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!!!

Behind

Do you ever just feel behind!?  Because oh good gracious, that is the only way I know how to describe my every day right now!

From battling strep throat, to a Virginia wedding shower, spring break cruise, closing on a house, throwing a bachelorette party, and preparing for our move this weekend.....I'm just flat out behind!!  Ughhh

So behind in my workouts.  Those have been sparse these past few weeks, and I am not ok with that.  I just feel "off" not working out & being out of my normal routine.  Tomorrow, that changes!

Behind and busy I guess.

Busy at school.... We're down to 8 weeks left & testing season is just about to begin :/

Busy packing and setting things up for our move... Like reserving a U-haul, changing our mailing address, setting up/transferring power & cable, etc, looking into an alarm system, changing the garage code....this list goes on!

Busy trying to catch up on reading blogs -- I don't even know what's going on in y'all's lives! Tear :(  So, so behind!  But I will catch up slowly this week!

And busy trying to blog myself!!  Ugh....I've yet to blog about our cruise & I need to recap the Bachelorette Weekend!!

I promise...those are coming this week :)  So stay tuned & hold tight while I attempt to get my rear back in gear this week!!



PS - Thank you all so, so, so much for all the congrats on the house!!  I had so many sweet comments and house love on the blog & twitter!  We're just so stinkin' excited & almost still in disbelief it's really ours :)  So thank ya, thank ya, I just love y'all.

We Bought A House!!!

Today....at approximately 430 pm....Brandon and I signed about 13.5 billion papers, handed over by far the largest & most impressive - well, in our humble opinion - {downpayment} check we've every touched, and locked ourselves into a 30 year mortgage in exchange for the keys and garage door opener to this beauty....

Our New Home!!!

Each of us a few weeks ago by the "Under Contract" sign :)

Now that it's officially ours, I couldn't wait to share a few pictures!  

Don't worry, there are many more pics where these came from!!  We are so excited to move in next weekend, get all our furniture inside & make some little changes here and there over time to really make it ours!

Ahhhh....WE'RE HOMEOWNERS!!!

Weekend & Other Random Musings

While vacation was wonderful, I was definitely glad to be back on Friday in order to have Saturday & Sunday to recoup.  Reality was definitely creeping back around the corner, plus we needed to get a jump start on some packing & get ready for B to head off to another work week of travels.

Friday night, once we got back into town, we made a stop by the ever so generous ABC store.  More booze after a whole week of vacation!?  Hah, no, no...boxes my friends. Boxes!

We started the packing process & finally, after a whole week Dexter free, fed our addiction!  I'm glad we got a jump start on packing, but unfortunately that means I get to live in a half packed up - cluttered - stuff out on the counters - apartment for 12 more days. EEEK.

That does seem to mask the dirt though - I've also decided to pretty much stop cleaning the apartment!  Ha, our complex is making us pay a lovely cleaning fee when we move out, even though we know good & well they'll just be coming in to demo our whole kitchen!

Our building is slowly undergoing a reno - so I just don't understand why we have to pay a cleaning fee for them to come dirty up our apartment again!  So, I'll show them.

Saturday morning we were reunited with this sweet thang...

This is pretty much how he spent the entire Saturday night!  He's been super snuggly.  Must of been a fun & busy week with his brother, Oliver!

Saturday night out for Ms. LB's birthday was SO much fun!!  I failed to take a single picture the entire night except of me before walking out the door.

OOTN - You're so vain

It was fun to catch up with my old roomie - just love her!  It was definitely some fun girl time over nails, drinks, and dinner :)

Our Easter Sunday was wonderful as well!  We woke up early to get a small work out in before church, and then went to my brother's church, Warehouse.  It was a really wonderful service!  I am partial since Josh is the worship leader - but the music was just great - one of my favorite ways to praise Him!

via

No Easter baskets this year, no candy, or a big family lunch unfortunately.  But He is Risen indeed!

Sunday afternoon was our final walk through at {the house} so Lord willing and the water don't rise, by Wednesday this will all be a done deal!  I just can hardly believe it!!!

I took B to the airport Sunday afternoon to head back to Florida for the work week & then snuggled with my Easter snuggle bunny....

The workweek came back with a {sting} today.  Frankly, 530 am flat out sucked!  Just sayin....  And I'm in a weird work out funk from vacation and every day busyness (oh yeah, that's called life).  Yuck!  But I'm in the home stretch here.  Survival mode & the official end of the school year countdown starts today.

42 days!  I think I can?

Wedding Shower Weekend

Last weekend, the start of spring break meant the pleasure of hosting a Wedding Shower I helped to throw for my cousin Erin at her parents' house in Virginia!  

I may have only had antibiotics in my system for 24 hours, but that meant I was no longer contagious, and slowly but surely the feeling of being run over by a mac truck was lifting - come hell or high water, I was determined and going to that shower!! :)

The shower turned out fantastic & Erin got so much great stuff!  My mom, grandmother, and my cousin Ashley (Erin's sis) were the other hostesses.  We were so happy to see everything come together just the way we talked about and were so pleased with the food!

The food spread!  We served meatballs, buffalo chicken dip, veggie cups, mini pimento cheese sandwiches, cheeseball with crackers, chicken salad bites, and fruit kabobs.  Yum!

Erin's colors are navy and grey so we made sure to include those where we could!

This was the dessert & drink table.  We served mini eclairs & cheese cake bites, as well as a make your own mini fruit pizza bar :)  To drink we had sweet tea, water, raspberry lemonade with frozen raspberries & lemonade with floating blueberries for a little color!  So fun & delish!

If you've ever been on Pinterest, you probably recognize a lot of these ideas!  Ha, they served as a lot of my inspiration!

Chicken Salad Bites - can't find this pin.

Fruit Kabobs

Veggie Cups

Cheese Ball

Erin is using white hydrangeas as her wedding flowers so we thought it was fitting to use some in the center piece!

Friends!
Me, Andrea, Hunter, Kelsey & the Bride to be, Erin

While everyone mingled and ate, each person wrote down a memory they had of/with Erin and put it in our vintage bird cage (a gift from my SIL we used for cards at our reception and that Erin will use also).  Ashley and I drew them out one at a time and read them while Erin had to guess who wrote it in order to open their gift!

from our Wedding

I made Ashley play this game a few years ago at her wedding shower & my MIL made B & I play at our Michigan couples shower - luckily, B had to do most of the guessing since it was his peeps :)  Definitely a fun little shower game and not as cliche as others!

Ashley & I reading Erin a clue

So excited about her pitcher!  Only at a wedding shower does one get so excited
about simple kitchen items!  Haha :)

Erin trying to guess a memory :) 

Lots of good loot, right!?

Erin's "Mrs. Webb" dress hanger

The start of Erin's big bow bouquet :)

Thankfully, our wonderful friend Kristen took all of these photos with her amazing camera and amazing photography skills!  (Kristin also took our engagement pics & Erin's graduation pics!)  I left our camera right on our desk back in Charlotte - I blame strep throat ;)  Thank you so much for the pics Kristin!!

Although the shower was over, the fun didn't end!  The boys came back from their fishing trip & we all ate more food (can you imagine that!?) and had some drinks!  It's always a good time at my Aunt Stacy & Uncle Scott's lake house!!

Just a little crazy ball fun in the kitchen!

And the ladies getting their dance on :)

Trish (Ryan's - Erin's fiance - mom), my Aunt Stacy (Erin's mom), and Kristin (the talented photog!)

Erin, I hope you loved  your wedding shower as much as I loved helping to plan it :) Thank the good Lord, strep didn't hold me down.  And now, the wedding fun has definitely begun....the bachelorette party is next weekend!  Woo hoo!!