2012 highlights

I can't believe 2012 is coming to a close! Let's take a look back, shall we?

-Purchasing a home! We were so blessed to be able to buy our first home this year, and it's coming together!

-Getting the opportunity to go to Wimbledon!

-BFF reunion. I love getting together with my best friends. We're super cool and always have fun!

-Being a part of such a great small group.

-Dan and I have been able to volunteer with the high school youth at our church (the same youth group I was a part of!).

-Finding out we'd be an aunt and uncle (twice!).

-Our trip to Scotland and England. I was looking at the pictures again last night, and what a wonderful trip it was!

2012 was filled with such amazing blessings and adventures. I can't wait to see what's in store for 2013! :)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! The past few days have been full of family celebration. Last weekend, Dan and I headed up to Lilburn to celebrate Christmas with the Burnett crew. We had a great time and ate, and ate, and ate. Santa brought some goodies too.

Christmas Eve morning Dan and I exchanged gifts. I just couldn't wait any longer. I got some of my favorite things: scarves and cooking products! (For those of you that may not know, anything cooking related is perfect :) ).

This morning, we headed to my parent's house to see what Santa had up his sleeve. (Bummed I don't have any pics from this morning)! Dan and I feel so incredibly blessed and are so thankful for everyone that helped make Christmas so special. Now, we're just waiting on the arrival of our nephew! He's due any day and we can't wait to meet him!

But what I love most about this season (and what is so humbling) is the little boy born in a stable.

"I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord." Luke 2:10-11

Merry Christmas, everyone!

two years

Two years ago, I was blessed to marry this man! God is so good.

A look back on the best day ever! :)

Happy Anniversary, Dan!

blue ridge

My husband and I just returned from a relaxing weekend in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We got to head out early Thursday afternoon. We made a pit stop along the way and ate at Taco Mac for dinner. (Since Augusta does not have one of those, it was nice do indulge in some delish wings). Then we were Blue Ridge bound again and it was such a nice, relaxing trip! Shout out to Michael and Gena for allowing us to use their mountain home!

We ate tons of food. Including this amazing strawberry cream fried pie I devoured from Mercier Orchards.

 

I look forward to another trip, and more fried pies. Or five... :)

december

I can't believe it's December already! This year has flown by. Lot's of things to look forward to this month. Let's go.

-The birth of my nephew! I can officially say he's due this month. I can't wait to meet the little guy!

-The office I work at closes the last week and a half of December. It's awesome.
  
-Burnett/Scott family Christmas! The Burnett clan gets together the weekend before Christmas and it's always a fun time with lots of laughs and good food. Then it's followed by Christmas on my family's side and there's more food involved :)

-ABC Family and Hallmark Christmas movies. Gotta love 'em!

-The whole Christmas season. I love Christmas and getting together for celebrations, but I seriously just love the true reason we celebrate it! I mean, come on-the Savior was born. Pretty awesome.
 
-There's another reason I love December. It's my anniversary month! This month Dan and I celebrate our 2nd anniversary. SO blessed!

Happy December!

decking the halls

I'm a big believer that you can't start anything Christmas related until after you've stuffed yourself with that Thanksgiving turkey. So the other night-after I stuffed myself (again) with some leftovers-Dan and I (meaning Dan) set up the Christmas tree!

We decided to go with a fake Christmas tree this year. Now, I do love the smell of a real Christmas tree and going to pick it out, BUT, after remembering what an absolute pain it was so set up a real one last year, we went to Target and picked one out. And a candle.

I decided to go with some simple, yet festive decorations for this year. Much less messy than garland :)

Love these silver tree trunks from Target.

A little spray paint turns things into a festive piece!

One of my favorite things this year is this glittery reindeer! The tutorial can be found here. My very talented mother actually free handed the reindeer. I'd say it turned out pretty great!

Fa la la la la!

gobble, gobble

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Praise Him from whom all blessings flow. God is so good.

baby shower

Ok. I've dropped the ball on blogging. Oops. I'll try and get better about that...

...on another note-this post is about the celebrating we did last weekend for Baby Scott! Some of Gena's friends and myself threw her a baby shower and it was a success! Here are some highlights of the evening.

The delicious spread!

 

 

Soon to be aunt & uncle!

Mommy to be.

Fun gifts!

I'm so excited to meet my nephew! Next month can't come fast enough!

fun fall.

So I realize that I have not blogged in a few days. Then I couldn't really think of what I would blog about. Then I thought I'd write about the fun things ahead for this lovely fall season!

...in no particular order....

1) The fall weather has finally arrived in Augusta, and I am so loving these cooler days.

2) A fun wedding coming up for college friends! So excited for them and their adventure they're about to start.

3) I do love when the fall comes around and 'my tv shows' start back up. It's my guilty pleasure to come home and catch the new Once Upon A Time (why oh why did Snow and Charming get torn apart again?!) & Revenge (come on Jack!) on Sunday night. Two entirely different realms of drama, but whatevs. And don't get me started on Modern Family. I love that show. I feel like Claire and I are two peas in a pod.

4) Throwing my brother and his wife, Gena, a baby shower! Along with Gena's friends, we've put our heads together to plan a fun time and look forward to celebrating them at a baby shower in November. I can't wait have a nephew!

5) Burnett family Thanksgiving. A few days before Thanksgiving we're headed to Mama and Papa B's to eat some yummy food.  I'm in charge of homemade pumpkin bread!

6) Scott family Thanksgiving. Heading to my parents house on Thanksgiving for even more food and more pumpkin bread :)

7) Ummm. Breaking Dawn Part 2 comes out in a few weeks. Yes I'm 26. And yes, I'm excited. :)

8) One of my best friend's, Katy, has a new blog Single, Party of One. I love when she posts something new because it's pretty amazing. Check it out!

9) Crockpot meals.

10) Candy corn...I've already finished one bag....

hello fall

Oh, how I love the fall. There's just something about the leaves changing, the cooler weather, the smells, the pumpkins, the boots, the scarves! And of course the decorations! I personally like to decorate for the fall as a whole and not just Halloween/Thanksgiving separately. Why? Because then I can leave up my fall decorations for October AND November. Then they'll get put away for Christmas, but that's a whole other department of fun :)

I tend to get overwhelmed when I walk into craft stores so I needed an idea to go off of.  I searched Pinterest (duh) and found some ideas I liked and kind of put them together to form a main idea.  And it's not fall without a cinnamon broom!

Also, massive pumpkin at the market.

Happy Fall!

what a wonderful day

So I haven't blogged in days (or weeks). Oops.

But today was a great day! It's my birthday! And I'm so very blessed with people that made it awesome. I enjoyed every message, phone call, card, text, and cake :) My hubby got me some fun boots, and I received other fun goodies from my awesome family, friends, and coworkers.

So thank you people. I'm so thankful for all of you! I can't wait to see what 26 has in store!

what a summer!

Labor Day has come and gone, as well as the summer. Except for the heat. But what I love is that fall is on the horizon. And y'all. I love the fall. But with the end of summer I can't help but think back to all the shenanigans and adventures.

1) Purchasing our very first home. Our house hunt started at the end of March, and at the beginning of June we closed. This all coming a few weeks after we thought about waiting to buy a home. Such a crazy, fun, sometimes frustrating experience. But well worth it. Definitely an unexpected blessing!

2) Traveling to Scotland & England! Have I mentioned why I wanted to travel to Scotland? Oh, I have? :) What an incredible trip that was. SO fun and got to see and do so many things. The best part? Getting to experience it with my hubby. And while in London I visited some of Kate's (the Duchess, that is) fave stores which was fun. I even purchased some Zara tops. Now I feel like we should be friends.

3) Completed lots of DIY projects! Our living room is finally complete, and since it's where we do most of our living, it's nice to have everything in its place. (Don't be deceived, there are still plenty of projects I'd like to complete :) )

4) Finding out I'd be an AUNT!!! My brother, Michael, and his wife, Gena are expecting their first child-a boy! I. Can't. Wait!

5) My mom, Gena, and I went to St. Augustine for a girls trip. We stayed at an awesome B&B and had so much fun.

6) Had a reunion with my BFFs.  Talk about shenanigans. Just kidding. Sort of. Gotta love cornhole tourneys and girl talk :)

7) A great Labor Day weekend in Hilton Head with the Burnett crew. Talk about a relaxing way to end the summer! And I just love the beach.

So thankful for such a fun summer. Now I'm looking forward to cooler weather, trips to the mountains, changing/falling leaves, boots, cardigans, scarves-the list could go on!

lamp facelift

I've had this floor lamp for a while.  It's a nice lamp, but it needed a facelift.  This project was so darn easy. All you need is a can of spray paint, tape, and a couple grocery bags.

First I got a grocery bag, covered the top of the lamp and the cord, and used the tape to secure them.  I read a lot of different techniques on prepping the lamp, sanding, using adhesive spray paint first, etc. Yeah, I didn't do any of that. I just chose what color and what finish to paint with and sprayed away.

I intended to head over to Marshall's or TJMaxx and look for a new lamp shade, BUT, why spend the money when I have some jute left over from a previous project that I could use to spruce this one up. So that's what I did.

There you have it. A very simple and affordable way to spice up a new lamp! Toodles.

diy burlap curtains

Oh, how I love our new curtains! A few weeks ago, I searched Pinterest tutorials on how to make your own burlap curtains. So with a lot of help from my wonderful mother (thanks, Mom!) I now have them hanging in our den. It's pretty darn easy. And burlap is very inexpensive. So here we go!

First, purchase burlap! I would say get more than enough just to be safe. You can always cut any excess off. Also, get your burlap according to how long/wide you want your curtains to be. Next, my mom sewed a hem on the top of the curtain, probably about a half an inch. We bought a curtain rod and my favorite part- rings with clips on them! All you need to do is simply clip the curtains onto the rings and put the rings through the rod. We frayed the bottom of the curtains slightly as well.

There you have it! DIY burlap curtains. It adds a lovely rustic touch to our living room and I find them to be pretty awesome :)

diy pallet coffee table

Since my husband and I moved into our new home, I've been wanting to make a new coffee table. Our previous coffee table-while a cool idea in theory-not so practical in real life. I'd found an old window that had been made into a coffee table and painted it red. I thought it was really unique, it just didn't work as a coffee table.

I loved the idea of using pallets as a coffee table. I'd seen all kinds of ideas on Pinterest and finally came across this tutorial. My parents and I set to work on this project but had to tweak it a little, or a lot, whatevs. We started with four pallets (which you can ask for at Lowe's or Home Depot) but they did not have the wood boards all the way across. We chose the two best-one as the base and one as the top, the leftovers in case we messed up. The plan was for my dad to pull some of the boards off from one of the spares to fill in the gaps for the top pallet (you following?). Turns out, the wood split whenever he tried to do that. Back to the store we went and bought some boards that my dad cut according to size and nailed them straight across on the top of one of the pallets.

After lightly sanding them, we stained both pieces. I used Dark Walnut stain made by Minwax. One coat was all we needed. To give the table some height, my dad cut some 4x4s (which we stained as well) and put four in the middle and four as the legs. My husband even pitched in and varnished it for me :) Definitely make sure you varnish! I added some felt on the bottom of the legs just to be safe it wouldn't get on the carpet.

And there you have it. Sorry I don't have any pictures for the 'during' process. It was really hot that day so that's my excuse. But I do have a pic of the final product!

bff reunion

I just got home from an awesome weekend with my very best friends. These girls are like my sisters and I love it when we can all get together. We are scattered throughout a few different cities and a couple of states. Some of us see each other throughout the year, but we try and have reunions where we all get out of town and hang out together. One of our best friends has a lake house on Lake Sinclair and that's where we went! Friday night we met in Milledgeville which is about 25 minutes from the lake. It also happens to be where we all went to college. I hadn't been back to Milledgeville or GCSU since I graduated three years ago. It was so cool to walk on front campus again and the second I got out of my car I felt nostalgic.  

After dinner we headed to the lake for a weekend of rest, relaxation, girl time, girl talk, food, being lazy, and in the spirit of the Olympics-our very own Cornhole Olympics. It was pretty hilarious.

My team took home the bronze, and we're proud of it! Tins and Erika took home silver and Caroline and Dana took home the gold. Just saying, Dana made the cornhole sets. Unfair advantage? :)

What an awesome weekend spending time with my people. Love them!

antiquing finds.

I love finding one of a kind pieces to put into my living space, even more so now since we've bought a house. I especially love to find rustic pieces. I'm inspired by looks of old, southern, farmhouse charm. And the best part is it's actually pretty simple to find those pieces and put them into your home! You can spot awesome finds at the antique store. All you have to do is look.

Sometimes when you go into an antique store it can be overwhelming. There are things everywhere! But the more you look, the more you'll find. Here are some pieces I've found the past few months.

I love old windows. And the best part is, about 99% of the time you can find them antiquing. They add character to a room and make a great focal point above a bed.

I found these old books at one of my favorite shops, Savvy Shopper (go find them on Facebook!). I made these bottles by covering them with jute. They make a great mantel decoration!

This artwork I also found at Savvy Shopper.  It's a set of four prints and each one says something different. What I loved about these are how old they look, plus I had my eye on them for months!

I just found this yesterday and looooved it. My mom and I went antiquing in North Augusta and found an awesome booth with this shelf.  The detail was so unique-you just don't find these things everywhere.

So, if you're looking for one-of-a-kind pieces check out your local antique stores. Chances are you'll find some great things and pay a lot less than something mass produced. Or, find something you like, and try and recreate it yourself!

Back Home

Yesterday morning we made the long trek back home. What an incredible trip we had! It was such a blessing to see another part of the world and we're both very thankful we had the opportunity.  I absolutely loved every part of the trip, but Scotland definitely has a piece of my heart.

Our travels yesterday involved an 8 1/2 hour flight back to Charlotte (where I got to watch The Hunger Games-yes!) and a delayed/bumpy/no AC flight from Charlotte back to Augusta.  Needless to say, it felt good to be back, safely, on land. This week also happens to be the week my workplace is closed for vacation. So it's kind of an added bonus (except for the lack of paycheck) that I have this week off too. I did catch a cold at the tail end of our trip, so this week shall consist of getting well (my apologies to those on the flight yesterday while I coughed up a lung). And hopefully finishing up some odds and ends that comes with moving into a new house!

London

We have arrived on the last leg of our trip-London! Our flight left Inverness (super early) Thursday morning. Let me backtrack a bit and say that my husband is a huge tennis fan. And it's been a goal of his to see-in person-all four tennis majors. He's checked off the Australian Open, the French Open, and now Wimbledon! Each morning, extra tickets are released for sale for the next day's matches. So Wednesday morning he got online, and we got tickets! So we landed in London, dropped off our luggage at the hotel, and went to Wimbledon. So blessed that it worked out! Here are a few highlights from the day. Bonus: great weather for tennis!

Today was our day to see the sights. It started off a bit windy/
cloudy/drizzly, but then the sun came out.

We ended the day seeing the Crown jewels at the Tower of London. Let me just say-whoa. But no pictures were permitted. But there was definitely a lot of sparkle going on in that (huge) vault.

 Tomorrow is our last day on this wonderful blessing of a vacation. We (and by 'we' I mean 'I') will do some shopping :) Then we may try and squeeze a couple of other sites in. Until next time!

Inverness

Oh my goodness. Monday morning we got up early to catch the train to Inverness, Scotland. And let me just say, I'm in love with this city and with the Highlands. The whole country is absolutely stunning. But being in the Highlands is just awesome. If you're a fan of the Outlander series, you'll understand why. After picking up our rental car and driving to our B&B we set out to explore.

Walking along the Ness Bank.

This morning, we headed to Culloden battlefield. It was so cool to see what I've read about in person. The Battle at Culloden was the final (and extremely bloody) battle of the Jacobite Rising in 1745 and basically the end of Scottish clans. It was definitely a little eerie walking around that field.

Culloden Battlefield

Left: Clan Fraser stone on Culloden Battlefield.    Right: Clava Cairns-split stone!

 

I couldn't visit the Highlands without seeing some standing stones! This is for you Outlander fans :) And if you haven't read this books-I highly recommend them. They'll suck you in and then you'll want to visit Scotland :)

Tomorrow we're off to hunt down the Loch Ness monster!

summer vacation part one...

...Edinburgh! After a looong long long day of travel yesterday and connecting multiple flights, we made it to Edinburgh, Scotland this afternoon! Now, we'll see more of Scotland in the next few days (posts to follow) but our first leg of the trip was spending the day in this city. But let me just say-this country is beautiful. Dan and I got to our hotel around 2:15 and went to explore. We went to the Edinburgh Castle and I was blown away.

You walk inside of this place and then it's like you're inside a mini village. Lots to see and the views were breathtaking. Sidenote to any Harry Potter fans-some of the side roads in this city reminded us so much of Hogsmeade!

Apparently, the castle has something to do with the Olympics, hence the bleachers.

We have tons of pictures that we'll be posting later, but I just wanted to give y'all an update! Now it's time to rest up for part two of Scotland tomorrow. We're hopping on the train and heading to the Highlands for three days-Inverness here we come!

weekend visitors

This weekend Dan and I had some visitors! His parents and his brother and his wife drove down from Lilburn to come visit us in our new home. We had such a great time! My mother-in-law has such a green thumb and brought us some plants for our yard. They look awesome!

My sister-in-law and I made a trip to an antique store I'm obsessed with. It's called Savvy Shopper, and if you live in Augusta and love rustic/shabby chic/refurbished furniture, this is the place for you. Here's my newest find.

Put together with this precious find my mom found at yet another antique store (can you tell I love antiques?) it looks pretty darn good if I do say so myself!

I'm trying to think of what I can put in this little shelf. Flowers? Cookbooks? I'll have to give it some thought.

Until next time!