Sunday Afternoon in North Georgia

This afternoon Joel and I took off and headed up to North Georgia. We have been enjoying all the beautiful changing leaves and wanted to see more. These first pictures are from the entrance to our apartment area. The trees are so beautiful right now, and we get to see them every day! It was great to get to see all the pretty fall colors up in the mountains on our drive.

from across the lake

close up
This one is for Joel...he likes the yellow/orange/green ones. I like the red ones the best!

Finally, after I got these pictures taken, we headed to North Georgia. Our destination was a town called Helen. Every year for the entire month of October, Helen, GA, has Oktoberfest festivities. The town is quite interesting in its decor...just see the pictures below. Their specialty during this month is beer and brats. We did not try either, but we did enjoy the beautiful weather and the unique atmosphere.

I hope y'all had a great weekend!

Ok, so it's been forever, literally!

Sorry it has taken me so long to get back on track with blogging. Joel and I have been super busy.

We are really liking our new town, and we have found a great church. I started working with the Cubbies at Awana, and we have 20 - 3 & 4 year olds on the roll. On any given Wednesday night we usually have at least 18! Talk about a crazy night. It has been a lot of fun and has helped me meet other people at church.

Today I had the second (in a 2 part series) beginning machine quilting class at a local quilt shop. I had a great time and learned so much. I got to meet several great ladies, and we talked about different ways to machine quilt and ways to mark the quilt. Also, I got to practice using my new walking foot and free-motion foot. The teacher of the class was super nice, and she brought several beautiful quilts to show us. You should go check out her blog...she does some really beautiful work and some neat things with real pictures printed onto fabric. Hopefully I will have something fun to show you soon.

Joel has been staying super busy with all of his classes, teaching schedule, and the homework that keeps him up late at night! He is really enjoying his classes and learning a lot. He just registered for next semester's classes this week. Only a month and a half left in the semester and then he will get to take a much deserved break for Christmas.

So that's a little about what's been going on with us. Hope everything is going well with you. I will try to do better about blogging in a timely manner (better than I have done since we moved :)).

Updated Apartment Pictures

Here are some updated apartment pictures. Everything has a place to call home now.

I have a sewing area set up in the office/guest bedroom.

Master Bedroom...it is impossible to show the color of the walls in a picture. The color changes depending on if it is natural or lamp light that is shining...I am very pleased with the color though.

Living Room....sorry the blanket isn't folded and the pillows are not where they should be :P

Much needed bathroom storage!

Our tiny kitchen :) So far it has worked out...I have had enough room to do what I need.

Last but not least...our new entry table. It might look familiar...it matches our bookshelves. Joel and I both really loved the look of the bookshelves so we decided to use the same look for an entry table. We are really pleased with the outcome.

DCI

So Joel and I have been quite busy since we moved. We took a week to get all the boxes unpacked and get settled in. After that we headed to Destin to visit with my family for a week. The day we got back from Destin, Michael came to visit. We got back on Friday and Michael met us here in time to go out for my birthday dinner. We ate at Outback, and Michael made sure to have the people at the restaurant sing to me for my birthday.

On Saturday afternoon we headed to Atlanta to see DCI. I have watched DCI on television for several years, but this year was my first time to get to see it live.

Here are just a couple of pictures from 3 (out of 18) corps that performed.

The Cadets about to start their show.

Phantom Regiment getting ready to start.

This show was in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. This is a view of the JumboTron that allowed us to see the forms on the field more clearly because we were sitting on row 5.

The Cavaliers about to start their show.

Cavaliers during their show.

The Cavaliers show this year was about crossing the "Great Divide." You can see the guard dressed as hikers and climbers. At one point in the show the horn line actually acted as a mountain and one of the guard "climbed" up. It was a really neat show.

It was a lot of fun to get to see DCI in person. Overall the weekend was a great success. We had a great time visiting with Michael and getting to see Graham in Atlanta.

Vacation

Joel and I took off last Monday (a week ago) headed to Destin to meet up with my family. We were there for several days, and we really enjoyed the beach, good food, and great family time.

This is the second time that my family has taken a summer trip to the beach. Last year I saw people parasailing and thought it looked like a lot of fun, but I did not get around to doing it (plus I would have had to go by myself.) This year Joel came along to the beach with me. I mentioned how fun it would be to parasail the first day we were there. My sister's decided that would be the perfect birthday present for me (they were right!). So on Thursday morning Joel and I headed off to get on the boat.

Here are some pictures to prove that we did it :) :

Us leaving the boat...
Starting to get higher...in the one on the right you can see how far away we got from the boat. The total length of rope was 800 ft.

Finally coming back to the boat...as they brought us back in we got dunked in the water to about waist level.

Eventually we got all the way back to the boat. It was a lot of fun...we could see so far in every direction when we were all the way up in the air.


The last night that Joel and I were there the whole crew headed down to the beach to take pictures. Here are a couple of shots that we got:

How cute is she?

Here is one of Maddi...how grown up is she getting!He is getting so handsome! About to start 8th grade...hard to believe!


We got them to pose together!
And finally, Joel was nice enough to pose with me for a picture or two :)

New everything...

SO I have obviously been behind on blogging, but I think I have a good excuse (at least for the last week or so!). Joel and I are all moved into our new apartment and are slowly getting everything put in its place.

Here are a few pictures:

View of the living room...the door to the left is the front door. This is the first day we moved in...lots of chaos still.

View of half of the bathroom.

Here is a view of the windows in the living room before curtains were added.

Here are the curtains up...we decided to add a third panel, so it looks a little different now. Try to post up to date pictures sometime soon when everything is finished.

View of half the guest bedroom. This is our multipurpose room...extra bed, computer, and sewing room.

This is our pantry/laundry room. Our kitchen is tiny=not much storage, so Joel and I got one of these shelving units from Lowe's and it has been a lifesaver! This picture was taken not long after we put it up. More stuff is stored on the shelves now...still need to organize it! But seriously without these shelves I don't know where everything would go!

And finally...our much needed bookshelf. We got this bookshelf from Ikea. I will have to do a whole separate post on our trip to Ikea...let's just say we were novices and did not know what we had gotten ourselves into! Once we figured out how to maneuver the store we were good to go!

So far we are very pleased with the storage this bookshelf is providing. The cubbies are deep enough to hold books two deep, which means that we actually had room for all of our books. This is the first shelf we have used that held all of our books.

So that gives you a general idea of the apartment. I will try to post more once we get things more organized. Hope you are enjoying your Wednesday!

Off to do some more organizing.

New Desk :)

A couple of months ago Joel and I went shopping for a desk that I could use to sew/use my laptop on. Right now my sewing machine and all my accessories sit on our dining room table, which is fine because we always eat supper at the bar in the kitchen. When we move we will no longer have a bar (sad)....meaning that we will need the table back!

We went shopping at a store about an hour away but were unsuccessful. When we got back to town we went into one of the local stores just on a whim. We found the PERFECT desk for me! It was actually in the children's section and called a child's writing desk. It has a pull out part for a keyboard - or in my case laptop storage! It also has a big open area on the right side that I can store my sewing machine in when I don't want it out on the top of the desk! I'm telling you it's the perfect size. I love it.

Anyway, we had them store it for us because we were getting ready to move and had NO where to put it. This weekend we moved a bed out of the guest room to make room for it (We wanted to go ahead and pick it up instead of having to do that later when we're trying to load the trailer). So I got to play with it some last night, and I am just super excited.

Ok, enough from me...here are the pictures:

See my sewing machine will fit in there perfectly (if I want it to!)

Perfect place to store the laptop :)

What we've been doing...

Well, we've been packing and enjoying the summer days (although I'm still and work and Joel just found out he's teaching a class for the June term). I've packed up what I can - the things that we can live without (other than some of our clothes and such that we're just going to put in the car as is)...now we're down to the things that really can't go into boxes- for example kitchen items - until I don't want to cook for us anymore!

Joel and I also had a conversation about how we shouldn't unpack boxes that have been packed! He's been warned! :)

On Sunday we headed to Athens for me to meet with a principal. We took the opportunity to look around and enjoy some time there. It was a quick trip...headed down Sunday afternoon and came back Monday afternoon. The meeting with the principal went well...they just don't know if they'll have any positions because of the budget and such. So if you get the notion to pray, please be praying for a job for me! Thanks!

Here are a couple of pictures of the famous Arch at UGA. I didn't take these pictures...but thought you might enjoy them.

The Arch is the official walking entrance to the campus. It is on the north side of campus and separates downtown from the start of campus grounds. This view of the arch is from a person standing on campus looking into downtown.

This picture came from here.

This view from the arch is standing in downtown looking onto campus. Same place...just a different view.

This picture came from here.

Hope things are going well for you. Are you enjoying the summer (before it gets blazing hot!)?

Big Weekend

So last weekend was fun and eventful. The biggest event was graduation. Graham has officially graduated from high school!

On Friday afternoon before graduation Graham had a little get together with family to celebrate the big event. I made some cute graduation cap candy things...instructions found here...

Close up of the hats...notice the orange and blue tassels for the school's colors!
(They were fun to make but messy!)

On Saturday we got to keep our niece and nephews. We had a good time playing outside until it started raining! After lunch we watched a movie and enjoyed being inside for a while.

How was your weekend?

Yard Sale!

So this week has been pretty crazy. Monday night we got to go to my parents house and visit with my sister who was in town for just that night. We ate hamburgers and played some games. Then on Tuesday night we watched the movie Deja Vu with Denzel Washington in it...if you haven't seen it go rent it this weekend. It is a really good movie (Of course pretty much all the movies I've seen with Denzel Washington in them are good). Then Wednesday night we had LOST, which was good, but it was mostly just an episode to set up for the Finale...2 hours next week! Last night we got to go and play with some kiddos and start preparing for the yard sale. Which brings me to my next point...

YARD SALE

If you are in town on Saturday morning you should swing by the second house on the right on Hiwassee. It is three families worth of items...should be some good things. Hope to see y'all out there!

Pillows...

Finally, I am posting the pictures of the pillows that Kelli and I made for Mom. I think they turned out really well. It was my first time to do a buttonhole, and I think they look pretty good :)

If you'll notice the couch they are being shown on...that is our new couch. We got it at Flexsteel, and we love it. It is SO comfy!

Here they are...you are able to see what the front and back's look like here. The bigger pillows have 4 buttons instead of 3.

Here you can see our new couch...doesn't it look comfy?

Close up of the front.

Close up of the back.

By the way...isn't it a beautiful Friday?

Bad Blogger award goes to...

So obviously I've been a bad blogger lately! I looked at it this morning and realized it's been almost a month, to be exact just two days shy of it! How awful! To make matters worse lots of things have been going on. I have more birthday pictures to post, pictures of the pillows I helped make for my mom, and big news to share.

Unfortunately the pictures mentioned above will not be posted today because I don't have them with me! I promise to try to get those up soon...

So the big news. Most people already know, but Joel has officially decided to pursue his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Georgia in Athens. We are pretty excited about all of this, but we are also nervous. We found an apartment a couple of weekends ago and are just trying to get everything else in order to be ready for the move in July. Still don't know the exact date of the move yet, hopefully will know sometime soon. We've been furniture shopping and I've been hoarding any good packing boxes I see!

So I guess that's an update for now. Again I'll try to do better and post those pictures soon!

Hope all is well with you.