super-weekend #1

I started this blog on Sunday night. And fell asleep while writing it. It's Thursday.

I'm glad for the automatic saves. Here we go...

Why that sort of title for the blog? Because I see a lot of awesome weekends in my future, and I'm calling them out for what they'll be--super.

P.S. Get ready. This post is picture heavy.

The weekend started early for me. I have been working a lot of overtime and I was given a day off. Friday started with gym time, quiet time, and then a zealous attack on my to-do list. For quite some time I've had a to-do list called "things I have to do that I don't want to do." It met its demise on Friday. I now have a new driver's license, car-tag, renters insurance, et cetera. I was eager to get out the door on Friday, so after I blow-dried my hair I didn't bother to straighten it, nor put on make-up. When the thought ran through my head of, "I may need a new picture on my drivers license" I thought no, surely not. I was wrong. New picture. It's bad. Real bad. I was going to take a picture of the crossed off list, but I'll just be satisfied with knowing its demolished. Friday finished with a great dinner with excellent company.

Oh. And then baking 107 cookies.

And then making Lorien's birthday present!

And making icing. (This picture will hopefully be framed in my kitchen. I love it.)

Saturday rolled around with a one-year old birthday party. I made the cookies for the party,

(fun!) and I was asked to take pictures during the party. LOVED IT. And the quality time with that sweet fam!

After the party I crafted with my friend Erika. She's awesome. And our paintings are awesome! Thanks, handy tutorial.

Success!

Sunday was Confirmation Sunday, (nearly) wrapping up a pretty sweet mentoring experience. I say nearly because we have a couple of meetings left to go.

And then post-Confirmation was one of my very favorite times of the week, church at Athens Link!

I also got some (a lot of) pics of my fave flowers on Sunday...

Looking forward to round two.

Happy Birthday, Nutan!

This is Nutan.

November 13 was her birthday!

Nutan and I have been friends for a long time...a REALLY long time.

How long?

Almost 13 years. THIRTEEN.

One takes a lot of pictures in 13 years...this is a smattering of some from high school...there are loads more.

I had no idea where to begin in even writing this post about Nutan. We have a lot of memories together. High school is its own store-house there, and...

we travel together,

We took our first "road-trip" as juniors in HS....we went to Callaway Gardens. Seriously. The above picture was our first trip to Charleston together.

The picture above was from our most recent trip to celebrate our 23 birthday.

Do fun things...

That's Nutan's attempt at "cooking" (she added food coloring, and did a great job.), photos, eating, etc.

Gosh, this is a REALLY hard post to write, I mean, where do I start? She is sophisticated, incredibly smart and driven, and has an incredibly caring heart. Let's just leave it at she's awesome and I'm so lucky to have her as a friend!

Happy Birthday, Katie G!

What occasion would warrant me finally posting on the blog again (it is always on my to-do list; posting just stays near the bottom...)? How about one of my best friend's birthdays?!?!

Happy Birthday, Katie!

Katie is one of my closest friends, and I met her while attending UGA. I met her while we were sophomores and I'm pretty sure the first time we hung-out we went to a dance performance on campus. Football season rolled around and cue lots more hanging out...

I have so many fun memories with Katie. When I went to pick out some pics for this post I was overwhelmed by how many options I had (and these were just the things I had documentation of). Here are a few...

There was dressing up like a human rainbow at a concert on Halloween,

completing a 5K,

baking,

exploring Athens in our final weeks (or what I thought was my final weeks...),

Katie was a graphic design major while at UGA and her talent is INCREDIBLE. Like, really-really awesome. Photography, printing, designing, painting...you should go check out her website. I fortunantly got to see a lot of her work, and it's just really awesome. Here is a pic of her and her now husband at her (super fun) exit party...

Katie recently celebrated her one-year wedding anniversary! Here we are at her beautiful & fun wedding...

I saw Katie most recently when Katie D. and I drove up to visit her in her new home in Virginia last fall (no, that isn't her home we're posing in front of). Since being in Virginia Katie has started selling her handmade books...again, you should check out this site and this one.

I am so sad that we live so far away from one another, but I do love any opportunity to visit!

Katie is really wonderful! I'm so thankful to have her as a friend. Happy Birthday!!

Happy Birthday, Katie D!

This is my good friend Katie D.,

the most intense text-messager I know, and today is her BIRTHDAY! Cue birthday post...

During the first semester of our sophomore year of college, Katie studied abroad in Italy. During that time I started hanging out and making friends with a lot of her friends. When she came back I was always around, we started hanging out because of that, and found ourselves being friends. I'm very thankful.

Pictures from every football game that I attended while in college feature my friend Katie. She's definitely a fan...I went along for the company, atmosphere and festiveness. This is especially evident by that I now fall asleep when I try to watch games if I don't bring a book or something with me to do.

College years continued with lots of hanging out, bonding over Grey's, studying at Starbucks and Borders (she was an English/English Ed major), Wednesday-night Wesley, planned adventures (see below), and more. The pic is below is at a Wesley event; we had similar J.Crew dresses, which definitely warranted a photo. Side-note...Katie is one of the most polished dressers that I know (something that I was re-reminded of as I went through my old pictures looking for pics for this).

We would go on planned adventures together when we were juniors, and one of them was exploring Watkinsville. I find that especially funny these days, as I live there now. I would have a pic from that adventure here, but my old PC computer crash took those photos with it. Here are a few more memories...

Road-tripping to Charleston, SC for Spring Break 2007,

Visiting Katie G. in Virginia in Fall 2008 (peak season for leaves, as it turned out),

Summer 2009 we were bridesmaids in our good friend Katie's beautiful and fun wedding:

Katie is incredible! These days she lives in Atlanta, has an extremely multi-faceted teaching job, owns such a sweet dog, and just started grad school. I love getting to visit her!

Happy Birthday, Katie!

LAC Birthday!

All credit to this idea goes to my friend Erika B. It was on her most well-written blog where I saw her idea of writing blog posts about friends on their birthdays.

Today is my dear friend Laura.Anne's birthday! Per mentioned, I saw this idea done elsewhere, and I thought that it was great. I also thought a trip down memory lane, and a special blog post would be an excellent way to share some birthday love!

Where it all began....

My friendship with Laura.Anne began back when we were both sophomores in college, getting ready to go on our first mission trip to Ghana, West Africa. Yup, our first mission trip was to Africa. Why start local? On our trip I had so much fun hanging out with this sweet individual, and it was also here we began to notice "life-similarities." For instance, going to Africa for trip #1, Polish last names, Catholic backgrounds, and the same major of CHFD (amongst others).


How very thankful I am that we had the same major! We had major friendship time while going through the academic rigors of CHFD. One of my favorite memories from college was during our senior year and us having a 5:00-8:00 p.m. class with a, well, "unique individual" for an instructor. I don't even remember what the course was called. The monotony of this class was broken up through chatting through our computers, trying desperately to not laugh out loud because of said-chatting, and ending with going out to dinner after class. And sometimes dinner was just a piece of cake (literally), if the past three hours had been awful enough to warrant it.


My friend graduated a semester before me, and went back to her hometown. Accordingly, I made my first visits to Columbus, Georgia. My amazing friend purchased a home (less than a year out of college!) that is one of the brightest and cutest I've ever visited. She adopted two dogs, one of whom I've met, and the other I'm waiting to. I love visiting her; I'm really past due for a visit!


Oh, yeah. VERY important. She also got ENGAGED to this fine fellow and will be marrying him in September 2010. Yeah! And get ready for project 365's posts on September 24-25, which will be full of bridesmaid-fun and celebrating at their wedding!


She also visits me up in Athens, GA, where I'm still currently at. Mandatory elements of visits include visiting Helix and other fine downtown shopping locations and embracing Athens cuisine (which we're both huge fans of).


I'm so thankful for such a wonderful, precious friend!