Memorial Day Weekend

Long, holiday weekends are simply the best kind of weekend, am I right? I'm sure most of you would agree with that. If not, well then I probably don't want to hear it. But thanks anyways... ;) Mine was the bestest, and honestly it wasn't long enough...it was full of sunshine, good food, friends, and relaxing. If only every weekend could actually be three days, right?! Right.

FRIDAY - we went to Hobby Lobby real quick after work (haven't actually done the craft I bought the supplies for yet), and then we ate dinner at Momo's Pizza again, since we were on that side of town. Super yummy.

Had to send out a Snapchat to a few friends of course ;)

SATURDAY - we met some friends down at Alligator Point Beach, and spent the day soaking up the sunshine, with our toes in the sand. The weather was perfect and breezy, and it felt great. On the way back to town, we stopped to eat dinner at Tropical Trader in Panacea. For you locals that might not realize this, it's like the little brother of Angelo's! Owned by the same people, but more casual and a bit less expensive. Such good food too! We all shared an appetizer of calamari, and I got a mahi mahi sandwich.

SUNDAY - ate sandwiches for lunch at Jimmy John's, and then went back down to meet our friends at the beach again! The weather was lovely again, and it was another good day in the sunshine.

MONDAY - we were up bright and early, so that our landlord could come by to look at the hot water heater, because it had stopped working... Long-story short, he ended up just buying a new one, and by 7pm last night, it was finally installed and working properly again. Thank the lord he worked so quick to get that done for us, or else this morning's shower would have been so freezing! We also did a lot of work around the house - laundry, tons of dishes, Jeff mowed the lawn (until the mower just stopped working), and we went grocery shopping.

Jeff grilled burgers and corn on the cob for dinner, and we had watermelon. And what I'm most proud of, was my homemade coleslaw! Our neighbor brought over a fresh head of cabbage from his garden, so I threw it in the Ninja blender, added in some carrots, mayo, salt, pepper, sugar & balsamic vinegar, and then topped it with sunflower seeds. It was so good y'all! Jeff and usually don't really even like coleslaw, but we both loved what I made last night! I was sad when I realized at like 10pm that I didn't take a picture of the fresh cabbage or the coleslaw though, so y'all will just have to pretend like I did, OK? :)

We were exhausted last night after a couple days in the sun, and a long day of working in and around the house. But it was all worth it, and we had a great three-day holiday weekend! We're thankful for those who have served in our military to make our lives so amazing in this great country of ours. We remember those who gave their lives, so that we can live ours free!

Happy Monday Tuesday! (This is going to be a confusing day...)

Wedding Day Recap - Decor & Cakes

So I actually meant to do this post yesterday, but some laziness happened, and I just never got around to the whole blog thing. But that's a-ok, because today is "Wedding Wednesday" anyways, so it fits perfect, even if I'm not even getting to it until almost 6pm, after work and everything... 

This is the last of the posts that I had pre-setup with all the pictures and stuff, so that means this weekend I need to throw a few more together to share family pictures, and then some of the actual wedding ceremony and reception. And then maybe eventually we can scoot past the wedding stuff, and move on to the honeymoon in Cancun!

This bike was my mom's old Huffy cruiser, from like the 80's or 90's or something. I used to ride it all around St. Augustine during college, but it was like bubblegum pink. And I liked it then, but we decided to fix it up and use it as decor for our bike-themed wedding! We sanded it (a lot!), the spray painted it this awesome turquoise color. It got new tires, a new chain, and new handle grips - and it looks so stinking cute now! It was perfect :)

We got our cake made at Publix, but my florist did the beautiful cascade of flowers. And it was perfect! It turned out exactly how we wanted it, and I thought it was just gorgeous. And it was of course delicious! It was vanilla cake, and the top & bottom tiers had a layer of raspberry filling. The icing was a subtle lemon flavor, and it just tasted so fresh and fruity! I made that little pennant banner, and we ordered the bicycle topper from this shop on Etsy.

Jeff's groom's cake also came from Publix, and they did a great job bringing his vision to life as well. It was perfect for him - bikes, Lego's and superhero's! He absolutely loved it. Oh, and this cake was yummy too.

We collected a variety of jars over the months before, and bought a big bunch of flowers from Hobby Lobby to make the reception decor ourselves. We filled the jars with white sand (bought from Lowes), and then arranged the flowers in each jar/vase.

We also collected and bought old, vintage books over the summer, and used stacks of books and our jars of flowers as the centerpieces for the reception tables. Oh, and we made "naked" books by ripping the cover off a paperback, then tearing all the pages off the binding. Then you simply tie the pages back up, and it looks really stinking cute!

For our wedding favors, we stuffed little take-out style boxes with bags of one marshmallow, two graham crackers, a piece of chocolate, and a match, for a take-home-s'mores kit! We also hand-stamped each box with a little bicycle stamp, and tied on cute little tags that said, "Sending You S'more Love." And yes, we got the idea from Pinterest :)

That beautiful photo-book from Shutterfly was our guest book, full of photos from our whole relationship!

 There were six of these giant windows in our reception room, and we made six of these yarn tassel garlands, one for each window. We did it using a super easy project from one of my favorites, Kaitlyn @ Wifessionals! And we liked them so much, we kept them to hang up in our house after the wedding :)

I wrote our ceremony out on a this giant chalk board, rather than printing up programs no one would read or care about. It saved us money, and it was good for the trees! :) I started out using a regular piece of chalk, but that really wasn't cutting it, so my bridesmaid Jenni and I flew to Michael's 10 minutes before closing in order to grab some chalk markers. And they worked like a dream. I did all the writing, and then Jenni did all the cute little embellishments around the borders. 

We kept things cute and simple, and it ended up looking so great. I loved every little bit of it, and all of our homemade projects were so sweet and personal. I just loved it all!

Cookout, Games, Kayaks & Food

Hey there fellow bloggers! I'm actually really excited about today's weekend recap, because of two reasons: 1. I used an actual camera this weekend, not just my phone, and 2. it was an awesome weekend, so there's good things to share today! I mean sure, there is always something good to share from the weekend, but this one was particularly good, so let's get to it, shall we?

FRIDAY

Some friends came over and we grilled hamburgers and corn for dinner. We sat out on the deck until after dark just having fun and talking, then finally moved inside once we couldn't see anymore. (We don't have a light out there...) Then we played some games for a while, and eventually they had to head home early, because she works the 7am-7pm shift at the hospital, so she needed some sleep! It was a great night though, and lots of fun for sure.

SATURDAY

Saturday we used our Groupon for Rum 138, and went kayaking down the Santa Fe River! It was gorgeous and sunny and we loved it so much. The current is pretty strong, so we hardly even had to paddle that much, so we basically just floated a lot of the time, and that was nice and relaxing. We packed a cooler full of lunch, waters, and some fancy giant cans of Arizona tea, and had lunch at the picnic tables at Poe Springs Park, about an hour down the river. It was so awesome! The trip was about four hours total, and it was gorgeous. We definitely loved it, and were glad we were able to go on this little adventure together! (And now I get to cross this off of our summer bucket list!)

On the way home, we took the back country roads instead of the interstate, and we came upon this super cute and absolutely delicious BBQ place in the tiny town of Mayo, Florida. The portions were huge, and everything is super fresh and homemade. She also makes her own desserts, so we enjoyed some peanut butter pie before heading back on the road.

SUNDAY
Sunday I accidentally slept in till after 10am, so we missed church yesterday. I was exhausted though after our big day on the river, so it felt good to get some extra rest. We lazed around for a bit, then decided to treat ourselves for lunch out somewhere, and I chose this new place I've really been wanting to try - Merv's Melt Shop. And y'all it was so good! I had a clubhouse sandwich, and absolutely loved it, with sweet potato tots. Jeff got a breakfast sammie of fried eggs and cheese, and his was really good too. We will definitely be back here many more times to come! (And this is new restaurant 1 of 3 for my summer bucket list!)

These next two pictures are just some random ones from before lunch.... These cute little dandelions are growing all over our yard right now, and I'm loving them! Unfortunately they're only growing because the yard is overgrown and needs to be mowed, but that's okay, I'll enjoy them while they're here! And then the second one is just because my little Primrose is the cutest girl in the world!

After lunch, we didn't do too much except check out a townhouse for rent (we didn't love it...), and went to Winn Dixie. Jeff is dealing with a serious cough and severe allergy issues, so he pretty much slept the afternoon away, while I watched Parenthood on Netflix. I cooked us dinner, and played super-wife doing all the laundry, dishes, taking out the trash, and straightening up. Normally Jeff would have been helping with all that, but since he was sleeping, I just handled all of it, and I felt super accomplished!

It was definitely a good weekend, and I loved just about every second of it. (Except for the fact my pitiful little husband was feeling so awful yesterday.) Thankful for all these great things and blessings and people in my life! Hope y'all had a great weekend too. What did y'all do? And Happy Monday :)

Wedding Day Recap - Bridal Party

I'm not so sure that y'all are still interested in all these wedding photos I'm posting or not, but the thing is I don't care. (Said in the nicest way possible.) It was my wedding, and I loved it, and I personally want to put it all on my blog, so that's what I'm going to do! Hope that's alright with y'all :)

Anyways, we took all of these group photos right after the ceremony, and I think you can really tell on mine and Jeff's faces how utterly excited we were at that point! I mean, we were just pronounced husband and wife! Isn't that such an awesome feeling, all you other married ladies? It definitely was for us, and I'm glad you can see that in these photos.

I think the lighting and the trees behind us are all just so pretty, and I think these pictures turned out really good. In fact, these are some of my favorite of the day - partially because of how gorgeous they are, but also because of all the people we love so much in them with us!

Dear Megan, Jenni, Bridget, Adam, Greg & Brad - thank you all so so much for being apart of our bridal party. Each of you means so much to both of us, and we're so thankful for such amazing people supporting us and our marriage. We love each and every one of you, probably more than you know. Thank you again!