Carowinds

This past weekend we headed towards Charlotte! The parents had tickets to the Rascal Flatts concert (Father's day present), so me and my dear girl sMb headed to the outlets. We did a little shopping around, and then caught a bus back towards our hotel. Lets say public transportation in another city makes me extremely nervous. I was so afraid the driver was going to leave us stranded at the station. Eeep! But the driver was sweet and made sure we got through the doors of our hotel safely. After shopping we headed over to Texas Roadhouse. There we devoured some fried pickles, yummmmy, steak, chicken, rolls, potatos, and green beans. It was such a delicious dinner and we had such a great time. After we dipped into the hotel pool for an after hours swim. It was so hot and humid so the water felt so nice and relaxing. The next day we woke early to head to Carowinds. The weather was yet again hot hot hot! 90 degrees at 10 am left us feeling very sticky. Thankfully we had plans to spend some of the day in the connected water park. We rode the Nighthawk, the Intimidator (our favorite), Afterburn, and several water slides. We made sure after the long day to change into some fresh clothes, wipe our faces clean, and spray some dry shampoo. After a little beauty work I felt like I had stepped out of the shower. We stopped at an Outback on our way back. A delicious pair of steak and snow crabs if you don't mind. My tummy was in heaven after being jerked around all day. It was such a fun weekend, and I can't wait to be reunited with sMb at school in a few short weeks. We have a to-do list to get started on.

sMb & me. Intimidator behind us

Meeting some of the Peanuts gang

Hope everyone has a great Monday!! :-)

Monday Mexican

On Monday I had the entire day off and it was rainy, so the boy and I spent most of the day working on things for school, him a test, me my resume. Needless to say we were semi productive and did manage to accomplish a few things. That evening he took me to one of his favorite Mexican restaurants...

His favorite thing to order is their special burrito. Since he knows what I like and don't like I trusted him on splitting the burrito. Which by the way was huge. Needless to say I absolutely loved it! 

Although the boy was disappointed with the presentation I still enjoyed it. Also, the restaurant has a salsa bar, bonus! We split several baskets of chips and queso along with some rice. I can't believe it but I'm starting to like Mexican food...I think the refried beans were keeping me away. Anywho, I'm excited about our next Mexican night outing. After we finished dinner we took a walk around a local neighborhood that is a favorite of ours. We ended up watching the sunset on this huge hill on the golf course. It was absolutely gorgeous and I'm kicking myself for not photographing. We then headed to my favorite fro yo, Menchies!! There we met up with one of my roommates and her beau. I was in luck they still had chocochella. Yummmmmy!! I do love love love fro yo. It was such a nice night, and I'm so glad I got to spend time with my boy. He is now in Jamaica on a mission trip and will be serving for ten days. Please add him to your prayers, as he will be preaching over the next several days. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, I'm off to play in Charlotte with this girl for the weekend. Cheers!

Shrimp Alfredo

Yesterday the boy finally made it back home. After a week of being separated with no communication it was really hard. I was so incredibly happy to have him back home with me. To say we missed each other was truly an understatement. For the boy's homecoming I decided I wanted to make him a true homemade dinner by, moi. Shrimp crab fettuccine alfredo was what my heart desired. We ventured off to the grocery store to buy shrimp, crab meat, broccoli, alfredo sauce, and fettuccine noodles. With a little experimenting (really just throwing everything in) I succeed at my first no recipe meal! I was extremely proud. The boy happily devoured every bite and even got seconds!! (BONUS!) Afterwards we spent the evening cuddling on the couch watch Elf and eating cheesecake with chocolate drizzle for desert. I forgot to photograph the alfredo (need to work on this) but I did manage to snap a picture of desert before we consumed that.

we love pictures. :-)

Cake Pops

Sooo...I did it, I caved. I decided about a week ago that I just had to make me some cake pops..only I needed an occasion to make them for. Well, tomorrow my little swimmers have their very last swim lesson of the season ( I'm extremely sad) so I am making the little ones cake pops as a treat. I'm so proud of this class, and they have done so well so they deserve this treat. Okay, so Tuesday evening I ventured out, bought my cake pop book..

some cake, icing, pop sticks styrofoam, and candy melts. That night I was super excited about baking the cake the next morning. I  woke early today to make sure I had plenty of time to prepare the cake before going into work. So I baked the cake, let it cool, crumbled, and balled it all up. Tonight once I got home and had a scrumptious dinner I prepared to dip my cake balls. Ok, this part is TRICKY!!! The book makes it look and sound sooo easy but I was challenged. Not only did I have an extremely hard time balling the cake, turns out too much frosting, oopsie, but too much candy melt is no bueno. Needless to say I ended up with about only 14 cake pops, suppose to have 48 after an entire cake, and only half way dipped cake pops. Oh well! I tried, I learned, and I will continue to practice! No worries here, I shall persevere! But here is my end result..

chocolate cake, chocolate icing, and chocolate candy melt.

Do you have any experience with cake pops? Any tips??

P.S. FIFTY FOLLOWERS! WOW! Y'all are great!!

Birthday Bash

Well my birthday weekend has finally come to an end sadly. This year I was lucky enough to spend my birthday with my family. We packed up the car on Friday, my actual birthday, and headed towards Hagerstown, MD for the outlets. I got some excellent outlet shopping in and was really pleased. I also purchased my first Kate Spade purse and wallet. I was pretty excited! My mom picked out the bag which is a black hobo style with the cutest bow on the strap..I must snap a picture soon. And my wallet is a zip around in bright turquoise. I loved the color because it would be easy to find in a dark purse & has plenty of different spots for all my goodies. After shopping we headed over to my mother's hometown to meet up with the rest of the family. We went to Ichiban's which is a wonderful Japanese restaurant. The entertainment was hilarious and the food was delicious! I left a little too full. Saturday we rose bright and early. While everyone was getting ready Daddy and I snuck off to Panera for my birthday bagel and frapp. Then off we went to D.C.!! It was an easy drive and traffic wasn't too awful. The first stop we made was at Georgetown Cupcakes. If you watch TLC you know how fun this cute place is. We made sure we were towards the front of the line so we could receive our FREE secret cupcake. On that day the flavor was campside fire and it was the BEST cupcake I've ever consumed in my life!! Trust me, go get a Georgetown cupcake!

We devoured these in about 5 seconds. Nom nom nom!! Of course we got a dozen to bring home with us so the experience could last ;-)

after purchasing our dozen

waiting for the order to be filled

After we placed our cupcakes in the car we perused around Georgetown. The shopping was amazing! I was an extremely happy birthday girl. I made it into Kate Spade to purchase a new iphone cover and some darling stationary. Then popped over into Vineyard Vines (my first time visiting the store) to purchase a shirt and cute little makeup bag. I of course had to stop into Dean & Delucas to purchase some French macarons. So incredibly yummy! After shopping around for a bit we explored Georgetown's campus. So beautiful! Definitely made me a little jealous. Then it was time for The Cheesecake Factory. I indulged in the four cheese pasta and cookie dough cheesecake. It was superb as always. We then shopped around the mall before heading home. Once we got back into town we joined some family friends for a little blues concert. Turns out the headlining band was a close friend of my parents, so we got the V.I.P treatment and hung out backstage. The night was topped off with lots of laughs and old fashioned frozen custard. Sunday we had breakfast at an old fashioned diner and then returned back home to Tennessee. My birthday was incredibly fun & I thank everyone for all of the well wishes. Hope everyone had a great weekend!!

:-)

Let the party begin!

Today is the eve of my 20th birthday. Yay!! I'm so excited. I just adore birthdays, and not just my own either. I love getting together and celebrating with everyone. Okay so as usual Franny & I watched Pretty Little Liars on Tuesday night. Holy smokes, I was sitting on the edge of my seat! It was crazy! If you haven't seen it you need to catch up now! And in other news I received my first birthday present, eep!

The wonderful bestie invested into my stationery collection. Needless to say after this past school year I was running extremely low and I was beyond giddy to receive something new, and with my monogram! I can't wait to start writing notes to the beau this fall. 

As for the #birthdayweekend I'm headed off to D.C.! We have some family we plan on visiting with and then its a lineup of Kate Spade ( & outlet), Vineyard Vines, the Nordstrom sale, Lilly Pulitzer, J. Crew, and a dozen others. Not to mention The Cheesecake Factory (my favorite party!) 

How do you celebrate your birthday?? 

Jack Rogers

I have fallen in love with Jack Rogers sandals. They go with practically everything and take a dressy outfit to causal and vice versa. I've started following the Jack Rogers Girl on twitter and tumblr and she is just a doll. love love love. Unfortunately I haven't been able to purchase a pair due to there not being a store near by. Luckily, Carly at the College Prepster is having a giveaway for a pair of Jack Rogers. I suggest you stop on by and enter to win, this is a giveaway one can not pass!

Nutella

It is well known that I have an addiction to nutella. And also well known I can't go a week without some fro-yo. Since we got a Menchies in the next town over I have been a weekly visitor, my roommate (who also lives in another town) & I are constantly running into each other there because we are such addicts. Anyways, the beau understands my need for fro-yo and took me out for some the other night. It also helped that since it is my birthday month I got a FREE cup of fro-yo. Hooray!!! And lo and behold there was a new flavor, choco-nella. Yes chocolate hazelnut, NUTELLA!! I couldn't be more happier. So I mixed into my usual concoction, cake batter, milk chocolate, and now choco-nella. Topped with brownies, cheesecake, cookie dough, and whipped cream. nom nom nom. Best mixing yet! The german chocolate cake batter was my previous love, but move over cause choco-nella is here!!!

Have you tried out this new flavor? Whats your favorite fro-yo flavors??

P.S. I was cloud gazing on break the other day and came across Dumbo. Do you see it?!

Oh so Lucky, Lucky!

Hello lovely followers!!

I just want to take a minute and say thank you for following along with me on here, your comments truly bring sunshine to my day! :)

With my birthday arriving slowly (its one week from today yay!!) I decided I'm in need of a birthday polish. Luckily since me and the best friend have girl night every Tuesday I had an excuse to try out a new polish color. We watch Pretty Little Liars EVERY Tuesday night, we do not miss an episode. We started reading the books back in 2008 and have been hooked since then. And when the show came out we couldn't contain ourselves. Ok, back to the polish. I've noticed everyone trying out different colors, besides the normals pinks and reds, and I thought I need a good solid purply color. My thinking was this would be a great transition from summer to fall and spring to summer. So after much perusing I settled on ...

Lucky Lucky Lavender! 

I loved the result. Its just purply and pink enough for me and goes well with my skin tone. The beau agreed as well. Win-win situation! Yay!!

What are some colors you're trying out? I love recommendations! :-)

Fourth of July Festivities

I hope everyone had a happy fourth of July weekend. I know I sure did! Although I had to work most of the weekend, when I was off I enjoyed myself. On Saturday the beau and I went to two dear friends wedding. It was absolutely joyous to be a part of the joining of these two people. The ceremony reflected their loved for God and Him being the center of their relationship. The reception was a South African tea, as the bride grew up in South Africa. She is the daughter of a missionary and now the family has returned to the states while the children have gone through college. I'm so happy for this couple and can't wait to see where the Lord takes me. The beau and I started our day with some shopping, the wedding, and ended with a good ole American ball game. We had so much fun and had excellent seats!! Right in the shade, and five feet from bathrooms/concessions. Although the beau did have to dodge a few foul balls, haha. 

I enjoyed a delicious funnel cake with my coke.

yummmmmmm


We came to the same stadium last year for the Fourth of July to enjoy the fireworks as well, its really a great show!

On Monday night we set off our slew of fireworks and fired of the grill. My parents sure out did themselves this year. Here was our menu : italian marinated chicken, BBQ chicken, BBQ ribs, macaroni and cheese, green beans, cheesy potatoes, steamed shrimp, and watermelon. Needless to say we were stuffed!! After dinner we played a round of badminton until it got dark. Then Daddy brought out his launch pad, yes he has a launch pad just for the fourth of July. 

I love sparklers

Mom & I waiting for the show to start

My birthday is in 9 days! Yayyyy!!!