The Weekend...

So, I can totally appreciate companies that feel the need to go door to door. I loathe solicitors, so I'm not going to be overly PLEASED that you're at my door, but I get it.

But when I tell you three weeks in a row to please stop coming to my door and trying to get me to come to your church, I'm going to become unpleasant. Sigh. It's not that hard people. I say this as a church leaves my front door, seemingly aggravated I've asked them to leave.

Moving along, I couldn't have asked for a better weekend than this past weekend! It was probably time for a girls weekend in Georgia with the bestie. I'm super fortunate my best friend is only 2.5 hours away, making our Girls weekends so easy to do. I hesitated to go on Friday instead of Saturday, because I felt so overwhelmed and swamped with client work, but decided I needed a break. Best decision ever, to have three total stress-free days! Friday we literally did nothing but sat around drinking wine while gossiping.

Saturday though, we road tripped down to Cartersville (okay, so it's only really an hour and a half from Rita's house, but....still. We are ALL ABOUT some road tripping!) to see Steve Wariner!

Somehow, even after being in and out of this city sooo many times a year to see my friends  - I had never been to this theater! It's BEYOND fabulous, super small and amazing for an acoustic show. I am so bummed PL has never played here, this would have been a DREAM venue to see a Mountain Soul show in. (I'm going to make this happen.)

And of course, for a photo nerd like me - it a gorgeous piece of art that looks amazing in B&W. Yes, I really do inspect every building I see and envision them in a photograph. 

and of course, no girls weekend is complete without six million selfies, right?! literally, after we touched up our make up, it was a "we need a selfie!" moment. 

Steve really put on a fabulous acoustic show - I kind of thought he'd play a little longer than he did, but....I got my song, so I have zero complaints. We were amused we each had a specific song we wanted - and he did them as bookends, hers opened the show (If I Didn't Love You) and mine closed the show (Some Fools Never Learn), and of course one of our anthems (Life's Highway - it leads every road trip set list we have!) was in the midst of the set list too, along with some great hits like Lynda,   The Weekend, etc. He also did Holes in the Floor of Heaven, a song I struggle so desperately with since Granny passed away. 

Side note: Steve doesn't live terribly far from me and I ran into him at the post office a few months ago. I immediately thought to text my best friend and all I could say was I was in line with him at the PO & had this incredible urge to burst out into Lynda! 

Steve Wariner is STILL super handsome.  Totally old enough to be my Dad, but whatever. He has aged pretty fabulously.

Also, what kind of photographer forgets their favorite concert lens? Sigh....Somehow I only brought my 50mm f1.8 lens with me. Not exactly what I use for concerts from 4th row, but whatever.

Oh hey, another selfie bestie! Yes we purposely color coordinated our outfits. 

I suppose what might (okay, not might...WAS) be the best moment of the night was Patty & Emory decided to come out to the show as well! Steve briefly thanked her during the show for coming by mentioning when he thinks of "Greatest Country Female Vocalist", he thinks of her. So not only is he super talented, he's freaking SMART. After the show, we stuck around so Rita could get her pic from the HOF signed, so we also ran into P&E as they left. It was fabulous to hear "Nicole, I thought I saw you in there....do I get my hug?" --  I love that girl.

All this....and I beat the storms home! I win at life this weekend!

Sunshine & Summertime...

The worst part of vacation is coming back to reality. After a long weekend at the beach, this past week was back to the real world :(

Friday afternoon I drove down to my best friend's in Georgia - we hit our favorite winery (The Georgia Winery.. If you've never been, you MUST at some point! They have the best wine ever, and Concord is to die for) to stock up on wines for the beach. The next morning we hit the road to head to Florida, which is about 6 hours from Rita's house. And if you know me & my best friend, we filled those 6 hours with ridiculous amounts of gossiping & singalongs.

We got to Pensacola Beach around 3ish, and immediately changed and walked down to the beach. Our hotel was on the beach, which meant for a quick walk - and was along the strip so  we weren't far from any of the local clubs and restaurants. It was when we walked up to the restaurants and pier that we started seeing signs for a seriously crazy convention going on. Let's just say it was adult themed and we had no idea what we were walking into. It was like something out of a Seinfeld episode - we go on a girls weekend, and blindly walk into something crazy. We could not stop laughing the entire trip.

One of my favorite things about the beach is going at night and listening to the waves crash. I grew up in Florida - a lot further south in Florida, though - and the sound of the ocean is one of the biggest things I miss. So after checking out some of the local places, we decided to go pour some wine in our cups, and walk down to the beach that night.. Where we sat in the chairs and had obnoxious Loretta Lynn sing alongs and listened to the ocean in the background.

That pretty much sets the tone for Sunday - because we went to the beach around 11 armed with wine, iPad, and music. From 11 to 4:30ish we sat on the beach watching shows, sipping wine, and listening to music.  Well, I say listen to music.  As usual with us - it was more like a karaoke session on the beach. Thankfully the people next to us on the beach were amused by us - not everyone loves classic country music as much as we do, and it's all we listened to. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones on the beach having a serious jam session to Donna Fargo.

Some pic spam from the weekend..

On the road again...

To this gorgeous place! Seriously, the waters, the sand...everything is so gorgeous!

Heading to the beach! Seriously, my best friend & I document everything....

Mango Margaritas - this was one of the best margarita's I've ever had! So fabulous. 

The pier behind our hotel...our hotel had this cute bar behind it along the water and this pier

This place we went to breakfast at one day was so adorable, and reminded me of some of our little shops in Nashville. It was called the Dog House or something to that affect, but the menus called it "the Weinery" 

This would be the spot I barely left on Sunday.

Toes in the sand....

Beach day number two...

As we go out into the ocean, I take my phone to take a picture, and come back with this. I have no clue if Rita was knocked down by a little wave or if she was just too intoxicated to walk out of the ocean properly...we DID drink a lot of wine! 

Helping out the Kentucky for Kentucky campaign, etching their slogan in the sand! 

We spotted this in the window of a store and immediately burst into some George Jones..."you're as smooth as Tennessee Whiskey..." I really think the folks there all weekend that didn't love country music as much as we did thought we had lost our freaking minds. 

Back to the beach to watch the sun go down the last night....

On the road.....again! 

Catching Up....

Who knew such a little remodel could make my week so insane? Finally -- the bathroom is complete--- after the dude completed it, and then spilled mortar down the drain. Which obviously meant -- no water could drain. The painter was supposed to come Tuesday and then just never showed up. I might have thrown a hissy fit, but clearly it worked as everything was complete Wednesday!

Because this gets shit done. 

But moving on...

Last weekend, I went down to Georgia for girls weekend with my bestie. We had actually planned on going to Alabama during the day on Saturday, but the snow kind of threw us off, and we didn't want to go over the mountain. Where the hell did that snow come from, anyway? Thank goodness I decided to go Friday and have two days --- god knows that my panic in just Nashville in snow flurries would have been insane trying to drive over Monteagle Mountain!

Anyway, instead of venturing out for the day, we opted for Lazy Girls weekend -- we went to a late lunch and then headed to the Winery. We were back at the house by 3:00, where we promptly changed back into our pajamas, started putting a bottle of wine in the crock pot to mull it,  while opening another bottle of wine to start drinking. (And why is it everyone back home looks at us like we're crazy when we talk about mulling wine?! Is like Georgia the only state that knows how to rock their wine?!) 

And because we were apparently afraid of being snowed in again with no wine, I bought six bottles of Concord, and Rita bought three bottles of Georgia on my Mind & Blueberry.  Forget the milk and bread, we had wine! Priorities people, priorities.

Every girl should be so fortunate to have a best friend that starts drinking wine with them at 3:30 in pj's while bitching about men, cheering on Kentucky Wildcats, singing Gene Watson, watching chick flicks like When Harry Met Sally & taking stupid silly pictures with the iPad!  

I decided last week to make an iPad change and picked up the iPad mini. Um, seriously, do you even realize how much lighter this is than the regular iPad??? Even with my case on it, I forget it's in my bag sometimes. 

I picked it up on the way to GA, which meant once we downed a few bottles of wine -- the more we played with the camera and giggled and took ridiculous pictures like this:

Yes, we're nerds. I know. 

Mom, Samantha & I saw a screening of "Safe Haven" this week...is there ever going to be a Nicholas Sparks movie that DOESN'T make me cry? I heard the book was fabulous, and I absolutely loved the movie. I guess I'll pick up the book now and see the comparisons (yes, I'm doing this backwards).

Watch the trailer. And then drag your boyfriend out to see it.