TWTW - the one before Thanksgiving

1. Friday night Friendsgiving at Bridget Foy's. I've been friends with these guys since high school, and some of us have been friends longer than that. Their partners have rounded out our circle nicely. We've seen good, bad, and ugly together, supported each other through a lot of bad shit, and shared a zillion laughs over the past 20 some years. A lot of my best memories involve these people. I'm grateful for them.

2. I had fish tacos and a side of mac & cheese. Alagash, cheesecake, and coffee rounded out the meal. They show their desserts on these little viewfinders there. It was pretty cool.

3. Saturday morning I split up the book ends and took Gus to get his nails clipped early. That was an experience that's best summed up by the phrase shit show.

4. Speaking of dogs, I got this mat for the basement that has their photo on it from Personal Creations. Now they can walk all over themselves.

5. Weekly food prep and freezer cooking...ham and cheese egg muffins for breakfasts, a mix of wild and brown rice/steamed broccoli/chicken for lunches, Hungarian mushroom soup for dinner on Saturday, breakfast burritos to freeze, and cheesy chicken and wild rice casserole (no cream of soups) to freeze for my girl Marla at Luck Fupus along with veggie beef barley soup and power breakfast muffins. The morning wore me out.

6. Like all weird dog owners, I was taking selfies with Mae. She's not good at them. She provides eleventy billion outtakes.

7. Saturday night errands followed by Designer Bag Bingo.

8. Coffee talk with Brie from A Breezy Life Sunday morning. We were talking nonstop for nearly two hours. It was great!

9. A blissful wander around Marshalls. I needed a new suitcase for our upcoming trip. I did not need anything else.

10. Sunday dinner: korean beef over brown rice with a side of steamed veg.

On Mondays I'm doing a picture linkup called Picture Practice with Kelli at Just Beachy. If you'd like to participate, here are the prompts through December. Share on your blog, or if you don't blog on Twitter or Instagram every Monday with the hashtag #PicturePractice. This is my photo for the prompt thankful. I'm thankful for these fools and the comforts of home. Here's MFD with hat hair in case you've ever wondered what that looks like. And me with no makeup/shower, but you know what that looks like.

Short week! Let us give thanks.

Linking up with Kelli for

Linking up with B Loved Boston for Weekending.

TWTW - wedding style

1. Early dismissal on Thursday for Aubrey & Stephen's rehearsal dinner featuring great people, good food, fine wine, love, excitement, and freaking snow. On November 13. How about no?

2. Not invited to the wedding, they got me up early on Friday in protest.

3. The lovely ladies of Sensational Scissors hooked us up with hair and makeup and kept us to our schedule. By 1:30 we were off in a limo towards Normandy Farm courtesy of Aubrey's mom.

4.  What a lovely venue, really. My old friend Susan from a former job works there and hooked MFD and I up with a lovely room. The entire staff was gracious and accommodating and the grounds were beautiful, but the true star of any wedding is always the gorgeous bride, and Aubrey was indeed that.

5. And then they were wed. MFD performed the ceremony and he was great. I love love love this photo. I can't wait to see the professional shots, our BFF Evan of Evan Leslie Images was awesome capturing the day. 

 

6. When you're in a wedding and you're me, you end up with 487 photos of yourself with others including your husband, grandparents, parents, siblings, aunt, DJ (our friend the awesome DJ Bill McCay), and walking into reception partner(hi Jared and Donna with the photobomb) and very few photos of the wedding details themselves, which were fabulous and all done by Aubrey. Pinterest would cry seeing her creations, everything was attended to and everything came out amazing. She put a lot of thought and creativity into this day and it showed.

7. Other miscellaneous shenanigans. It was a really fun, late night that culminated in my little brother picking my hair pins out of my hair in the parking lot at 3 a.m. 

8. I won't lie, Saturday was not pretty. Hashtag old lady status. After a morning of social things that I was not well equipped for, my Dad & Carol deposited me at home, where I napped most of the afternoon. Being social for so long takes it out of me, I'm not used to being nice for so many hours. My introvert tendencies called for a long period of recharging in silence. MFD got home around 5. We watched Dallas Buyers Club and some episodes of The Wire, laid around with the dogs and ordered Lee's Hoagies and that's all she wrote.

9. Not much in the way of food prep this weekend. Egg muffins with ham and cheese for breakfast, soup out of the freezer for lunches, bananas and veggies for snacks. 

10. Sunday consisted of 408720983 loads of laundry, dog lounging, magazine reading, putting stuff away from the weekend, and fresh sheets. I love a Sunday in which you can shower and put a fresh pair of pajamas on.

This wedding was a wonderful celebration of two people I love, with so many other people I love. You can't ask for much more than that.

Tomorrow: spinach casserole.

Linking up with Kelli for

Linking up with B Loved Boston for Weekending.

Picture Practice: Night

On Mondays I'm doing a picture linkup with Kelli at Just Beachy. If you'd like to participate, here are the prompts through July. This is my photo for the prompt night. It's the Salem Witch Museum...at night. A derr.

Have you checked out the ladies on my sidebar?

• Heather at My Little HEA. She took over the Friday Five for me last week, is a fan of the beach, books, and pink. She went to Book Bash in Orlando this weekend, make sure you keep an eye out for a report on that! What's book bash? Here's her recap of last year. 
• Rachel at Can't Google Everything. Another Philly-area local, she co-hosts Time For Mom link up every Tuesday. 
• Kelli at Just Beachy (formerly She-Crab Soup), runner of Picture Practice on Mondays and one of my favorite weekly features, Seashell Chronicles on Fridays. 
• Mercedes at It's a Harr Life. A 20-something married to her high school sweetheart, enjoying their first baby and living the dream out in California.

Don't forget to enter to win a $50 Amazon gift card, only two days left!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Linking up with Kelli for

Motion

On Mondays I'm doing a picture linkup with Kelli at She Crab Soup. If you'd like to participate, here are the prompts through July. This is my photo for the prompt motion. It's a surfer at 4th Street Beach in Ocean City, NJ.

Tomorrow: the weekend that was a day late since my four day weekend is still happening today.
In the meantime, have you entered the $50 Erin Condren giftcard giveaway?
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Linking up with Kelli for

In observance: Memorial Day

I always think Memorial Day has a somber undertone, as well it should. While we celebrate a three day weekend and have barbecues, frolic on the beach or at the lake, sit on curbs and watch parades go by, drink beers in backyards and do whatever else it is that we do, we are also conscious that the weekend is about observing all the lives that have been lost on battlefields in this country and across the globe to perpetuate liberty and the American way of life. Every day is the right day to thank someone who serves, but today is specifically in remembrance of those who have lost their lives doing so. Gratitude doesn't begin to cover the debt we owe to so many service men and women who've laid down their lives so that we may continue to enjoy our freedoms.

On Mondays I'm doing a picture linkup with Kelli at She Crab Soup. If you'd like to participate, here are the prompts through July. This is my photo for the prompt black and white.

Tomorrow: the weekend that was. Enjoy your day and your freedom so many sacrificed so much in order for you to have.

Linking up with Kelli for