Weekend Highlights.

This weekend was jam packed with activities and lots of celebrating! I'm looking forward to a low key holiday weekend coming up and then relaxing on our babymoon the following weekend! 

-I co-hosted a shower for one of my longest friends, Caroline! It was a woodlands themed shower, which goes along with Baby Ben's nursery. I'll do a separate post on it, but it all turned out really cute! 

-We celebrated Cameron's birthday with his parents with dinner at Indaco followed by cocktails (and mocktails) at 492. 

Appetizer: Burrata with shaved asparagus, pickled bluberries, and asparagus aioli

Recommend?: Yes! 

My Entree: Tonnarelli with lump crab meat, saffron, mint, breadcrumbs and paremesan

Recommend?: No. While the crab meat itself was tasty, there was no real flavor to this dish. 

Cameron's Entree: Garganelli with braised lamb, ricotta, herbs, and breadcrumbs

Recommend?: YES! I had major food envy with Cameron's dinner. It was much more flavorful that mine. 

Dessert: Espresso tart with chocolate ganache, biscotti, and espresso cream

Recommend?: Yes, how could you go wrong??

-Gus announced on his Instagram page that he was going to be a big brother x2!

That's a 3D pic of the babes!

-Cameron painted the nursery (yay!!!) while I did super fun stuff like laundry, de-cluttering, etc. 

-We celebrated June birthdays for my family, which are my sister, Cameron, my grandaddy, and my mom! My mom made the most amazing Kahlua cake with white russian icing! Reminded me of one of the layers of our wedding cake! 

Hope you all had a great weekend! Another Twin Tuesday post coming tomorrow! 

Prayers for Charleston.

On the day where I usually talk about the Sofa Super Store fire and the Charleston 9, last night's tragic events in our Holy City gave the phrase "Charleston 9" a whole new meaning. I hate that this happened, but I especially hate that this happened in my beautiful city. No doubt justice will be served, and served swiftly. Please pray for Charleston, the victims, and the victims' families. 

Read more here. 

Previous Charleston 9 posts on my blog can be found here.

West Elm is coming to Charleston!

Exciting news, Charlestonians! West Elm is coming to King Street and should be opening up by late Summer! 

West Elm is definitely one of my favorite places to shop online for home decor and gifts, and I was super bummed when they announced that they were launching a gift registry after we had gotten married. 

If West Elm wanted to give me an unlimited amount of gift cards, here are just a few things I would take home with me. 

shelf with drawers

lanterns

rug

coverlet

mirror

pillow

Charleston Culinary Tour - Upper King Street.

It's no secret that I love food. And with a new restaurant popping up in Charleston what seems like every week, it's hard to keep up with all of them! So when I was asked if I wanted to participate in a Charleston Culinary Tour in exchange for a review on my blog, I jumped at the opportunity. 

There are 5 different possible tours one can take - Upper King Street (which is the one I chose), Downtown, Chefs' Kitchen, Mixology, and Chef's Showcase at the Farmer's Market. They also offer combination packages where you can add on a walking tour of Charleston or a carriage ride. 

I took Cameron as my plus one (because he likes to eat, too) and we were joined on our two by two couples, a family of 3, and a group of girls who played volleyball together in college. Our tour guide, Charlie, was very personable and knowledgeable, and I liked the fact that she had everyone go around and say where they were from at the beginning of the tour. 

Our first stop on the tour was HoM, which was also the meeting place for everyone. We were served a turkey burger, which had spinach and leeks, as well as brie, green goddess dressing, and green apples. It didn't really do it for me, but Cameron liked it. We also had calimari, but it was not your standard calimari with the marinara sauce. This version came with a sundried tomato and goat cheese sauce. They were pretty good. The winner of this stop was the Dixie Flatbread, which had pimento cheese, pork confit, carmelized onions, and bacon maple arugula. YUM. 

Second stop was a few doors down at Prohibition. Not only was the food amazing, but the atmosphere was definitely my favorite. I've only been to Prohibition once before at night for drinks. We were served shrimp & grits and the duck quesadilla. We also ordered two of their cocktails, but those are not included in the tour. Seen in the picture is the "Itty Bitty," which according to our tour guide, is voted on the of top drinks in Charleston. The duck quesadilla was easily one of my favorites on the tour. This is definitely a restaurant I want to go back to to try more of their food. 

Next we made our way to Rue de Jean, which we have been to a handful of times before. It's a tried and true place and if nothing else, they win the award for best smelling restaurant. We were served mussels, ratatouille, french fries, and warm crusty bread to dip in the leftover broth of the mussels (obviously the best part).  Looking at the menu just reminded me that I need to make truffled potato soup ASAP. 

We ended the tour with gelato at Paolo's. I chose the chocolate flavor, but wish I had chosen Nutella because it was much creamier. I never realized until we were in Paolo's that gelato has 1/3 of the fat that regular ice cream does. Good excuse to eat more gelato, right?

All in all we really enjoyed the tour and I am very interested in trying some of the other ones. If I could offer any constructive criticism it would be to change their menu offerings up a little bit. We were served pretty much the exact same things that Shelby was served on her tour the weekend before and same goes for Amy on her tour a few weeks ago. Looking at their posts, Prohibition seems to be the only placed that changed up their offerings. Even a girl on the tour with us who had participated in the same tour a year ago said she was served the same thing on her previous tour. That would be my only minor complaint!

Thanks again to Charleston Culinary Tours for providing us this opportunity! Can't wait to try another one!

Pretty Perfect Weekend.

This weekend had all of the key ingredients for the perfect weekend!

Dancing, friend time, football, boating, & family time.

Here's how it went down..

Friday night was supposed to be a low key night of just eating some Mexican food with Emily and David. On the way to the Mexican restaurant, I checked Facebook and saw that our wedding band was playing downtown that night! After a little convincing, we ate our food and were on our way downtown! Met up with some other friends who were already down there and had a blast!! Got me even more excited for our wedding!

Saturday we got off to a slow start thanks to Friday night. I went over to Emily's to take pics of her, her husband and their doggies so she could have a pic for their Christmas cards! I should definitely look into becoming a photographer...haha, not really. But it was fun! After that, I picked up lunch and headed back to the house where we lounged on the couch and watched the Gamecocks beat Arkansas! (Sorry, Hannah. :) ) We went to Cameron's parents house to watch the Clemson game and ate dinner over there, as well. I was asleep by 9pm on a Saturday night. Officially old. 

Sunday I made a trip to Trader Joe's (YUM), worked on invitations, and then went for a boat ride! It was SUCH a nice day yesterday! Looking at the pictures below, you might see a stripper shoe hanging from an outrigger. Don't worry, they were not on our boat. I'd like to hear that story though.

And after the boat ride, my parents came over for a few adult beverages since they were in the area. Always love hanging out with them. :)

Hope everyone has a great week!

Friday Loves.

Happy Friday!!

I am so glad the weekend is just 8 hours away! Well, technically my weekend will start at 10:30pm tonight since I have an event, but I don't have an event tomorrow or Sunday which makes me VERY happy! 

Tomorrow morning I'm going to a baby shower for Cameron's cousin's wife then heading to the fair with my favorite group of girls!

Here are some of the things that have made me happy this week...

 

-These beauties (in taupe) are being delivered to me today. I hope I can pull them off!

source

-First fire of the Fall/Winter 2013 season! Not much is better than sitting by the fire with a glass of wine, snuggled up to your sweetie, watching tv (or reading a book - but that's not me).

-Beautiful sunsets on the way to work.

-Will Hoge being nominated for the Song of the Year Award on the CMA's for writing the song "Even if it Breaks Your Heart." He didn't win, but the fact that he was nominated is awesome!! Also just found out that Lady Antebellum is recording one of his songs and it may be on their next album! So exciting!!!

-This sweet picture of Marcus Lattimore. He seems to be in good spirits despite his injury and that makes me so happy for him! :)

What are yall getting into this weekend??

Thanks (again), y'all!

So proud to call Charleston my hometown and the place I live today. 

Have a great weekend, y'all!

My Charleston Wedding Venue Picks - Part 1 of 2

No, I am not engaged, nor will I be anytime soon, but I work in the wedding / event industry so my mind is constantly filled with wedding-related things and I spend my days scouring over people blogs and wedding blogs. So I just decided I wanted to put all of my favorite Charleston wedding venues into a post! Hope yall enjoy!

First and foremost, my all-time favorite venue - Lowndes Grove

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Very close second - Legare Waring House

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The Rice Mill

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I'on Creek Club

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 William Aiken House

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To be continued...