Wildflowers

Hello there! The trip I went on to Charleston last Thursday-Sunday was a lot of fun, but the time spent in Charleston just flew by. My friend and I drove down Thursday and it took us fourteen hours to get there, and it took the same amount of time on the ride home on Sunday. So, we were really only in Charleston Thursday night-Saturday night. The weather was great! It was sunny while we were there, and in the 70's. We even went on the beach on Saturday afternoon, and I went in the water up to my calves (water was 65 degrees). 
I had never been to the Folly Beach section of Charleston before, and I loved it. We stayed pretty much right on the beach; just had to walk a couple of minutes to be on the sand. Folly Beach is about a 25 minute drive from King Street. King Street is the main street in Charleston, filled with restaurants, shopping, and bars. My friend and I walked up and down King Street on Friday morning/afternoon for a few hours, which was nice. Otherwise, we were with the rest of the bachelorette party during Friday & Saturday. My friend and I ate lunch on Friday at Jestine's, which is a famous traditional southern cooking style restaurant there, and we had both been there before. I just got a grilled cheese sandwich, but my friend got the fried chicken. My sandwich was good though, ha. 
One mont from today Bob and I are flying to Nashville! I hope it hurries up. I'm SO excited to go, because we had such a blast last year. This year my sister and her soon to be husband will be in Nashville while we're there, so we'll be seeing them, as well as attending the Boogie. The Boogie starts on Thursday, so Tuesday night and all Wednesday Bob and I will be hitting up all the places we want to go to (especially restaurants!), so we can mainly stay at the Boogie the rest of our trip. We'll be going to Monell's, which is a very famous traditional southern style cooking restaurant, and we've never been before. Bob is especially looking forward to going there to eat. We're definitely going to Loveless Wednesday, as well. It's always a MUST for me, and will be my third time going. 
Bob's birthday was Wednesday, and Friday after work we went out to a local brew pub for dinner and drinks. This coming Saturday we'll be at his dad's house for a joint birthday bbq for Bob and his brother. 
In the pictures below I'm wearing my beloved and much work Trashy Diva Wildflowers Trixie dress, which I got a year ago. I wear it sooo much when the weather is nice. I wore it on the car ride down to Charleston, actually, and am definitely taking it to the Boogie. I love the primary color combo in the dress, and the beautiful flower print, plus the dress is super comfy (love stretchy side panels!!). 
The necklace and brooch I'm wearing are new, I just got them from Luxulite. They go so well with the dress!  

Dress: Trashy Diva
Necklace, brooch, earrings: Etsy (Luxulite)
Bangles: Splendette, Etsy (BrighterBakelite), & antique shop
Heels: BAIT Footwear

~Bye bye for now!

Southern Road Trip, Part I

Hello there! It really is SO nice to have off Fridays in the summer, and I appreciate it very much . It may be a little tough to transition back to a five day work week, but it's not like I'm a teacher who goes from having NO work for a couple of months, to then back to a regular work week! So, it could be much worse, ha. It also shouldn't be too tough, since I like my job! I'm just doing some cleaning, laundry, working out, reading, and what not today. 
I'm going to do this post on the first two stops of our vacation: Richmond and Charleston. We stayed in Richmond for one night; it was our first stop. With the bit of traffic we hit, and the rest stops, it took about 7.5 hours to get there. We first went over to Carytown (which is a cute section that has a bunch of little mom & pop shops and restaurants). I had been planning on going to Bygone's Vintage first, which is a clothing shop there. We got parking right in front of the shop, which was great, and I got a Trashy Diva dress there! I hadn't bought anything in the ruffled feathers print before; it came out about two or three months ago. I hadn't been sure about it, and wanted to see it in person before deciding. They only had a couple of sizes left in the two styles they had, the sarong and l'amour. The sarong I tried on fit, but I liked the l'amour on me better. The l'amour is a little roomy, but I still think it looks good. They didn't have the next size down. We walked around more after that, and went in a few shops. We went back to the hotel then to check in and get ready to go out to eat. 
We went over to another section of Richmond, which was really nice. The roads are cobblestone there. There's some restaurants and bars over there, and we went to an Irish pub called Seine. We love Irish pubs, and we this one didn't let us down. Dinner was good, and during happy hour I ordered my usual vodka crans, not knowing the happy hour price. It turns out they were $2 each! After dinner, we walked around the area, but didn't see a bar we wanted to check out, so we came back to Seine for awhile to have drinks at the bar.  
We moved on to Charleston the next day. We left in the morning, and got there in the afternoon.  We were there three nights. We were a little let down by Charleston, Bob especially. I mean I did like it, but was just expecting more. A lot of the stores there were chain mall stores, which I do not like. My first dinner there was bad, too, and I'm almost never disappointed by food I order. I ordered a side of mac & cheese, and it just tasted like burnt garlic! 
After we got there and checked into our hotel, and started walking around, we went into a bar at a restaurant called Toast. After we were there a little bit, the guy sitting at the bar started talking to us, and we ended up staying for hours, talking to him, and his wife who showed up later. He was really funny and easy to talk to. So, that was definitely a good experience.
There weren't really any bars or restaurants we tried that I LOVED. It also rained a couple of times in the afternoons we were there, so that was annoying. We checked out a place called Husk that  Anthony Bourdain recommended on his show "Parts Unknown". But, we weren't impressed with the food we tried. Granted, we only tried a small "bar bites" dish, and not a regular dish at the restaurants itself. 
We did venture over to a beach, which was about a 20 minute drive away (you have to drive to get to any Charleston beach). We hadn't originally planned on doing it, but when we were at Toast, we heard good things about the beach towns. We checked out a bar/restaurant that was recommended. It was right on the beach, so that was nice. It was a very casual place, which we definitely like that, but it was nothing exceptional. I think if we had gone at night, when it'd be a lot busier, it'd have been more interesting. We were the first people in there that day, ha. We walked along the beach after hanging out at the bar awhile, and waded in the water. It was SO warm! We had heard on the news that it was 87 degrees! It was nice to get to check out the beach.
The first two pictures below are from Richmond, and the rest are from Charleston.

 

The dress I got at Bygone's Vintage!