A Great Weekend with the Family

This past Saturday, Joseph's mom, two sisters, and a niece and nephew travelled down to our house to spend the day. It was the perfect fall Saturday morning. The air was nice and crisp and a perfect day for roaming around downtown doing some shopping.  The kids did very well shopping and of course what did they spot on the way back to the car? This poor fellow!

I believe that the painted horse was downtown for a breast cancer awareness fundraiser. It was so much fun watching the little ones get their hands dirty for a good cause. (and some fun, too!)

First up was Cooper. She is absolutely a doll.

Then, it was Cameron's turn. What a cutie patootie, if I may say so myself!!

And finally, it was time to pet the donkey. I thought the donkey was quite festive in it's little pink bow!!

I'm so glad that they all came down to spend the day. It was a very special treat to have them come down for a visit.

On Sunday, I drove down to my parent's house to go celebrate this little man's third birthday. (whew. i'm tired just thinking about last weekend and all that was going on!)

Isn't he too cute in his new glasses? And surprisingly, he has done very well with learning to wear them. Go Barrett!! So I think that he deserved to go a little crazy on his birthday!!

After the candles were blown out, it was time to get to the good part. Eating the cupcakes!!

And of course, after this cupcake massacre, he wanted to give his Sissy (me) a big ole' kiss. Thanks.

I'm a good sport. And the icing only made his sweet sugar even sweeter!! After that, it was fast a furious present opening.

And finally, the party was over and time to head home.

So all in all, I had a very blessed weekend. I got to spend time with Joseph's family and mine. It was such a rare occasion, but so very wonderful!

Fall-ing into Autumn

I am so glad that the temperature has been dropping. Not by much, but with the humidity down and it slightly cooler, it is oh-so-lovely here in south Georgia!! Here's a little hodgepodge of what's been going down here at Casa-de-Bryan.

I pulled out a few fall decorations for the house.

First, I got out my leaf plates and added a few new plates that I picked up at good ol' Wally World.

Here is a close up of the stuff on the buffet. Nothing fancy. Just a few pumpkins I got at Dollar General last year sitting on two salad bowls for some height. I had to get creative!

 Then I moved on to the living room. Nothing too exciting.  Just added some fall foliage to the mirror that usually just has those globe things and a candle.

And then I just added a few more pumpkins to the table by the chair.

I didn't do much in the kitchen. Just placed some leaf plates and some ornamental gourds in a basket on top of the island, which I moved by the window for my herbs to get sun. (which are now outside, so I guess I need to move it back!)

That's about it for decorating for fall. Nothing too spectacular. But it does make me want to run to Starbucks every time I walk in the door and go grab a pumpkin spice latte. Yum. And speaking earlier about my herbs, I had this waiting on me yesterday:

See that green stuff peaking out of the top? Yay! My seeds have begun sprouting!! The basil is the only seeds that have done so to date, but I am anxiously awaiting the sproutage of the other two!!

And just because they are cute and I haven't posted any puppy pictures in a while. Here are a few pictures I took of my sleeping beasts beauties today.

They just got a new bed, because the babies demolished their so-called "indestructible" bed they had. But they really love this new one. I think because it is so super soft. Even Oscar likes it enough to cuddle with the other two to sleep.

Sunday Projects

Hey Ya'll!! Its a rainy Sunday here at my house. That means, that I could get a few honey-do jobs marked off my list. Okay, really just one honey-do job, and I had to plead to have that one finished! I was in Lowe's yesterday and made a slight impulse buy. I bought a ceiling fan for the kitchen. Go ahead and scoff all of you interior design types that hate ceiling fans. I'm sorry. I live in Southwest Georgia and it is hot 95% of the year. So functionality wins this one. This is the fan that I bought.

Do you notice what is says on the box? Look closer.

That's right......the five minute fan. I got this one because I knew that would be about the time frame I had for Joseph to put the fan up for me before he got mad with it and wanted to stop. Needless to say, it didn't take five minutes, more like about 30 minutes. And all of 1 minute for Joseph to be complaining about his wife bringing stuff home for him to do on his day off. Whoopsie! But it really helped that it was 90% pre-assembled. Score!! Here is my sweet hubby cussing installing the fan.

You're loving my popcorn ceilings, aren't you. You should be jealous! (not) Here she is. I have already enjoyed the coolness she gives off this evening while I was cooking supper. Happy dance time!

I also started another project. It is yet to be seen how this one will turn out. I grabbed three of these darling pots yesterday at Lowe's. They were basic terra cotta pots. But I jazzed them up with a little bit of high gloss red spray paint. I realize that I am a horrible blogger since I didn't take any before shots. But here are the after.

Aren't they adorable? I got a Parsley and Basil pot. And obviously the "generic" herb pot because apparently nobody plants Rosemary, I guess. But those are the three herbs I am planting. I am being brave by starting out my plants with seeds. Usually I buy plants that are already established, but Lowes doesn't have them this time of year. So here we go!

I basically filled the pots 3/4 of the way full and then dropped a few seeds on the surface. Finally I covered the seeds up with about 1/4 inch of dirt. The packet suggested to plant the seeds every 6 inches or so, but since I have mine in a pot, I figured I would dump some seeds in and hope some take. Then I can just pluck out the plants once the pot gets too full. So, I got all my planters filled up. I placed them by the window and gave them a little bit of water. We should {hopefully} see some sprouting seedlings in about 2 weeks!!

And if you can see on the window, that is indeed rain!! We needed it so very badly. So that's what I have been doing on this somewhat lazy Sunday. You have any projects that you got done? I know my mother got at least one thing done, her closet. She finally watched Hoarding: Buried Alive and had the same reaction that I did. Clean, clean, clean. Throw away stuff, throw away more stuff, and throw away even more stuff! Happy Sunday!!

Way, way, way, overdue!!

I am long overdue with a post about Labor Day. Needless to say, we went to my parents. I will let the pictures do the talking!! We did have some special visitors. The Treadons made the journey from Thomasville to check out the big town of Blountstown!!

29 and Holding

Sorry for the delay. First was the whole missing USB cord to my camera....and then my internet has been down for like a week!

I celebrated my 29th birthday on Sunday. So I am officially in my last year of my "20's". Insert wail {here}. All in all I had a pretty great birthday. Joseph and I rode up to Athens this past weekend to watch the dawgs play the Arkansas Razorbacks. Yeah, not such a great game. But we still had fun!!

This is Scott. He is the bomb dot com. He is Joseph's pledge brother and such a gracious host to always let us crash at his house when we go to Athens. We got to go to dinner with his wonderful family on Friday night. We ate with his parents and his two brothers. His mother is such a lovely Southern woman. I love, love, love her!! His brother Greg, btw, was UGA's quarterback in the early 90s. (and his sister had a famous country song written about her, just a little fyi) All I can say is I love me some Scott!!

On Saturday, we headed out bright and early to the Kappa Sig tailgate. We didn't tailgate at the house, but we did have a pretty good spot. Right next to the "Dawg Walk", so we got to see all the players enter the stadium.

It was sooo hot in the stadium! Joseph and I only stayed their until about 30 seconds into the 3rd quarter. (interception on the first play of the second half. good job dawgs.) So we went back to the tailgate and enjoyed the company.

Yes, Joseph is so cool!!

Got back late Saturday evening. My mother was so sweet to come and "babysit" our pups and Stacey's (she was at the Auburn game). Hopefully she didn't go too crazy having to take care of all her grandpups. Sunday morning before mom left, we had a little birthday party with cake for breakfast.

Can you tell that we had just rolled out of bed? Ha ha! Thanks mom for the cake and flowers! That was so super sweet of you! The festivities didn't end there. Stacey cooked me a birthday dinner on Monday night. Here she is doing a very good impression of Ina Garten.

I absolutely hate it every time Ina rubs her hands together, so Stacey was doing that just for me. Stacey made a jam up dinner for me. We started with a vegetable tray for appetizers. For dinner we had shrimp creole (made with a roux she made herself! you go girl!!), rice, salad, and fingerling potatoes. I swear Stacey wants to be Cajun. She watches Swamp People like there is no tomorrow. If only I could convince her to watch True Blood because it takes place in Louisiana. Hmmm......

All in all, it wasn't too terrible turning the big two niner. Next year might be a different story.....

Anniversaries and Holidays

Howdy. Hopefully I will be able to upload some pictures from Labor Day weekend, once my USB cord to my camera has been found. I'm thinking that it is in Joseph's truck some where (I hope at least!) Not too much has been going on around here. The only updates with the baby making process is that I started ovulating a few days ago, and had to call the office to let them know. So that resulted in me going to the lab yesterday for some much dreaded blood work to check my progesterone levels. Then I go back next Monday for more blood work. Oh the joys! So in the past month, I have had to do blood work every single week. Yuck. I am almost used to it now. But not quite. Hopefully it is helping "toughen" me up for when the shots begin. That's about all on that front. Pictures and updates from this weekend coming!!

Brutus and JR.....one year later

And just for a little fun, here is what was going on this time last year. We had just brought our puppies home Labor Day weekend. This was actually their first day home with us and their first Georgia game!! Watching it I can't believe how much they have grown! {please excuse the redneck southern girl doing the narrating}

I still can't believe that it has been a year. We have enjoyed these babies so very much. I miss them being this little and cute, but wouldn't want to go back to those days for anything. We finally have them halfway trained! (or is it the other way around? hmmm...)