E's Bachelorette Weekend!!

This past weekend, I got to throw a Bachelorette Weekend Bash for my cousin Erin's impending nuptials!!  I took Friday off of work to make sure I got to Charlottesville at at decent time.  (Not sure if you've every driven that drive before....but it sucks!) Luckily, my friend Andrea is Erin's friend also & she was a fantastic car buddy, per usual :)

We got away a little later than planned since we had to show B's friends that were in town (for the 1st annual "Brocation" at the beach) a good time uptown Thursday night!!  Whoops...well worth it though!

After escaping some flying wooden rods off a trucker (near death experience, for real!) which took my hubcap with it...we finally arrived in Charlottesville around 4, met my cousin Ash, & got the room all set up!  Our suite was way bigger than expected which was an added bonus.

Erin & her girls arrived between 530 and 6 & the festivities began :)

Friday night was Girls Night In....complete with pizza, drinks, painting nails, face masks & girly movies....

Mellow Mushroom Pizza, lots of pink, and some other goodies ;)

Decorations!!

Girls chit-chatting

Oh yes...this happened!

And this!

A few other things happened Friday night....but, some things that happen on a bachelorette party, stay on a bachelorette party ;)  I'll never tell!!

Saturday morning, we slept in, got Starbucks & ate breakfast at the hotel.  Then it was off to the winery!  I never knew this until planning this party, but apparently, Charlottesville is vino country!!  We went to an amazing winery, Veritas Winery.  

For $25 bucks - we were had a tour, sampled 8 wines, received 2 complementary wine glasses {which read "In Vino Veritas"} and ate an amazing lunch on the patio!  Seriously, lunch was amazing.  We were all raving about it.  Pretty fantastic deal, right!?

Andrea & I

Gorgeous ball room - they do weddings!

So appropriate, right!?

After our tour and tasting, most of us picked our fav bottle and shared a few drinks with lunch!

Ladies waiting on lunch

All 17 of us & the gorgeous view!! 

Andrea, Me, Erin, & Kelsey - the Charlotte/VA Beach girls 

Erin's soon to be SILs - Erin, Erin & Kim

All the Maids except 1 who couldn't make it!  Hannah, Me, Erin, Erin, Kim, Ashley, Emily

The VT girls - Hannah, Erin, & Regan

My cousins, my best friends, my sisters - Me, Erin & Ashley

Friends!!  Love these 2 :)

After our winery fun, we headed back to the hotel for E's lingerie shower & then it was Girls Night Out!  We had dinner at an Asian Fusion Tapas Restaurant, Bang, made our way to a roof top bar for a bit, then danced the night away at one last place!!

My delish Pomegranate Martini

Pretty ladies with the Bachelorette!!!

Cheers!

The weekend was so much fun!!  Erin has some great girlfriends (many of whom I've known for quite some time!) and we all got along so well!!  You'd think with 17 girls surely there'd be drama or tears...but none of that!  Just a blast all weekend celebrating our girl!  

Love you E!  Hope you enjoyed your last fling before the wedding ring!!!

A Busy & Exciting Spring

Holy moly, y'all!!  My brain has been a big ol' jumbled mess lately.  My brain feels like an ADD kid all jacked up on sugar!  It's probably because we have, oh, just 9.2 million things going on ;)

I keep going through my calendar each day and starting this weekend - we have something almost every weekend until summer time!  Whoa!

The good thing is - it's all super exciting, fun stuff!!!

It's hard to not be so excited with all this wonderful stuff coming up, so I couldn't help but start some countdowns!  Hold on, it's about to get real busy over here...

Tomorrow morning we have our home inspection!  We're so excited to go back, walk through again & check everything out!  Then, tomorrow afternoon, I'm running in the 2nd Annual Family Fun Run & 5K at my school!  I'm just running for fun, so I'm not too worried about my time!  Should be a good day :)

Next Saturday is the St. Patty's Day Bar Crawl!

It's the biggest bar crawl in the world!!  And a fun day of some bar hoppin' with the friends!  If you're in Charlotte, you should definitely throw on some green and join!

Sunday the 25th Brandon & my brothers are participating in the Spartan Race at the White Water Center.  My SILs & I along with the kiddos are gonna go watch!!  It should be really fun - I'm just hoping no one gets burned from jumping over fire or beaten up from the gladiator style jousters!

via

The next weekend starts Spring Break!!  Friday the 30th B and I leave for VA for a wedding shower for my cousin Erin!  My mom, grandmother, my cousin Ashley & I are all throwing it!  It's going to be so pretty, I'm so excited!  It's been so much fun to plan!

We come back to Charlotte Sunday, April 1st and fly out early Monday the 2nd for Miami!!  From Miami, we board our cruise ship to the Bahamas!!!

Hello vaycay!  That's right!!  We'll be boarding the Majesty of the Seas cruisin' for 4 nights in paradise!  All thanks to Brandon's hard work, by the way - he won the cruise from his company!

We fly back to Charlotte April 6th and 5 days later, April 11th we close on our house!!!  We are so giddy to close and have our house!

We won't be moving that weekend, though.  April 13th - 15th I'm off to Charlottesville, VA for my cousin Erin's Bachelorette party and Brandon is off to Hilton Head for a little Brocation!

My cousin Ashley & I have been planning an awesome girls weekend & some of B's best buddies are flying down from Michigan.  Lots of vacay time back to back - I can't complain!

After Bachelorette & Brocation weekend, we'll finally get to move April 20th & 21st!!  Woohoo!  I absolutely hate moving, but there's a lot of gratification in knowing we won't have to move for another 15, 20, or 50 years :)

We'll have a weekend at home, before heading back to Virginia the first weekend in May.  More wedding fun!  Erin & Ryan have a couples shower at the lake!

May will be a bit of a quieter month - I'm hoping it will consist of a little painting in the house & some furniture shopping!!  Memorial Day weekend is usually a good time, too!  I'm hoping for a good cookout and maybe some lake time :)

And then, before you know it, it's June!  June 7th is my last day of school & June 8th - 10th is Wedding Weekend!!

Good gracious...that's a lot, huh?!  So let me just go ahead and apologize way in advance if I seem a complete ADD mess between now and June - but I sure hope you'll stick around for all the fun!

Lately...

1 - Lately, I've had some new followers join my blog!  So hello & welcome!  Hope you're enjoying my humble little corner of the internet :)  I'm doing my best to check out each of your blogs and "get to know" each of you a bit (slowly, but surely), so again welcome!

2 - Lately, we've been spending other people's $$ - and it's lots of fun!!  We got several gift cards for Christmas, lots to Target, Dick's, World Market, etc.  So here are a few of our purchases...

Our new matching lamps for our bedside tables (since I finally got one!)
The lamp shade looks grey - its more of a khaki really with the brown thread!
We are loving them :)

New work out clothes!!  I don't know about y'all, but having new workout clothes sure motivates me to get to the gym!  Brandon and I were both able to pick up some new gym essentials on someone else's dime :)  Way more enjoyable then buying it with your own dough!!

3 - Lately, we've been trying to spend less of our own money!  I wouldn't say I'm a shopaholic, but typically if I see a cute shirt for a reasonable price, great earrings, a scarf I can't live without, I'll just go ahead and get it for myself!  Ha, fortunately, this hasn't been breaking the bank, but since we hope to buy a house this year I'm trying to practice a lot more self control in my spending - asking do I WANT this or do I NEED it?

So lately, if it's not a need, it hasn't gone in my cart.  It's been hard, too!!  Let me tell ya!  There's an adorable iPhone cover I've had my eye on and a great right hand ring I've been wanting!!  I just try to remind myself that my birthday is less than 2 months away so maybe I'll get them then!

4 - Lately, I've done a little spring cleaning....in January!  Between new things we got for Christmas and general clutter, it was time.  I cleaned out my drawers and my closet.  Feels good to purge some old things. And speaking of not buying things I don't need, I just filled up a trash bag and a paper bag full of clothes to throw away/donate.  That alone right there convinced me that exercising a little self control on my purchases is a good idea!

5 - Lately, we've spent a LOT of time looking at homes for sale.  Online, driving by, even visiting a few. We're really excited to start this whole process....we feel like we're busting at the seams of our 2 bedroom apartment (including our storage unit), but it's also all a wee bit stressful!  Luckily we have time to play with as we don't really want to move til this summer.  That goes right back to that whole not spending loads of $$ lately either :)  The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward right!?

6 - Lately, I've been trying to say NO to tempting little goodies like these...

It's hard enough to resist the temptation in the checkout line at the store, calling out to me, but we also have sooo much Christmas candy left in the house!!  I'll have a few M&Ms here and there or a small reese's cup (or 4) after dinner!  Ughh, maybe one day they'll all be gone!

7 - Lately, I haven't had ANY diet coke!  In fact, I haven't had one yet this year...!  It wasn't really a New Year's resolution to give up soda or aspartame, but I've been doing a pretty good job of it (well for sure the soda part) so I might just go with it!!  I'm sure I won't be able to cut out aspartame completely - since I have an addition to skinny drinks at Starbucks - but I think I'll keep up with this whole no soda, limited aspartame thing!!

8 - Lately, I've been in party planning mode!!  I'm planning a shower for my cousin Erin with my mom & grandmother as well as her bachelorette party with her other MOH, my cousin Ashley!  Between the two parties there's a lot of details to figure out and put together, so I've been a mad woman on the computer researching, putting together invites, etc. :)

This weekend was a great one!  We celebrated the birthday of this cute 2 year old!!

Happy Birthday Wells Bascomb!

And watched these sweet ones play...

We also tried 2 new recipes (1 a success!, 1 was dry - boo), made a few trips to the gym, caught up on laundry, and enjoyed some time on the couch :)

Lately, we've been really enjoying the new year!  I hope your New Year is off to a great start as well :)

NYE & 2011 in Review

We had a fun little NYE this year & got to catch up with some good friends!  Our friends decided to have a house party which is just the good time we were looking for!  We were not interested in spending a small fortune to go out downtown or fighting the crowds that would be out.

So good food, good friends, and low key was the perfect way to end the year :)

Decked out in some sparkles! - Sadly one of the only pics we took :(
Please do pardon Brandon's creepy eyes!!  For the life of me, I couldn't correct them!

Chasey Lane with her party hat on!!

I've loved reading every one's recaps of 2011!  I pretty much did a review of the year in our anniversary post so I didn't want to re-blog what's already been blogged :)  But I did want to add a few highlights from the year that weren't included!

In January we got our sweet snuggle bunny - Benson!  He's a sweet thang with quite a 

personality!  He keeps me company when B's on the road and provides us plenty of 

entertainment!  He was definitely a highlight of the year!

In March I started this here blog!  I've so enjoyed having a little online journal of our life!  I know it will be a great way to kind of "store" my memories and I've met some wonderful fellow bloggers along the way :)

Over the year, I went to 3 different bachelorette parties & we went to 3 friends' weddings!  Tis the season of our life I guess...all our friends are getting married!  Such a fun season though :)

Alex's Bachelorette at the Beach!

Dana's Bachelorette in the Mountains!

Back to back wedding weekends this fall - First Erin & David, then Ryan & Kelly!  

There was lots of fun and lots of dancing :)

I also....

...got my iPhone!  Man I love this thing.  It's probably actually unhealthy.  We're attached...and...

...I went on my first helicopter ride!!

2011 was definitely a great year with many blessings!!  Among other things - we enjoyed vacations with loved ones, time with our families, birthdays, & we celebrated 1 whole year of marriage!  We learned how to fight and how to make up :)  We learned how to have fun date nights and make decisions together.  It was a good year.

That being said, I'm always excited for a new year and what it may hold!  I'm so looking forward to fulfilling my Matron of Honor duties & celebrating my cousin Erin's wedding to her best friend.  I'm excited to go on a Cruise with my husband that he definitely earned.  I can't wait for more sweet time with the people that mean the world to me and fill this heart up.

I'm not really one much for resolutions.  I think I used to be, but realized they're always kind of the same - we do have a few goals for the year (and the next years in general) as well as some dreams, too :)

So here's to hoping that 2012 brings us:

1 - a house!!  We're just beginning to start this process...more on that later!

2 - good health!  Maybe more eating in and cooking for ourselves and less eating out.

3 - a half marathon.  (This one gets no exclamation point.)  I feel like this is my year...I'm gonna do it.

4 - meaningful time spent with one another!  Less time on my computer & phone when Brandon's home and more time engaged with him :)

5 - meaningful time spent with family and friends!  This one should be easy and fun!

6 - meaningful time spent in the Word!  We started a new devotional together and we need to find a church home.

Happy, happy new year friends!  May it be a blessed year for you all and may your cup be filled and runneth over this year :)

Recap & a Peek Ahead

Phew!  I've been to 3 bachelorette parties in the last 6 weeks and am still living to tell about it!! :)  haha

My friend Dana's party was this past weekend in Banner Elk, NC which is in the mountains.  We kept saying, "What happens in the Elk, stays in the Elk!"  Haha, nothing too crazy really happened, we just thought it was an appropriate saying for a Bachelorette party ;) We had an amazing house with 13 girls and all of us had a bed!  It was an awesome house, I would go back for sure!

Saturday started out pretty chilly, but turned out to be a gorgeous mountain day! Upper 70s, all sun, no humidity....perfect for tubing down the river just relaxing!

That night we had dinner at a great tapas restaurant!  It was such a great weekend and I'm SO excited for Dana!  The wedding is just over 4 weeks away now...woo hoo!!

I got home and spent some much needed time with the hubs before he left for work again on Monday.  I'm CAN'T WAIT for our loooong weekend coming up! And, the 4th is probably my second favorite holiday after Christmas, but that's whole other post :)

And just for fun...here's my countdown list as of late:  (you know I have one ;)

-2 days til hubs is home from work!

-3 days til a 3 day weekend!

-5 days til the 4th of July!!!  Happy bday America!!

-10 days til we're off to Durham for a little baseball (at least hopefully, still tentative for now)

-11 days til we are BEACH BOUND!!!  Toes in the water, toes in the sand :)

Bring it on!!  Be blessed y'all!