Return To Blogging

Trinity Episcopal Wedding Ceremony

Coming Out Of Church

Wedding Cake

Reception at the Casa Monica during the

Nights of Lights

White, Black, Pink, Gold
Candy Bar

After many months away, I have made the decision to return to blogging. My absence was brought on by months of wedding preparations followed by normal life stresses. I have periodically followed other blogs' postings, but have never seemed to find the time to post myself.

Our son was married on November, 2008 in St. Augustine, Florida. We spent over a week in the area. The wedding and related events went off beautifully. During the week following the wedding, we traveled to Disney World for a whirlwind day and a half. Nine years prior to this, my husband, daughter and I had been in Disney World. During our week there, each of us had bouts with viruses and we missed time on our tickets. At our departure we were told that our tickets would never expire. We promised our daughter that we would return (she loves Disney World) in the future, and she had reminded us of that for 9 years. So... since we were so close to Orlando at the time of the wedding, we decided to return and find out if our tickets would still be valid. Our nephew had never been to Disney World, therefore my brother and sister-in-law decided to come with us.

Upon check-in, we were pleasantly surprised to find that our "multi-park" tickets were still valid and each of the three of us had one full day left to spend in the parks. That was a very exciting financial discovery! What was quite eery, was that they could scan our "cards" and know exactly when and where we had visited the various parks on our visit 9 years prior! A little bit like
"big brother," but reassuring for security purposes. Even at 19, our daughter was delighted to be back at the parks. We spent most of our time in the Magic Kingdom, but flew to Epcot and Hollywood Studio sites for a few highlights. Our nephew was thrilled with his visit and decided to stay in the Magic Kingdom throughout the day. Even though my husband and I were marking our 7th trip to Disney World we found the experience still very enjoyable and look forward to taking grandchildren in the future!

Our son and daughter-in-law have been living with us while they prepared to take the Florida Bar exam. At the beginning of April, they were thrilled to find that they both passed the bar and are now in the process of job applications. Our daughter will be completing her sophomore year in college in less than two weeks and we will travel to South Carolina to bring her home.

Over the last several months, I have attended a few auctions and was able to find several items for our continuing job of completing our house addition, renovations and decorating.

We have almost finished our expanded downstairs bathroom. The new walk-in shower is ready for use, but still waiting for the frameless shower doors. The doors are extremely expensive, even wholesale, so we will use the shower as is (because tile surrounds the area) until we are ready to commit that amount of money to that project. I was also disappointed at how expensive even "lower end" vanities were going to cost...again, even wholesale. Particle board started at about $400 and up (retail) and real wood started at $1,000 and up (wholesale) and this was only for a 36" vanity. I decided to go with a vessel sink and went on the hunt, for months, to find a piece of furniture to adapt for use as a vanity. I finally found a newer "vintage" chest, with matching mirror, at a local auction. The chest has three drawers, at least one of which I will lose for plumbing. It is painted black with some gold floral accents. The mirror is oval and quite large and matches in color, etc. Finding an affordable faucet was more of a challange, especially since I didn't want to wait 5 weeks on more to order wholesale. Compromised on the design and we are beginning to install everything this weekend. Hope to post some photos in the near future.

We had our first yard sale for the season last weekend, but this weekend the rain forecast caused us to postpone the next yard sale. We will be having more than ever this year because we have so much to de-clutter from home and left-over inventory from our gift store to "unload." We have considered a local flea market for some of our store stock, but that is so much work to pack, transport, and re-store from week to week. We have leased our former "brick and mortar" store location and have a lot stored that we would like to liquidate that I will not be using in our "online" stores.