BLUEBERRIES!

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Saturday morning, Ann Claire, her mom and I set out on an early morning adventure to Baird Mountain Blueberry Farm, in between Shelbyville and Lynchburg, TN. We met my mom, aunts and grandmother for a morning of picking the best tasting blueberries I have ever had! Literally, we just picked them off the bushes and ate them. Amazing!

Something about the simplicity of what we were doing, the quietness of the country side and being around my friends and family made it one of my most favorite memories of the summer.

We came away with a combined total of over 60 pounds of blueberries. At $2/pound, it was way cheaper than what you would pay in a grocery store.

I've used about 1/3 of my berries in a pie, coffee cake, pancakes and just eating them by the handful. The rest I've frozen - they keep for up to a year.

I am often easily amused, but it seriously was so fun. You still have a few more weeks left in blueberry season - it is very much worth the hour and a half drive to Baird's!

P.S. One of my friends was making fun of me for not only paying to do manual labor, but enjoying it. Ironically enough, Dateline NBC had a special the very next night about children/migrant workers picking blueberries in Michigan.

pinchin pennies

Taken by my dear friend's fiance at thier local Kroger. Those Plus Cards sure do come in handy.

love at first sight

My high school friend Meredith passed along this blog to me.

After the first entry, I was hooked. Check it out!

http://catalogliving.tumblr.com/

Indian giver...but in reverse

Back in April when Ann Claire & I took a mother/daughter trip to Boston, we spent an entire day in the quaint little down of Nantucket. In one of the shops strewn along the cobblestone streets, I spotted a vintage necklace I fell in love with.

I love all things vintage...some of my favorite accessories have been found at vintage stores and flea markets. I also aspire to collect every type of vintage Pyrex dishes I can find.

O.k., I'm getting off course...

I spotted this long, gold mesh necklace at a little boutique. While in the store, I probably went back to it three or four times. I would pick it up, try it on, move on to something else and then go back and try it on again. It was such a one-of-a-kind piece that I knew I wouldn't find again. I ultimately decided I didn't want to spend the money on it, but I literally almost went back at the end of the day to get the necklace. Had we not had to catch a ferry back to our bus, I would have.

But I would have been sorely disappointed. Because it would have been gone.

Fast-forward to tonight. I met up with my mom, and she said she had my birthday gift. I actually forgot that my birthday is about 6 weeks away; so I wasn't even expecting a gift. It wasn't unusual for her to give me my gift early - in fact, I do the same thing.

I opened the bag and there it was! The necklace I had obsessed over three months early...the one I had left behind and all but forgotten about it. And now it had a place in my jewelry box, thanks to my sweet mom. It has a lot more significance than had I just bought the necklace myself.

You are probably wondering where the title "Indian giver...but in reverse" came from. Well, that is because my mom let me know that she has, in fact, worn the necklace five or six times...to work, parties, church, etc. She said the reason she gave it to me early is because she was afraid if she wore it one more time, she'd either loose it or just never want to give it to me.

My mom - a bit off her rocker, but a keeper!