over the creek and through the dunes

This weekend weather was spectacular. The kind of spectacular when we spent 80% of our weekend making future weekend beach plans, as most reasonable people would do when the sun is shining. 

Like Hey! We should go check out some good beach chairs.

And now we should look at umbrellas.

Man, why can't I find a good beach bag yet? Am I too picky?

This chair is a back pack chair! We can use it when we ride our bikes to the beach.

Yadda, yadda, yadda. Basically, weekend beach planning with the Weiss folk is super fun. As it sounds, I'm sure. Weather, please only get warmer from here on out. 

Did anyone ever watch the Brady Bunch Movie? Because if you answered, yes, then I fully expect you to be singing It's a Sunshine Day while looking at this picture. 

The other 20% of this sunny-licious weekend was spent eating. I'm not really sure who the genius was that decided Charleston, a beach town, should also be Charleston, the food heaven town. Bathing suits and burgers on the daily kind of seems like an oxymoron. Whatever, I don't care. I'd rather live here and eat my way through the city than live here and fit into a bathing suit! Amiright or am I right?! 

Butcher & Bee. One of the places I will be taking you (and you and you and you...) when you come to visit. See that smile in the background? That's Katie and she is smiling because the food is delicious. 

Hold up, let's go back to this bathing suit thing. Where are all the good bathing suits? And don't say Pinterest because yes, they are all on Pinterest but when I click the links it takes me to websites where said items are no longer available. Which leads to said bathing suit searcher wanting to cry. 

This bathing suit haunts me in my sleep. Must. Have. Must. Become. Available. Again.

pee-s: let me clarify. Must have that top. No one wants to see my cheekies hanging out of that bottom. Or do they...?

No.

Well, there ya have it. A successful, sunny, and salivating worthy weekend. 

Salivating? Ew, sorry. But it's the only s-word I could think of that is food related. Again, my apologies for grossing you out on a Monday morn. 

up high, down low, in the middle, too slow

It is Friday. It is spring. And it is in the 70s today. Thank the spring time sunshine lovin' gods because the 30 degree nights we've been having have not been very beach appropriate...

Because it's Friday and nice outside and because I sure do love me a good linkup I'm linking up for some high fiving on this here Friday. 

Five Favorites From the Week:

 (or the past Few days..trying my best to draw out that alliteration). 

1. On the way home from Atlanta last week we stopped at one of the best places in the whole wide world: the DeKalb Farmer's Market. That place is heaven on Earth and heaven for your mouth and bellies. Other than missing family, I might miss this place the most. 

I'm pretty sure we finished off most of this food during the first half of the week. I never said I had self control. 

2. Going back to Georgia also means going to Kroger which also means stocking up on all the soda water. Seriously though, what is all other soda water lacking that it doesn't taste as decadent and perfect as Kroger brand?! Mind blown.

3. Some days I get really anxious about my life. But then I finish a class with cuties who say things like...
Student: Are you a mommy?
Me: Nope.
Student: But you are married so you're a mommy.
Me. Nope. I'm married but with do not have kids yet.
Student: Oooooh! That's why you're so refreshing!

4. One of my good friends and wedding coordinator extraordinaire was in a terrible car accident on Wednesday. We are talking hit multiple times, once by an 18-wheeler. His car looks like a few scraps of metal right now, but what does he look like? He looks just as he did before. No broken bones. No horrible injuries. No pieces of glass or metal stuck anywhere. Everyone keeps telling him he is lucky to be alive and he reminds those people that he is a superhuman. Is the terrible accident one of my weekly favorites? H-E-double L no. Is Paul walking away from said accident one of my favorites? Yes, siree! Paul, never again. Love, me.

If you know anything about Paul then you know that this was probably the exact same face he was making while mid-accident. Really, people?!

5. I took over The Blog Baton yesterday. I hope the amount of ballet and/or dance related pictures only scared off several people and not a huge mass of people. When I say dance is my life I'm only half kidding. And by half kidding I mean...not kidding at all.

What were your favorites from the week? 

fudgsicles for everyone

Coming back from a vacation is never fun. Or easy. Or any word that sounds appealing. Freddie and I spent last Wednesday night through this past Sunday in good 'ole Georgia celebrating his brother's wedding weekend. Which means I've gotten 2 sisters-in-law within 7 months. High five.

Now I don't know if it's my old age (but, really...) or that I've been away from my family for a good 7 months now, but celebrating weddings and spending 24/7 with family makes me the sappiest lil' lass you ever did see. Which means coming back from this vacation has been especially not fun. And especially not easy. And especially no word that sounds appealing. 

But oh my lanta, weddings! Don't you just love them? How can you not love an evening in celebration of love?! Love love love. I spent 50% of my time this weekend reminiscing about our wedding day. I. Can't. Stop. (Sidenote: how long do you have to be married before you stop trying to relive the feelings and emotions of your wedding day so frequently?! Just let me know the answer because I'm hoping it's at about 8 months so I can return to normal human form soon). The other 50% of my time was spent relishing in the pure bliss of being around our families. I'm waiting for the day when both of our families decide they want to relocate closer to Chawlston... (preferably a day that is sooner rather than later...)

I'll hush up and get to the good stuff. I.e.: the pictures. 

Sike. Not pictures of the wedding festivities. But these are restaurant family festivities so almost as good. 

Fun fact: They never taught us how to take good selfies in school... I missed that period. Fun fact #2: Always rent fancy dresses from Rent the Runway. It'll make you look real fancy. 

And just like that they were Mr. and Mrs. Those happy holy shiz we're married smiles kill me. 

Not to brag, but Weiss people know how to break it down on the dance floor. 

The End. Are you as sap happy as I am right now?

Sow how does one come back from a vacation? Back to regular life? Back to long distance family lovin'? 

I'll answer that question with a story. A story of what one of my students told me yesterday morning. 

I twisted my ankle before. It was when I was at Grammy's house wearing Cinderella slippers and my Rudolph jammies. But then I ate a fudgsicle and I felt all better.

Well, shucks. I guess chocolate really is the answer to everything. I'm off to dive into a nice size carton of chocolate gelato for b-fast in hopes of all post-family vacation blues vanishing. (If only I had some Rudolph jambes...) Catch ya on the flip side. 

an encore of decor

And now, with the press of the Publish button, I present to you the final wedding post. For now... It took me 4 months to plan this wedding and about 7 months to blog about it. So there's that for whatever it's worth. 

I am leaving you all with some snapshots of the decor. Planning said wedding in 4 months meant there was no time to sit and ponder and daydream and daydream some more and look at this and that about anything. I found what I liked and wam bam, thank ya m'am decided on it. It also meant spending thousands upon thousands in the decor area was just not worth it. Our venue was beautiful. The weather was beautiful. Our families and friends were are beautiful. That's kind of all we needed. Cheesalicious! Every thing else was made with love from some hard working hands (mostly the hands of my wonderful friends...). 

Some of my college friends decorated the entire barn for me the morning of the wedding. Without them, the day would have just been some vows under a pecan tree. They turned the day into a celebration. 

Thank goodness my friend is a creative genius with chalk. P-h-e-w.

I don't know how or when I got it in my head that we needed some kind of In Memory decor. But I did get it in my head. Freds didn't want to make the entire event be about these people missing and bring sadness to it, but rather acknowledge that these people were definitely there in spirit, partying it up with the rest of us. This table is/was so bittersweet to me. My grandfather passed away the month before our wedding so our family was together a lot within those 90 days. Some for sadness and some for happy times, but together through it all. Then we have Freddie's sweet mom that I never got to meet, but I think his ridiculously kind spirit, giggalicious sense of humor with a contagious laugh, and the fact that he looks just like her are plenty of indications that she was a special lady. 

Something old: my grandmother's lace.

Something new: a wedding dress. 

Something borrowed: pearl earrings.

Something blue: new initials sewn in my wedding dress.

We used the same florist who did my parent's wedding and my grandparent's 50th anniversary party. Represent. 

Freddie and his friends have been brewing beer for several years so they concocted some special wedding brew and a friend from the theater designed a cutesies label and Voila! Something Brewed just for you.

One of my bridesmaids asked if there was anything she could do to help. And then she and her mom came up with this fancy 'ole program fan like it was a piece of cake. Remember when I said I have the best kind of friends? Example #467.

Let's talk cake toppers. Like, whoa, am I right? Why is something so small so hard to decide? I must have looked through one and one bajillion cake topper ideas between Pinterest, Etsy, and Lawd only knows what other forms of social media. I found the silhouette idea and got so excited. The excitement was followed by nerves...as in the I am so going to screw this up kind of nerves. That's when another trusty friend was in to save the day. And made the cake topper for me...while I watched and cheered her on.

Saaaaaaame.

You made it! To the end, that is. If you ever start to feel a void in your life because of the lack of my wedding picture posts, feel free to hop on over to Chucktown and I'll sit ya right down to look at all 800+ of the originals ;)

Speaking of weddings, Freds and I are headed out to Georgia today for his twin brother's wedding this weekend. Twinsies who get married within a few months of each other stay together? ...Or something like that I'm sure. I've got Georgia on my mind and I ain't mad about it one bit!

a two person one

Marriage is weird. Isn't it? You become one, yet you are two. You are still you. But this you spends all of your time with this other person who makes this a we. Gettin' crazy just throwing pronouns around up in here! 

Freddie was out of town bachelor partying it up and our little two person bubble popped. 'Sploded. We have ridden the relationship train all the way to this point. Ya know, we started at the stop where you see each other maybe just on the weekends. Then we started the maybe once a week plus on the weekends stop. Eventually after I graduated college we started spending just about every evening together. Because he would feed me, you know. But then we got on the long distance train and that was just roses and butterflies, obviously (hint: not). After 6 months of that train we hit up the marriage stop. The stop where we spend all of our time with one another. You + Me = We and all that kind of stuff. 

We go out with friends.

We go grocery shopping.

We go out drinking on the weekends. 

We do this. We do that.

He cooks. I do laundry. Details.

We, we, we. 

What happens when it's just YOU again? What do you do?

Lemme be real honest. I was dreading this weekend. I was dreading it as if I was on the way to an eye doctor appointment (hey, I really hate eye drops. Okay). What was I going to do?! There are so many hours in the day! Especially on the weekend days! Who would fix me weekend waffles?! (That was obviously the biggest dilemma in this situation).

What did Emily used to do before Freddie?

And that's when my ruh-dic-ulous self realized. I'm still Emily. I'm still me/you/whatever. I don't have to remember how to do Emily things or how to be Emily because dat's me. Even when I am a we with Freddie, I'm still the me part of the we. Following along?

So yes, as I said before, marriage is weird. Weirdly hard. I truly believe it is so important to not get lost in your marriage, per say. To not stop being you. To not become one. GASP! Let's look at this equation again:

You + Me = We.

There would be no We without a You and a Me. Need 'em both therefore it can't be just one. 

And guess what? I did all the regular 'ole Emily things this weekend. I worked at an arts festival. I hosted a precious ballet birthday party for 8 four year olds. I went out to dinner with friends. I went to Target and spent money so I could save so much money with my Cartwheel app. Spending is saving! Wait... I went to my rehearsal. And after it all, I came home Sunday night, saw my Freddiefriendhusband and gave him a big 'ole kiss. 

Because even though I'm still me, I sure do love being the me to our we. 

it's what you wear from ear to ear

Do you ever just have certain things in life that make you smile? Smile bigger than the Cheshire Cat. Smile bigger than the Orbitz lady. Smile so big that your mouth opens and you don't realize how insane in the membrane you look at pictures of yourself. Oh, that's me. 

Life has been throwing a lot of these smile worthy moments out lately. Although, don't you think life is constantly throwing these smiley moments our way? It just depends on our attitude and how we are looking at these moments? When we approach said happy moments with a rawr life sucks it must be Monday attitude then we aren't really giving a chance to the potential smile that's waiting to be released. Let's be Positive Pollys forever and always, deal? Deal. 

It makes me smile when...

-one of my students interrupts class with a Miss Emily, I just love you so much.

-that sweet student makes up for all the misbehaved students of the week. I'm must be doing at least one thing right.

-some of my ballet students remember the year Coppelia premiered. High five!

-I realize that the countdown to when we're next going home is super short. Hai, next week Newnan trip. You be looking so good. 

-Freddie picks out and throws away all of the yellow and orange gummy bears from the 3 lb. bag we recently purchased. Hashtag: dedicated.

-we get to drive 4 minutes to the beach to watch the sunset.  

-my body is sore from rehearsals for a new show. Yay, performing again! Yippity yay. Also, old freaking body. 

-the sun is shining. And I remember my sunglasses. 

-I wake up and it is suddenly, magically Friday. 

Happy Freakin' Weekend!

What's been making you all smiley? (or...what's been making you all Miley? I'll accept either answer).

tradition, tradition! tradition!

Anyone else humming like Tevya singing Tradition right now? Oh, no one else grew up in a musically nerdy household? 

Much like Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof who was all about traditions and the traditional role each person played within his or her social class, I am/was all about traditional wedding gimmicks. 

Like cake cutting and cake feeding. And garter tossing. And bouquet tossing. And a grand departure. Those kind of traditions. 

It seems the popular thing to do is to try and be as off-the-wall/unique/different when it comes to planning weddings. That means throwing out all the traditional wedding things like garters, bouquets, cakes. Sometimes wedding dresses, vows, food, dancing.  Just get rid of it all and be original and not cave to society's norms. Can you tell I went to an uber liberal college?!

Um, well ex-squeeze me, but I wanted all of those traditions and norms. I wanted them and so I did them. Period. 

And they were f-u-n, son. 

Let's start off with some wedding cake.

 I do not like cake. I do not like it, Sam I Am. Call me crazy and maybe I am...but just not crazy for cake crazy. I almost tried to not even have a wedding cake, but that's silly. And guess what? It was delicious. Cream cheese frosting, please come on everything.

 Remember how these wedding pictures taught me that I never. ever. ever. smile with my mouth closed? 

Oh hello, new husband. Won't you try some cake?

Why yes, best wife ever, I would love some.

^^probably similar to the dialogue that was going down at this point, I'm sure...^^

Feeding cake pictures with squinty faces and smeared icing?? Ooo, so mainstream, I love it. 

What does one do after getting one bite of his or her wedding cake? They toss some garters, of course!

One word. Classy. Two words. Be jealous.

Time for...all the single ladies! All the single ladies! All the single ladies! All the single ladies!

This is your cue to belt out some Beyonce, hint hint.

Remember that one time these pictures taught me I never smile with my closed AND that I have the most ridiculous facial expressions? Aye, aye aye. 

And then, just like that, it was time to leave.

...so we squeezed in a wee bit more partying pictures...

This photo of my father will forever win every photo contest ever. 

...Then finally got the heck outta there!

...And that, my friends, is the story of how a 5 hour event felt like 5 freaking seconds. The best, most full of fun and love 5 freaking seconds ever.