Whirlwind of a Weekend and Blog Post.

I had the best weekend! I suppose after a somewhat slower summer schedule and with Grayson studying so much lately it has left me needing some quality time. As an aside, if you've never read The Five Love Languages, I would highly recommend doing so. There is something wonderful about knowing what it takes to fill up your personal love tank in order to keep yourself from running on empty. I am fully aware that my top love language, 100% is quality time which meant that I made it a priority to fill up this weekend.

Saturday morning started off with both Grayson and myself waking up super early. He headed off to work while I headed off to Marshall, Tx to attend a baby shower for one of my wonderful college friends Julianne. (Pics coming soon). Julianne is from Marshall which is a mere 2 hours away from me, as opposed to teh 4.5 hour trip to Fort Worth. You can't blame a girl for opting to shower her and baby Charlie here instead! I had so much fun catching up with her; it was like we hadn't skipped a beat since we last saw each other ... which was who knows when? I'm anxiously awaiting baby Charlie's arrival and hope to meet him over Halloween weekend when we're in FW for TCU Homecoming.

Okay, so after brunching at the cutest bed & breafast, I headed back to Shreveport where I was an errand-running machine. I managed to redeem a gift certificate for a manicure & pedicure, got fitted for a bridesmaid dress, grabbed lunch and did some shoe shopping at DSW! Very productive if you ask me. While driving around town accomplishing these great feats, I ran across this cute little store. While Grayson doesn't go by his first name (Charles), I thought it was still too funny not to stop in the middle of the road with my caution lights blinking to capture this photo! Kind of makes me want them to bake something for us!

Anyways, next on my agenda was a visit to the Zeta Tau Alpha chapter house on the campus of Centenary College. Madalyn is Recruitment Chair and invited me to attend their alum only viewing of their recruitment skits. I WAS IN HEAVEN!!! I loved college and all the ZTA memories I made, so to be able to briefly reminisce or live vicariously through her and her chapter was super fun. I was also able to meet a lot of young Shreveport alums and hope to catch up with them again for some events this fall.

I then proceeded back to Jonesboro (arriving a mere 12 hours after first departing) to celebrate Natalee's birthday! She and Dax were in town so Kathy had a bunch of people over for dinner and a Saints football watching party. I took a great recipe that people actually asked me for! (that never happens) It was very refreshing to catch up with people I don't get to see that often. Needless to say when Sunday rolled around, I was pooped!

At this point, if you need to take a break from reading, I'll understand. I should have turned this post into two, but I already uploaded these pics and for any of you other bloggers out there, you understand the hassle which would be related to deleting and re-uploading. Thank you for showing me grace ...

School officially starts next Thursday for Tech which means that my relaxed days at work without students on campus is quickly coming to an end. Because of this I decided to take a personal day from work on Tuesday and wrap up summer. I put away all of my linen clothes and white shoes, I whipped out my corderoy skirts and thin sweaters, I did laundry and all the related boring house-cleaning chores and I "decorated" for fall. I'm no interior decorator by any means, nor do we have lots of fall decor, but what little we do have, I put out!

I especially love my leaf plates that my mom got me from Pottery Barn last season. Just wish they were here to actually eat on them! I'm not in love with the pumpkin in the center, I'm just waiting to find the right centerpiece! And for any of you who are in the area, please come over to eat! I have a lot of great crockpot recipes that I'm dying to try. Since it's getting a little cooler, I figure that gives me free reign to start trying some easy recipes out!

When I was in college I bought these pumpkins. I have no idea when or where or why, but I did. I also recall one of my roommates (cough, cough Megan) not really like them in our front yard. I know they are a tad cheezy in a homemade-craft-fair-sort of way, but I like them. No one ever uses our front door, but tons of people drive by it and if these pumpkins help put a little Fall Cheer in their hearts, then my job is done.

What I do love is our fall wreath.

In an OCD sort of way, I love that it matches our door. Yes, the door that no one enters.

Lastly, I want to document a bet that was made between Grayson and me. So, during my day off I had to complete some pretty lame chores. One of which was 7 loads of laundry. Not sure if you recall, but our laundry is located in the dungeon portion of our home, um ... I mean the garage. It is also in this garage where TC was first allowed to live, her territory if you will. Well, in order for me to do the 7 loads of laundry meant that I had to walk up and down the stairs to our garage approximately 14 times. Without going into detail, hopefully when I write the words: GARAGE, CAT, & DEAD BIRD, you get the picture. Well, when I politely asked Grayson to take care of this for me, he adamently fought that it wasn't a bird that I had seen, rather a mouse.

Excuse me? Are you seriously arguing with me about what I saw? Okay, fine then let's make a bet. The guy actually bets me that what I saw (approximately 14 times in one day) was not a bird, rather it was in fact a mouse. You can guarantee that after shaking on the bet that he would purchase me a nice, cold beer at the Tech/Auburn game this weekend if I was right, that I marched myself right down to the spot where Tweety lay and took the following photo.

Pretty sure I'm getting a beer this weekend!