A Bridal Shower

A couple Saturdays ago, I headed to downtown Petersburg and joined some of the girls from work to celebrate and have tea in honor of our friend/former coworker Donna. We threw her a surprise bridal shower there.


It was really cute-the tea place we went to was the Blue Willow Tea Room, which is in downtown Petersburg.











Everybody there split a full afternoon tea service with another person. Even though the food was small, we were all full because there was a lot of it! We had tea, scones, devonshire cream, little appetizer type things, tea sandwiches, soup, and dessert. There was so much..and we even had cake for the bride while she opened all her gifts up.



It was a lot of fun and I know that Donna really enjoyed it. We all wish her the best and are really excited for her.


I also took some photos of some of the signs on the buildings downtown. I love old signs!

Wild berries

My parents have wild berries growing along their driveway.

My nephews took me down to the spot and showed me on Sunday.











The boys and my dad have been eating them-my dad said the blackberries are safe to eat (not sure about the red ones?).

I picked a bunch of blackberries..

Homemade dishwasher detergent

An update on my homemade dishwasher detergent:

We have been using it for several weeks now and it is great. It's so simple to make and use. And cheap!!

Mix equal parts of borax (completely safe) with baking soda. I filled a quart size paint can with my detergent and used my dymo labeler to label the can. I put a little scoop inside the can to make for easy dispensing.




We use white distilled vinegar as a rinsing agent, and we just fill both detergent compartments in our dishwasher with the homemade detergent. It works great. But, if you're not a pre-rinser, then don't bother using this (we always pre-rinse). Also, just put dishes in the dishwasher. No pots and pans (we always wash those by hand, it keeps them better looking after many many uses). I am not sure how those would wash with this type of detergent in a dishwasher. But anyway-so far so good!

And as for cleaning our kitchen surfaces-Dr. Bronner's liquid castille soap works like a charm and just one bottle of the stuff goes a very very very long way.

Lemon Sugar Hand Scrub

Earlier this year for mother's day, I made my mom and my mother-in-law some Lemon Sugar Hand Scrub. It was so easy to make! I got the idea from this blog: Under the table & dreaming
Thanks Stephanie Lynn!!


You will need:
2.5 cups of sugar
1 cup of extra virgin olive oil
4 tbs fresh lemon juice


Sugar.




Take a big bowl and add your sugar.



Then add your olive oil. And lemon juice.






And then mix it all up until it's just the right consistency (you want it to be a scrub). Pour it into jars, or whatever you are packaging it in. I used little mason jars. There was only a little bit leftover, and I used it on my hands to test it out. It made my hands so soft and smooth!

I included a little scoop with each jar (I have a bunch of these scoops left over from our wedding candy bar/buffet you can see here and here).



You could double or triple the batch if you want to make a lot-this is perfect in smaller jars given as party favors. Would be really cute as a bridal shower favor, or even a baby shower favor in some tiny little jars like these half pint jars from wineonthekeyboard.com:

You could put a name/label/instructions on a circle that covers the lid.

A friend of mine tried the lemon scrub herself and her fiance tried it on his feet-they loved it. So it's not just a hand scrub..it works great on feet too!


Last time I was at my sister Bonnie's house, we made some Vanilla Brown Sugar Hand Scrub. The recipe for that is also on the same blog here. It was great and felt like sand. I actually liked it better than the lemon scrub.

The ingredients for the vanilla brown sugar scrub are:

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup sugar
1 cup sunflower oil (we used evoo)
1 tbs pure vanilla extract.

We used the EVOO and it worked out fine for us. Great gift/favor ideas!

Cupcake update

Last year I had a Richmond Cupcake Taste Test. I determined back then that Pearl's was my favorite. Guess what? It still is today. Pearl's Cupcake Shoppe!




Not just because Pearl's cupcakes look so great, but they taste great too. I would recommend them to anyone in the Richmond area looking for a specialty cupcake shop.

Daniel's dream come true

The weekend we were coming back from Roanoke, we drove through downtown Charlottesville to try and find some little place for dinner. We ended up passing an old theater and Daniel saw a poster in the corner of his eye for something familiar..so he got out of the car and took a photo:




This past Saturday evening we drove out to C-ville just for this special screening. Of course, it was for Jaws. Why else would we drive for 45 minutes just to see a movie? Especially since it's a movie we've seen a hundred times over.



Daniel has always wanted to see Jaws on the big screen. Jaws was also the first movie my parents saw on a date back in the beginning of their relationship, 36 years ago this summer.




We went to The Paramount theater to see the 7pm showing.



We picked up our tickets at will call (we ordered online the day before).



Inside the theater lobby was free food and beer, so that was pretty cool. The theater itself was so gorgeous inside and very very clean. I didn't take any photos once we were inside the place but the outside was pretty cool too. Next time we are out that way and have time, we are definitely going to take a longer stroll through the market place area where the theater is. (When we drove by the theater the weekend before, we were on the side of the street where the BACK of the building is, and they had a small poster advertising it. We notice Jaws that much wherever we go. The front entrance is in a market/shopping area that is pedestrian access only..pretty cool!)



The best part about the whole evening was my husband had a huge grin on his face during the entire showing of the movie. Love!

Did I mention

Did I mention a couple months back I rearranged our bedroom?

I moved the bed over to the side of the room so the window sort of functions as a head board of sorts. The wedding quilt looks a lot better to me on its very own wall.





The marble side table in the corner was actually my grandma's, and it holds books and crosswords and such. Each corner of the room on that side has a bundle of those reeds.





I got this cool platter/tray from Ikea back in early Spring and it's perfect for our dresser.




I use this vintage pyrex dish to give spare items a temporary home. I love the dish, and it's divided so it's like 2 containers in 1.





My paintchip art is hanging on the wall above the dresser. It gives some extra color to the room.






This bookcase in the corner houses a lot of our wedding stuff. I like this stuff here for now even though it is pretty cluttered. I am thinking of putting shelves up some how......that's another project for another time.




The other wall/window inherited these baskets. They hold random things we don't want on display. The big basket on top holds other blankets and pillows when we don't want to use them.




The room is much more functional now than it was before. There's no walking all around the bed to get to the other window on the side, since it is now basically the "headboard" for the bed. Much more space, too. I think when we originally moved in I wanted the bed on this wall, but for some reason we put it on the other wall. It just works so much better this way.