Thrift Shop Find

Found a cute children's quilt at a thrift store today for $3.99 plus tax. It's not quite as yellow as pictured below. The lighting in the cabin in the evening sometimes throws my pictures off a bit. Those are actually white patches. ;)Detail shots.

The back.
It's so cute, and looks like it was hand-pieced, and then sewn on a machine. I'll put it away for a little Holder one day. ;) I'm pleased with my economical buy.

Home away from home

When we booked a Presidential Reserve room, we knew that it would be a nice place to stay. We weren't quite prepared for the spacious luxury that awaited us. The room was at least as big as our house with more pantry and closet space than we currently have. It was a one bedroom (versus the 2 we have at home).

Here is the king-sized bed.
The dining room table (which my husband thought it was funny for us to sit at opposite ends of while we ate meals).
The kitchen.
The living room.
And, a place to hold wine bottles, which my husband made good use of with my newly purchased Pook-A-Looz.
I made a walking tour video of our room so that we could share it with friends who also visit Bonnet Creek on occasion.

I mentioned it before, but this is a room that we would not normally stay at on vacation. I'll admit, it feels nice to go on vacation to place that is nicer than our own home (although I can't complain since I do live in a cabin in the mountains, and we have our own king-sized bed at home as well). Next time we probably won't be staying in the lap of luxury, but the regular rooms at our resort are also so comfy and cozy that we won't mind at all.

Wonderful week

I just spent the last week here...Wyndham Bonnet Creek Resort.I had probably one of the laziest, most indulgent weeks of my adult life spent mainly here...
And I spent this great vacation week with my wonderful husband, Joshua.
We were in sunny Florida, near Walt Disney World.

There are more pictures to come later, but for now I'll just give the quick recap. We ate out for five yummy meals, and then Josh cooked the rest of the meals in the room. We quickly realized after our first full day at the resort, which was also our first day we visited Disney, that we were both ready to truly vacation. So instead of going to the park for three more days as planned... We just didn't.

We enjoyed the luxuries of our Presidential Reserve room on the 17th floor (We had bonus points left over from where we originally got the timeshare). I watched television in the bedroom, colored pictures (that I will eventually laminate and use in a classroom one day), and spent time with my hubby. We went out on occasion to shop, eat at a dinner reservation, or spend time in one of the many pools (or lazy rivers, or hot tubs...). It was wonderful. I really enjoyed the rest.

I was sad to see the end of our restful week, but I also enjoyed coming home again. Today we had the opportunity to go to a family reunion (up in our neck of the woods) for Josh's mom's side of the family. Afterwards Josh's parents, Mamaw, Jenny, & Christianna all came over to the cabin for a few hours. I got to spend time with them in fellowship, and I also got to spend time with my beautiful niece. Look how big she's getting! She is almost 7 months old. She is so adorable.

And speaking of big, I also have noticed how big I am getting. I have reached that point where I am very unhappy with my weight. I have had those great moments where I have looked at pictures of myself lately, and I say, "WHOA! Am I really that big?" So, I will be trying to make some lifestyle changes to help take a few of those extra pounds off. I am not joining Weight Watchers, like my mother, who I wish luck to as well. I walked this evening, and I am going to try to continue exercising this week. I'm going to try to keep a food journal to monitor my eating, try not to eat quite so late, and try to follow some general guidelines from my last successful weight loss endeavor.

Hoping to be a success! With that said, I'm going to go finish a few things this evening. I have more Bonnet Creek pictures to share later. ;)

If I can make it through the day...

It's my last day of May session before I get to take June off! I'm tweaking final writing projects, and I am so tired of looking at a computer screen. I have really enjoyed my class this semester, but oh how I am going to enjoy waking up tomorrow knowing that I do not have an assignment to do over the weekend!

Maybe I'll have more of a chance to write tomorrow. :)

Quotable Moment

"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see."

--John W. Whitehead

(Thank you to my professor at Lee for quoting this the other night. I appreciate the sentiment. The picture, btw, came from when Christianna & her mom had a sleepover at our house over Spring Break. She loves her Uncle Josh.)

Gardening...Take Two

First, I have to brag on my husband. He heard my pleas for a better way to water our garden, and he rose to the challenge! We bought a system that is automated. On it we can set times, days, length of time, and hose to direct the water through. Basically, for the areas that we have our system set up we can water them as needed without having to do anything manually. The hardest thing about it is setting everything up initially and spending the money needed on hoses, connectors, etc.

The garden (now with new plants in it) is set up with a sprinkler. The posts & wire are for the cucumbers to climb, btw. If you look closely, you can see Homer in the left corner of the picture.

The front of the house has sunflowers. The hose in the shot leads to a box that holds a hose that I can use to water things in the front and a side bed (because the spigot is in the back). This is practically the only place for me to have to manually water except for my new bed around the light pole.
The front bed is snaked with double soaker hoses. Not pictured, the back bed also has a snaked soaker hose. My hubby did that and used u-shaped things to hold them in place.
On Saturday I planted some new vegetables and all of my flowers, and I created that new flower bed. On Sunday, I planted some more vegetables, our herbs, and tomatoes. Below are the herbs.
Here are some cherry tomatoes in Topsy Turvy holders.
And, so I don't completely bore you with the garden (which is pretty much finished for a while except for weeding and mulching), here are some family pictures from yesterday.

The beautiful Christianna reaching for her new Bible at her baby dedication. It's hard to believe that she'll be 7 months soon.
Me and my mother. She's wearing the corsage my sister got her for Mother's Day. Some people say I look like my father, and some say I look like my mom. What do you think? I look more like my mom than my sister does, I know.
Me and my hubby, Josh. He's awesome. ;)
I'm going to head to bed soon. I start back to school tomorrow night. Although I think I'll like the teacher and the class, I'm not looking forward to going back to night classes. Sigh.

Wacky

I'll have to share some of the more sentimental pictures from a great Mother's Day later, but for the night, I'll share my wacky pictures from the day.

A critter that climbed onto a bag while I was gardening.
Rolling about in the dirt and also begging for love.
A sweet little girl, looking upside down at her Aunt Amanda.