Fall Fun

October has been super busy for both me and Leslie! Leslie took his comps last week and is working hard on his thesis, and the education department has a National Accreditation team coming in this afternoon that we've been busy preparing for. Hopefully things will slow down for both of us soon!

Even with all our crazyness, we've had time for some fall fun! Pumpkin carving was a must every fall for my family, so I decided Leslie needed some more pumpkin carving experience.

We were quite proud of our little jack-o-lantern!

When we got a cold snap, Leslie made some delicious chili for dinner :)

Mom made two prints of all of our wedding pictures and got albums so she and dad could have one and Leslie and I could have one. Unfortunately, the pictures were all mixed up and most were printed 4 times instead of two! It took a ton of time to get them all sorted, so I decided to take a little break from them before putting them in the albums :)

I finally found some fall-ish flowers that suited me, and two sweet ladies from church brought us some pretty roses when we joined :)

So, overall we're both doing great! I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween!

Fall Break

Last week we had Monday and Tuesday off for Fall Break and it was wonderful! Leslie's mom and grandmother came Friday night and took us to eat at our favorite place in town, Hana :). On Saturday, Leslie had to work most of the day. I went with Leslie's mom and grandmother to Front Street to the "Return to the 50s" classic car show. I'm not much of a car person, but they sure knew a lot! The weather was wonderful and it was fun walking around and looking.

Leslie was able to meet us for lunch and we ate at a place called Papa's downtown. It's attached to Mama's, and it's owned by a husband and wife. They share a kitchen, but Mama's is an oyster house and Papa's is a bit more sandwichy. We love going there for their fried onions and jalapenos!

After lunch, Leslie had to get back to get ready for the football game. Since he had to be at the game, we decided that we would go watch! We ended up losing, but it was a very close game!

We all got to eat dinner together after the game, and they stayed for church and lunch on Sunday.

Baseball decided to take part in the Fall Break, so Leslie didn't have to work AT ALL on Monday and didn't have to go in on Tuesday until the evening! We slept in on Monday and then decided to have a picnic lunch by the river. We were itching to use our adorable picnic basket and blanket that we had gotten from friends for our wedding! The weather was wonderful and we had time to relax and read and feed lots of ducks.

After that, we went to Chili's and to watch Courageous with some sweet friends from our Sunday School class!

It was a great weekend and break, but it went by too fast, as usual!





Some Pinteresting Dinners and Other Craftings

I know I've been terrible about posting on here lately, but Leslie and I have mostly just been working and busy with school stuff lately. Football season has officially started which means that Leslie is now going to be working all of the games as well as practice and he'll be traveling some with the football team until baseball starts. He had a work-free weekend for Labor Day and we got to spend it with my parents! We had a really great time being lazy, eating good food, and watching some Alabama football!

I feel like we've had the same list of things on our menu lately, so I decided to look to Pinterest for some new dinner ideas this week! Both were very successful :)

The first thing I tried was stuffed bell peppers. They're stuffed with ground beef and LOTS of cheese! I love peppers, so I really enjoyed this. I think Leslie approved, too!

Still working on the picture taking thing

If you click this picture, it'll take you to the recipe! (hopefully)

The second thing I tried was bacon wrapped chicken. It was a big hit with Leslie, and it was pretty darn tasty if I might say so myself :)

I forgot about the picture taking part until we were almost done!

Next I want to try stuffed jalapenos! Maybe I'll get into this cooking thing yet, haha.

I've also done some other Pinterest-inspired projects lately. I made something to go above our bed because it was too empty for me! It still needs some work, because it didn't stick so well, but here it is

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Romans 12:12

I printed out the words in a font I found online and then I cut them all out of scrapbook paper. I glued them to cake plates because they were much cheaper than canvases, but they seemed to bend on me! I need to try to flatten them out again.

Next, I took a pretty frame that we bought and never used and put a little Pinterest inspiration on it, too!

The words are the lyrics to "Lost in This Moment"- the song we danced to at our wedding. All of my wedding flowers are in Texas still, so I dried a rose from a bouquet Leslie gave me a few weeks ago :)

I also found a tutorial online for how to make a dress out of an old tank top and some fabric! My first attempt wasn't too great, but a belt covers it up nicely, haha. Unfortunately, Leslie says it's a bit see-through so I'm going to have to get a slip or figure out how to line it before I can wear it out!

I'm currently working on a skirt, but I'm finding the zipper part to be a little tricky. Hopefully I'll finish it before too long!

That's about all for now! Hopefully I won't wait so long to post again :)

Feeling Crafty and Other Happenings

Football camp has officially started for Leslie which means he's working from 6am- at least 10pm Monday-Saturday. This leaves me a bit lonely and very bored until work starts for me (which thankfully is next Thursday). Even once work starts, I'll have some time to sit around the house, so I'm very glad that my sewing skills seem to have improved! In middle school I attempted to make a stuffed dog that the BFF affectionately named roadkill... My sewing skills really couldn't go anywhere but up :)

So my two favorite projects so far involved button up shirts from Goodwill! I got the idea for both on pinterest (surprise surprise)! My first shirt of choice was a very manly shirt that I found for $3.99.

All you really had to do was cut off the top part, measure and piece together a waistband, pin it so it was a bit ruffly and was the same length, and sew! I skipped the cutesy little tie that was in the tutorial I used, and I ended up using a button instead of elastic because I didn't leave room for my waistband to stretch- oops!

Waistband and the bottom part of the shirt for the skirt part!

My skirt!  

I realized yesterday that all of my cutesy little bags to take to my books to class in had been left in Texas. Sure, I have a perfectly fine backpack, but that's not the point here. So I decided I had to find a bag on pinterest that I could make! I quickly came across a bag that was made from a button up shirt, and although there was no tutorial, I had such good luck with my last button up that I decided to try it!

I forgot to take a picture of the original shirt, but this one was thankfully found in the ladies' section :). When I got home and cut up the shirt I decided it was a bit too thin to carry my books around in, so I lined it with some white material I had laying around. Then I just sewed around the edges and added some handles and made a cutesy little flower, and ta-da! Bag!

Here are the links I used for my crafty fun:

Skirt from a men's shirt: http://www.craftstylish.com/item/44969/how-to-make-a-belted-skirt-from-a-mens-dress-shirt

Surprisingly easy little flowers: http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-2010-fabric-flower

In other news, I was able to go back to Tuscaloosa last weekend to graduate! Our graduation was postponed because of the tornado that hit on April 27th.

April 27th was a Wednesday, and the tornado hit around 5:00 that evening. My roommates and I were very blessed to be some of the only remaining people in Tuscaloosa with power, but we were without cable and internet, so we were shocked to hear from others just how much had been destroyed. We found out several days later that finals had been canceled. School was over- graduation postponed. We were done with college. And that was it. Most of us stayed in Ttown to volunteer however we could, and we were very blessed that our church family at Calvary found lots of places to put us to work. In the evenings, we all got together at our college minister's house for dinner, fellowship, and prayer. It was a strange time, and it seemed as if everything normal had stopped and everyone was doing what they could to help. We had tons of people coming into town to help clean up, to donate blood, or to donate items and food. There were people from other states who brought truckloads or who decided that they would come to stay for as long as they needed to because they felt the Lord calling them to help. When I went home, my heart still wanted to be in Tuscaloosa. I felt like I should be going back again to finish school- but it was over.

I'm so glad that I was able to go back to graduate and that a lot of my family was able to be there :) It was a very nice ceremony and the families of the 6 students who died in the tornado were there to accept their diplomas. It was all certainly an experience that I will never forget!

Feeling Crafty- My First Project

Now that Leslie has gone back to work, I've had plenty of time to be bored. I don't do sitting around the house well, and now that I'm addicted to Pinterest, I couldn't help but feel crafty! There are just too many cute projects not to try any of them. After lots of browsing and thinking "I'll do this eventually" and "If only I had a sewing machine" (or knew how to use one) I finally found a project I could (and really needed to) do! So project number one was re-covering my Toms:

I was really lucky and found this pair of Toms at TJ Maxx for much cheaper than they're normally sold AND in my size! The only problem was that the only color they had was tan and that the soles were a bit messed up so they couldn't be washed. This led to some icky looking Toms pretty quickly!

I was super excited and set on spending my day on this project, so I was more than a bit disappointed when I got to Wal-Mart and found out that they were re-doing their fabric section and had very slim pickings. After wandering around Wal-Mart asking strangers where I could buy fabric in town (which apparently is nowhere) I ended up with this:

I hated to cut up the cute little people clothes, but they were each less than $3 and I was needing a craft. I used this tutorial to figure out how to do it, and it turned out to be pretty simple! I will say that other fabric would've been much easier and that putting denim on the toes of my shoes made them a bit more crunched up than they were before. My Toms are not as comfortable as they were before, but I'm hoping they'll stretch out nicely! I think they would've been cuter had I used more than 3 materials and if I hadn't had to cover the backs of the shoes (that's where all my holes were), but they look much better than they did before!

Ta da!

I've convinced myself I want to try sewing, and I may be getting my mom's old sewing machine at the end of the week! After looking at some tutorials, I'm not feeling too confident about my abilities (and I remembered how much I hated pinning and measuring and cutting things) but I will hopefully have a few successful projects to help me get into it! If you have any project suggestions for beginners, I'd love to hear them!

On The Road Again

Leslie and I have done lots of traveling lately! We just got back from a great trip to the beach with my parents to celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. Thankfully, Leslie and I were able to stay 5 days so we'd had plenty of time to forget the 9 hour drive there before we had to make it again! While we were there we spent lots of time relaxing on the beach (we had great weather), ate lots of good food, and even found some treasures on the beach! It was a fun trip, but I think we're both glad to be home.



Eating at one of our beach favorites- Captain Anderson's



Enjoying the sunset on the beach

Sand Dollars and Shark Teeth we found!

Dad and I have gone deep sea fishing almost every summer for a long time now. Leslie got to join us last year and usually my BFF Katie accompanies us, but she now has a big girl job and couldn't join us this trip. BUT mom got brave and decided to join us this year! She was a trooper and baited her own hook with squid guts and caught quite a few fish!

Our fish!

Our fish were much more impressive than the ones we've caught in our backyard...

But our lake is just as pretty!

Cane River/Lake

Leaving Florida (and having fun with Instagram)

Now we're at home for a while until our trek to Alabama for my graduation! Leslie has camps to work and I'm planning on keeping myself busy volunteering, finding crafty things to try on pinterest, and re-reading the Harry Potter series. I know, very productive.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Oh Happy Day!

Okay, so I'm going to make my first attempt to link up to other blogs! My friend Mallorie (whose blog I love to keep up with!) posts every Friday with what is making her life happy that week! Now it's my turn :)

This week I have so much to be happy about, it's hard to decide where to begin!

I officially (once I sign my contract) have a GA position at Northwestern State! I'll work in the Education/Human Development building 20 hours a week doing whatever they need me to do! This is fantastic news because I will actually be out of the house and working with PEOPLE! Yay!

I also came across a very exciting volunteering opportunity this week! My new friend Emily told me about the a place and I decided to stop by to see if they needed volunteers. It turns out they are a Christian organization that is completely pro-life. They have their very own ultrasound machine in their very nice facility and their hope is to show young, pregnant girls the love of God and to encourage them to choose life for their babies! Because they are a "peer counseling" service, all you need to do to become a counselor there is go through their training and go through a time of observing other counselors. I'm hoping that I can use this as an opportunity to share my adoption story with girls who need to hear it! Also, I get to learn all about caring for yourself while you're pregnant and caring for yourself and your baby afterwards WAY in advance :)

Another thing making me happy this week is that Leslie and I can fish whenever we want in our backyard! We tried out our new fishing poles earlier this week and although Leslie was the only one to catch a fish, I did prove to him that fish LOVE hot dogs!

Also, now Leslie and I have been married for almost a month! The Fourth of July was our first holiday together and we had lots of fun walking around downtown and watching fireworks!

Last weekend, we got to go to Tuscaloosa to see some friends get married and the wedding was beautiful! (Not to mention that my hubby made quite the handsome groomsman (: ) We got to spend time with Leslie's family and with some friends from school who we haven't gotten to see recently! It was lots of fun seeing everyone, and it definitely made the 7 hour drive (each way) worth it!

Now we're having a relaxing Friday evening. We went to see the new Transformers movie and we're going to use the gift card we got from opening a new bank account to get some tasty steaks for dinner :)

I hope everyone else has had a great week, too!