The Weekend Report

I had a pretty good weekend this week, as it is was one of the first weekends I finally started to feel a bit better, have a little energy, and not be in pain post excess skin removal surgery (I really need to do post all about that, since I haven't had an easy go at it, at all).

Adam left early Saturday morning with Linkee to go spend Thanksgiving with his family in Wisconsin. It's a long story, as to why I'm not going. But no one need worry about me, since I will be spending it with some friends. But I will miss him dearly. 

On Saturday, my friend Lark and I had made a date to go to the Gingerbread Market in Huntsville, which was a big, Christmas shopping marketplace. And it was such an enjoyable morning. First of all, every time Lark and I get together we talk a million miles a minute and seem to have so much to catch up on.

Second of all, the market was big and had such cute stuff.

I ended up buying two wooden door hangers. I'm kind of in love with cotton fields, and I thought the cotton ball that said, "Welcome," is so very perfect for fall. And then I got the cute fox for the Winter months. 

We both got these Mad Scientist candles. What was so interesting about them is once the wax burns, you can blow out the candle, and then use the wax as a lotion! So cool. 

We of course got some treats. There was the always delicious Piper & Leaf tea in Cherry Christmas flavor. I also got this super moist and creamy Pecan Praline bundt cake. Soo amazing.

The outing wore me out for sure, and I spent the rest of Saturday napping.

Sunday, I managed to get a little crafting done which felt good, as I haven't had much energy to spare lately. I made a page for my November Project Life spreads. I love the Homespun studio calico kit sooo much.

I also started on my 2018 "All About My Selfie" album. I made a title page, and I made a page about my goals for 2018.

Some where between all that, I watched a million classic episodes of Survivor, stayed up way too late, and cleaned up my craft room.

I have a little bit of Sunday night blahs. But I'm happy to have a really short work week, and I'm ready for Thanksgiving.

Love,

B

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

Huntsville Ghost Walk and Maple Hill Cemetery Walk

A few weekends ago, I met up with my college friend turned local friend, Lark, for a Huntsville Ghost Walk Tour. Lark and I are very a like in some of the activities we enjoy (like me she is a Disney Park friend). We are both into local history and beautiful homes. So when I texted her to find out if she wanted to go on the local ghost walk with me, she was like, "dang, I meant to text you about that first!".

There are three different tours, and we decided on the Twickenham tour, which is the historic district in Huntsville.  We really enjoyed the tour, I'm not a big, believer in ghosts, but I loved the ghost stories, and the historic information I learned. And I'm all about history.

A few weekends later we were again out an about for a little Huntsville history. This time for the Maple Hill Cemetery Walk. This Maple Hill Cemetery stroll is an annual tradition, taking place in this beautiful old graveyard. Actors and Actresses portray famous Huntsville people, standing in front of the graves telling their life story. It made for a very pleasant afternoon!

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

Mothers Day @ Cotton Row

Cotton Row is a restaurant in Downtown Huntsville that I've been meaning to try for quite a while. So I finally decided to do it by taking mom out to brunch there for Mothers' Day. 

And I'm so glad I did, it was so worth it! 

Cotton Row is in an old converted bank, it even has a huge safe to prove it. The restaurant is in three levels, and we actually ended up eating down in the wine cellar, which was nice and quiet. 

We started with mimosas and an appetizer of fried green tomatoes, which were super crisp. Mom got the river fly farm granola crusted french toast, and I ordered the chicken and waffles.  Both were excellent.

I've had chicken and waffles before, but not ones with gravy, syrup, and hot sauce. I loved that combination, and the chicken was super tender.

I can't wait for my friend Anna (a total foodie) to come into town at the end of the summer, so I can try their supper menu.



Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

Pints & Pixels

Friday night was date night for us this week, and we decided to check out a new place in Huntsville, Pints & Pixels. It has old school video games, and most important to me, a long row of Pinball Machines. Oh, how I love Pinball. 

It reminds me of when I was younger, and they had a little arcade in the movie theater, which I loved to play pinball on, before and after the show. 

The bar is uber cute and full of geektastic decorations. It has a statue of Han Solo in Carbonate, murals of video games, and those piranha plants from Super Mario Brothers as table decorations.

I think we may have gone a little overboard, as we purchased 96 tokens. And we played for something like 3 hours (which included dinner). I have learned that I am much better than Adam at Pinball. But he takes the award on the arcade games. He even managed to get the 4th high score on Tapper! I was so proud of my nerd.

Our other favorites were Paperboy, Pacman, Donkey Kong Jr, and Mortal Kombat. 

I think this is a great addition to the area, and I can't wait to take our friends when they come to visit!

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

Unclaimed Baggage Center

Yesterday, Adam and I took a little day trip to Scottsboro, Alabama, to check out the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Which is basically a thrift store where all the items in luggage that gets lost when people fly (and never reunited with their owner) go. I've been wanting to check it out for years and years, but every time we were in the vicinity, it was closed.

When we had almost completed our hour drive, we tried to avoid what we thought was a tire in the road, but it ended up being a turtle. The biggest turtle I've seen outside of the zoo. We couldn't leave it in the middle of the road, on a somewhat busy highway. Those trucks were going to turn him into turtle soup. We quickly completed a U-turn, so we could get him out of the road.

I was worried he might be a snapping turtle (later by googling online, I learned he WAS a snapping turtle). So our best idea was to wrap him in a blanket we keep in the car for emergencies. He let Adam move him to the field next to the highway without issue. But when we attempted to move him farther back, he tried to snap off Adam's finger. It was like he was saying, "I got this now, leave me alone." We left him to his own devices, hopefully he didn't head back to the road!

The UBC has a little museum of some of the most unusual items they have come across. There were huge paddle boards, McDonald's Arches, and Hoggle from the movie Labyrinth! Like how does that get lost? 

Unclaimed Baggage is huge (about the size of a city block). And they have so much stuff, it really is like going on a Treasure Hunt. Ultimately, I got some books. sunglasses, postcards (for my project life album), and a Michael Kors bag for a very reduced price! Adam got some video games and books for himself.

Such a fun place that would be good to hit up every couple of months to see what could be found!

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

W Girl Weekend

This last weekend was one of the weekends I look forward to the most and is always over way too fast! It was one of the weekends where my college girlfriends came to visit, and I loved every minute of it. And can I just say how much I love having a house big enough to hold my friends?

Even though everyone rolled into town Friday night and we stayed up late talking, the festivities didn't really kick off till Saturday! I have been really into Jamberry lately, and I agreed to host a little Jamberry party! We had a good time trying on wraps and just having some girl time. I bought 12 Krispee Kreme donuts to the party because I'm the hostess with the mostess.

It just so happened that Lark and Jana's birthday were in the upcoming week, and they were turning 30. In fact, by the end of May, we will all be 30 (I'm the baby)! That is crazy, knowing we have all been friends for 12 years now. Where has the time gone?

So before we headed out for some shopping and dinner, we stopped to get the birthday girls some birthday crowns (and "I'm 30" buttons of course). They looked so cute.

We shopped for a couple of hours, and then we stopped to get dinner and drinks at Bar Louie. Adam joined us. I assumed he would dress up, since we were dressed up, but I guess that never occurred to him (ha). I had never eaten there, and it was so good! They had quite an extensive menu of drinks, we each tried something different, and just passed them around.  The food was awesome too.

For dinner, I took them to one of my favorite local spots, Steel City Pops! They loved it just as much as I always do, that makes my heart happy.

The whole point of the weekend was to see the show Mamma Mia. Personally, I have seen Mamma Mia twice, and it has never not been amazing! It is hilarious, the music is awesome, and one of the best parts comes after the show wraps, when everyone is dancing in the aisles. I could see it again and again.

Sunday morning, I took Jana to Pure Barre, which is one of my work-out passions, and one she had been wanting to try. Of course, we took a Before & After picture. It was definitely a tough class, but I think she liked it!

We had pizza before everyone left for home. It was such a great weekend, I can't wait to do it all over again!

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

Holiday Date Night

This morning at the annoying hour of 6 a.m., Link and I dropped Adam off at the local airport to send him on a work trip out to California for two weeks. Although I have been known to love my alone time, I have been dreading him leaving. December is such a fun month, and we both love Christmas, so it just sucks to be missing so much of this season together.

I also don't want him to leave for a myriad of selfish reasons. I have to take care of all the household tasks myself, and I can't share the responsibilities of dog care with him. etc. And one of my favorite things about Christmas is coming home from work to the lights ALREADY on. When I complained about that, Adam ran out and got timer for the lights, so I could still have that joy. He can be so sweet.

So we decided Friday night that we would have one good holiday date before he left.

We decided to head downtown and check out the Tinsel Trail. This is a free event at Big Spring Park, which has over 200 decorated Christmas trees. It was so pretty out there, and some of the trees were decorated so creatively. I also learned Adam never read Dr. Suess growing up, when I was talking about the "Thing 1" tree! I was shocked, how is that even possible?

After walking the trail, we did a little Christmas decor shopping. And Adam surprised me with the Inside Out DVD, which is my favorite movie of 2015. I love me some Pixar, and I can't wait to watch it. Then, we got pizza at Mellow Mushroom (we are such pizza people), and I had a peppermint Popsicle from Steel City Pops for dessert.

I really enjoyed those couple few hours with Adam, and it was a perfect Holiday date night. And while I always miss him terribly, I'm going to soak up as much fun from this season as possible.

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

Notes from the Week

We got first place in trivia Monday night, which was super fun, because it is super rare. My mother, Adam, and I go nearly every Monday night. It is steep competition, there are often times 15+ teams there, and some have 8+ people in them. It makes it hard to hold your own when you are just a lowly team of three. But we do frequently do well, and we often place in the top 3. This is the third time in three years, we've gotten first place, which is something to celebrate! 

Tuesday was a big election in our little town. The vote was on whether or not to raise property taxes to improve our local city schools. The polls closed at 7, and I get off work at 6. So I was killing myself to commute home from work and pick up Adam so we could vote. Voting is super important to me, so I was super anxious we wouldn't make it! I even got stuck, by not 1 but 2 trains.

When I finally got Adam, I told him not to tell the polling people we had recently moved, because we hadn't updated our address, and I figured it would be a problem! But God Bless Adam, he is a better person than me, and he did tell them we moved! I was already keyed up due to the anxiety of getting there, and for a moment, I was super irate at him. They ALMOST didn't let us vote, but they were nice, and let us anyway. We were the very last people to vote.

Unfortunately, we voted yes to support our city schools, but most of the city voted no. So we lost. On ward and upwards I suppose. 

A couple of weeks ago, I bought a new dress I loved. I probably just loved it because it was yellow, that is my favorite color. I wore it to work on Wednesday, and I got through the morning with no problems. And then on lunch, I went to wal-greens to pick up a few things, when I felt a little draft on my backside. I never heard a rip or anything, but apparently the slit in the back on my dress had torn open. My butt was hanging out, and  I was mortified! I spent the rest of the time in the store, holding my dress together and running toward the car. I had to barrel home, so I could change, and this made me 10 minutes late getting back from my lunch break. I can only hope my butt wasn't hanging out all morning long, as I walked in front of people quite frequently!  At least my boss thought the story was funny, when I texted her why I was running late! 

Wednesday was National Dog Day, and this is the picture I shared of my little stinker, on his walk at a nearby trail. I just had to take a moment and honor this sweet, sweet boy, who has added so much love and energy to our household. We love him more and more everyday. It's stupid crazy how much we obsess over this little dude. But we won't apologize for that!

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!

The Weekend Report

This weekend flew by, but I have no complaints, as I am actually ready to start the work week! This will be the last week of summer camp at work, and then I can get back to work being just regular work. Which is good because I'm utterly exhausted.

Saturday morning, I woke up early @ 6:30 a.m! How totally unfair and awful is that? 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday! Adam didn't get up till 10:30 a.m (that was when I decided I could no longer deal with the boredom and woke him up, ha), and I convinced him we had to go out for the day. 

We headed down to a local shopping area, Bridgestreet, and grabbed lunch at a new place that had just opened up, BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse. We were excited about this because we had frequented one when we lived in California. I got the honey sriracha brussel sprouts for my whole meal, and they were so good! Adam thought I was crazy for ordering brussel sprouts anyway, it was even worse to him that it was my entree. No regrets.

Next, we hit up Steel City Pops for some dessert. I had been wanting to stop by this place for a bit, but I just hadn't gotten the opportunity to do so. But I'm so glad we did, I got a strawberry shortcake one, and it was AMAZING. Now I must try all the flavors (Adam got nothing, what a party pooper). I had put try Suzy's Pops on my summer manifesto as #8, but I'm substituting Steel City Pops there instead. I'm thinking a gourmet pop is a gourmet pop!

We headed home after that, and spent all day on the couch being lazy with Linky (playing video games and catching up on shows). 

Sunday, I tried to surprise Adam by making him waffles for breakfast. I had to go the dollar store to pick up some stuff we needed. I was going to get his regular chocolate chips, but I decided to get fancy, and try out reeses peanut butter chips.  The breakfast was an epic fail, and not just because I realized we had no syrup after the first trip to the store, so I had to go back (boo). Nope, I went too heavy on the chips, so it was more like eating straight peanut butter than a waffle. But Adam pretended to like it anyway. I guess he loves me.

Now I'm sitting here watching TV with Adam, mentally getting ready for the week ahead. Let's do this thing. 

Click here to follow this blog on bloglovin and keep up with all my posts!