his 28th birthday

I decided it was time to see if I could surprise my husband for his birthday. He was on tour on his actual birthday but flew home the next day around lunch. I had every aspect of our day planned out and I was prepared to catch him completely off guard. After eating lunch at Baja Burrito, he came home and opened his "present" that was several shirts that I had picked out for him at H&M. All was going according to the plan.

I picked out where we were going to go to dinner with plans to surprise him during dessert. We went to Red Pony in downtown Franklin. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it was one of the best meals that I have EVER eaten. We enjoyed every bite of our dinner and sip of our drinks. We are already planning on when we will be going back. The only problem was that we were too full from dinner to even think about dessert. So I decided just to give him his present once we returned to the apartment.

I presented him with this box.. and a puzzle was inside for him to put together.

and the finished project showed..

(please excuse the terrible facial features on my drawing)

WE ARE GOING SKYDIVING!!!

Now a few little details:

I got an amazing coupon deal for us to both be able to go for less than the price for one of us to do it. I had decided weeks before the coupon showed up that this is what I was going to do so it was great to know that I was going to be able to save that much money on it. I knew that I wanted to be able to surprise him with it and didn't want him to know right away what we were going to do. So I brainstormed and still had no clue how I was going to tell him. I was looking around at JoAnn's for something that I was using on another project and came across this blank puzzle that you can draw on and then use for whatever you want. It was perfect!! My original draft that I drew of "him" skydiving was MUCH better than the way that the final product turned out but I'm still proud of it. He was really excited and completely surprised. I didn't schedule the actual day that we were going to do it because he has been gone A LOT lately. I knew that we needed to wait until he was home again on a weekend.

Fast forward to this past Friday..

Skydive Alabama in Cullman, AL is where we went. It took us just under 2 hours to get there so it wasn't bad at all.

It was an incredible experience. Hard to believe now that we actually did it. We are already trying to figure out when we can go again and who we are going to take with us!

Happy 28th Birthday, Taylor!

home.

We are here. After a couple of months of living at the beach and out of suitcases, we have now started life together in our new home, Franklin, TN. We are settling into our one bedroom apartment and exploring as much as possible.

We closed on the selling of our first home in Montgomery a few days after our 4th anniversary. Since we had not found a place to live in the Nashville area yet, we moved everything into two storage units and packed our bags for the beach. My parents graciously allowed us to take over their condo in Gulf Shores while we were searching for our new place. Taylor was traveling in and out and I was spending my days by the pool and my nights on the computer searching for where we were headed next. We discovered during those two months that we could live without a lot of the "things" that we were used to in our 3 bedroom/2 bathroom house.

We narrowed the search down to a smaller place and found exactly where we knew we wanted to be for the next year. We signed the papers and after a few set backs with the construction not being finished by the deadline, we had keys in our hands and took off to Montgomery to get our things.

There are still boxes to be unpacked and there may not be anything hanging on the walls but it's starting to feel like home more and more every day.

catching up and starting over

Too long. TOO long to even try and update on anything and everything that has happened in the last year. So maybe just a few highlights:

• Surprise trip to Disney World in April for 3rd Anniversary and my birthday!

• Heather got married!

(picture by J. Rawlings Photography)

• Lucy turned ONE! I fly to Salt Lake City for the week to celebrate this little one's big day.

• Andrea got married!

• Thanksgiving in New York! 

• We placed our house on the market and it SOLD in 13 days! 

So much has happened but those are the highlights. Taylor is still traveling all over but we are making the move to Nashville as soon as we find somewhere to live. More to come on that.

I don't have excuses on why I haven't updated but it is my goal to start back again.. (if anyone will even read this anymore).

Pre-Spring Cleaning

This weather has had me stirring to throw open the windows and clean the house from top to bottom. And that's exactly what I have done today. I made a list last night of everything that I wanted to accomplish today and most of it got checked off.

- clean windows
- dust blinds
- clean mirrors
- clean fans
- vacuum floors
- vacuum furniture
- clean baseboards
- dust living room furniture
- dust entertainment sleeves
- dust inside & out of china cabinet
- sweep kitchen & bathrooms
- mop kitchen & bathrooms
- clean kitchen cabinets
- clean oven & stove
- clean sink & countertop
- wash master bedroom duvet cover & pillow cases
- wash master bedroom quilt
- wash bathroom rugs
- wash shower curtains
- clean showers/tubs
- clean toilets
- clean sinks

Yeah, that's a lot to do in one day. Also included a few other things that just needed to get done.

- finally hem curtains in office
- cut out patterns for a few new projects
- trim Valentine's flowers
- take Miley for walk/run
- return spontaneous shoe purchase that I didn't need
- gather clothes donations for the Clothes Closet
- prepare shopping list for grocery store
- wash clothes

I'm exhausted. I decided to finish the day with a fresh pedicure with a new bottle of nail polish. I'm off now to crawl into clean sheets and continue reading Black Heels . Hope that you had a productive Saturday, too!

Updates

Yes, I've changed up the blog. It was time for a change. I needed a little something new. I am still working on it from time to time.. trying to get it just right.

If you see the last few posts that I've done, all of my extra time after work is being spent creating things for my nieces. Smocking has become my favorite hobby and I'm so thankful that I found someone last year that taught me all about it. It's been a year since I took my first class at Kids Kloset in Auburn. I always have a project in the works. After finishing this last one, 3 more have started. One is smocking a design on a pre made bubble. The next two are making 2 dresses from scratch. The smocking design for those is going to be perfect. Hopefully there will be enough time after work to get them finished on time. I'm about to have a timeline on one of them that looks like it maybe exactly a month to get it finished.

Here goes nothing.

Hula Hoops

Another bubble for Emily Kate:

Little Fish

A bubble that I smocked for Emily Kate:

Little Bear Peep

A dress I worked on for Lucy:

Little Turkey: part 2

Here's Lucy on Thanksgiving day wearing her turkey bubble. (Please excuse the iPhone pictures, it is all I have!)

wishful thinking

not that i need a new phone cover right now...