Lately...

It is hard to believe August is here and summer is officially over. Lately, we have just been enjoying Ben's work schedule which is allowing him to be home at night. Which means we have been having dinner most nights together! I know this won't be the case come October when he will be back to 70+ work hour/week.

All this cooking has made me have to spend more time brainstorming, aka meal planning. This is not my forte. But it is an area that I would love to improve in since I know life will continue to get more hectic. Eating meals at home is important to both Ben and I. But with us both working full-time jobs it can be demanding to be responsible for preparing a meal every night. So, me and the crockpot have become good friends lately. The great thing is there are websites, like this one, that do all of the hard work for you (meal planning, grocery list).

Here is one of the meals we tried this week-- Chicken Fajitas. We love Mexican and this was so easy!

We have also been able to have some fun date nights and try some new restaurants. Atlanta is not lacking in the culinary world. My bucket list of restaurants to try is so long that we may never get to all of them! Friday night we went to Two Urban Licks, which is not new to us but was kind of special since the last time we went there was almost 2 years ago-- the night before Ben interviewed in Atlanta for his job. I can still remember our discussions at dinner that night and wondering what life in Atlanta would look like for us. To think of how much has happened in those short 2 years is unbelievable. God is SO good!! We have so much to be thankful for.

And lastly, as if this wasn't already the most random blog post, we have been furniture shopping! When our sold in Chattanooga, so did most of our furniture that we had purchased. We both agreed that it wasn't worth losing the contract on the house for furniture that could all be purchased again. But these past 2 months of furniture shopping has been exhausting and there have been times when we questioned why we agreed to sell all of our furniture. We have spent just about every weekend at a certain furniture store in Atlanta. Thankfully we have had a very helpful, patient sales associate/decorator helping us. And we are finally done with the decision making and will be ordering this week! Here is a sneak peak:

The color scheme

Coffee table

Ben's "man chair" but will be in dark grey

 Couch but will it be in a lighter fabric and have a bench cushion

I can't wait until it is all here! Now just have to wait 4-6 weeks :)

Summer Vacation- part 2

We left Amelia Island and headed to Bluffton, South Carolina to spend a few days at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff. It was unbelievable and a trip we will never forget. Ben gets all the credit for this trip because this was definitely his idea. I'm so glad I let him convince me that we should go!

The Inn is located on the May River and the low country is a beautiful backdrop 

We stayed in one of the guest cottages, which was tastefully decorated. It felt so homey...which I loved.

The first day we were there, I spent the afternoon at the Spa while Ben played golf. I was in heaven. This was without question the best Spa experience I have ever had. 

I had the women's facilities to myself that afternoon, so I snapped a picture of the whirlpool tub with my phone. Total relaxation....

One morning we ventured out for a 7 mile bike to the far end of the property to see a treehouse

I am not a big fan of biking but it was hard to complain with views like this.

Clearly this was not just any treehouse...the views from the top were incredible

After all that hard work, it was time to cool off by taking a canoe ride

Or so we thought. We didn't last 15 minutes on the canoe before we started heading back. It was unbelievably hot and required way more energy/effort than we had to give at that time.

So, we headed to one of my favorite places to cool off.

I loved that they would bring you a bucket of ice water!

My favorite summer cocktail = Miami Vice

One evening we went on a sunset wine cruise on the river. It was so fun and we ended up meeting a sweet family from Birmingham who vacations here every year.

We saw several dolphins but, unfortunately, weren't able to capture any on camera. You can see Harbour Town on Hilton Head. 

Inside the little place we ate breakfast at every morning 

 The precious chapel 

 Fire pits where we roasted s'mores at night...a palmetto bluff tradition 

 The gorgeous main lodge. The wrap around porches and gas lanterns....perfect! 

 We enjoyed dinner at the main lodge one night 

 Eating dinner outside at the Canoe Club

Complimentary snacks and wine which we devoured

I cannot think of a more perfect way to celebrate our 3rd anniversary! We were both so sad to leave and cannot wait to go back.

Recipe Organization

It is no secret that I love Pinterest. Ben is quick to call me out on it when I become glued to my phone-- "Are  you over there pinning again?" Which of course my response is, "No, I'm reading a very important e-mail." He knows me too well. 

There is no shortage of recipes to be pinned and I have done my fair share of contributing to this growing number. When my "recipe" board was getting seriously out of control, I decided to create more boards (appetizers, sides, etc) in an attempt to make it more manageable. It helped, but was still not as functional as I was hoping. Have you ever been in a grocery store, scrolling through hundreds of pictures on your iphone trying to find "the pin" which will lead you to a webpage that you then have to navigate to find "the recipe"? I quickly decided this was not working. See, I am usually not organized enough to go through my pinterest page prior to going to the grocery store.  

Enter Dropbox- a cloud service that allows you to save your personal files. I have it on my computer and now on my iphone. It is amazing. This article describes how you can use it to organize your recipes. By using google chrome you can save a website as a PDF. It is so simple and you can specify which page numbers you want to save, which means you don't have to scroll through 10 pages before you get to the recipe! This is huge. Now it's just the time consuming process of going through the pinterest page to decide which recipes are "keepers" and which ones were probably pinned in haste when I was very hungry...which happens often. 

Not only is this a solution for my Pinterest recipes, this is also huge in helping with the paper clutter. I have so many recipes printed out from websites, like cooking light. I have written little notes to myself on different modifications I made. Does anyone else have a recipe book that looks like this? 

You can imagine being at the grocery store, deciding you want to make a certain recipe and then having to place a phone call to the hubby asking him to rummage through the above mess. Do not recommend it.

Enter GeniusScan . A way to scan my recipes by simply taking a picture with my phone. 

And are you ready for this---genius scan will "send" to your dropbox account. Wow. All of my recipes, included handwritten ones, on my phone in a neat little folder that is alphabetized. Complete life changer. 

Happy Organizing!