Today I’m take over this thing Mommy calls her blog! I’m still not exactly sure what that is but that’s okay! Anyway, I’m taking it over today to wish my big brother, Chester, the best birthday ever!

I’m sure I still drive him crazy most of the time though. He doesn’t try to eat me anymore so I’ll call that a win. Mommy says that when I was a tiny kitten I would jump and climb on him so much that one day he literally tried to bite my head off. She says that if he had teeth I wouldn’t be here anymore.

Chester has been my best friend since the beginning! He’s shown me how to drive Mommy crazy but also that no matter how much we make her crazy she will always love us!

I love cuddling with my big brother at bedtime! He’s not too fond of it but he lets me as long as I’m not too close! I love my big brother!

Happy birthday Chester!!! I love you!

Don’t you hate when you just have no idea what to write about? I have had a random writer’s block over the past couple of months! I haven’t been able to write anything. It’s been very frustrating to be honest!

I have been able to work on my novel but the blog has been a different story! I have been doing so well with the novel! I have 23,602 words right now! I’ll be working on it every day next month for National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo, and I’m hoping to double my word count by the end of November!

There’s just something about seeing a book cover with your author name on it! Edith Kenner is a combination of my grandmothers names. My maternal grandmother’s first name was Edith and my paternal grandmother’s maiden name was Kenner. It was the perfect way to honor them.

Here’s a little sample of how the story has been going:

Kelcie was having the best dinner with Colby. Even if was a simple one. Grams’ devil’s food chocolate cake was a sinful ending to a delicious dinner. As they were cleaning up the kitchen bar Colby took a bit of leftover icing from his plate and smeared it on Kelcie’s nose. She laughed and shrieked in delight as he pulled her close. She tried to wiggle away to wipe her nose off but Colby held her tight. He took his finger and wiped away the icing before he kissed her. There was something magical. It was the same feeling she had at Vanneaway days before! “Kelcie, I want you in my life! I need you in my life! I have never felt this way about anyone.” Colby ran hos fingers through her raven black hair and gazed into her emerald green eyes. “There’s something I want to ask you.”
“I feel the same way! Every guy I have been with just hasn’t given me the spark that you give me! What do you want to ask me?” She was hoping it was the question she had been waiting to hear from him for ten years.
“Well, I have been wanting to ask you this since Sataruday but I was waiting for the right moment and there’s no better moment than now! Will you officially be my girlfriend? Please say yes?” Colby asked all in one breath because he wasn’t sure if he would be able to get it out.
As Kelcie smiled her eyes started to sparkle. “Of course I will Cobly! There’s no other man I’d rather be with than you!” Colby was relieved to hear those words. He had been waiting ten years to ask Kelcie to be his!

Yes, I know there’s typos in it! I haven’t gone back through it to edit it yet! So what do you think? Will Kelcie and Colby be able to stay together? Will people from their pasts sabotage their relationship? You’ll just have to find out when it’s finally done! Whenever that will be!

Happy Fall ya’ll! Where has the year gone? Didn’t we just celebrate the new year last week? The past few months have been quite a bit crazy around here!

Mr. RCGG and I have been working on refinishing our coffee table. It has taken so much longer than we thought and we are living without it in our living room right now! It looks so much better from the ugly black color it was though! We stripped the paint off it it and sanded it. Then we painted the top and bottom shelf part a dark gray. I still need to sand the legs and sides! I’m painting the drawer a light gray that’s almost a light purple. It reminds me of the color I painted my office in our house in Savannah.

I usually start decorating for fall at the beginning of September. I am so behind this year because we have been so busy that we haven’t been able to get all of our fall decor our of the garage. So it’s kind of a mix between our summer decor and our college football decor.

I really need to get back into writing blog posts more often. I have fallen way behind on what I want to post. With the holiday season coming up soon I usually am better about posting then.

My favorite cookie is chocolate chip. My favorite ice cream is chocolate chip cookie dough. The only kind of cookie that my grandma could not make was chocolate chip cookies.

Did you love Fixer Upper when it was on HGTV? I still love watching reruns of it on TV! I was recently gifted a subscription of Discovery+ for my birthday and I love it! I have watched all of season one of Joanna’s cooking show Magnolia Table. It has inspired me to become magnolia!

What is becoming magnolia? It’s something I made up. It isn’t an official thing from Chip and Joanna Gaines or The Magnolia Network and brand. It has nothing to do with them at all!

From watching the Magnolia Network shows on Discovery+ I have been inspired to want to try some of Joanna Gaines’ recipes she has made on Magnolia Table and to decorate my house more!

Have you seen the movie Julie and Julia? It’s about a cooking blogger that decides she is going to cook from Julia Childs’s cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking every day for a year! She ends up accomplishing this enormous task and her blog goes onto be made into a book and movie.

Anyway, I had the idea to do this with Joanna Gaines’ cookbooks Magnolia Table volume 1 and volume 2.

So far I have made three recipes from Volume 1. I have only taken pictures for one recipe so far though. So I will make the other two again soon and be sure to take pictures for them as well!

Do you have any favorite recipes from a cookbook? I’d love to hear about them! Share them on the Facebook page.

The past few months have been a bit Crazy Town. Not only for us but for a lot of people I’m sure. We took some time off over the 4th of July weekend and let me tell you! It was needed!

Our favorite vacation destination is Jekyll Island GA. We love the peaceful and calming atmosphere. We started going in 2010 and immediately feel in love. So much so that we were married on the beach of JI in July of 2012!

The island’s historic district is full of millionaire history. It was the winter home to many of our country’s early millionaires. The Rockefellers, Morgans, and Vanderbilts are just some of the families that stayed here. At one point 1/6 of the world’s wealth were member of the Jekyll Island Club, the beautiful resort hotel on the island.

The Federal Reserve was founded in a secret meeting in the Club Hotel in 1910 under the rouse of a duck hunt. The first transcontinental phone call in 1915 connected a club member from Jekyll Island to Alexander Graham Bell in San Francisco.

Our trip over the Fourth of July weekend was the best fourth holiday we have had in a very long time! It was nice to finally get some time to relax after the crazy past year of Mr. RCGG’s work! We enjoyed it so much that we decided to make an annual trip for the Fourth of July holiday now!

What’s your happy place vacation spot?

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I love Summer! I don’t love the Georgia heat and awful humidity though! With the patriotic holidays during Summer I usually do a red white and blue theme through mid July! Then after that I take my patriotic stuff down and put up a more fun summer theme.

A few years ago I made a watermelon wreath that became one of my favorite wreaths.

I also made wooden fireworks.

July is a big month for our house. With the Fourth of July and my birthday, our anniversary, and our vacation we usually have pretty big plans. I’m looking forward to sharing more about our summer plans with you soon!

Just after midnight on Friday March 26 the town we live in was hit with an EF4 tornado. Most of the damage to the town was in the main downtown area which is a mile away from our house. We did not have any damage other than our power being out for about 38 hours. We lost all the food in our fridge and only a few things in our freezer. Our meat was still frozen solid. I thank God that we were fortunate to dodge this storm but there are others that were not so lucky! There are areas of town that were completely flattened.

The tornado came so close to our house. We could hear it just as the warning sirens stopped. You know how you are always told that a tornado sounds like a freight train roaring down the tracks? Yeah, that’s exactly what it sounded like. The tornado was an EF 4. This would be the equivalent to a category 5 hurricane! The winds in this tornado were 175 mph! There’s only an EF5 above that! I haven’t seen any confirmations on this but there have been reports of the tornado having multiple (at least 3) vortexes come out of the mile and a half wide funnel!

The lightening we saw from our house was actually inside the funnel of the tornado! It was so crazy to see it and with the tornado being so close to us I’m surprised we didn’t see it!

I just wanted to give y’all an update about what happened and let you know that we are fine! Please keep those that have lost everything in your prayers though! There are still some people without power today and there is still a lot of clean up to do!

I love decorating for Spring almost as much as I love decorating for Christmas! I love the freshness that Spring brings to the world after the dark and cold from winter melts away. The flowers popping up through the ground gives new life to the world. It reminds me of the way Jesus gave us new life through His resurrection.

There are so many things you can do to decorate your home for Spring. I’m working on changing most of my home decor to more of a farmhouse style and I have been bringing more buffalo plaid into my style! There’s just something about it that I love!

This is one of my favorite Spring decorations. I bought it from an Etsy shop when we loved in Savannah and it was so cute across our mantle. I also got these cute carrots from a friend’s boutique in Southern Illinois. I love how they look in the basket! It needed a little color so I got some eggs from At Home and it was the perfect pop of color!

I love using flowers in my decor too. There are so many ways you can use them! I love this wreath that I made several years ago when we lived in our apartment. It is still a perfect Spring wreath for our door.

What’s your favorite was to decorate for Spring?