birdsandtrees

Jesus is my friend

Another thing that happened this past weekend is Stacy and Amanda showing us some amazing videos.  Like this one (around 1:45 starts some of my favorite lines of the whole song):

Our Weekend Trip to Murfreesboro, TN

This past weekend we visited with our friends Amanda and Stacy.  We had a wonderful weekend-
here are some of the things that we did:
We celebrated James's birthday with really good chocolate cake- and Amanda's parents made an appearance which is always a treat. 

Stacy sang his "signature" happy birthday song.  I wish everyone could have a chance to experience that. 

We sat in front of the fire.  A lot.  It was nice. 

Molly liked it too.

She likes to pose for the camera. 

We played "Dutch Blitz" every night. 

I tried really hard to beat Stacy.  No such luck, though.

The next day we headed out to Lynchburg to a barbecue festival.  After finding a parking spot, we loaded the bus and headed to the festivities in the town square.

I tried to take pictures of the general store while bald men unsuccessfully tried to get out of the shot. 

It was an incredibly lovely day. 

Nice, huh?

I started to pretend I was in Stars Hollow.   The town felt a lot like it (minus the insane amount of bikers in leather chaps).  I kept my eye out for Luke's Diner and skillfully avoided seeing Taylor. 

On my hunt for the town troubadour, we stumbled upon this scene:  an old woman playing the accordion amidst a group of people sharing their testimonies.  Only in the south, people.

We then headed to the Jack Daniels Distillery, which was just right around the corner.  Our tour guide was this guy:   

He is busy telling us all about the process of making whiskey.  Important stuff, apparently. 

It was a cool place, though.  I admit that. 
Lastly, I made a mental note to make this arrangement with pumpkins next year.  Amanda had them on her front porch- I love them!

A good time was had by all.

Hope your weekend is filled with sweet things!  We're headed to Murfreeseboro for the weekend! See you here next week...

Fall decor

The first and last pictures are from Country Living and the middle three are from Martha, of course! And there are more great pumpkin ideas at Poppytalk!

Three things I'm loving right now...

1.  Bon Iver's "For Emma, Forever Ago" CD.  It goes great with fall and it is on constant rotation at my house right now.  He wrote most of the cd while in a remote cabin in Wisconsin, which made for some beautiful music. 

2.  These cups on etsy.  Trying really hard not to buy them. 

3.  This commercial - I love the boy that joins the other ones...the faces he makes are awesome!

Three blogs to check out...

1. Days with my father  
Please go to this website and scroll through the whole thing (it doesn't take that long)...my friend Erin sent me this link, knowing of my love for old people.  And this just tops everything.  Being a crier, I definitely had some tears, so be warned.  It's beautiful. 

2.  Simply Photo  
This is a blog with amazing pictures- it's one I could look at for hours and hours. If you have time, check out the "Simply breakfast" link on the right side of the page.  It makes my publix brand cereal bars look like dirt. 

3.  Abbytryagain
This is a new blog that I've been into and love her pictures! 

And just because I can't have a picture less post...

Three things I love about fall...

1.  Planting pansies
 

2.  Pumpkins

3.  This season of the Duggar Family on TLC.  The fact that this family was able to think of 17 (possibly 18 now) names that begin with the letter "J" is amazing. 

Three images from school today...

A Week of Threes

In order to hold myself more accountable for blogging (and to give me some ideas), I'm going to have a different list of three things for each day.  So for today...3 things I loved from this weekend:
1.  The Shepherd's Pie we made on Saturday...I am always looking for meat dishes that I think I'll like (because James loves him some meat) and I saw this recipe in Everyday Food.  I didn't take a picture, but here's the one from Everyday Food- ours looked pretty much like this (without the good lighting and nice orange tablecloth):

2.   As one pie wasn't enough, we then made Sour Cream Apple Pie from Posie Gets Cozy.  It was so good and really easy to make.  Everyone needs to make this!  And serve it with vanilla ice cream...so good. 
3.  And my third favorite thing from the weekend was watching a classic, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  It may sound like a random movie, but I'm on this mission to show James all the movies he missed from his childhood (like- The Goonies, Back to the Future, Coming to America, Adventures in Babysitting, Breakfast Club, Short Circuit, Parenthood, Wayne's World,  and I could go on and on).  Watching the movie was advantageous to me, too, because I finally figured out what they were saying at the baseball game- where they say, "Swing batta batta swing batta batta swing batta ssswwing batt-a.." and then I thought they were saying, "Kennedy kennedy kennedy" which makes NO sense at all, but I just went with it.  But after watching some of the special features, they were telling the story of those lines and instead how he was saying, "he can't hit he can't hit he can't" really fast.  So glad I know that now!  I really hope I'm not the only one who couldn't figure out that part.
Anywho, hope you all had a good weekend too!

And for my next trick...

Last night I was flipping through Vintage Crochet: 30 Gorgeous Designs for Home*Garden*Fashion*Gifts by Susan Cropper.  This is a beautiful book, and I think I'd be happy even if I never made anything from it- the pictures alone are worth it.  But I did stop at this picture:

How cute is that!?!  The dog even looks like Molly!  It's called the "Woody" Dog Coat, and it may be just what Molly needs for this winter (or so she told me).  I can just see her working it on our street.  It only calls for 3 balls of yarn, which is good, because man can crochet become expensive!  Now hopefully I can figure out the pattern...and yes, I have just become the woman that makes things for her dog.  But I promise you- this is the first time.  For real.