Friday, July 31, 2015

Summertime in the South: Outfit of the Month

Well, today I have a last minute Outfit of the Month for you.  To be honest, I bought this dress way back in June for our weekend in New England for Mike's sister's engagement, but I am just getting around to photographing it now (and finally wearing it a bunch), so I thought I'd share it.  It is honestly one of my favorite dresses ever (from Target, of course!).  If I'm not coaching that day, I am always wearing a dress to work, and this is one of my favorite maxis because it's so lightweight.  I paired it with one of my new favorite necklaces I bought at a Love Obsessed trunk show at Jessica's house earlier this summer. 




Wednesday, July 29, 2015

#MegandMikeTaylor: Vendor Index

Today is my second to last Wedding Wednesday post.  Seriously, how did that happen and how have we been married for over 10 months already?? I do have an exciting announcement to share: beginning on August 12th, Nikki from Make.Up.HER will be taking my place and co-hosting Wedding Wednesday with Macy.  Macy and I really enjoyed how one of us was sharing the planning process while the other was sharing wedding recaps.  As Macy transitions into her recaps, I am so excited to see Nikki's whole preparation process!  I hope you will continue to follow along with them, and you know I will be back for anniversaries and to share other weddings. 
Today, I will be sharing a full list of our vendors so I can give credit where credit is due AND so if you happen to be in New England, you can take advantage of some of these amazing people.
Ceremony Venue: St. Joseph Chapel, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
Reception Venue and Catering: Wedgewood Pines Country Club, Stow, MA
Photographer: Carrie Draghi Photography, Glastonbury, CT
Videographer: Kevin Lee Studios, Somers, CT
Hair and Makeup Artists: Blushing Brides, Hudson, MA
Florist: Frugal Flower, Hudson, MA
Cake Baker: The Icing on the Cake, Newton, MA
DJ and Lighting: C-Zone Entertainment, Natick, MA
Limos: Executive Limos, Springfield, MA
Hotel: Embassy Suites, Marlborough, MA
Rings: His- Tacori Sculpted Crescent; Hers- Tacori Ribbon (engagement) & Tacori Sculpted Crescent (wedding band) 
My Dress: Courtney by Maggie Sottero
Dress and Veil Shop: East-West Bridal, Manchester, CT
My Jewelry: Necklace and Earrings- Sea Magic Cultured Pearls; Tacori Bangle in pink amethyst; borrowed and personal bracelets
My Shoes: Nina Evelixa in Grape
My Nails: Mamas and Divas Nail Lounge, Westborough, MA
Mike's Tux: Calvin Klein from Men's Wearhouse with tie and vest in Regency
Bridesmaid Dresses: David's Bridal Long Strapless Chiffon in Oasis
Flower Girl Dress: David's Bridal Tea-Length Organza in White with Satin Sash in Oasis
Mother of the Bride Dress: Jade Couture K158011 in Grape
Groomsmen Tuxes: Same as groom but with Oasis pieces
Bridesmaid Gifts: Robes, Hangers, and Jewelry
Groomsmen Gifts: Socks, Lighters, and Cuff links
All Paper Goods: Invitations, Ceremony Programs, Place Cards, Dinner Menus - Meadow by Minted with calligraphy by me
Cocktail Hour Accents: Monogrammed napkins, striped straws, and personalized Kisses from The Knot Shop; Personalized Golf Tees from Par Golf; Candy dishes from Dollar Tree
Toasting Flutes: Silver Parisian Romance Glass Set
Cake-Cutting Set: Silver Parisian Romance Cake Set
Favors: Stemless Wine Glasses filled with personalized M&Ms (purple, teal, and platinum)
Kids' Favors: Personalized coloring books from Simply Sherlock with Golf Wedding Crayons
Thank You Cards: template from Shutterfly and prop from Wedding Banner Love

Now, it's your turn - share your own engagement/ wedding/ honeymoon/ anniversary post with me and Macy below.  Please link back to one of our pages so that others can find us and join in the Wedding Wednesday fun!

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Cooperstown Weekend

Last weekend was our annual pilgrimage to New York for the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction: #27 for me, #33 for my parents, and #5 for Mike. I've always been more of a baseball history than baseball-watching fan, but it's so cool to start seeing people get inducted who played in the real prime of my baseball-watching days in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Craig Biggio were this year's inductees, and the biggest class inducted by the baseball writers since 1955. I can vividly remember owning all for of their baseball cards and thinking about how old I'd be when they got inducted (ha!).  As always, it was a terrific weekend, filled with adventures in the museum to see what's been added since the previous year, trips to the cider mill and the lake, and a sun-filled induction ceremony. I swear, it can be 70 and breezy all weekend, but as soon as 1:30 rolls around on Sunday, you know it's going to be sweltering. New this year, we visited Cooperstown's own distillery, and we were super very impressed with the liquors they're making! Here are a few of my favorite photos from the weekend:

To imagine more of what we did, you can probably just look back at all of my past years' blog posts with the Cooperstown label since we tend to be creatures of habit...

Monday, July 27, 2015

Mid-Summer Bucket List Check In

Right now, I am traveling back to Charleston from the Baseball Hall of Fame Induction in New York.  This was my 27th straight induction and no, I haven't missed one in my life.  Taking the place of a weekend recap (that I'll be sharing tomorrow), I thought I'd check in with my Summer 2015 Bucket List to see how I'm doing so far:

- Try 5 new Charleston restaurants: Mellow Mushroom, Smashburger (a little bit of a cheat haha), California Dreaming, and Santi's so far
- Parasail: We have a gift certificate, we just need to do it!
- Start an herb garden: Trying to figure out what herbs my weirdo cats can gnaw on and not get sick - haha!
- Cook dinners and s'mores on the charcoal grill: Check! We did this when my girl was in town a couple weeks ago.
- Jet-ski: Another thing we have a gift card for - just need to book it :)
- Run 10 miles each week: LOL yeah, no. BUT I did sign up for the Princess Half weekend, so I will be getting my booty in gear soon.
- Visit a new museum in Charleston: Any suggestions?
- Play golf at least twice a week: We're at about once a week right now, but I did play in two tournaments, which I haven't done in a couple years.
- Run at least 1 race: Suggestions needed here, too.
- Play tennis: Check! Here's something we've done super well on; we're playing at least once a week.
- Pick fresh fruit: Check!
- Play lots of cards: Half-check. Uno was a standard while our guest was here, and I think cribbage will be in the rotation soon!
- Bike ride: Yeah, no. Still haven't even taken the bikes off the porch yet...
- Visit every brewery in Charleston: Slacking big time here. 
- Explore Edisto Island: We want to go to Erika's spot Botany Bay sometime this summer. 
- Learn about living on a boat: We're gonna try an Air bnb on a boat for a weekend later in the summer. 

Soooo, I guess I have a lot of work to do.  But at least we still have a couple months left!

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Charleston Bloggers Visit Finicky Filly

A week ago, I attended another fantastic Charleston Blogger Society event, this time at Finicky Filly
They're a wonderful women's wear shop, owned by a mother-daughter team, located right in downtown Charleston.  I had so much fun walking around and looking at the vast array of styles and brands they carry!  Also at the event were Pure Fluff Co, a natural and organic cotton candy company, and September Oaks Vineyards, a family-owned winery right here in South Carolina.
So, while I sipped Family Reserve White and enjoyed some delicious strawberry cotton candy, Director of Digital & Social Media (and fellow blogger) Lanie shared all about Finicky's (and their sister store Hanger to Home's) signature personal shopping experiences: Brown Box Club and Hanger to Home.  You might have heard about Stitchfix before?  Well, these two delivery services are like that, but even better.  Instead of individual pieces, you get 4 complete outfits with Brown Box Club and 5 or 6 complete outfits with Hanger to Home, all put together by their amazing stylists.
Interested in signing up?  The process is really easy, and the $18 styling fee for the first box is always waived!  That means, the first time around, you just keep what you want and nothing else.  You start with their style questionnaire (Brown Box Club or Hanger to Home) to help your personal stylist get to know you, then you'll receive hand-picked items delivered right to your door!
Want to shop at Finicky Filly or Haute Hanger but more into choosing your own style and can't make it to Charleston?  I'd definitely suggest the House Account app!  It's truly an interactive shopping experience that allows you to connect directly with your favorite boutiques both over the telephone and instant chat message feature.  All four shopping avenues have their own House Account feeds, so head to their respective websites or Facebook pages (Finicky FillyHaute HangerBrown Box Club, and Hanger to Home) to learn more and start shopping.
I cannot even tell you how much I enjoyed shopping at Finicky Filly and hanging out with some amazing ladies!

Thank you to Gillian Ellis of Coastal Bride for all of the fantastic photos!

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Wedding Wednesday: The After Party

Well, the dancing was done and we were married, but it was only 7:30 the party was far from over!  We chose to have a noon wedding for a lot of reasons: I'm not good at waiting around for things, the groomsmen didn't have enough time to get drunk before the ceremony (only half kidding), I love natural light and think daytime weddings have the best photos, and almost everyone was coming from 1-2 hours away, so it meant that they could make it a day trip (if they wanted) and not be forced to pay for a hotel room or leave early.  Well, that might have been my plan, but we were thrilled to see that not many people did that.  This brings me to our after party!

Since the wedding took place an hour and a half from Mike's and my hometown (think of it like a triangle), we decided to stay in a hotel the night before to get ready there as well as the night after the wedding before we left for our mini-moon the next day.  For me, there were two really important things in finding that hotel: 1. It needed to be big enough so that we could block tons of rooms and everyone attending could stay at the same place (I hate weddings where people are all spread out!), and 2. There needed to be a big bar area for the after party.  Well, Embassy Suites had both of those, and over 30 rooms were booked by our guests.  By the time we got back from the reception, it was about 8:00, but obviously no one was ready to call it a night yet.  We basically took over the hotel bar with 50-60 of our guests and got to spend quality time with so many of the people who had traveled to be at our wedding.  It was fantastic!  

Here's our "we did it" photo and our beautiful cake topper all packed up to freeze for our first anniversary... can't wait to see what flavor it is!


The hotel staff left us champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries - my favorite!


All of my college friends!

I think it was after that Holy Cross photo above, but at some point, my phone disappeared and (because everyone I possibly knew was there) I never realized it.  The following chaos ensued...
The next morning, I got my phone back and we hosted a small brunch in one of the conference rooms at the hotel.  The hotel staff had even stored a bunch of our flowers for us and decorated the room with them - how nice is that?  We loved getting to see everyone one last time and say goodbye and thank you to everyone.  So, moral of the story: have an early wedding.

Now, it's your turn - share your own engagement/ wedding/ honeymoon/ anniversary post with me and Macy below.  Please link back to one of our pages so that others can find us and join in the Wedding Wednesday fun!

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Lemon Blueberry Crunch Cupcakes

Last weekend, Mike and I went blueberry picking.  We found this adorable blueberry farm about 20 minutes from our house where blueberries were only $1.80 per pound and the owners flat-out told us that we "couldn't eat them out of business, so taste and try the berries as much as you want."  Don't have to tell me twice!  We picked about 4 pounds of berries (only about 3 of which went into my bucket (Anyone remember Blueberries for Sal?  That's pretty much how I felt...).  
Well, Mike doesn't like blueberries (weird, right?), so besides eating them with every meal, I decided to come up with something to bake with them.  I broke out my favorite cupcake cookbook and found these Lemon Blueberry Crunch Cupcakes.  No, I did not create this recipe, but I thought it was fantastic enough to share.  
Lemon Blueberry Crunch Cupcakes
Taken from Cupcakes by Shelly Kaldunski

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 sugar, plus 2 tbsp for topping
4 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest
3/4 sour cream
1 1/4 cups fresh blueberries

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line muffin pan with paper or foil liners.
2. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. In another bowl, with an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat the 3/4 cup sugar and butter together until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes).  Then, add in the egg, lemon extract, and zest, and beat on medium speed until combined.
4. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and the sour cream, beating until just combined.
5. Fill the muffin pan 3/4 full.
6. Arrange blueberries in a single layer on top of the batter and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tbsp sugar.
7.  Bake for 18-20 minutes (until the blueberries burst and a toothpick inserted into the middle of the toothpick comes out clean).

For the icing: I tried to make Shelley's egg white buttercream and failed miserably.  Honestly, this cupcake doesn't need a whole topping of frosting anyway, but her buttercream (with 1 teaspoon of lemon extract added) did turn into a nice icing.  Anyone have a fantastic not-too-sweet buttercream recipe?  This is one thing missing from my recipe cards.
 The recipe only made about 12 cupcakes (and yes, I left 2 without the blueberries for Mike), but even he said the blueberry ones were delicious).  I highly suggest this recipe!

Linking up for all of my favorite Tuesday food link-ups (Two Cup TuesdayTry A New Recipe TuesdayDelicious Dish Tuesday, and Tasty Tuesdays)!

Monday, July 20, 2015

Weekending

Hope everyone had a great weekend!  We had a pretty busy one with kickball finals, blueberry picking, outlet shopping, golf, saw Trainwreck (Amy Schumer is the woman), tennis, baking, and lots of British Open-watching.  Pretty excited for the Monday finish today!

Important PSA of the week, don't forget: Free Tea Day at McAlister's is this Thursday. Be there!

Linking up for: Weekend Recap, Weekending, and Monday Madness!

Friday, July 17, 2015

Recently...

Happy Friday, everyone!  How has another week flown by?  It's been another couple of weeks since I've posted anything about life in Charleston (how does this keep happening??), so here's a peek before the weekend...
Listening to: Recently by Dave Matthews Band.  Whenever I write these posts, I always start humming this song to myself.

Anticipating: a weekend of nothing who knows what!  The British Open is on, there's golf to be played, and tonight we're headed to the Riverdogs Baseball stadium, "The Joe," to watch the finals of the spring kickball season!

Missing: My girl.  Like I said in my last "currently" post, I had a little 12 year old visitor in town a week ago for girls golf camp.  It was so much fun to get to do "kid" things!  We saw Inside Out, went to the splash park, and toured Magnolia Gardens and the petting zoo.

Eating: Anything and everything.  While our visitor was here, we ate Ben and Jerry's twice (you need to try The Tonight Dough, if you haven't), finally tried the barbecue chicken nachos Mallory raves about at California Dreaming (the views of downtown are great, too!), and made tons of s'mores.

Lusting after: Ice Berry Polka Jamberry wraps!  I'm so excited to welcome Amanda to my sidebar!!  I hope y'all will check out some of the new Jamberry designs.  They now make tons of college wraps and even some for the UConn Huskies (1 and 2).

Reading: Gone Girl.  One of my colleagues let me borrow it, and I am so excited to finally jump on this bandwagon and see the movie after I read it!

Training for: the Glass Slipper Challenge!  This week, I signed up for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon and Mike and I signed up for the Enchanted 10k.  My two races together will be a total of 19.3 for the Glass Slipper Challenge medal.  I've got 6 months to train... I got this?

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Wedding Wednesday: Dancing The Night Away

After we cut the cake and did the family dances, it was time for the fun: dancing!  We had a fantastic DJ who really catered our experience to our guests.  We loved the combination of new music and oldies to keep people of every age on the dance floor.  We only chose a few songs like "Wannabe" for my bouquet toss and "Here, There, and Everywhere" for our last slow song of the night, followed by "Save The Last Dance For Me" for our closing song.  I was so impressed with how many people stayed for the whole night of dancing, and how almost everyone made an appearance on the dance floor.  
Christopher (our flower girl/goddaughter's big brother) stole the show and is such a little dancer!

Maybe all of the dancing had to do with making sure the open bar stayed open all night...

My mom dancing with my best high school friend, Jeff

Mike's cousin caught the bouquet!

Such a fun night!
After all of the dancing, it was time to head back to the hotel.  I could not believe how quickly our wedding day flew by, but we were so happy to have almost everyone staying at the same hotel, so the party wasn't over yet.  We took over the hotel bar, and I'll be back with a few photos from that as I wrap up my time with Wedding Wednesday!

Now, it's your turn - share your own engagement/ wedding/ honeymoon/ anniversary post with me and Macy below.  Please link back to one of our pages so that others can find us and join in the Wedding Wednesday fun!

Also, since my wonderful co-host, Macy, is enjoying her honeymoon, I'm also guest posting over there with a fun DIY favor perfect for an engagement party, shower, or bachelorette.  You can check it out by clicking here!



 
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