This week's lack of posts...

... are brought to you by our good friends at Pepto Bismol and the makers of Phenergan. 

Usual posts to resume ASAP!

Friday Favorites!

Happy Friday, folks!! I'm ready for the weekend, baby. I'm a stay at home mom, so I suppose every day is the weekend (or more like every day is a work day), but there's still something about Friday through Sunday that feels like you can finally take a deep breath. 

This weekend's plans are completely dependent on the weather this time. Friday night is the usual high school football, but they're giving rain and cold temps, and the game is an hour and a half away. This auntie may have to sit this one out if the weather is as bad as they say it will be. 

Then Saturday is my hometown's fall festival, which I love to go to, but again, there's the rain. Kettle corn might not be worth the misery. 

#Imightmelt

#prepareyourselfforaSUPERboringweekendrecap 

#again

On to this week's favorites, and don't forget to go by Andrea, Erika, and Narci's blogs to check out everyone's favorites this week!

"Ready Set Roll" by Chase Rice

When I got home from the Luke Bryan concert (I know, stop talking about it already!), I COULD not get this song out of my head. And it's not even Luke's! I was so exhausted I was achy, yet couldn't sleep because I was still dancing and singing to this song. 

Oven Baked Chips

I'm addicted. Well, not completely addicted, since it's not like I'm sittin' around eating these things all day every day. But, probably 5 days out of 7 I'm eating them for lunch or dinner. Not as my whole meal, of course. 

Geez. I feel like I'm rationalizing my chip consumption a little too much. 

Anywhoo.... 

My very favorite ones are the cheddar sour cream, but they aren't as easy to fit into my diet as the others.

So, the ones I eat most often are the Oven Baked Tostitos Scoops. I make some tuna salad almost every day lately, and I basically use it like a dip with these chips. Great little meal!

My other favorite lunch lately is a turkey sandwich with the Oven Baked Original Lay's. I love me some plain chips, and these are the best substitute I'm gonna get. 

Plaid Scarves

I've been on a scarf-buying bender lately. 

#sorrynotsorry

#callSA

It started with the leopard print scarf I wore to Luke Bryan (last time, I swear). 

The same time I bought that one, I bought this one. It's half plaid, so apparently I was dipping my toes in the plaid pool with this one. 

 

Here's a closer look at the color:

Since then, I've bought this one from Target, too.

And then the durn free shipping Nordstrom monster jumped up and got me with this one. For the price, it's so cozy and Christmas-y and snuggly. Plus, with free shipping and returns, what's to lose?

So now I REALLY want to get this one. Mostly because it's lighter weight that the others I've bought, and therefore it's COMPLETELY different and I need it my collection. See how that rationalization works? 

And Shay's post about her scarf collection makes me really want this scarf, but I'm not sure how much realistic wear I'd get out of it. Not that that would normally stop me, but yaknowwhatImean. 

And to mix things up a bit from my plaid addiction, this would be be awfully nice. Any color that wants to come live at my house can. Any time. Just come on by. 

Our Halloween Costumes

I am a little crazy about Halloween, if you haven't noticed. And to drive that "crazy" point home, I will let you know that I typically know what Halloween costume I'm going to wear for the next year right after the current year's party is over. 

#neurotic

Not this year. I was totally inspiration-less. For quite a while, I thought Steve had his costume picked out, but it wasn't a couple costume, so I still needed something. Then he decided he didn't want to do that original idea, so we were back to square 1. Having already sent out invitations to our annual Halloween party, I was starting to panic that we didn't even have costumes picked out yet.

Problem solved! This past weekend, I decided that I wasn't getting off my computer until I picked something out. I narrowed down the type of costume we wanted, but just not the specific one. You know how hard it is to order stuff online that you can't see on a real person, right? Well, because of that, I decided to Pinterest my idea and see what other people had worn. I put the search right there in the search box, and up pops a picture of a HYSTERICAL version of our idea. 

BOOM!

That was it. We were all in, and ordered our costumes on the spot. Mine came in, but part of it doesn't look quite right so we're going to have to do some finagling with that. Steve's is a custom order and will take a while to come in. 

Even though I am listing it as a favorite, I'm not revealing our costumes quite yet. We want to reveal it at our annual Halloween party, but all I'll say is that we've laid down the gauntlet this year! Can't wait for the reveal!

Walker

This little guy. I sorta hate to list family members as favorites, but our sweet Walker is battling cancer, and his time with us is limited. Times like bring things into perspective, and I just want to post about my deep and abiding love for our FURst baby, Walker. I should do a whole post devoted to him, but he's certainly my favorite this week. And forever. 

A little bit of this, little bit of that...

This will be a post about a whole bunch of nuthin'. Not much going on around here. After the excitement of Luke Bryan last week, this week pales in comparison. 

Friday night was a rough start to the weekend. The weather was cold and rainy, and Teagan's ballgame was a disaster. They played a team with a couple of D1 signees, so we were outmatched outta the gate. All I can say is that I'm glad it's over and that all of our players came off the field healthy. We have another tough game coming up this week, so yay for that. 

Saturday started off a little hectic. We had tried and tried to get tickets to the UT/Florida game, but couldn't find anything for a decent price. Instead, we decided to have a little football party here, so I was throwing together appetizers for the UT game and a meal for the LSU game later that evening. I had planned to go to the gym before, but that didn't happen. Everything on our end came together in time for the game, but unfortunately UT couldn't get their stuff together on the field, so that was another bummer. The party was fun, though!

Our buddy Jeff is originally from Louisiana (hence the interest in the LSU game), and when he found out we make our own pizzas on our Big Green Egg, he wanted in! He came up with the idea for muffaletta pizza, and we grilled some up before the game. Let me tell ya, it's a winner! Probably about a thousand calories, but every now and then those calories are completely worth it, and these were! He used an olive paste instead of pizza sauce, and then piled it high with every deli meat you can think of and topped it off with cheese and Italian olive oil dipping sauce.

Flavor explosion!

Steve built another bonfire (for the 3rd week in a row- it's our favorite thing to do now!) and we all sat around the rest of the night and just shot the breeze. It was a pretty fabulous way to spend the evening after a disappointing football weekend.

(objects in picture are larger than they appear)

Sunday was family lazy day. We pretty much played hooky from life that day and decided to never get out of our jammies. It was pretty fantastic.

See? Boring weekend! Nothing much to report here since then except for a raging case of pink eye for sweet Ella Kate. So I pretty much have to stop this post because just typing it makes me want to go wash my hands.

Happy hump day! 

Friday Favorites: Luke Bryan edition

Ladies! 

I am still riding high from my Luke Bryan concert experience! 

We bought tickets forever ago for Luke Bryan's Farm Tour concert in Greenback, TN (right outside Knoxville, for you non-local-ish folks). I have a good friend who went to one of the farm shows in Georgia last year, and that's pretty much all she's talked about since. (Love ya, Tina!)

And really, tickets were only $40. How else could I be thisclose to Luke Bryan for the low, low price of $40???

So, my usual band of concert-goers (plus a few) loaded up and headed to the metropolis that is Greenback, to Maple Lane Farms (and corn maze!). 

To give you a little background about the Luke Bryan Farm Tour, he does a handful of shows on farms in the South. None are concert venues, but truly are farms, the middle of which is where he plops his entire concert down. It was truly incredible to know that this was just a big patch of dirt and grass on Tuesday, and on Wednesday was a well-organized concert venue. 

#nothisfirstrodeo

To beat it all, Luke does this for free! Now, I have no doubt that his and the farm's expenses are all covered, but the profits from farm tour shows are placed into a scholarship fund for students looking to go into agricultural sciences. That makes Knoxville the best location for something like this, considering the University of Tennessee has one of the biggest and best ag campuses in the nation. 

#salespitchover

Anyway, my friend Tina left here early that morning to get the best possible spot in front of the stage, but because we had 2 teachers and 5 students going in our group, we weren't able to leave until later in the school day. We stopped and ate at a Zaxby's near the farm, and headed in. The field we parked in wasn't nearly as full and I had expected it to be, and we went to get in the entrance line, which should have opened up right before we got there, but the line was HUGE and not moving an inch. There were already people inside, though, including Tina. I need to ask her how that happened....

Line pic! IDK what happened to my hair. I swear it was poufier than that. IDK if they heat smushed it or if it's the glare of the sun. 

The girls right inside the gates. My niece is on the right and these are her best friends.

Anywhoo. We stood in the non-moving line for what felt like forever, and once we all got sweaty and smelly, we started to inch forward, and were finally inside. We had every intention of hanging back, spreading out our blankets, and enjoying some live country music. Once we got in there, though, we noticed there was a bunch of space in the very front, so we decided to try our luck up there. We figured if things got too crowded or crazy, we could always move back. Well, we grabbed a few drinks and hung out there for about an hour or so. Luke had a few opening acts with him, and a cute little girl named Chancie Neal was the first one up. I wasn't familiar with her, but she appears on the Duck Dynasty Christmas album, and she did a great job at the concert. But the best part of her being out there is that at one point I looked up, and homegirl was about 5 feet away from me, up on stage! We had no idea that the stage came out in a cross, and we just so happened to have posted ourselves at the corner of the right hand cross arm! I was all like, "Look! That girl is right there. OMG! That means Luke Bryan is going to be RIGHT THERE!"

<insert teenage-girl squeal here> 

And, by golly, he was! RIGHT THERE! 

So was Cole Swindell, although I didn't get many pics of him. My phone battery was low, and I wanted to save what I could to get pics of the man himself. 

My niece got this one, though. 

#cutie

I'm telling ya, Cole Swindell put on a GREAT show! I would totally go see him in a headlining show of his own. And considering I knew all the words to almost every song he sang, I can only imagine that he'll be getting his own headlining tour very soon! 

In between acts, a DJ was on stage and he made the wait go by easily. I will say this, though, a big ol' non-favorite from the show was the long wait in between Cole and Luke. It seemed like hours. I have no idea how long it actually was, but it felt like forever.  And then there was an incident with some drunk teenagers, but I'll omit that story in the interest of avoiding prosecution. #pleasetellmeIneveractedlikethat #oratleastdidnotleaveevidence

So, what else do you do while waiting forever and a day? Selfies!

 Renee, Jessica, me, Sonya

 Jessica, Renee, me, Sonya (who says that's a peace sign, not bunny ears. #dontbuyit)

Jessica, Renee, me, and Sonya sticking her tongue out because I complained about the bunny ears. LMBO. 

As you can tell, we made friends with the folks behind us....Only the front 4 are my group. 

So, to finally get to Luke, and my favorites for the week, feast your eyes on these! 

 Then Cole came back out and they sang Florida Georgia Line's 

"That's How We Roll". These two actually wrote the song, not FL/GA Line. It was an awesome performance! 

So, since this is supposed to be a favorites post, here's my favorite pic of all those that I took:

 Yep. He's looking right at me, and I do believe he's pointing at me. I am seeing that. I'm positive that's what's happening, and that is the story I'll tell from now until forever. #believedat

Luke's show was IN. CRED. EEEE. BULL!!! So high energy, such fun music, and I screamed so loud my throat STILL hurts!! 

If you ever have a chance to see Luke or Cole in concert, do it! And if the Farm Tour is an option, do THAT! 

Linking up with Andrea, Erika, and Narci, as always.

Have a great weekend!