Thanksgiving 2012

Today it's back to reality after a glorious 4 day weekend. I had a wonderful Thanksgiving at home with my family. It's really hard to get back into the swing of things this morning at work after being spoiled all weekend.

Cute little Thanksgiving napkins my mom found

Mom always makes sure that the table is festive for Turkey Day. She did a little fall theme this year.

We even pulled out my grandparent's turkey-thing that they have had for as long as I can remember.

It's always nice to pull out a little reminder or two of your family that can't be there with you to celebrate.
Of course, we ate way too much food. It was so good. I love Thanksgiving time and all the food that we only eat once a year.

Daddy and his BFF, Wilson getting the meat carved

I made Stacey's favorite carrot cake. It's a Southern Living recipe and oh-so delicious! Too bad I didn't take a picture to document all my hard work!

It was a pretty laid back day. This was David's first Thanksgiving that he has spent with us, and hopefully he will be spending many more Thanksgivings to come!

Barrett had a very captive audience with David!

Barrett got to show us all of his Thanksgiving arts and crafts that he has made. It was really cute :-)

And no Thanksgiving would be complete without a little photo taking.

Somehow Daddy and David managed to escape the camera! They are sneaky things!

I will have to post some more pictures from the weekend to capture all my adventures. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

xoxo

Happy Thanksgiving

I wanted to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving is really one of my favorite holidays. Mainly because it is more focused on just gathering with your family and giving thanks to God for all that He has done.

Today, I am thankful. It's been a good year and I have oh-so-much to be thankful for.  

God is so good!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Sounds of Silence

It's been mighty quiet on the ole' blog-front lately! But in honor of my favorite uncle's birthday this past weekend, I will throw a post up!

Happy Birthday, Uncle Brett! Love you lots! xoxoxoxoxoxo

Things have been super busy, but super quiet in my neck of the woods. I've stayed so busy at work lately, that I just don't take the time to blog like I normally do. Guess my boss is getting his worth out of me here lately. Ha! But that also means - no blog posts! I will try and do better. Pinkie swear.

Here are some random things going on in my world.

I voted! Granted, the State of Georgia can't figure out where people live, so I still had to go to Grady County to vote instead of Thomas County where I live. Oh well! I got to vote, nonetheless. Election night, I headed over to the Thomas County Historical Society to help serve up chicken pilau for their annual fundraiser. I am happy to say this 20th annual dinner turned out to be the best one yet!

Took all the leftover Halloween candy to the office to get rid of it. Thank goodness it's almost gone or else I would probably be in major trouble. I can't keep candy at home or I will eat it. Now I can just eat it at work.... yeah that doesn't compute.

I've started getting geared up for Christmas. When I came across these dachshund themed tea towels, I of course made them mine. {told you I have zero blog material}

I chased a bird around the house for 30 minutes after it flew in through the back door. That was a goat ropin' let me tell you!

In other animal related news, I've gotten Glitzy fattened up enough that she is now a free range rabbit- in the dog pen. She's really digging the extra space to run around and to be out of the cage. Now I can really enjoy watching her hop about for the all-of-ten-minutes of daylight I get to enjoy when I get home. #ihatethistimechange

I'm enjoying these Escambia County satsuma oranges right off of my grandmother's tree. They are super tasty and I just love them.

I burned up every piece of wood that I have been hoarding on Friday night. It's good motivation to keep the yard picked up though!

I've been on a hunt for a dress to wear to my cousin's wedding. I'm not having much luck. It's hard to find something that you can wear to a December wedding without freezing. This dress is what I refer to as the "C3PO" dress. It was a big negative! Needless to say- the hunt continues. Although I did just get a BCBG dress that I ordered online in today. And good old Max never seems to let me down, so it will probably be the winner.

....and that's about it. Told you it's been boring around here!

Lazy Weekends

This weekend will have to go down in the record books as Laze-Fest 2012. And you know what? It was amazing!

What's wrong with being lazy? It's my full time job!

David and I will be coming up on a year of being together at the end of the month. So that's been one full year of going back and forth between Thomasville and Savannah every weekend. It's totally worth all the travel to see David every week, but let's face it, it's exhausting traveling 4+ hours one way each weekend. Since David had to be in Orlando today for work, we took advantage of having two full days together. And guess what we did? Not a dang thing and it was glorious. After all the go, go, go, go,go of the summer and the fall, it was nice to have nothing more on the agenda than football and food. We did venture out downtown to run in Kevin's and ate lunch at Stacey's favorite restaurant downtown- The Billiards Academy. Which specializes in hot dogs. I figured David needed the full Thomasville experience. So we went in to eat and to watch a little football. We got our hot dogs just in time to watch Marcus Lattimore get his leg ripped off. So yeah, I lost my appetite and my desire to even watch football. After watching some of the UF/UGA game, I really had lost interest and decided that my day would be better spent outside reading  my Southern Living magazine than watch that goat ropin' go down.

David got me a little present for the patio, although he admitted it was more for him than for me! Ha!

The Pyromaniac

He got me a Chiminea fire pit to keep warm on these cool evenings. I was really impressed with my new fire pit. It did a fabulous job keeping us toasty warm and it was zero mess- even better! Guess I now have even more reason to pick up all the sticks and pine cones in the yard. This little Chiminea is the perfect size to burn all that stuff up. So thanks, David for my present. I love it!

We spent the rest of Saturday burning anything we could get our hands on and listening to some music. It was the perfect evening. I will have to get some stuff to make smores for the next time we use it.

So, that's about all the highlights I have from our weekend. Unless you count some old school movie watching in our sweatpants and a trip to Wal-Mart.Well, there was some more peanut boiling- which was better this go round, since it was cool and we could open up the windows to let the heat (and smell) escape from boiling those things for hours on end! And of course, the copious amounts of food that was consumed.

Oh- and Oscar has found him a new BFF. I'm kinda jealous. He is totally David's boy now.

After our lazy weekend, it's back to the daily grind and to a pretty jammed pack schedule on the weekends from here until Christmas. Sigh.... I'm tired just thinking about it. But it will all be fun and well worth the effort. First up- Charleston next weekend! Woot. Woot! I'm even going to take a vacation day to head up a day early to enjoy the Citadel Homecoming festivities. I think I'm looking forward to the much needed day off than anything!

Hope ya'll had a fabulous weekend doing just what you pleased!

Scenes Around Savannah: Old Fort Jackson

I had to pull out my calender to see when the last time I was in Savannah. It had been well over a month since I have been up that way. It was nice going up there. I realized that I have missed visiting that lovely city.

Saturday, we decided to tour Old Fort Jackson, which is Georgia's oldest {standing}brick fortification built from 1808-1812. It was named after James Jackson, not Andrew :-)

I'm Ashley and I will be your docent today.

James Jackson was a British native that moved to Savannah in 1772 at the age of 15 and rose in ranks during the American Revolutionary War serving in the Georgia Militia.

Jackson later became a political power and was elected the 23rd Governor of the State of Georgia.

Old Fort Jackson saw wartime action, first in the War of 1812, then again in the War between the States. From 1884-1905, it was known as Fort Oglethorpe but rarely used by the U.S. Military.

It was finally purchased by the city of Savannah in 1924 for park purposes, but wasn't fully restored until the 1970s.

It is now owned by the State of Georgia and is operated and ran as a Museum by the Coastal Heritage Society.

This will conclude your tour of Old Fort Jackson!

It was a very nice place to tour and it was great watching the water from the top of the fort. The picture directly above is taken from the top of the fort. We stood up there and watched a few dolphins swim by. Maybe you can see it in this picture.

Where's Waldo?

It was a fantastic day and this fort isn't quite as busy as Fort Pulaski, so if you are ever in town and want someplace to go somewhat off the beaten path, hit up Fort Jackson!

Friday Faves

It's that time of the week again. Here we go with some of my favorite things from this week.

1. Oscar: Hands down my favorite thing from this week. This little guy is just the sweetest dog in the world. He makes for wonderful company in that big, lonely house! He made a new friend this week when our friend Libbie came to stay with me.

He of course, occupies his time doing what he does best, napping. As a matter of fact, he is napping right now in my office. He made the journey to hang out with me since I am headed to Savannah after work.

Ready for a grueling day at the office

2. This picture: David's mom emailed me this picture yesterday and it absolutely made my day.

David recently acquired (against my protests at Wal-Mart in Baxley, GA) a pair of overalls. Granted, he bought them as a joke the other weekend when we went to Justin and Crystale's wedding. Crystale always said how back-woods redneck her part of the woods is, and David wanted to fit in. David wore said overalls Friday night to the lake house where everyone was staying- with no shirt and no shoes. It was hilarious, but slightly disturbing. Anyways, he brought them to my house over the weekend and put them on to hear me fuss. His mother said that she had a picture of him wearing overalls back in the day and she located it. Isn't he just adorable?

3. Peanuts! I couldn't resist grabbing up some green peanuts to boil. It takes forever to boil peanuts, but oh-so-worth the effort!

4. A new snack obsession: In the form of these bad boys -

Honey Maid Grahamfuls

Oh my goodness! I got the Banana Vanilla Creme variety (and I just heard Stacey gag from 200 miles away).  These things are like eating banana pudding. They are so yummy! I just picked up another box of them yesterday and I am now regretting not bringing them with me this weekend to Savannah. 


Okay, that's enough for today. Gotta get back to work. Have a fabulous weekend, everyone!

Front Porch Update

Last look at the front porch of the house, it was looking like this:

Since then, I added a few little tweaks to make it look a little more substantial.

Nothing too spectacular, but mums make anything look better!

The mums will still look great once Halloween is over and transition to a more fall/Thanksgiving feel.

Even the fake Bentley at the backdoor got some mum love.

Now the trick will be keeping these poor plants alive. Let's hope I don't forget about these guys!