good times & photoshop discoveries...

I don't typically title my posts in such "cryptic" fashion, but I just couldn't come up with anything clever for this one. But this post does serve 2 purposes: 1) to post photos of our short road trip to Wake Forest to see our friends, Matthew & Elizabeth and 2) to show you what I've been discovering in Photoshop...

We had a great time with Matthew & Elizabeth. They took us to a great pizza place downtown and we all shared a yummy crab dip appetizer and a scrumptious half-n-half pizza (girls side, boys side :). Saturday, we went to grab some lunch at a "hole in the wall" place called Shorty's -- fabulous hot dogs & cheese fries! Then Elizabeth and I walked around downtown to some really cute shops while the guys went off to TigerDirect or some such store as that. :) Elizabeth and I walked back to the Seerings house from downtown and were able to walk through the seminary campus where I got those great shots above. It was a gorgeous day! Good times with good friends...aren't they lovely?

fall is my fave...

And we're finally to fall -- it seems like summer lasted for.e.ver since it was so stinkin' hot. But it's begun to cool off rather quickly around here. We're enjoying highs in the mid to upper 70s with gusty winds (thought we'd somehow gotten into March today), sunshine...what could be better?! I love fall...

In honor of the first day of fall yesterday, I got my fall "tub" down from the attic and put out all my stuff last night. Aaahhh, much better.

road trip to Wake Forest...

We get to go see our sweet friends, the Seerings, tomorrow night! Matthew & Elizabeth used to be in our SS class at church until God called Matthew into ministry -- he's now at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. We miss them a lot but I'm able to keep up with them pretty well through Elizabeth's blog -- she's actually the one that inspired me to start this blog. And she keeps me in stitches reading hers...

She began blogging shortly after we found and started progress on our house. I realized that maybe blogging would be a really great way to keep our friends & family informed on how the house was coming along. Bingo! That's exactly what happened. My mom was thrilled to have the blog to "watch the house go up" -- she said she felt like she was here with us by being able to read the blog on a daily basis.

Anyway, we're heading to Wake Forest after work tomorrow and will stay overnight with 'WMD' & 'Lizzy' Friday. We'll head back sometime late Saturday afternoon. So looking forward to seeing them!

dining on the "veranda"...

Yeah, not really the "veranda"... just the porch. We don't have a "veranda" (I'm not sure I really even know what a "veranda" is). But the porch is good enough for me right now! Jeff had the good idea to eat dinner out on the porch tonight as it has cooled considerably since our highs-in-the-high-90s temps the last few days. It was cloudy all day & the breeze blew the humidity right way. Our new furniture worked really great for dining!

Just for the record, I baked some cajun salmon, steamed some asian stir-fry vegetables and we had that with some seasoned rice...not bad for not knowing what I was going to make tonight until about 5 min before I started it! That's usually the way it goes...

centerpiece...

I found something that I thought would look good on our kitchen table as a centerpiece. I think it will be versatile enough to stay on the table no matter what types of tables Jeff builds for us --er, I mean, no matter what types of tables we go through in our lifetime -- dark, light, big, small, etc. We don't use our table too often (to eat on, anyway) since we have the nice coffee table with the lift mechanism that Jeff built me a few years ago (this post has a photo of it), but it will be easy enough to move the centerpiece when we do use it (for guests & such).

It's my kinda thing, too...candles and all that. What do you think?

**Note: we fared just fine through Tropical Storm Hanna -- it woke us up quite a few times through the night with serious wind gusts and constant wind in general but after getting up & looking around this morning, the only "damage" we had was an overturned hammock. Jeff fixed that easy enough. :)

glued to The Weather Channel...

Okay, so this is technically our 2nd hurricane season on Rose Bud Lane but it only feels like the 1st because we didn't have any activity our way last year. This year will be a little bit different, it looks like:

This was the image about 16 min ago...see where my arrow is pointing, folks? That's where we live. Right there in the middle of all that junk from Hanna. Now, we're not too concerned at this point. It is, after all, a pretty unorganized tropical storm but there's potential so we're not being stupid about it. I'm pretty much glued to The Weather Channel to see the latest. Right now, we've just got some wind accompanied by clear skies. Yeah, I said clear skies. That will change the closer we get to midnight which is when they predict landfall around the SC/NC border. We did have some rain earlier this morning around 10am, and then another rain band came through about 2pm.

Personally, I like storms. Now, I try to be smart about them, but I rather enjoy the whole process of watching these tropical storms/hurricanes approach, all the maps they show us on TWC to show us how the storms are being guided and what causes them to form, etc. I think I would've enjoyed a life as a meteorologist...for a little while at least. :)

But now tornadoes are a whole 'nother ballgame that I am not a cheerleader for IN THE LEAST. Tornadoes are completely unpredictable and something you can't watch "approach" and know, for the most part, what they will do. Tornadoes, though, are a possible "side effect", if you will, of hurricanes and as a matter of fact, that radar map above has a red box around our area...that red box means we're under a tornado watch until 5am tomorrow morning. I don't like that. But that's why I'm glued to TWC.