Summer 101

Before I forget let me post the "Coupon Monday" first since this day on my blog was assigned for a such matter first and foremost..........

And I will add....new markdowns in the shop! So print this and bring on by :)



Now onto Summer.....


This summer has been a different kind of summer for us. As my children grow, summer activities change, different stages of life occur and birthday's happen a lot (more of that to come!)

I have much too much to update you all on without completely boring overwhelming you. So I will do my best to keep this short and sweet and hopefully get several more posts together for you this week so as to not feel like you are reading a novel in one day, but more like a chapter at a time.....


Here we go!


 A few mornings ago, my girl's conversation in the bathroom went something like this....

Jillian: I am going to get married on the beach, and have a reception in a big beach house. I am not going to wear a veil and I want my hair down and long. And I am not going to wear any shoes.

Elizabeth: well, then you are going to mess up your dress with all the sand and it is going to drag.

Jillian: I don't care, it will be the happiest day of my life and that is all that will matter.

Elizabeth: well, I am going to wear a red dress with red shoes that make me taller, and it is going to spin.

Emily: Well, I don't know where I want to get married. But I want a long dress that drags and I do want a veil.





Can you remember??? Part of me wanted to cry on the fact that just a short time ago, all three of my girls told me they never wanted to get married. That they wanted to stay with us forever, and now this talk......



But, this is the change of life, and I am thankful that my girls have a desire to get married and I believe that the Lord created that natural desire in my girls and I am thrilled that the designs and imaginations are going on in their mind.


All this to say.....

This year, I had the complete blessing and honor in helping plan a wedding for two very special families in our church.




The bride for the wedding I helped with, was the easiest bride to work with. She just wanted to get married, and she was grateful for whatever we did.

She had just a few requests on my end.

She wanted certain flowers, bouquets and wanted the reception at her family home outside.


After months of planning an outside wedding reception a decision was made (because of our very unpredictable southern summer heat and rain showers) to change the location, she graciously accepted the need to move it indoors.

A very dear friend and myself wanted to create her original desire to have a garden type reception and do everything possible to bless her in the details.


Sorry to offend if you differ,  but to anyone that has been at our church; in my option we have a very plain ugly Fellowship Hall and we wanted to change it as much as possible.

Well, anyone can for that right??? Just hire people, spend lots of money and waaaa laaaa , a beautiful transformed room.

This was a different kind of gig though. This was going to be approached a different kind of way. These were covenant children of ours in our church and our church is FULL of gifts and talents and we intended on placing our hand print by blessing these families with a beautiful wedding that was put together by the church families. Don't get me wrong, the two families uniting worked their patooties off even more so.


All I can say is, that if you have never experienced the body of Christ working together in this way, I will tell you, you are missing out on something.

So many hands, so many hearts, giving in the food, decor, flowers and just plain whatever we asked. It was beautiful to see......



So I will leave you with some pictures of what took place the beginning of our summer........ Hope it will provide some inspiration :) I have one picture I took off of the photographer's Facebook page. I encourage you to click on the link provided below to view more pics. I took very little pictures and didn't have time to spend time adjusting my settings so my pics are what they are. For much better quality, click on the link.


Enjoy! 

** this photo compliments of Tim Thomas Art Photography**

**you can view more of these  wedding pics and other work by Tim Thomas by clicking here**

Really wish I had better pics. When it was through, Tim asked me if I got many pics. Sorry to say I didn't :(

To me, it was a beautiful, God honoring celebration and I do hope my girls will experience the love and service of our Church Body on their special day. Even if it is with a red dress, shoes that make them taller, veil or no veil, sand or carpet......



coming up next-


more summer recipes.