Posing for Engagement Pictures

So now that our save-the-dates have officially gone out to (almost) everyone - we're still having issues with the Outlook.com account we created - I can finally share our amazing engagement photos! We only ended up using two of the photos for our cards, but I still didn't want to let the cat out of the bag too early, then have none of our family and friends be excited or surprised if they had seen them already on the ole' bloggy-blog. But now the time has finally come!!

We took these way back in April, in St. Augustine, Florida. We were oh-so-very blessed and fortunate, because Jeff's Uncle Phil is actually a professional photographer! So he very happily agreed to shoot our engagement session for us in St. Augustine, especially since he lives in Jacksonville! Even though it rained on our entire shoot, basically the whole day, Phil did such an excellent job capturing so many beautiful pictures!

Get ready for pictures galore - "This is the event you've all been waiting for......and away we go!" That last part is a movie quote, and if anyone can guess it, I'll send you some Julep fingernail polish ;) Anyone?

This is one from our save-the-date, that Jeff Photoshopped the "5" in, since our original date was the 12th.

This one is definitely my favorite! There's just so many things about it I love.

This is the second one we used on our save-the-dates.  And this is my Mama's favorite one :)

We chose to do the photos in St. Augustine for a couple of reasons:

1. It was close and convenient to Phil and Tammy, without making them drive three hours to Tally. 
2. I went to school there, at Flagler College, so the small town was my home for four years during college, and I loved it so very much. 
3. It was the very first trip Jeff and I ever went on together, way back in 2011, to attend his Grandpa's funeral (in Jacksonville actually, but we also spent time in St. Augustine that weekend as well.)
4. We've gone back together multiple times since then to visit all my old friends who still live there, and Jeff has come to love the city too!

And for all those reasons, St. Augustine is a special place not only for me, but for us as a couple. And it really meant a lot to be able to have our engagement photos taken there as well, in this gorgeous little town that we both now love so much! All of these were taken in the following locations: historic downtown, the Castillo de San Marcos fort, the Spanish Mission, and Flagler College.

I am so so happy and pleased with the way the pictures turned out. I mean, you can't even tell that we were being rained on during the majority of these. For real - we were standing in the rain for at least half of the pictures above, and they still look amazing! Huge props to Uncle Phil (and his lovely assistant/wife/Aunt Tammy) for all they did for us that day, and the beautiful photos they created for us! If you're in the Jax area, check him out here.

Glad I'm finally getting around to sharing these with y'all, and thanks for being patient and waiting for the past three months! I promise not to take so long sharing our wedding pictures in a couple of months! :)

Much Love,
Halie

Prompt 1 - My Life in 250 Words

Back with a second post today (my weigh-in was posted earlier this morning), because I want to share my super quick auto-biography, in 250 words or less. (Mine turned out to be 249! Bam.) I just found this fun idea today, and I can't wait to join in the rest of the month. I doubt I'll be able to do every single prompt, but I'll do what I can, when I can. If you want to join in on the challenge to Write Every Day in May, visit Jenni's cute blog HERE.

I was born and raised in Tallahassee, Florida. For a long time, my little family was “broken” and so my mom took care of my sister and me basically all on her own; then my parents divorced when I was 12. Even through the trials though, my Mama raised us in a Christian home, and we know that our faith in the Lord is what brought us through some of those tough times. Luckily, my Mama got remarried to an amazing man when I was 16, and he loves us as his own. I was a cheerleader in high school, and was also involved in a ton of groups and activities in both school and church. I went to Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida, for college, and made an incredible group of friends who I love dearly. I am so grateful for all of them! I am now living in Tallahassee again, engaged to an amazing man and planning our wedding for this upcoming October! Jeff and I love riding our bikes and going on adventures together. Besides blogging, I like to learn new recipes, try new crafts, and attempt cute nail art. I’m also on a journey to become healthier and lose weight, so that’s a big part of my life now too. I’m very positive and organized, and somewhat outgoing. I love smiling and laughing and playing games with my friends. I am a blessed woman, and I thank the Lord for what he’s given me! 

Photo by Phil Pullen Photography

Puddles & Pictures & Play Time

So far this Monday morning is off to a pretty great start (despite my lack of sleep), because I'm still coming down off my high from an amazing weekend!! Jeff and I drove over to St. Augustine for the weekend, and we were able to spend some amazing time with my wonderful friends from college, but we were also able to finally take some engagement pictures!!!

FRIDAY
Left right after work and Jeff and I drove over to St. Augustine
Met up with Kaley, Dani, Jenni and Cally and had dinner at Mango, Mango's - one of our favorites!
Went back to the girls' house to play cards and laugh and have fun

SATURDAY
Woke up semi-early, got ready, grabbed Dunkin Donuts coffee and met our wonderful photographer! (Jeff's uncle!)
Spent the hours of 9:30 am - 3:30 pm dodging the rain and tons of puddles and taking pictures
We also had a yummy lunch with Uncle Phil and Aunt Tammy at Cruisers, another favorite of ourse!
Came back to the girls' house to rest for a while, Facebook stalked people, chatted, Jeff napped, ate a snack
Got ready and went downtown to eat at our friends' restaurant, Catch 27, that he just opened in January!
Went next door for some yummy desserts from Bon Ami
Bundled ourselves up for winter weather, and sat on the beach for an hour or so just talking and laughing
Went back to the girls' house, where more friends joined us, and we just hung out and had so much fun together!
Made a couple Vine videos, and VidRhythm videos, and stayed up wayyy too late being silly

SUNDAY
Luckily everyone was able to sleep in a little bit, then we got showered and dressed and had brunch at Cafe 11
Hung out at the house for a bit, packed our stuff up, then Jeff and I wandered around downtown for a while
We stopped for a coffee break, then hit the road back to Tally!
It was super windy and a bit rainy still, so we drove home slow and finally got back around 8:30 last night
Got some essentials from Publix, and a turkey sub from Jersey Mikes, then went to Jeff's house
And our photographer was already done editing and had uploaded all our pics already!
Sat around looking at the 60 beautiful images Phil & Tammy created for us, in such awe how they turned out!

This past weekend truly was amazing! We had such great times with my awesome friends, had an wonderful photo shoot with some talented family photographers, and got to spend quality time with people we love. We both felt so happy and blessed after such a great weekend! Oh, and in case you missed the subtle hint up there, I finally jumped on the bandwagon for Vine (about a million years late), and I'm loving it so far. Already can't wait to take some more random videos! (Search for me with my Twitter name, "HalieRenee88" - I think that's how I signed up for it...?) Also, my friends and I all love Instagram, so here's a collage of all of our IG pics from the weekend! Ooooh - and we found a new app we like a lot too, called InstaPlace, that is pretty neat. Those are the top left and bottom right corners below.

At some point, I will be writing a much more detailed post of the engagement picture session, because I definitely want to remember that day, but it's a lot and I want to save that for later. And of course I'll be sharing more of the pictures, but I want to keep some of them a surprise for now. (The very middle of the above collage is my favorite from the day.) I will however give you a little sneak peek preview of them though, with another one of our favorites!

So to recap - we had an amazing weekend, we now have beautiful engagement pictures, I love my friends from Flagler so so much, and I love my fiance so so much too! I am a very blessed woman.

Linking up today with Covered in Grace, Sami's Shenanigans & Synfully Delicious.

Ponce Hall, Roommates & College Days - First Things First

It's another cold day down here in Florida, and they said on the radio this morning that it's actually 15-20 degrees colder this year than our usual averages for this time of year. That's not cool! Where did my glorious spring weather go? Not that I can complain too much, because half of the country just got half a foot of snow or more, including one of my lovely co-hosts... More importantly than the weather though, is another week of our First Things First link up! And this week we of course have another round of amazing co-hosts, Jess at Jess Is More and Veronica at Passion, Pink & Pearls!

First Roommate (s)

First Time Living Away from Home

First Dorm Room at College

First Roommate (s)
Well first of all, I wasn't able to go to Flagler my very first semester, because they had no room for me. It's a requirement for freshmen to live on-campus in the dorms, and they were full by the time I would have been accepted. So instead, I was accepted for the spring term in January, and I just went to community college for a semester here. So while that was happening, my future roommates had issues with the third girl in their room, and she was leaving, and they got to look through and pick out a new replacement - and they did an awesome job picking me out, because they were some fun first college roommates!

After the Christmas break, I was to move in about 4 days before the returning students, and I got there to find that Emily and Linnea had left cute notes and pictures all of the room for me :) Those first few days alone without them were hard and boring, and so when they finally got there, I was sooo dang excited!! They welcomed me with open arms, and we kicked off that first semester with a game night in our dorm room, with a group of some other girls. We had so much fun that semester together. We went to the beach, had game night every single week, had fire alarms go off three times in one night, dealt with the awful laundromat, visiting the Jax zoo, watching tons of movies on our laptops, and so many more fun memories!

First Time Living Away from Home
This goes hand-in-hand with the first question, because the first time I lived away from home was that spring semester of my freshman year, at Flagler College! Like I mentioned before, I moved in about four days before my roommates did though, and that was close to torturous. Talk about major homesickness! It was super quiet in the entire dorm, but also in my tiny room, and it was rough. But once the girls got there, the fun never seemed to stop. I met soooo many amazing girls that first semester I lived away from home, and seriously had a blast. There was just so much fun and freedom and opportunity and adventure! And I made sure I took advantage of all of that as often as I could. I mean, I was only taking 12 hours that first semester, and I didn't have a job, so I had plenty of free time to just live it up as a care free 19-year-old! And I loved every second of it.

First Dorm Room at College
First I just want to share some background info about my school, Flagler College. (I'm only going to share a little bit, but there is some amazing history and interesting facts about it, so take time to visit the links I provided!) It was originally built as the beautiful Ponce de Leon hotel by Henry Flagler, and opened in 1888. It was quite a fancy place, and definitely a popular destination. Then during WWII, it was used as a training center for the coast guard. It was also a very prominent part of the Civil Rights movement. Then in 1968, it was finally opened as Flagler College. (I could go on and on with cool stuff about the college, but I think I'll save that for another post - because now I'm so excited about sharing that with y'all!)

When the hotel was turned into the college, the main building of the hotel housed the girls' dorms. It was called Ponce Hall, but usually just shortened to Ponce. So like I mentioned before as well, Emily and Linnea had prepared the room for me, and left cute notes for me for when I moved in. It was a good-sized room with one bunk bed, and one additional twin bed. There were two real closets and I had the free-standing wardrobe. Then we each had a desk and a small dresser. There was even a cute fireplace in the room! (But it didn't work, it just looked pretty.) And we shared our suite-style bathroom with the room next to us. Luckily we really did have one of the bigger dorms, so we had tons of open floor space in the middle of the room. Even though it was a little bit cramped, it was still a great dorm room in general, and we had tons of fun in it! Our favorite thing to do was find ways to creatively hop up into the top bunk with flips and jumps and chairs and hoopla. That was fun times. I loved my dorm room days, and would definitely recommend it for at least a year in college. SO much fun. :)

If you'd like to join in on this fun link up, check out the super simple 'rules' below, and get to writing! Can't wait to see all the new link ups this week, meet new friends, and read y'all's posts!

1. Write your own post about this week's topics

2. Please follow me, as well as this week's co-hosts, Jess & Veronica.

3. Put the new button on your post or somewhere on your blog

4. Link up with us! (Link will appear on all three blogs.)

5. Visit some of the other links, and share the love with them on their posts!

6. Spread the word on Twitter and/or Facebook

And if you'd like to prepare and get ready for next week's First Things First link up, start by checking out next week's awesome co-hosts, Syndal @ Synfully Delicious and Erin @ Love, Fun & Football. Next week's topics are all about home sweet home:

1. First house or apartment on your own (either rented or owned, just away from your parents!)

2. First room you decorated in it, or would like to decorate

3. First thing you bought for it, or would like to buy

Preserving Memories

Remember a couple of weeks ago (like almost a month ago now actually...) when I went to St. Augustine to hang out with my bestest girlfriends? Well I was finally able to get a hold of Jenni's amazing photographs, and so I finally get to share them with you lovelies!

So, my friend Jenni and her awesome roomie/bestie, Alyssa, own their own photography business (Studio No. 9), so if you're in the Orlando area, check them out and hire them. Because not only do they take great pictures, but they're also super awesome and nice and you'll love meeting them. HERE is their website, just in case ;)

I think pictures are probably the very best way of Preserving Memories. We can only remember so much on our own, but the photographs never forget, and so that's just one reason why I love pictures so much. We took over 300 pictures that weekend, and Jenni gave me just over 100 of the best ones. I chose 11 of my favorites of our group shots, made a collage of our portraits, and then made the whole thing into a video slideshow! So the video is down at the very end of the pictures... Enjoy!

Portraits Circa 2007

Yesterday's post was all about things from many, many years ago from my childhood. Today, we're still taking a walk down memory lane, but I thought I'd fast forward to the college years. So instead of memories from when I was 5 years old, here are some from just 5 years ago...

5 years ago I...

:: turned 19 a few months ago (and goodness that sounds so young now!) ::

Emily and I at my 19th birthday dinner, at Mango Mango's! Jan 2007.

:: was approximately one week away from the end of my first semester at Flagler ::

Picture borrowed from Google Images.

:: had lived away from home, in a dorm for 4 months, and loved it! ::

My bunk, the very day I first moved in! :) January 2007.

:: drove my dad's car back after Easter, since mine was having serious problems ::

This is the day we traded this car, for my Jeep Liberty. Summer 2007.

:: made it through my first experience with roomies (some good times, some not...) ::

Me, Linnea and Emily - first ever roommates. February 2007.

:: was making friendships that would last a lifetime! ::

(sorry to those in these pics - I know they're not the best ones of us ever, 

but they're at least the best from that time period...)

Mine and Nicole's first weekend at Flagler. January 2007.

Emily and I the last weekend of the semester. April 2007.

Nicole and I on game night! Feb 2007.

College was a fun time, and sometimes I miss it terribly and really wish I could go back. But then I remember all the homework and group projects and reading endless pages of text books and paper writing, and then I remember I have a lovely degree from that beautiful school. So I've decided to keep the degree, rather than doing it all over again... :)