Monday, September 14, 2009

Celebrating the South!

Miss Janice is hosting a wonderful Southern Lady Celebration Giveaway. The giveaway includes a package of signed and personalized southern books by fabulous Southern Ladies such as Sister Schubert and Laurie Smith! I love Laurie! She's too cute for words and I just love her decorating style. I've been a big fan since her early days on Trading Spaces. Y'all go over and visit Miss Janice's post here if you're interested in attending the Southern Lady Celebration (wish I could!) or to enter the giveaway!

In honor of Celebrating the Southern Lady, I thought that I'd share a list of things that define the South for me. But, this list is just a small start. It's really the overall culture that defines the South for me.

1. Sweet Tea: This is just a given. As I mentioned before, I don't consider Florida to be the real South. One of the reasons why is because some restaurants don't have real freshly brewed and sweetened iced tea. They either try to serve that instant crap (I can tell the difference!) or they offer that yucky raspberry iced tea (what??).

2. Moon Pies: This needs no explanation. If you haven't had one, you must. Eat it with an RC Cola if you want the full experience.

3. Southern Gentlemen: There's nothing like a man who was raised right by his Mama! Extra points for those Gents who wear seersucker and bowties - oh, and Lilly too!

4. Southern Drawls - Southern Gentleman + Southern Drawl = Swoon! I love to hear a Southern Drawl in Florida. It just reminds me of home.

5. People With Manners: Really, I don't think that people are taught manners anymore. My old boss was actually offended when I let a "Yes M'am" slip out. She would promptly inform me how long and hard she worked to get where she was and that she wasn't some old lady so don't call her M'am because it's demeaning. Really? Does anyone else feel like feminism has killed being feminine? That's a post for another time.

6. Traditional Family Values: You can disagree if you like, but I feel like this Country has long forgot about family values and our children are suffering because of it.

7. Sun Drop: I want some now please. But, that will have to wait until the baby gets here. Dang you pregnancy induced hypertension!

8. ACC Basketball and Football Season: I'm an ACC girl. GO WOLFPACK! (I attended NC State for my undergraduate degree) Girls dressing up in school colors, boys wearing a shirt and tie, cheering on the Wolfpack and jeering those Tar Heels, Deacons, and Dookies! :)

9. Southern Hospitality: This goes back to the Southern Culture that I love and miss so much. Neighbors bring over baked goods when they see someone new has moved onto the street. Women organize enough food to last a couple of weeks when a loved one has passed or a new baby is born. Gentlemen tip their hats to ladies and hold the door open. People smile and wave at strangers because there are no strangers in the South. It's about honest to goodness morals, values, and kindness.

10. A True Love for God, Family, Freedom, and Country.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to add to my list!

Saturday, September 12, 2009

PAR-TEY On A Saturday Night!

Yeah...some of you are out on dates, hanging out with friends, or wining and dining tonight. Whatever. I organized my kitchen pantry! Now, that's a party let me tell you!

We've been living here about two weeks now and I just couldn't take the chaos in my pantry any longer. I couldn't see what we had to eat! When we were moving in and brought our food over to the new house, it was literally about 9pm and my Husband was rushing me to just throw everything into the pantry so we could drive the 1.5 hours back to the old house and get some sleep before the movers showed up in the morning. This is the result...



This picutre is after I asked my sweet Husband to move all of the left over floor and wall tiles that were being stored in the pantry to the garage. There were also several leftover bags of grout mix hanging out on the pantry floor. Apparently the previous occupants never bothered to move it. That floor was gross y'all! But, it's all better now!

After about 45 minutes of scrubbing the floor and organizing our food, I have a neat pantry where I can actually see what I have! Now I won't keep buying the same thing at the grocery store. :)

Friday, September 11, 2009

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program...

So our first house guest in the new place flew in on Wednesday morning, got some crappy news from work that night and had to turn around and fly back home on Thursday afternoon. We're all very disappointed because we had a lot of fun planned through the weekend. Oh well.

The good news is that I got a lot of rest yesterday and I'm feeling more productive today. As soon as little bit wakes up from her nap we're going to the mall to find some more clothes to cover my ever expanding belly. That should be fun!

Then we're coming home to get busy on the housework and unpacking again. I've got a serious goodwill pile going and it's growing everyday. DH and I keep wondering how we ended up with so much crap?! I decided that the problem is that this is the 4th place that we lived in 7 years of marriage. Each time we moved, we moved into a bigger place so we had room to just stuff the extra junk somewhere so we could deal with it later. Well, obviously we never dealt with it - out of sight, out of mind! Now, I'm paying for it! But, it feels good to get rid of clutter. So refreshing! I'm just ready to get all of this mess out of the way so I can finish the fun stuff - decorating!

Alrighty, have a lovely day friends!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I'm Back Online - Sort of...

Hey Y'all! Well, we survived the move and we're now living in our new house in Naples. We already have an offer on our old house but I'm not getting excited until closing. You never know what will happen in this crazy Florida real estate market.

The movers were great and got everything loaded on the truck, moved, and unloaded in 6 hours! I think that's pretty good considering that we moved out of a 4 bedroom house. I'm currently working on de-cluttering because we only have 3 bedrooms now even though the new house is basically the same size. I'm short a closet too. But, this move has just made me realize how much crap we have that we just stuffed into the extra bedroom or closets. So, I'm going back to Flylady principles and if I haven't used it in a year, it's not a sentimental object, or especially if I didn't even remember we had it - it's out the door!

So, there's still lots of unpacking to do but I'm mostly done with the kitchen. My goal is to finish a room per day so that we can get back to some form of normalcy by next week. Oh, and we have our first house guest coming next Thursday! So, I've got to get busy!

I hope that y'all are doing well and enjoying the rest of your summer. Only about 1.5 months left before the summer heat and humidity leave and we're left with gorgeous 75 degree non-humid sunny days. I can't wait! I'm tired of staying indoors because I just can't handle this heat being pregnant. I'm almost 6 months pregnant now so I tend to swell up if I get too hot.

Ok, baby girl is sleeping and I'm going to sneak in a well deserved ice cream break. Then back to more unpacking. I can't wait for things to settle down so that I can get back to reading all of your blogs. Until then...take care!