Weekend Wrap-Up

Happy Monday, folks! I always wonder how this day gets here so fast...it just seems like the weekend FLY by every week! Agreed? Anyways, we had a great weekend even though we didn't too much. Sometimes the perfect day is a day spent at home in PJ's watching movies...and that's just what we did on Saturday.

First let me start with these:

(I couldn't decide which photo I preferred...the lighting is so different in both!)

The above cupcakes were made for a co-worker's birthday last week. I have been deemed the cupcake lady at work...which I am totally okay with. It does challenge me to create more creative cupcakes though since I end up making cupcakes for about 15 people's birthday and I don't want them to all be the same. I digress. Karen had told me that her favorite color was green, and I had some of these great frogs so I took it and ran with it. They were a hit and the birthday girl loved them!

Also, these cupcakes had a surprise inside. The surprise went over VERY well. I know for a face that one person ate 4 cupcakes! 4!! :) Apparently Oreos make everyone happy!

Changing gears here...last week was rough. I hadn't been feeling great and I was SO tired. Let's not even talk about work. Stressful? Oh yes! But you know what? God is so good! Last Wednesday when I was having a pretty horrible day, I came home to some unexpected fun mail from my friend Brooke. She had sent me the sweetest note and the cutest salt and pepper shaker for my collection:

Isn't she the best?! It brought a smile to my face and made my horrible day not so bad!

Okay, now onto this weekend! Remember I mentioned not doing anything on Saturday? Well, that's what we did. We spent Saturday at home cleaning the house and watching movies. It was so nice! I think Louie really liked it too-he got lots of cuddle time!

Sunday was kind of a busy day for us. We had to teach Sunday school at our church and then leave right after to make it to Stephen's parents church for a special board meeting. Stephen is still a member of that church because we have not officially joined the church we go to, so he needed to bet here for an important vote. Afterwards we got lunch at The Siding with Stephen's Mom & Dad. It was a little cold outside, but at least it was sunny! Lunch was yummy and filling!

After lunch we had plans to get ice cream...and boy did we. Stephen got the death by chocolate milk shake and I got this massive strawberry shortcake sundae:

I told you it was massive!! While eating our ice cream we headed to 7 Pillars; the place of our engagement.

The water was really, really low. I'm actually not sure if I have ever seen it that low. I could walk out almost to the middle of the river and still be standing on stones. It was pretty neat to be able to look up and down the river....I liked it!

Me standing in the middle of the river and freezing, it was windy and colllld:

After that adventure we headed home for some R&R time. We watched the end of Star Wars Episode 6 and The Proposal. I can now say that I have seen all the Star Wars movies, and on a more shocking note; that I actually enjoyed them! Haha, who am I?!?

And that wraps up our weekend!

How was yours?

Update & Vera Bradley

This past week was an exciting one if you live anywhere near Indiana or if you are a Vera Bradley fan. Well, lucky for me I fall into both of those categories. The 2012 Vera Bradley Outlet Sale took place in Fort Wayne, IN last Wednesday though Sunday. Oh what fun! Do you remember my posts about this sale last year? (Here they are!) Well, we had a great time at the sale again this year!

Back in January, one of my best friends Brooke decided she wanted to go. After a couple conversations she found she had an entire group of people who wanted to come with her. The more the merrier, right? Well, that's exactly what I was thinking! Brooke, her mom Lisa, sister Brinley and sister-in-law Kelley arrived at our house Thursday evening after driving from Lexington, KY. I was SO excited!

We spent Thursday evening catching up with each other and watching Grey's Anatomy. Of course the anticipation for the sale was building...actually, I could barely sleep Thursday night. Don't judge!

Friday morning we woke up and were eager to get ready and hit the road. Our shopping time was at 2:30pm, but we wanted to get lunch and get in line WAY before that. Before leaving Stephen took some picture of us all in our matching shirts that Lisa made. She is so talented-don't you love the shirts?!

LOVE this girl and am so blessed and thankful that we met on a Carnival cruise many years ago!

Louie was not too happy that I was getting ready to leave...but still, how cute is he?!

And an up close view of our shirts. Glitter? Yes, Please! Thank you, Lisa!

We grabbed lunch at Chipotle...because you know how I love that place! After lunch we headed to the sale to claim our spot in the line. Luckily, we were early enough to be pretty close to the front of the line...maybe 30 or so people were in front of us. I call that success. Now came the not so fun part. The waiting in line. Ugh. We waited in line for 2 hours before our time to shop. It wasn't all that bad though, we had plenty of people to people watch and we got LOTS of comments (and looks) about our awesome shirts!

We mapped out a game plan and decided to try and stay together. Well friends, that doesn't work. There are just so many tables and people and Vera bags. Thankfully though, our bright shirts worked to our advantage in locating each other when we were separated. Perfect! 

Finally, we were in!

Here is a shot of the inside:

We shopped for almost our entire allowed time and got some great awesome deals. For example, XL Duffel for $39.99? Nice to meet you! Angle Tote for $19.99? Nice to meet you as well! :)

In the end we bought LOTS of things and ended up saving almost $1,000 total with all our purchases combined. Thanks for a great sale this year, Vera!

Oh, and we are featured on the Vera Bradley blog today. Check that out here.

After shopping we did some more shopping at Kountry Kitchen and Target. We also got some dinner in there at Cheddars, which was delicious as always. We headed back to my house and spent the night making lollipops and cupcakes and playing some fun games of Catch Phrase. It was such a fun day! 

Saturday morning we woke up and decorated cupcakes...and then ate them for breakfast! Soon afterwards the gang was back on the road and headed home.

After they left, our day consisted of making laundry detergent and doing a lot of laundry in between taking naps. On Sunday we taught Sunday School, went to church and then went to see The Hunger Games. Oh my! I finished the book a week or so ago and was ready to see the movie the next day, but I had to wait for Stephen to read and finish the book too. Well, he did and we got to see the movie. Amazing. We both really enjoyed the movie, but agree that the book was better. There are just some details that can't be captured on film and your imagination views them better anyways! :)

Have you read or seen The Hunger Games? What did you think?

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Weekend-Wrap Ups-2 weekends!

Well it seems that life and it's schedule has prevented me from posting some weekend wrap ups in a timely manner...again. Let's hope that this does not become a trend like it always seems to...moving on now...

This wrap-up includes pictures and details from the past 2 weekends, starting with the day we returned from vacation in Florida. We arrived at home around 9pm Saturday evening and even thought it was dark outside I could see our tulips had bloomed. Who do you think was excited!? Raising and waiving hand energetically: this girl! Tulips are my favorite flowers and I had been really looking forward to their bloomage (totally just made that word up) in our yard. They are beautiful AND I have taken basically a hundred pictures of them already!

Sunday we had some errands to run, which included grocery shopping. We had basically no food in our house once we got back form vacation. Apparently we did a really good job of eating everything to prevent it from going bad the week before! :) We snapped some pictures before we left and were just enjoying the spring blooms and nice weather in Indiana!

The above bush is near our back walkway into the house and it smells amazing. Seriously, love it!

These sandals were a Florida purchase at Kohl's and I love the pink flowers, so girlie and fun!

Above: our Red Bud tree. I always wanted a Red Bud when I lived in Florida and even looked into purchasing one. When we realized one of the trees on our lot was a Red Bud, I was pretty excited!

Below: Even Louie likes the Tulips!

After we went grocery shopping and did things like that it was time to get dirty in the yard. We cut our grass for the first time of 2012 on March 25, 2012. We also did a little weeding and some sign fixin' too. It was such a nice day outside!

Our reward for the hard work in the yard? Pulling the grill out of the garage for the spring/summer season and grilling steaks for dinner! I am so thankful that Stephen likes to grill and is good at it. Dinner was delicious!

The grill master!

Now onto last weekend...

Friday afternoon Stephen finished fixing our sign that had been beaten up this Winter and we took some pictures with the sign and the tulips. Louie was not in a picture mood though...oh well. Friday night we went grocery shopping (our normal Friday night date...we live an exciting life people!) and got dinner out at a Mexican place. I think we were both so happy that it was Friday since last week at work had seemed long and overly busy...just exhausting. You can bet I slept in on Saturday!

Stephen wanted to cut the grass on Saturday morning, but it was kind of chilly outside and the grass never dried enough to cut it. I did get outside to take some more pictures of our Tulips though!

I LOVE the above fire ones!

Saturday we left the house after lunch and headed to Indianapolis to shop at GardenRidge and have dinner with some good friends of ours. I warned Stephen that he might not like GardenRidge, but he actually said it wasn't bad and that he would go back. WOO! We were shopping specifically for pots for the front steps and a patio table, which we got both. We also got some other things that were not on the list...but that always happens, right? Well, it always happens to us at least!

Some pictures before we left:

LOVE

boy oh boy...

Sunday we taught Sunday School at church and went to late service. In the afternoon we spent time outside cutting the grass and putting up our new patio table that we purchased on Saturday. It was much warmer outside on Sunday, so that was nice. Actually, it was kind of hot at times! We had to get some water outside for Louie because he was panting non-stop. He likes laying on the bricks in the shade...I think they are cool for him!

Our new table and umbrella:

Can't wait to grill and eat dinner outside with Stephen & Louie!

We ended Sunday with a trip to RedBox and Dairy Queen. Did you know that DQ now has frozen hot chocolates? Well, they do and they are SO good. We got a large blizzard and a frozen hot chocolate to eat throughout the week, but they messed up and gave us 2 large blizzards AND the frozen hot chocolate so we really had a lot of ice cream. In fact, it's still in our freezer! Oh and the movies we picked (I picked) were Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 1 and Dolphin Tale. We both really like Dolphin Tale-so cute! Twilight was okay...I will say the movies are getting better and better. It's a great improvement from the first one for sure!

Oh and in other news...I had an exciting Monday morning. By exciting I really mean, not so much exciting at all and lots of stress. I hit a deer on my way to work at around 7am. I drive through the country to and from work so hitting a deer is always a risk and I have seen them many times on my commute. I did not see this one until he was collided with the front of my CRV. I felt so bad for the deer! Unfortunately he died and my car basically did:

I am driving a rental car (per our car insurance-thank goodness!) and waiting for the body shop to tow the CRV in for repairs. While I would have much rather not had to deal with this on Monday morning...I am thankful that I was in the CRV and not my old Civic because it would have been much worse. I am also thankful that I was not injured at all. God is good! I was upset about the car for a little while because well, I loved the CRV and its still pretty new to us but I have to remember that it's just a car. There are other things in life much more important!

Hopefully repairs will start tomorrow and I can be back in the CRV soon! I hope it's soon because the rental car really stinks!