Newbies

I'm a few days behind but I have finally gotten all the new pieces up on the website. I'll constantly be putting more up as I make them so don't think this is it. However, there are about 20 new pieces to peruse through! Have fun looking...

Summer in the City

This past weekend was a wonderful one! We started on Friday night with a fun dinner with friends at Extra Virgin and a post-dinner rooftop drink. Saturday morning we began with Krispy Kreme doughnuts (a family favorite.) The doughnuts were just to warm the stomach up for what was to come next. For over a month a group of our friends have had tickets to Taste of Tribeca. It's a great neighborhood event where most all of the restaurants participate. They block off around 8 blocks and have live music, tastings from each restaurants, and  a kids tent with face painting, etc. The food was wonderful and we finally were able to try out some of our local neighborhood restaurants we've walked past numerous times. After we had our fill of food we moved onto the local wine stores where they were having free wine tastings. I think we all needed to sit and let our stomachs settle so we headed to the park and just sat.
 Later that night, Ben and I went to see the Broadway play Newsies for my birthday! It was one of my favorite movies as a little girl and the play definitely did not disappoint. (If you're visiting the city or live here make sure you go) It was quite hard not to sing along during the play but I managed to hold back until we were back in our apartment. I feel bad for our neighbors.
We ended the weekend with a delicious steak dinner with friends in Midtown at Quality Meats. It was so much fun to spend my birthday with such great friends! This past weekend is what makes me love living in the city.

 Ashley is planning out which food tent to try first

Take a look at all these choices from all the restaurants!

Flowers from my amazing dad!

Jewels

Between all the fun travels and working, I've stayed consistently busy. In a good way. I'm still working but thought I would share a few of my favorites that will be coming to the website today or tomorrow.

Queen City Weekend

Well, I had another long weekend in the great state of North Carolina. This time in our previous city of Charlotte. The reason was to see our old Charlotte friends as well as our annual Chapel Hill bible study reunion. The weekend was absolutely wonderful. There really is nothing like seeing old friends to make the heart happy. (Not to mention visiting the place the Ben and I met and fell in love.)
Everyone in the group now has kids (with the exception of LB and me being pregnant) so the group has doubled in numbers and noise levels. Which only makes it that much more fun! Instead of going out to eat, we now cookout and play in the park. It's funny how life changes and somehow seems to just get better.

Love front porches with rockers!

Next year everyone will have kids in their arms and hopefully the rest of the group will be there!

Rest in the Holy Land

This past month I have felt like this blog has been my last priority, especially with all the other things going on in my life, not to mention all the traveling taking place. However, after this past weekend I couldn't wait to come home and try to write down the kind of weekend I witnessed. It started with an surprising invitation that came my way about a month and a half ago. The invitation was to attend a "Ladies Farm Forum" in Asheville, NC. This event is put on through a wonderful and generous family as well as The Trinity Forum. My sister had gone once before and Ben had gone to the "guys farm weekend" last August. Needless to say, they both loved it and have talked about it the entire year. So I was beyond excited that I got invited.
Are you asking yourself, what the heck does this "Farm Forum" thing entail? Well, it's somewhat hard to describe since I'm not sure words will do it justice. But I'll try.
To sum it up, it was about fellowship with other women who love Jesus and came together in a place of rest and yet silliness. However, it goes far and beyond just that. We all read the book, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen before we arrived. We had 3 sessions on the book throughout the weekend. The rest of the weekend was about resting and listening to the words of God and then basically having a big slumber party like you did back when you didn't care about how silly you looked. It was an amazing and beautiful time of freedom, love, acceptance, peace, honesty, raw emotions, and seriously silly and fun girl time. This past weekend will go down in the history books as being one of the best! God is good.

Getting ready for a session on the book

 Their property was gorgeous

 Our setting for every incredible home-cooked meal

 How do you not rest and have fun here?

 Girls gone fishin

 The cow pasture

 We drove around the property in small cars

 Just part of their beautiful land

 Silliness with handbells?! Not even sure how this happened

 Ole!

 It was hard to leave this wonderful place