a good job decorating everything in turquoise and purple. They even got some youth from the church to act as waiters, so it was really nice :)

Our last picture before becoming man and wife!

Jenni and Jeff's Granny became best friends, and they instantly loved each other :)

Love this pretty sister of mine!

After a yummy meal and dessert and coffee, the girls and I headed back to our house for my final night as a single lady! We had a few more things to finish up and take care of, but we made sure not to stay up too late. I needed plenty of beauty rest, and we had an early day coming the next morning! And now that means the next wedding update, will finally be of the actual wedding! About time, right? Only six and a half months later, but who's counting?! Happy Wednesday ladies!

P.S. - #sorryimnotsorry about the giant picture dump... hope you're not sorry either ;)

32 Things That Make Me Happy

Yesterday, Erin at Two Thirds Hazel host a little link all about happiness. Since I had already posted a blog yesterday,  I decided to wait and use this post today instead. I started writing it yesterday though, and had fun thinking of some serious, some funny, and some random things that make me happy!

32 Things That Make Me Happy

1. Gorgeous, bright sunshine and warm spring weather.

2. Fun adventures and quality time spent with my husband.

3. My super cute and adorable doggie, Primrose.

4. Being able to make just a short drive to the beach for a day in the sun and the salt air.

5. A loving family that is also fun and supportive and caring.

6. Pizza. Seriously - it makes me happy. I just love carbs and cheese, y'all!

7. Cuddly nights on the couch under a blanket, watching a cute movie or tv show.

8. Craft time, and making random things for our house.

Just did this on Wednesday night, to finally re-pot my little African Violet!

9. Decorating our house!

10. Camping trips.

11. Walks around the park by our house.

12. Taking tons of pictures, even when it's of just everyday, ordinary things.

13. Brightly colored pens used for everyday activities. (i.e. at work)

14. The Easter wreath my MIL made for our front door.

15. Six months of marriage. Tomorrow is our 6 monthiversay of marriage, and I'd say things are going pretty great so far! I sure love this man :)

16. Living in The Sunshine State.

17.  Looking forward to seeing old friends at weddings. We're going to one at the end of the month, and I can't wait to see a big group of people I love so much!

18. New nail polish. Especially super bright colors that are perfect for spring and summer.

19. Wearing flip-flops all year long. And yes, I really am one of those girls that does that. I'm pretty sure I was wearing them with my sweater, scarf and jeans on Christmas day this past year...

20. Finishing a good book.

21. Our ever-growing collection of movies, both for grown-ups and "kids". AKA - Jeff and I still watch the kiddie movies just as much as the regular ones :)

22. When my husband texts me randomly in the middle of the day just to tell me he loves me.

23. Good music.

24. Getting coupon codes for Shutterfly in my email, making a book the day it expires, getting it only a week later, and being in love with it!

Thanks to my husband for being the hand model in this one ;)

25. Burning a yummy smelling candle in every single room of the house, so when I walk around I get bursts of a new smell in each room.

26. Spending an entire day in my pajamas - but most importantly, not putting on a bra the entire day.

27. Game nights with friends.

28. Making lists, of any kind. (Also see, I'm OCD and I love lists....)

29. Singing along at the top of my lungs while watching a musical or movie at home.

30. Florida State football.

31. Chapstick. Especially if I haven't put it on in a few hours and I've been craving it, my lips get real happy once I'm finally back together again with my beloved Burts Bee's or EOS.

32.  Having so many happy things in my life! I think I could list at least 32 more (my brain is still on a roll right now thinking of more things), but for the sake of brevity and closure and sticking to Erin's allotted number of 32, I'll cut to the credits now...

This was so much fun to make! I think I need to make these kinds of lists more often - things that make me happy, things I'm grateful for, things I love about where I live... I just want to bring so much positivity into my life and into the blogging world, and what a fun, easy way to do that!

Oh, and one more thing I'm happy about - it's Friday!!

Sunny Love,
Halie

Bridal Shower from my Church Family

Hello bloggy friends, today is another wedding update around these parts. I'm keeping things in chronological order (of course, or else my OCD self would break out in hives...), so today's recap is my second bridal shower!

This wedding shower was given by some lovely ladies from my church, Bradfordville First Baptist. I have known all of these ladies for a long time, and I was very honored that they volunteered to host and throw a bridal shower for me. Everything they made was beautiful and Pinterest-worthy, and it was a great time with a close group of lovely ladies!

The hostessses - Debra, Callie (one of my really good friends), & Allison. Oh, and Emma :)

Once again, there were some great friends and ladies at the shower, and I was so glad I got the chance to celebrate with this group of women. They all gave thoughtful gifts, and I was thankful for every single one of them! Thank you again to Debra, Callie & Allison for all the hard work  you put into making this shower such a great time for me. Love all of you!

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!