Savannah, GA (Savanniversary)

To celebrate our anniversary of being married for 5 years (!) we decided to go on a fun trip to Savannah, GA. We drove down Friday afternoon and got to Savannah just in time for our anniversary dinner at The Olde Pink House restaurant. The restaurant is in an awesome historic home.



We were sat in this small dark room with just a few other tables, but it made for a very romantic setting.



When we left we peeked into some of the other rooms and there was one room that must have been the old ballroom or something, it was really pretty, but tons of tables in there and it was super noisy. I was then especially glad where we were sat. The food was fine. We should have tried something a little more exciting, but we both just got steaks.

The setting was so fun, with the little candle and sitting next to the window, I had some fun taking pictures of Joe, and because he's so handsome :)



After eating, we didn't know what else to do, so we just walked around the city a bit. We walked down to River Street and saw all of the craziness down there. There is definitely a difference in the city, from being up among the squares and being down on River Street. There are all of these bizzarre down spouts on the buildings, we had to take some pictures of them.
Also, tons of street performers and artists around trying to make a buck. It makes for a lively scene.


Watching huge cargo ships go through was actually really interesting.

We happened to walk by this huge Yacht called the Apoise. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before. Apparently in 2008 it was #79 in the World's 100 Largest Yachts, and really, it was huge!


Saturday (April 11) we woke up early-ish and went to Clary's for breakfast. It's the diner that John Cusak goes to in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The joint was just ok, I'm guessing that the diner gets most of it's traffic from people interested in the movie and not their food.

After breakfast we went over to Forsyth Park. I'm glad we went early because when we went back in the afternoon to get our car, the park was packed with SCAD students and was not nearly as enjoyable. Being there early we enjoyed a quiet stroll through the park, and some decent photo ops of the cast-iron fountain.




It's a beautiful park with wonderful trees draped in spanish moss, just like you would imagine. One great thing about Savannah is that it's a very walkable city AND they have free street parking on the weekends. So we left our car at Forsyth Park, which is the Southern most part of the historic district, and walked in toward River Street, through most of the squares.


We decided to take a private walking tour of the city and came across Gail, who runs Discover Savannah Tours. She was recommended by Bobby, the most recommended tour guide on Trip Advisor, who was booked the day we were there. We met Gail at Chatham Square and started our personalized tour. I highly recommend going on a walking tour, and if you are willing to spend just a little bit more for a private tour, it's well worth it. The next time we go, I'm going to try to get on a tour with Bobby.
Gail walked us through a lot of the squares and told us fun facts about the areas. We walked by Colonial Park Cemetary, passed the Savannah Police station and ended up on Bay Street just in front of the River Street area. I think we were with Gail just over 2 hours, which made it well worth the money. It was also good to go around with her because we saw more than I think we would have had we just been roaming on our own. We were able to retrace some of our steps and spend some more time in the spots we wanted to explore more. Here are some photos of what we saw. You can also go here for my Picasa album of Savannah.

Shared Savannah

We also took a Trolley Tour which took us by a few more places we hadn't yet seen, but if you were going to choose between a walking tour and a Trolley Tour, I would choose the walking tour. That way you can get better pictures and you'll probably hear fewer lame jokes :)
We thought about doing a Haunted Tour, but it was so hard to tell which would be worth the money, the reviews are all very mixed.




For a tasty lunch and an ice cream treat we went to Leopold's Ice Cream. It's a cute shop and they have some good food. Joe really enjoyed their shrimp salad sandwich (gross!)


Through it all I really loved Savannah. It was what I wanted, a beautiful city, with awesome trees and fantastic houses with amazing architecture, the whole city had character. I will definitely go back and I recommend it to everyone. If anyone wants to come out for a visit, we can take a couple days and drive down there!



Here's a great map to play with if you are interested in planning a trip.
Here is a fun guide of Savannah.


Sunday (April 12th) on our way out of Savannah we drove to Bonaventure Cemetery. It's where the Bird Girl statue in The Book (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) came from. The city finally took the statue out because of all the tourists trying to find it. The cemetery is huge and really awesome.

From the cemetery we drove to Tybee Island, which I'll write about in another post!

Helen (again) & Unicoi State Park

On Sunday (11/1) I wanted to drive to the Georgia mountains and check out some leaves before they are all gone. Unfortunately the rain from last week brought down a lot of them, but it was still pretty. The fun part was that Joe and I had all afternoon to drive up there and check things out, it was quite relaxing and definitely a needed change from our typical afternoon of TV watching :) You can check out the Picasa album for more photos.

I think this is Yonah Mountain. It looked nice, obviously I’m sticking my camera out the window, so I don’t really know at what angle the shot is going to be, so this is what you get.

 

 

To get to Unicoi State Park you have to drive straight through the main drag of Helen. It was the last day of Oktoberfest so it was a little crowded, but it was fun to see all the crazy people. There were some very strange street performers.

When I think cabins and mountains I totally think about tigers and toucans. And I also really liked all of the Aspen-inspired liquor stores, out here they are usually called “package stores.”

      

Unicoi State park was nice, it was small though. I guess there’s more towards the Anna Ruby Falls, which is also on our list to see, but we didn’t go there Sunday. This was the prettiness we saw though.

     

Some action shots of Joe skipping some rocks, he did some pretty awesome skips. I could never skip rocks very well.

Crafting!

I had been wanting to do some appliqué for awhile but I was afraid of it. I finally tried it once on a onesie and it was a horrible mess. I was trying to just pin the small giraffe on the 3-6 month onesie and then try to sew it while not making any piles of fabric. After doing some more blog research I discovered that everyone was much more successful when they used Wonder Under, or another type of iron on fabric glue. It’s a fantastic addition to appliqué. I’m not yet talented enough to rotate the fabric while doing an actual appliqué stitch or even a zig-zag, so I just stuck with the straight stitch. I’m still learning so don’t judge my inability to sew a straight line, but I still like how they turned out.

These onesies I made for all the new nieces that were born into the Grigg clan in 2009. I wanted to get them done while Joe’s dad was visiting he could take them home to the family. We decided that Robbie would also need a shirt, and he suggested a race car, with flames! That was definitely more difficult, but I think we came out successful. I have no idea how all of these will do in the laundry, I imagine that the ends of the fabric will fray, which I think will add a cute look to it, I just hope it all stays together! At least I know it looked cute once!

 

Our friends Emily and Bill were having a combined birthday party for their girls Sally and Alice. I decided that I didn’t to just find a toy to buy for them, but wanted to give them something a little more cute. I had an extra giraffe to use for Alice’s shirt (she turned 1) but Sally needed something more appropriate for a 3 year old. Joe thought a butterfly might be nice and I agreed, she had butterflies in her room. So we set out looking for a butterfly shape to mimic. We found a shape I liked and Joe worked his magic in Photoshop and made me a beautiful double layered butterfly! (he also enhanced the baby giraffe, elephant, and rhino). He’s so good!
This is what we came up with for Sally and Alice.

Unfortunately my sewing machine was acting up and the stitches are terrible, hopefully no one looks very closely. Turns out my bobbin thread was a little out of wack. I hope that the appliqué stays on through the wash!

I love Halloween, but I never love dressing up. I really like just wearing cute Halloween shirts. My usual shirt for Halloween “shrunk” so I had to come up with something new this year. Of course appliqué was the answer. I decided that Joe and I should both have bat shirts. I had just purchases some hard-to-resist-sale fabric in fun Halloween designs, so we were set. Again, we set out to find a bat shape I liked and then Joe went into Photoshop to make it exactly what I wanted. I bought a black long sleeved shirt at Target the night before and Joe had an extra shirt from his gay for Edward experiment, so we were set. We decided that we didn’t want to be exactly matching so we decided he would have a smaller bat than mine and we would put it at an angle on the left side of the shirt. I think if you can have manly appliqué this one is for sure there.

We wore these to our ward’s Fall Festival and I felt very festive. You can also see our cute Mickey votive holders. We bought those last year when we were in Disney World.

If you would like any of my appliqué templates, just let me know, I can email them to you, or maybe I’ll even post them on the side.

For mutual one night I decided that it would be fun to have the girls sew some blankets. I got the idea from sugardoodle.net, they were kind of sponsoring a service project for giving cards and blankets to the Ronald McDonald House. We (the Beehives) combined efforts with the Mia Maids (their leaders were looking for something to do, and it worked out great. Becky was able to bring her sewing machine too, and we definitely needed two machines going at once. We were able to get all of the blankets sewn, but not finished. Becky and I each took two blankets to finish the edges on, and they all turned out great. I was really pleased with how it went.