Photo Card

Gifted Tag Christmas

Turn family photos into personalized Christmas cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

So here you go a sneak peek of our 2011 Christmas Cards!  Aren't they just precious? 

The Elite.... Or so I thought!

So as most of you already know I have gone back to school to become a nurse.  This was one of the biggest and hardest decisions I have ever had to make.  It was hard for all of the obvious reasons like: going to school sucks, going to school is hard work, going back to school = being poor all over again, and going to school as an adult is what some would call CRAZY!!!!  I mean the first time was hard enough, why in the world would I decide to do it again???  (Sometimes I still ask myself this question, ha).  But after endless nights of no sleep a lot of thinking I decided the reward would out way the cost, so I dove in head first.  I have been very successful this time around, maintaining a 3.98 GPA (would have been 4.0 but satan  Professor A-hole gave me a B in a 1 hour lab, thus bringing my perfect GPA down) Obviously, I am still holding a grudge! HA! Which brings me to my point, it was a VERY competitive process to get accepted into the Nursing Program, so I thought once we got into the program I would no longer have to deal with the dumb people that essentially were a waste of space in my pre-req classes.  I mean we are talking the elite of the elite!!! Well today we had orientation and man was I proven wrong.  The room was filled with the dumb question asking people and the oh I'm sorry I wasn't listening so I am gonna ask the same dumb question that was just asked people!!  I guess book smart doesn't equal common sense.  Please give me the strength to get through these next two years without a complete meltdown!  OK, I am done with my venting.... for now ;).

Rules of Blogging?!?!

This is going to be a very quick post, but I have a question to ask about the rules of blogging.  I have started stock piling ideas from the web for inspiration for our wedding.  I would really like to start sharing these on this blog.  So my question is, do I have to show the source from where I found the picture?  I don't want to make anyone mad or have people think I stold their ideas.  Please leave me comments on these rules. 

Also, we have been very busy around here.  Between school, wedding planning and now moving I have been on overload and haven't had time to blog.  Hopefully, once this move is over I can get back to it on a regular basis!!  Happy Wednesday!

I will leave you with my favorite engagement picture :)

Sweet Potato Chips

The other night I decided to make a new side dish, Sweet Potato Chips.  I did it on a whim and they came out ok, but I will definitely need to try it again to get it just right.  All I did was slice the sweet potatoes, place them on a baking sheet, drizzle them with extra virgin olive oil, add a dash of salt and pepper for taste, and bake on 450 degrees for 30 minutes or until crispy. The only problem I had was they never really got crispy because I used a bit too much EVOO, but they were still very tasty!

The Ingredients

Before they went into oven

Beach Baptism

On July 17, 2011, Mr. T and I were Baptized at Ft. Desoto State Park by our church, Christ Fellowship.  Mr. T accepted Christ into his life on Feburary 27, 2011 at Christ Fellowship and we have been planning on having the baptism sometime this summer when both our parents were in town.  Well between his parents building the mountain home and my father having double knee replacement surgery we thought it was never going to happen.  So when we heard that our church was going to have a baptism at the beach we decided to jump on it.  We had such short notice we were unable to get the whole family in town but decided we would have my brother video tape it and just share that with the rest of the family.  I thought being baptized at the beach was such a neat idea considering this was the way they did it way back when! Here are a few pictures to share of our special day!

Us with our Pastor Bruce and Matt

Right Before

Mr. T got to help with mine

New Recipe

I have been keeping my Nephew during the day for the last week or so and we got to have him spend the night with us last night.  My brother and sister in law were coming over to visit with him so I decided to make it a dinner night at our house.  I was watching Food Network and felt really inspired so decided to try an new recipe.  You can check it out here.  This recipe for Baked Tilapia with Tomato and Basil was so delicious!!  I stuck with the healthy side so I paired it with a fun salad I made up.  The salad had romaine lettuce, strawberries, almond slices, cucumbers, mandarin orange slices, basil, feta cheese and red onions with Lite Raspberry Walnut Vinaigrette dressing.  All in all it was a complete success!!  I will definitely be adding this to my recipe book!!

Visit to the Parentals

The end of June Mr. T and I went to visit my parents in Pensacola.  My Dad had double knee replacement surgery back in May and he has been out of work since then so we thought it would be nice to go up and visit since he is usually working when we go up there!  We had the best time!!  We did all kinds of activites and I just love sepending time with my Momma and Daddy!!  Here are a few of the things we enjoyed while on our visit!

My Momma got some deep sea fishing poles for Christmas and we decided to go try them out!  I have grown up fishing and the entire family enjoys it. Thank goodness my future husband is an avid fisherman too! :) We didn't catch anything but we fed a lot of fish and had a great time!!

Momma and Daddy Night Fishing on the Pier



Mr. T fishing

The next day we went on a dolphin cruise called Chase-N-Fins and they did not disappoint!  We saw a family of 1 Bull (male), 2 Cows (females) and 1 Calf (baby). They played for a long time in the wake of the boat and it was so amazing!!  Here are a few pictures that Mr. T took that really captured the playfulness of the dolphins!


We look like tourist, HA



You can see the baby in this one

 

Busy Bee and Saying Yes to the Dress!!!

I haven't posted in over a week and for good reason, I have been a busy girl!  I had to study for the TEAS test, which I took on Sat., it is an entrance exam to my Plan B nursing school.  Hopefully I won't need a Plan B, but you can never be too careful! Anyways, the test just brought back all kinds of memories of the standardized tests we had to take to get into college after high school.  I think standardized testing is ridic....I mean you sit there for 4 hours and take a test.  Four hours people, I mean who is good at sitting still for four hours not to mention having to read and answer questions during each timed section?!?! Anywho, on to more positive things!! 

Mr. T reads this so I can't post pics but I offically said YES to a dress, wedding dress that is!!!  I am more than thrilled! For some reason this has made the whole wedding seem more realistic (I guess because we still have a lot of time and a lot to do before the big day)!  First of all, I am not good at making big decisions.  I mean I look and look and investigate and price check and read articles and look some more before then figuring out I am just making myself crazy and even more confused!  See my wedding dress shopping went like this..... My parents came into town in February and we went to XYZ bridal (don't want to name names so we will just call it this) where I experienced my first wedding dress fitting.  I tried on every single style imaginable to figure out what looked good on me and what I thought would work well for our wedding vision.  First of all, my Daddy was bored and just wanted to get the heck outta there and go get some lunch!  Love you Daddy but wedding dress shopping should definitely be left to the ladies!!   Secondly, that store is GROSS!  They gave me a bra to use and it smelled like a hog had rolled around in it for days and then they hung it up in the sun to dry before they decided it was fit for me to use!!!  I am not exaggerating!!! Needless to say I didn't find my dress there! We had lots of other wedding things to do while my parents were here so we had to use our time wisely so we didn't go dress shopping again during that trip.  Later on I got to talking to a friend of mine Aubrey about wedding dresses and she expressed to me how she loved all things wedding, so I dragged invited her to go wedding dress shopping with me and we went to about a bajillion stores in the Tampa Bay area.  I fell in love with one of the first dresses I tried on, but me being me I had to continue looking!  Well after I had gone to about every store you can imagine here, I decided to stop my searching and wait to go with my Momma again while I was visiting her in Pensacola.  We went to one bridal boutique where I continued to try on about 20 dresses. This is where I started to panic and questioning myself and wondering if I even knew what the heck I liked and didn't like!!  Then my Momma said with all her wisdom...."Angie, you need to make a decision because you are just confusing yourself more by trying on all these dresses!" And she was right, so this week I swung by the store that had the dress I loved from before.... just to try it on one more time!  As soon as I put it on, I KNEW!  I am oh so excited to say that I have picked out my wedding dress and it is better than I ever could have imagined!! I cannot wait to show you guys pictures of me in the most beautiful gown I have ever laid eyes on!!!!  Now, you just have to wait 288 days, HA!!

The results are in............

And we saved some mega money on groceries today!  I told you guys about the couponing class we took last week.  Well we put our couponing knowledge to the test today!  In the spirit of our money saving Thursday, I started the day off with a visit to our local produce stand (I found this one last week and it has fantastic produce at outstanding prices and it is literally right down the road, which = perfect)!  Here is a photo of my scores at the produce stand. I got all of this for $11.81.

(1 Watermelon, 1 cantaloupe, 2 yellow bell peppers, 3 tomatoes, 5 Georgia peaches and 6 cucumbers)

Then I waited for Mr. T to get home from work so we could go to Publix and this is where the real fun began.  I had already prepared for our visit by clipping coupons that went along with their BOGO deal and a few others that ended up being great deals themselves.  Not to mention the coupon that comes in the "junk" mail that gives you a $10.00 gift card when you spend $50.00 or more.  We got all of this for $80.08 and saved $94.19 (55% savings), yes you read that right!!! Go ahead you can say it, HOLY COW, that's CRAZY!!!

(4 Ragu, 6 boxes of pasta - different types, 1 Pepsi, 2 packs of hot dogs, 10 yogurts, 1 sour cream, 1 bag of sliced cheese, 2 bags of dog treats, 1 aluminum foil, 8 rolls of paper towels, 2 men's body wash, 2 body lotions, 2 bottles of olive oil, 1 can of Off, 2 value size boxes of granola bars, 2 V8 Splash, 6 Lysol cleaners, 2 1/2 gallons of Organic Milk and 10 hand soaps)

And then we finally headed over to Aldi, which is where we got a few additional things because they are always better priced at Aldi.  We spent a total of $38.08 there.


(2.5 lbs of ground beef, pack of pork chops, bananas, blueberries, loaf of bread, hot dog buns, bag of stir fry, 3 bags of shrimp, 1 liquid dish soap, 2 fried shrimp frozen dinners, 2 pringles and 4 chocolate puddings)



All in all, I think it was a TOTAL success!!  I can't believe we haven't been doing this for years!  Ahhhh, think of the savings! I am so excited and I can't wait to see how much we can save with more practice.  You have to keep in mind that this was our FIRST time!  Not to shabby, if I say so myself!! It was so much fun and so easy to do!!  Now we just have to figure out what we want to do with all the money we are going to be saving :)

Row, row, row your boat

I took this picture yesterday, but was too tired to post it last night!  Mr. T and I live on a canal off of Tampa Bay so we like to go to the dock and fish... Well I watch and Mr. T does the fishing!  Yesterday was so nice, the breeze was delightful and we got to watch this man row back and forth on the canal.  Just one of those perks to living on the water :)

Couponing

This past Friday I went with Mr. T and my SIL to a free couponing class at a local church.  We learned so much about how to cut coupons and use them appropriately to save money and in some instances make money!  Yes, you heard that right!!  With careful planning you can be paid to take products off of stores shelves!! Of course, we are just starting out so I am sure it will take plenty of practice to get that good!! So today I cut, organized and planned our next grocery shopping experience, which will take place at our local Publix!  I just love Publix Grocery Stores, they are so clean and have a really friendly staff; not to mention great deals... can you say BOGO?!?!  So for my photo for the day, I wanted to show you all the coupons I plan on using Thursday when the new sales come out!!  Once we get home I will do a post on how much money we saved!  Until then, happy shopping :)

Notice my little helper :)

Picture A Day

I recently saw this, Today, on a friend's facebook page and thought it was such a neat idea.  This guy by the name of Jonathan Harris was turning 30 and wanted to take one photo a day and post it to his website.  So I am going to try and do my own version.  I can't wait to go back after a year and see the photos that made the cut.  For the first Picture I chose my Fur Baby Cody! 

Isn't he the cutest pup dog ever!!

Becoming a Blogger

So this is my first post and I am just trying to figure out the world of blogging!  One of my very sweet friends, Mandy over at Certain Days, came over to teach me the ropes of blogging!  Thank you Mandy for teaching me everything you know about blogging and helping me get started on this journey!!  I am going to use this blog to document my journey of planning our wedding, becoming a wife to Mr. T and anything and everything in between.  I hope you enjoy our adventures as much as we do and welcome to my blog!! I will leave you with a picture of us (and so I can practice at inserting pictures, ha).