Palmetto State of Mind

Hello everyone!

Per usual (lately), sorry for the absence! 

This will be a picture-intense recap of the last couple of weeks!

First, we moved the hottest weekend of the summer from Starkville to Greenville.

 Saying goodbye to our first apartment together. 

 We packed up the Budget truck and headed to South Carolina!

Zach's dad came with us to help us unpack and also to spend a few days with us during the holiday week. 

We arrived late Saturday night (June 30) in Greenville and stayed at a hotel. Sunday we checked out the potential houses we had found as well as the route from the area to my job and then we went to downtown Greenville for dinner. 

 I just love downtown Greenville and especially Falls Park!

 Monday we moved all of our things out of the Budget truck and into the garage of the house we chose. The painters and carpet cleaners were still in there cleaning the house but we wanted to get rid of the Budget truck as soon as possible. 

 Tuesday we ran some errands for utilities we had to get set up in our names and then we went to the house and moved tons of stuff in! Mostly the large furniture, unloaded all the kitchen stuff, and began unpacking boxes and decor. 

We got almost everything unloaded Tuesday afternoon/evening! About 90%! We were a great team. 

 Our house is so cute:) Excuse the messy yard and garden! The previous tenants didn't care for the yard but there are some landscaping people coming this week to fix the yard. The garden has already been worked on. I'll be sure to give y'all an updated picture as well as a house tour soon!

Wednesday morning we slept in a little, then woke up and drove the short ride to Charleston!

 Caitlin and Dan hosted a 4th of July cookout at their house for the holiday. 

 Yummy burgers and a festive cake made the cookout fantastic!

 Patriotic pup!

 After lunch/dinner we headed downtown to set up to wait on the fireworks. We got an fantastic spot right on the water with lucky parking spots and only waited about 2 hours. 

 The time passed by really fast catching up with friends!

 The fireworks were so pretty over the water!

Thursday was my 25th birthday!

 We headed to Sullivan's Island in the morning. It was so relaxing! We just floated in the water for hours and then we went to Red's Ice House for lunch. After lunch we stopped by the outlets and went into a few shops before relaxing at Dan and Caitlin's before dinner. 

 Dinner downtown at the Smokehouse Brewery was fantastic! Then we came back and had funfetti cake! Caitlin made a birthday cake for me with sparkly writing icing and animal print candles. I loved it! What a great birthday :)

Friday, which was the day in between my and Zach's birthdays, is dubbed Zashapalooza. We dropped Zach's dad off to get his rental car to get back to MS and then celebrated our invented holiday by using a Living Social voucher I had for a Charleston Harbor Tour. 

 The weather was sweltering but the views and history were fantastic! 

We followed that activity by doing our food tasting for our wedding! We had a great time. That deserves a post of it's own, however, so more to come on that! 

We stopped by the Boone Farm store and enjoyed homemade ice cream milkshakes and later that night went to dinner with Caitlin and Dan and some of their friends. Another great day!

Saturday was Zach's 25th birthday! He wanted to sleep in on his birthday, so we had a relaxing morning then hit up Firefly distillery for the afternoon!

 The grounds were very rustic and cute I loved it! Tons of rocking chairs and tables and chairs to sit at and enjoy the grounds. They also had local vendors selling BBQ and a local singer entertaining outside. 

 We enjoyed the tasting and Zach picked out two types of Firefly he wanted to take home. 

 They even had cornhole! 

(Is it football season yet?)

 Saturday night we went to Sullivan's Island for dinner at Poe's Tavern. 

 We sat outside on the deck and enjoyed our food with a fantastic beach breeze and then followed dinner with a walk on the beach!

Sunday we woke up early and headed back to the Upstate to get the usual Sunday activities of laundry and grocery shopping done, plus I started work today so I wanted to get all my things together and chill out a little before beginning the work week. 

What a whirlwind couple of weeks but a great couple of weeks! Friends, birthdays, a new city-what could be better? 

T-4 Days: Big Changes Are Coming!

Hi everyone!

Sorry about the unexpected blogging hiatus. I went to South Carolina for 5 days 2 weeks ago and it was a crazy 5 days! I flew that Wednesday to Charleston for a job interview, then drove a rental car to Greenville at the crack of dawn the next day for another job interview Thursday, then Zach met me in Greenville Thursday night because we both had another interview Friday! Then Friday afternoon we drove back to Charleston to spend the rest of the weekend with Caitlin and Dan and came back to Mississippi on Sunday. 

It was an insane few days!

I have accepted a job in Spartanburg and we are moving to the area this Saturday! We aren't living in Spartanburg but in a town in between Spartanburg and Greenville, in case Zach winds up working in Greenville.

We loved the area when we visited and we are really looking forward to arriving and getting settled. Bear with me as this will be another crazy few weeks, but I promise to update y'all as best I can!

 

We visited downtown Greenville when we were there and loved it!

It was such a nice city!

We visited Falls Park while waiting to eat dinner at Smoke on the Water!

Smoke on the Water was great to Zoe. We sat out on the patio and they brought her a huge dog bowl of water and she just laid under the table and people watched. She's such a sweet, well-behaved dog! 

We like how central Greenville is to a lot of people we love and care about! Caitlin and Dan are only 2.5 hours away in Charleston, Mary Catherine and Kevin are only a couple hours north in NC, Jimmy is less than three hours away in Knoxville, and Zach's cousin Shawn is only about 3.5 hours away in Kentucky. It will make road-tripping much easier!

Zach is moving with me this weekend and will spend July writing his thesis, but will return to MS for a few days in August to finish up any missing samples he has left to run in the lab. We will both come back for a long weekend in October for his defense and some MSU football ;)

This will be quite an adventure but we're excited!

Do any of y'all live near Greenville/Spartanburg? Charlotte is close too!

The Bridal Party: How We Asked Them to Be In Our Wedding

Happy Thursday everyone! It's almost the weekend! 

Thank you all so much for your sweet comments on our Charleston engagement pictures! We had a great time with them and I love how they turned out. A few people have asked me where I got my pink dress. It's from the Banana Republic Mad Men collection. I got it back in March. I have seen a few very similar dresses so if you are in the market for a hot pink dress let me know and I'll direct you :)

Today I'm going to show y'all how we asked our friends to be in our wedding party!

We have seven bridesmaids and seven groomsmen!

Each one of them is so important to us and we are thrilled to have them all be a part of our big day. 

The first thing I did for my bridesmaids' cards was make the little accordion ladies like so many of us have seen on Pinterest. They took forever (especially to make 7!) but they turned out so cute I'm really glad I made them. Everyone seemed to really like them!

I also included mason jar "will you be my bridesmaid?" cards I ordered from The Blue Envelope on Etsy. I love how they turned out!

For the ladies I don't get to talk to as often as I'd like, I wrote some of the wedding details on a palmetto moon notecard and sent that along with the accordion ladies and mason jar card. 

And lastly, I packaged it all up together with a pink bellyband and sent them on their way!

They all loved them and they all said yes!

For Zach and his groomsmen, we got each guy a huggie with the palmetto moon on it (the palmetto moon will be a recurring theme in our wedding ;) ) and sent them to each of his groomsmen with a little Charleston card and a personal note Zach wrote to each of them. Guys are a little more low-key about wedding parties than girls are but it was important to me that Zach asked his groomsmen in a special way. It's a big commitment to be in a wedding and I want them to all know how glad we are that they are standing with us on the big day! Although Zach probably would have preferred to just call them, I think they all liked getting a little present in the mail and they all also said yes!

The members of our wedding party are: 

Bridesmaids: Chelsea (maid of honor), Amanda, Emily, Caitlin, Mary Catherine, Brianna, and Danielle

Groomsmen: Shawn (best man), Scott, Jonathon, Dan, Kevin, Jim, and Andy

If you want to learn more about them please feel free to visit our wedding website at zachandashleywedding.com :)

Our Charleston Engagement Pictures!

Happy Monday everyone! 

As promised, I'm starting to catch up and share with y'all what's been going on in our lives the past few months. 

We went to Charleston for a weekend in April to take care of a few wedding things and have our engagement session with our fabulous photographer, Jen from Carolina Photosmith!

We had a fantastic time spending a couple of hours strolling all over Charleston and taking some amazing pictures. I love Charleston as well as our photographer so it was tons of fun! Her pictures are so bright and vibrant! I love how they capture the colors of Charleston! 

Here are a few of our favorites:

Gorgeous lanters and moss covered brick!

I love the color of the house behind us!

My amazing groom-to-be!

The bride-to-be! ;)

My favorite place in Charleston- Waterfront Park and THE fountain!

Zoe wasn't feeling photogenic but I love the Ravenel Bridge in the background!

Little family

Amazing Charleston brick

Cobblestone streets!

Kisses and wrought iron fences

Gorgeous turquoise house!

I love the greenery everywhere in Charleston!

Walking along the battery.

The Battery

I love the gazebo in White Point Gardens!

Thanks so much for checking out our pictures :) We love them!

MIA...But I'm Back!

Hi everyone!

Sorry I've been completely MIA since basically March. I had my defense then literally did not feel like doing a thing until about now. I made all the edits to my thesis, submitted it, then proceeded to sit on my butt for the next two months.

I'm kind of in a weird transition mode...I've graduated, I'm working part time at MSU until I find a permanent job elsewhere (anyone want to hire me? :) ) and I feel like I have a lot to do with extra time to do it but I haven't done anything. I haven't ran, cleaned, packed...nothing. I'm trying to get myself into more of a schedule so I get back to running and working out (I gained a few pounds :-O so mad at myself!) as well as organize our apartment so when the time comes to move my life is a little easier. Bear with me y'all! I've missed blogging!

There will be more in-depth posts on each of these, but here's what I've been up to for the past few months:

Holidays and spending time with family in MS before we move:

 Had our engagement party at the church in Zach's hometown:

 Visited Charleston and explored the Charleston Tea Plantation:

 Took our engagement pictures in Charleston!:

 And I graduated!!:

I also found my wedding dress! But no pictures of that until next March! ;)

I'll be catching up with more in-depth posts of the spring as well as my wedding planning and attempt to run again in 95 degree heat! See y'all soon!