A Coffee Experiment & an Awesome Lip Dub

We did an experiment this week.  We tried drinking half-caff coffee instead of regular coffee.  Someone gave us a bag of it and I am not very picky when it comes to coffee [mainly because I pour ample amounts of peppermint mocha creamer in it every morning] so we gave it a try.  I have decided it was a FAIL.  I don't consider myself a coffee addict, but I have to have my one cup when I get to work in the morning.  I am not sure if it is because of the half-caff or the fact that I've been up late every night this week, but I have not had as much pep in my step as I would like.  Thankfully it was a small bag and will be gone soon and I can go back to whatever is on sale [and fully caffeinated] next week =)

And just because it's Friday and I wanted to share something fun, I give you the lip dub.  I love a good lip dub video.....The first one I ever saw was the one the Today Show did a couple of years ago. I saw this one yesterday.  It was done at a school where some of my friends teach.  And it's like 12 mins long......very impressive.

Happy Friday!

Flower Bed Photo Dump and a Sneaky Puppy

I realzed the other day that it's been a good month since I took some pics of my flowers.  And I had completely neglected taking any pics of my favorite little white flowers this year.  Since they are almost done blooming I headed out with my camera to get some pics of them and some of the new additions to my flower beds this year.

I spent 2 years trying to figure out the name of these and had a friends grandma tell me what they were last year, but sadly I have completely forgotten what they are called.  They grow on a tall shrub/tree like plant and they are extremely fragrant.  I just love them! 

My lantana is usually one of the last flowers to start blooming in the summer time, but they bloom all summer long which I love.  This year I already have several blooms on my plants.  

 I have about 7 different colored day lilies in my garden, and this is one of the newest additions that mom sent last fall.  It's a peachy/pink color with a bright yellow center.  I think they are absolutely gorgeous!

 Close up of my day lily.

 My irises came from my grandmother-in-law.  We transplanted them when she moved a couple of years ago. I never thought much about them because I remembered them as being jut plain white irises, nothing special.  For some reason this year I really noticed them for the first time.  Yes they are white on the top but the bottom petals are a peach color with yellow in the center.  They are really quite pretty.  

 I realized that irises are really hard to photograph because of their shape.  Without a 3 dimensional picture it's really hard to get the whole flower. 

I like to pretend that my gardens are pristine, but the truth is they are not.  We have a lovely patch of poison ivy growing on our pool fence. It used to be covered up by a large honeysuckle vine, but the hubs cut those out this year (they were not the honeysuckle vines that tasted good and they were out of control so I was ok with it), so all we have growing is poison ivy now.  I am too chicken to pull them out because I don't want to get poison ivy.  I have never had it even though I am almost positive I've been exposed to it and have never had a reaction, but my mother is HIGHLY allergic to it so I am steering clear of it.  Note to self--get some weed killer this weekend and knock this bad boy out. 

That is my garden round up for the week.  I realized this week that I am going to have to start watering my flowers everyday already.  We've had temps in the 90s for the past week with no rain and my flowers are looking very parched.  The only way to keep them from baking in the sun again this year will be daily watering.  

On another note I was going about my business this morning and I was about to walk out the door when I heard someone eating breakfast.  Since Peanut's last back episode, he has been on a diet, which means feeding Hawk and Peanut separately.  Not easy to do.  I was starting to think they had gotten used to separate bowls (in separate rooms no less).  I knew Peanut was in the bedroom still asleep because I had not heard him prance across the floor so I walked into the living room and saw this.

Yup.  That would be 85lb Hawk eating a the small scoop of food that was in Peanut's bowl this morning.  He did not want anything from his large bowl full of food, but thought he needed a "snack," I guess. I let him finish it because he was done in about 30 seconds with it, and put another scoop in the bowl for Peanut to eat when he got up. Next thing I know, Hawk has that one devoured too.  UGH!  I can't win with these two!  The big one wants to eat out of the small bowl and we still have to chase Peanut away from the big bowl.  No wonder Peanut tries to eat from Hawks' bowl, Hawk apparently helps himself to Peanut's food when we aren't looking.  I gave up and called hubs on my way to work and asked him to feed Peanut when they were both up. 

Happy Thursday! One more day til the weekend!

It's a Great Day to be a Hawk

Huntingdon College Athletics played a huge roll in Eric's and my lives and if it were not for athletics at Huntingdon we would certainly not be where we are today because we would have never met because neither one of us would have gone to school there. I wanted to play basketball some where when I graduated from high school and when the opportunity came up, I decided to visit the campus and had that this-is-where-I-am-supposed-to-be-for-the-next-4-years moment almost instantly.  The girls that I played ball with are still some of my closest friends (and one will soon by my sister in law!).

This would be from my freshman year....almost 10 years ago...gah!

The oldies @ the inagural Alumni Game.  I love these girls!

Eric's path to HC was a little different. He graduated from high school and had an opportunity to play football at a small Division 1 school in Montgomery.  It did not work out for him the way he had hoped and he ended up taking a year off of school to join the Air Force. When he came back from basic training/tech school one of his his high school coaches told him that Huntingdon College was in the process of starting up a football team.  They had just finished their inaugural season (which was dismal at best) and were looking to improve the program by a whole new staff of coaches.  I sure am glad he decided to give it a chance!

D-Line Domination

Needless to say, Huntingdon and the HC Athletic Dept holds a dear place in our hearts.

This past weekend was a big weekend for Huntingdon College Athletics. For the first time ever, both the baseball and the softball teams won their conference tournaments!  They have both done it before but this is the first time they have both won in the same season! I have very fond memories of sitting on the truck tailgates behind center field (who sits in the stands to watch a baseball game?) watching baseball games, while the guys heckled the opposing teams' outfielders.

The other big thing to happen at HC this weekend was one of our football players signed with the Atlanta Falcons as a free agent the day after the NFL draft.  Yeah, you read that right....the NFL....as in the National Football League.  I know some would say big deal, it happens all the time. But Huntingdon is a not an NCAA Division 1 school like the University of Alabama & Auburn University, or D2 like the University of Montevallo or UNA, or even NAIA like Auburn University Montgomery--they can at least give athletic scholarships.  Huntingdon College is an itty bitty, about 1,000 student, NCAA Division III school that cannot give athletic scholarships.  Oh and did I mention that our football program will turn 10 years old this upcoming season?  Yeah....it's not been around too long.  Having a football player from HC in the NFL is HUGE!  I guess I will have to become a Falcon's Fan now and start watching some NFL!

via

Hawk Em!

Wedding Shower Weekend

We had a wedding shower for my BIL and FSIL this past weekend and it was soooo much fun! We had it at the same place where we had our wedding shower 2 years ago (has it really been that long?).  We had a nice crowd and some delicious treats!

Aren't we cute? The Cagle boys know how to pick'em!

I was in charge of decorating the place, which is a rectangular whiteish building.  Talk about a blank slate, right?  Of course I immediately went to pinterest for ideas. Their wedding colors are tans/mochas/off-whites, very elegant, and she LOVES some burlap so I knew I had to incorporate some into the decorations.

This was the front table when you walked in the building.  I found the tulips @ Costco a few weeks before and KNEW I was going to use them for flowers for the shower. I was so glad they still had them the day before the shower.  The vase is a mason jar covered with a piece of burlap that is tied at the top with a piece of string.  The miniature lanterns were a Target dollar bin find.  I tied a piece of ribbon around the top of each one and we stuck a candle down in them.  I had about 20 so they were on all of the tables. The plate was our gift for them that I made with my Cricut.  When Eric and I got married, someone gave us something similar to this and I absolutely love it!  It still sits in a prominent place in our kitchen.

This was the gift table.I was super excited about how this turned out because it was the focal point of the whole room (aside from the delicious food!)  The buntings were made out of burlap.  I traced and cut the shapes and then made the letters with my Cricut and glue dotted them to the burlap.

Close up of the top one. 

The rosette back drop was one of my favorite parts of the room.  I helped a friend from work make some of these for a wedding shower she was decorating for a couple of months ago and decided they would be perfect for this, too!  For the back drop I used a science fair display board (the tri-fold ones) and covered it with a piece of silky-feeling fabric I found in the scrap/returned fabric bin  at Jo-Ann's (If you have never checked that  bin out before I highly recommend it. All of the fabrics are 50% off/yard.  They are already cut but if you just need random swatches they are fabulous!).  The idea for the paper rosettes came from pinterest.  I hot glued smaller rosettes to larger ones and then glued flowers that I made with a pack of flower pieces and some fancy brads in the middle.  I did not want to put holes in my fabric, so I hot glued clear fishing line (yep, we're country) to the backs of the rosettes and strategically glued the other end of the fishing line to the back of the board, so they would hang where I wanted them to hang.

Our tablescapes were pretty simple.  We had a white table cloth with champagne-colored drapes for table runners!  They were tied at the middles and the ends to give them some shape.  Then we put 2 burlap tulip vases, a couple of candle lanterns, pictures of the two of them and a little favor on the table.

We had another table off to the side for decoration. It had a box of it for guests to leave "Words of Wisdom" for the Bride and Groom. That table had a burlap vase, a beautiful fern and a pile of tissue paper flowers (that I have decided are one of the greatest simple decoration items ever!).

Apparently we were much more concerned with eating the food than taking pics of it (rightfully so), and the only pic we ended up with of the food was the absolutely incredible Banana Cream Cupcakes from Gigi's Cupcakes. According to their website the cupcake is a "Yellow cake with a vanilla filling, topped with banana buttercream frosting, crushed vanilla wafers and a wafer on top."

I am normally an if-it's-not-chocolate-it's-not-worth-it dessert kinda girl, but these cupcakes are seriously amazing.  The bananas taste like straight bananas....yum.

My FSIL gave us the cutest hostess gifts, too.  They were potted herbs with a cutting board. My basil and mint from last year did not come back so I was super excited about these!

The only drawback to the afternoon was the serious lack of AC in the building.  I vaguely remembered it being warm at my shower but I guess I was too distracted to care then.  We knew there was something going on that morning when we were setting it up because we cranked the air down to 50 to get it to cool off and when we came back that afternoon it was warmer than it was in the morning. We brought in some enormous fans (think the ones they use to cool down old gyms but about half that size and just as loud) that kept the air circulating but due to the fact that it was 90+ degrees in Alabama on Sunday it did not help much. I guess summer decided to show up this weekend.  

Eric's Aunt and Uncle were in town for the shower and stayed with us, so we had zero down time, but we had an absolute blast!  I am a huge fan of family get-together, and they are always extra special when it's family you don't get to see all the time.  Hence the reason I absolutely LOVE get-togethers with my family!