Dad's Birthday

Finally.... I just turned in my last last assignment for this semester. Now to enjoy the most wonderful time of year.  I have some catching up to do first.
We celebrated Dad's birthday in Dahlonega. We ate at the Porter House. One of our favorite restaurants in our area. The greatest thing was that they had already decorated the Dahlonega Square. If you have never visited Dahlonega at Christmas you are missing out! It's beautiful!

Where is your favorite place to visit this time of year?

Fall Has Arrived...

Wow... these past two month have been crazy busy around our house. I love this time of year and I would really like for everything to slow down just a bit so that I could take some time to enjoy it a little more. I know we all wish that at times. Well, last weekend we took a timeout day. We went with my parents to Gold Rush in Dahlonega, GA. We normally go on Saturday but this year we went early on Sunday. I know we were bad a skipped church but Caleb was called into work on Saturday and we had to postpone for one day. We got there around 9:30 am on Sunday and I was glad because we got there before most of the crowd. By the 11am it was packed. They had some really cute stuff.

Anyhow, we had a great time just walking around and being outside on that beautiful day! After we left Dahlonega we rode toward Ellijay which is know for their apple orchards. On the way there we stopped by Burt's Pumpkin Farm. If you live around here you know Burt's is famous! :) It was packed too but fun to walk through and take some pictures. They have all different types of pumpkins all shapes and sizes. 

In Ellijay we stopped at Hillcrest Orchard and the most wonderful Apple Fritter with Apple Ice cream on top!!! It was DELICIOUS!!! I was actually just thinking of it again this afternoon and wondering just how bad it would be to drive all that way just one more time this week! Haha! 

Sorry we had to have a bite before I remembered that we had not got a picture. :)

After that we drove back across the mountain you know over the river and through the woods. :) The trees were beautiful this weekend! Being out on a day like that just reminds me of all we have to be thankful for. God has definitely painted the most beautiful picture for us to enjoy! 

Well this weekend we are not sure what we will do but definitely something fall related as I am determined to have at least a half a day with no school work for either of us! We need that time to relax. Hope you are all enjoying this fall weather! 

What have you been up to? Any fall festivals or new creations?

Anniversary

Tuesday, October 4th was our 3rd Anniversary! I have been truly blessed to be married to my best friend for 3 years!

I was looking back through our wedding pictures and I have to say I absolutely loved our wedding. If I could go back and do it again I would keep everything exactly same. Well, except I might slow it down a little. That was the fastest day ever... 

Here are some shots from our perfect day.

We got married at an old mill. This is the front porch. My grandmother did all the flowers for our wedding. I think she did an amazing job. She went above beyond to make sure they were perfect. I did not want the over arranged look. I wanted a natural setting.

Many people were not sure why we wanted to get married outside and not in a church but what greater place to get married than God's Sanctuary that he gave to us. We brought in old wooden pews and set it up like a sanctuary outside. It was exactly as I pictured it would be. Actually it turned out even better.

There is my handsome groom waiting for me. :)

We chose to use sand as it was something we could keep. The sand we are pouring is from Destin our favorite place to go to the beach. In bottom were shells that we had picked up that summer in Destin on vacation. On our honeymoon we got sand from the beach in Jamaica and placed it on top. The Jamaica sand was darker so you can see a difference. I love this part as it is personal for us and something we will cherish forever. We still have it sitting in our bedroom. We did things like this for our wedding because we wanted it to be something that we would keep. I had asked other people about their unity candle and most could not even tell me where it was and I also asked about a guest book and got the same response. Instead of a guest book we did a picture frame for people to sign as they entered the wedding and reception. We have it above our mantel.

I love the old wheel in the back. 

This was my family picture. Everyone loved it and most got a copy for their homes. I love walking into my grandmothers house and seeing it hanging up as a reminder of the most wonderful day ever!

One of my favorite things about our reception! Groom's Cake.

I love this picture because it shows us so happy and ready to start a new chapter in our lives.

Well, thank you for letting me share our wedding with you!

I will share our Anniversary dinner later. We tried a new restaurant and it was so good!!!! 

Fall = Football

Well, it is my favorite time of year. Fall... now if only it would feel like it. We are still in the 80's to 90's everyday.  I am ready for some blue jean and long sleeve tshirt weather. :)

With fall comes football. I really enjoy football season well I like watching UGA football. :) I am not into watching every single game that comes on. That's what Caleb uses DVR for. :) We are so excited to have season tickets this year. Last week was our first game. UGA lost but we still had fun!

Anyway, during this time of year Caleb and like to fix "snacky" foods on Sunday afternoons how this relates to football well it doesn't I'm just giving too many details.

One of my favorite dips is a simple dip that everyone has a version of. The difference in ours, which I got from my mom, is sausage. It's the simple rotel dip.

We cook the sausage mix with rotel and velveeta and there you go. Easy, easy but so good.

What is your favorite "snacky" food to make?

We Are Back!

I am so sorry that I have been away from the blog world for a while! It has been a crazy few weeks for Caleb and I. Caleb decided this summer that he was ready to go back to school. He has wanted to for a while but was just unsure of what to do. This time he really looked into his chosen degree and made sure that there was a good future with it. So we started preparations for his start of school with meeting with his advisor to orientation and all that goes along with starting a new school. At the beginning of August I suddenly realized that my summer was almost over! :( It went by really fast for me this year. I did, however, graduate with my master's degree this summer. YAY! I then had to prepare for my next step which is my Specialist and that started on August 15th.  If you did not already know I am a teacher and I started back to school with preplanning on August 16th. Caleb's classes officially started on August 28th. Thankfully we are both taking classes online so even though we are busy with school work when we get home we are still in the same house and are technically spending time together. :) So... with that said I have been a little overwhelmed but I am trying to get back to normal. With both of us in school the cooking new things and weekend trips have been put to the side a little but hopefully once we can get into a routine we will be able to get back to normal. I am excited about what our future holds for us and I know that God is in control and has a great plan in place.


As for today we are home and enjoying the night cooking together and watching some Football!!! GO DAWGS! :)

Tonight we made our own version of Southern Plate's Stuffed Pizza Sticks. We added some other stuff like italian sausage, onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives, pepperoni, garlic, mozzarella cheese and we used prego. We sauteed the onions, peppers, mushrooms, and olives before. We also cooked the italian sausage before.

 You have to let it rise for about an hour. 

It was really good! Definitely a keeper! 

Yard Sale #2

Our Second trip to yard sale was definitely not as successful. We found a lot of yard sales but did not find anything that we were looking for. Even with it all planned and mapped out. Let's just say we learned a lot!!! The majority of the yard sales would state household items and so on but when you got there it was mostly clothes. Also, if the yard sale started on Friday all the good stuff was gone. My new rule is if there is even a mention of clothes or baby stuff we do not need to go. :) We did find a couple of estate sales and they were priced really high so not sure that I will go for that again. But all in all it was a learning experience for us. The first trip, although totally free styled as the "Pickers" would say, was unsuccessful except for this one little find. An old clorox bottle at the first place we stopped at that was not even on our list. This lady had a lot of stuff but we held out because of space and I wish we had just bought from her. Again, a learning experience. :)

So here it is our one great find....

Not super special but something we like so at least it wasn't a total waste. 

Mirror, Mirror...

A couple of weeks ago we went to a couple of Yard Sales (I blogged about it earlier). While we were looking we found this old mirror. It was extremely heavy so we knew it was good quality.

BEFORE

 AFTER

We are currently working on our guest room and this will go in there when we are done. I have one more week of summer break left before school starts back. I cannot believe that summer has went by so fast! AND it is so HOT here right now that you can hardly stand to be outside even in the pool. I would personally like to go back to the old days and go to school from Labor Day until Memorial Day. I mean we all turned out ok. Right?! So something must have worked. :)

What are you working on right now?

Linking Up:

New Creations

I have been working on a couple of different things for our house and getting ready to go back to school. This summer has flown by and I am not ready for it to end. But I must say if we are all going back to school then I would like Fall to start right now! Bring on those 70-80 degree days please! :)

Anyway, this is what I have been up to....

 The dots are not perfect but I painted this one. If I were to make this as a gift I would use vinyl or make a stencil. This will go in my classroom with a picture of the hubby and I so I like the homemade look. :) 

This is a photo album that I personalized with our Monogram and now it just needs pictures of us. :) I love polka dots if you cannot already tell. Haha!

My Mom and I are also working on something to help get a little business going. I will reveal that later. Hopefully, our plan will be finished soon and I can show you! :)

This August Caleb and I both will be going back to school. I will start August 15th on my Specialist Degree. I just finished my Master's this summer and I am so excited to be done with that. Now to conquer the Specialist. Caleb will be starting August 29th to go back for a degree in Networking. I am so excited and proud of him for this! Anyway, as you know college is not cheap and we are trying to find a way to make some extra money to help out with this. So far we have had a couple of orders from family and I am greatly appreciative of that as it will help get the word out. We are praying for a great year and we know that God will provide and we have faith in that!

Yard Sale Treasure

We bought this stool at a yard sale a couple of weekends ago. It was several different colors but had potential. I am not the tallest person at 5'1 I have a difficult time reaching the top of our cabinets for the spices and such. I usually have to drag a chair over to get up there and have always wanted a little stool. So when we were yard saling a couple of weeks ago Caleb, the wonderful husband he is, came across this and showed it to me. I got it for $3 dollars. The little lady that I bought it from came up and gave me a hug and told me that she had kept it in her kitchen for years and recently her husband told her that she could not climb up on anything anymore and so he put it in the yard sale. She then whispered to me, "but when he is not around I will climb up on anything I want!" She let out a little giggle and had that twinkle in her eye that reminded me of my great-grandmother. She was always up to something. Anyway, that made it a little more special to me. 

 So today while I was in the house escaping the heat Caleb was in the garage working on this. Of course I did not know that until he brought it in and showed me. I am a lucky girl! :)

I think he did an excellent job on that little stool.

I linked to this party: