Life in Cheraw

Well, life in Cheraw. Hmm. Where do I begin? First of all, we L.O.V.E. it here. It is certainly a small town, but there are definitely perks to living here. I think I could drive around and look at the historic houses all day. It never gets old. Next, We LOVE our church family here. They are so welcoming, loving, supportive, caring, fun. I could go on and on. If you have seen Friday Night Lights, I think of our town similar to Dillon, Texas. On Friday nights, everyone is at the high school football game. Yes, I did say THE high school. As in ONE. Yes, there are only a few choices of places to eat and we have to drive into Florence if we want any big restaurants. We do have a GREAT mexican restaurant that everyone just calls "mexican" haha... because it's the only one in town. A couple weeks ago I went and took pictures in our downtown area. It is such a cute little area and reminds me of Boone's downtown streets. Anyway, here is our life through pictures.

Our front door to our rental house. The summer wreath I made via Pinterest (love!) (please excuse myself in the door reflection...)

A view from one side of the downtown area. It's several streets. This is a restaurant called the Rack Shack.
Our favorite restaurant "The Rivers Edge". They make everything homemade to the butter, bread and peanut butter. Y-U-M!

Another view. They say in the Spring when the azalea's are blooming it is beautiful!

Another view outside River's Edge.

NWC

Last week we went to Carowinds and the National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, NC. It was a great trip, especially a great last trip for us with the youth of RBC. You can read more about the whole trip on Brooke's blog. Here are a few of my favorite pics from the white water rafting trip. As she said, I stood on the sidelines and took pics for several reasons. Last time we went to the NWC I went rafting, so I had done it before. On Thursday, I got a wart frozen on my toe (I know TMI) and it had blistered up so I couldn't possibly have stuck my foot under the boat to hold myself in. YIKES! Just thinking about that makes me hurt. Needless to say I consider myself a trooper for walking around Carowinds and the NWC with that giant blister (I have newfound respect for Kevin when he had his massive blisters from sun poisoning!). Anyways, without further adue... here are some of my favs...

Katie and Patrick's Wedding

This past weekend, Katie, who's Marshall's sister and my sister-in-law got married! It was such a great weekend with great family time to celebrate! The wedding was in Charleston, SC which is a place that I love! I've only been once so I was super excited to go again and spend a long weekend there. We went down on Thursday and stayed until Sunday afternoon. It was a really fun weekend that we spent hanging out with family that we don't get to see very often. We have a great time with Katie and Patrick and love hanging out with them. We are very thankful that we all get along so well. On Thursday we went to the outlets and Charleston :)

This was a picture of all the bridesmaids getting ready. Thanks to Ashley, Marshall's cousin, my hair got done once I got to the church!

Me and the beautiful bride!!

This was our bridesmaids breakfast at the Hominy Grill restaurant on Friday morning!

Katie, Ashley and I before the wedding! It was such a beautiful day and a great weekend away!!!

Ahh, Remember This??!!

I was going through pictures and saw this. This was on our way to Charleston, SC when we got very turned around and passed SAS like 3 times. HAHAHA this just makes me laugh! Enjoy!

I Heart Football

First, I'll start off most recently. Warning: There are a lot of pictures! The first pictures are from last week on my trip to Charlotte with my family to go to the Carolina Panthers game. This was our view from our seats...

Check out Steve Smith (#89)!!!!!! I was super excited to be this close to him...

This was a pretty good picture of Clausen about to throw a pass....

Ok... so this is Rev. Syko (a Falcons fan who was certifiably insane) he kept turning around and getting the people around him to sing Christmas carols... He is apparently having a conversation with Sir Purr, the Panthers mascot.

Me and Mom

Our view straight through the goal post before the game had started (the net was still up)

Mom, me and my Aunt Bobetta getting warm before the game started

Still in good spirits even though it was freezing and raining while we were tailgating

My Uncle Bash (who has season tickets to the Panthers)

Now on to the game a couple weeks ago. Carolina vs. Duke @ Duke....

Me and my cousin Celeste tailgating before the game

How cute is my grandpa with his hat??? Who also, by the way, showed up to Marshall's graduation party Friday night in head-to-toe red even with his shoes and socks a matching red. He's precious!

I absolutely love football season! Too bad my mountaineers aren't a threat anymore... but now looking ahead to basketball season!!!

Not so extreme home makeover

HOUSE UPDATES!! Yay!

This summer has been a great time for me to work on home projects for the house! Since I have had sooo much free time to relax (which I will be missing dearly starting next week) I have been recording and watching Design shows on HGTV. I've taken some of the things I've learned from there and transferred them to my own house! Here are some things that I've done...

I took scrapbook paper and framed it to make inexpensive, color coordinated artwork for the bathroom :)

Probably the highlight and pride of my summer, my unfinished furniture bathroom cabinet. I stained it (2 coats) and polyurethaned it (yes, I just made that a verb!) let it air dry in the garage for days and viola! I think it matches the cabinets as perfect as it could!! But as Christy can tell you from my first coat... it was work! I was sweatin bullets out in that 99 degree garage!

I bought a shoe rack and put it together and it makes the closet SO much more organized with my bins of boots and other items beside it!

This was another piece of furniture that we got for Marshall's clothes to be in our bedroom. It was also from the unfinished furniture place which we got to stain a clear coat for us to match the rest of the bedroom. It's a little lighter, but such a great storage for Marshall's clothes!

On our trip to Ikea before Taylor and Emily's wedding in Charlotte I bought some inexpensive accessories to decorate the house! From my first Ikea experience the main thing I would say is that it's freakin huge! It did have great prices, but I'm not gonna like, it was a little overwhelming!

Here are some seat cushions for the kitchen table to match our black & white theme, with green accents.

A cute vase to go on top of our cabinets.... $3.99!! (I'm going to get some short branches to put inside it)

Another scrapbook/art project with the opposite black and white mats with the black and white scrapbook paper. The baskets I got from Charity and spraypainted black to match our kitchen... thanks!!

This was for those of you who haven't seen our house in a while! Hopefully I'll keep adding fun accents that make me smile!

The Beach Part 1

So this week, we are at the beach with Marshall's family for the Harper Family Reunion that we do every 2 years. It has been really relaxing so far to end the school year and go to the beach the very next day.

We made up a scavenger hunt for the family to participate in and had families get extremely serious and competitive! We weren't taking it too seriously, so we stopped for ice cream instead. Haha.

The weather has been absolutely beautiful and although I got a little burnt the first day, I've been good about putting on sunscreen since then. Marshall was playing golf today and he will play again on Thursday.

Last night we went to Original Benjamin's Seafood restaurant and Marshall put everyone to shame eating crab legs. 8 plates later... he was finally done. Of course, I only ate fried shrimp, roasted potatoes, fried okra and hushpuppies. I'll post more later, but this is what has happened so far! :) I am blessed to be in such a fun and wonderful family.