Beach Houses and Shopping

When you’re traveling with girls, you can be sure there will be plenty of good food. Most of our hubbies will not eat like this, so it’s nice to eat girlie food on a trip to the beach. Tricia brought her oh-so-yummy Southern Living Cha-Cha chicken salad, which she made for us and if you need a good chicken salad recipe, it’s listed on this post. This is about the BEST chicken salad I’ve ever had, so give it a try. I’m definitely going to make it myself. You use rotisserie chicken and it has cream cheese in it, nuff said! We brought fruit, plenty of crackers, bagels, I made my banana bread, and we ate very well. We polished off the rest of the chicken salad and fruit for breakfast the last day and headed home.

I snapped some of the colorful beach houses on the way out of town. You can see the sky was dark and cloudy, but that didn’t stop the shoppers. The array of color on the Gulf coast with these beach cottages can’t be beat.

I imagine the folks below don’t have any problem telling their visitors where to go…it’s the PINK house….

Pink seems to be a popular color down here for beach cottages.

Our first stop on the way out in Foley was Fran’s garden center.

We got countless laughs over their sign since we saw it driving in. Sandy is an avid gardener and really wanted to take some of this home with her, so we stopped to take a look. She decided it smelled a little too much for us to put it in the SUV and have to ride home with it. The lady at Fran’s said they had quite a lot of comments over the turkey poop sign. I bet they have! :)

I did enjoy the garden paths around this nursery and got some ideas for my backyard. It was a fun place to browse.

A bottle tree.

And the Wisteria was blooming over this arbor. Next stop was Trees N Trends, another fun store. Sort of a cross between Old Time Pottery and Grand Harbor Imports in Atlanta.

Lots of floral arrangements, as well as dried and silk florals galore.

A whole wall full of outdoor cushions.

Tons ‘o lamps.

Luggage that you couldn’t miss a mile away. This is what you need at the airport carousel to stand out in the crowd.

A couple of us bought this moss on a roll, thought it was pretty fun.

A couple of cute ottomans.

Lots of outdoor pots.

Trendy and inexpensive purses.

And plenty of furniture pieces too. A total fun place to browse and look around, so if you get to Foley, check out Trees N Trends.

There still more to come and the next shops are even better!

Birmingham girls, today the yardsales are plentiful, so you might want to get out there and find a few. I'm hitting at least 3 big sales this a.m. and I also met up on Friday with a reader in Indian Springs who is having a big sale today. Great stuff! She is at 788 Indian Crest Drive if anyone wants to stop by. She and I worked out a trade and I brought home some beautiful brown and white transferware Staffordshire English ironstone dishes and I'm going back next week for a decorating consultation. I love that! And I bought some other goodies from her too that I'll show you later on. I've got lots to share!

Just Us Girls

There’s just nothing like a road trip to Gulf Shores with some girlfriends to recharge your batteries and just enjoy some good ole’ girl time. We all love our hubbies, but this trip was all about us. We got to do exactly as we pleased, stopped as much as we wanted while we were driving, shopped a whole lot, and ate girlie food. Oh, it was fun! These ladies are very sweet and I’m so glad I’ve gotten to know them these last 2 years since moving to Birmingham. This was our first time going on a trip together and it really turned out great. We had a blast, took walks on the beach all 3 days, sat and sipped coffee in the morning over good conversation, and relished the peace and quiet pace of the beach. And the napkins that Maureen had at her beach house said it all…Just us Girls!

We carpooled down in 2 vehicles and stopped plenty of times. One of our many stops going down was at Priester’s Pecans, a legend in this area for their abundance of pecans and candies.

We popped in upstairs to see the candy making process in person. I didn’t take pics, but on the way back home, we stopped by the Russell Stover store and bought their blooper chocolates. And man, are they good! My hubby was happy to see those when I got home.

And who knew there were SO many variety of pecans. I sure didn’t!

Next stop, Wisteria Cottage in Fort Deposit, AL. A couple of the girls had been here before, but it had been awhile.

They have lots of home accents.

And apparently, they are party central in this area for pageant dresses, prom dresses, and all around party wear.

These slip-on OKA sandals are very popular in the South. Do you have these in your area? They are very comfortable and the ribbons can be changed out for other colors. I don’t have any yet, but I just bought my first pair of Yellow Box flip-flops at Belk this week. The black and white polka-dot ones will be great for my wardrobe this summer.

Wisteria Cottage has lots of monogrammed items, like these hand towels.

Lots of birds and nests.

And an abundance of bunnies. And no, I didn’t buy this lamp, as much as I loved it.

This tall lantern was very nice.

Birdsnest and a painting.

This iron item was very unique and would look great on a large island in the kitchen. What a fun piece to have for parties. If you’re in this area sometime, stop by Wisteria Cottage. You’ll enjoy it!

And so, after a few stops on the way down, we finally arrived mid afternoon at Maureen’s beach house. I showed lots of pics of this last year, so if you’d like to see the whole tour of this beautiful beach cottage, click here. It’s a 3 story beach house and absolutely beautiful. With 4 bedrooms and baths, we all had our own space.

The large back deck looks out over the back bay area. A total Coastal Living moment.

Their dock, complete with boat and Waverunners. It’s a bit chilly yet to be in the water.

Since we had sunshine the first day, we figured we had better take advantage of it. Good thing we did, as we didn’t see it again the whole trip.

So, we enjoyed a nice breezy walk on the beach late afternoon on the first day.

The beach was practically deserted this time of year. Isn’t it pretty? Come summer, things really get hopping down here.

We watched a couple of guys on these balloon skis flying through the air. There was plenty of wind that day, so it was no problem for them to fly across the waves.

And we stopped someone along the way to take a pic of the girls. That’s (L to R) Sandy, Tricia, me, and Maureen, who owns the lovely beach house we stayed in.

For dinner that night, we went to Calypso Joe’s and it was really good. I got shrimp and grits and we all enjoyed our seafood. When at the beach, you gotta get seafood.

Maureen, Tricia and me before dinner.

Since the weather didn’t cooperate, we had to find something to do the next day. Rain threatened and it was black and cloudy. We didn’t let that dampen our spirits though. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. When it rains at the beach…what do you do but go shopping?! We took off to the Tanger Outlet and spent all afternoon there and had dinner at Lulu’s the second night.

After walking on the beach that morning, we all decided that our hair would just have to wait. You can see I went curly since that’s what my hair does naturally and after walking around in the humidity, it’s almost a losing battle at the beach, I’ve learned. We were all whining about our hair, especially me.

Lulu’s is a lot of fun, if you’ve never been there you must try it. I got my fill of some fried seafood that night and we all had some luck at the outlet shops. I bought some Gap jeans and a cute top from Ann Taylor and we all came home with shopping bags.

On the way home from the beach, we took some time to stop at more fun places and I’ll share those with you in the next couple of posts. There are some great places down there to browse and the best time to do that is without our hubbies, so we took advantage of the time and had a ball looking at everything. Can’t wait to show you some of my favorite new shopping haunts. I’d love to go back to a couple of them for sure, so stay tuned for more great shopping and a few pretty beach houses too!

Thank you ALL for stopping by the giveaway. What a great success it has been. I've got so many new readers to visit and I'm really trying to catch up with all of you, but it's just about impossible these days. I SO appreciate you all taking the time to stop by and see me and I just run of out time to visit you all. The fab giveaway below ends on Friday night at 6 pm Central time, so there's still time to comment if you'd like to get in on it! Winner will be announced on Saturday morning.

Sales and Going to the Beach

It's been raining a lot this week. We’ve had some severe storms blowing through the last couple of days and I was browsing the Saturday yardsales in the paper Friday night about 9 pm, when I spotted the Mt. Laurel ad. My heart skipped a beat. I look for that one every spring and fall, since I’ve always found some great things at their sales. I’ve written about Mt. Laurel several times, so go and take a peek if you’d like to see more about it here. It’s a beautiful quaint community and rain never stops me from hitting this sale. From the looks of the crowd, no one else minded either. I was pretty careful about what I brought home, but I did find a few things.

A nice piece of burlap was free (and only marked 10 cents) because I bought two T-shirts from them. I haven’t unrolled it yet, but it’s probably at least 2 yards. Why didn’t I find this before I did the corner cabinet? Oh well, I’m sure I’ll find something to use it for.

This adorable custom made Roman shade was a great price. I don’t have a place to put it, but bought it anyway since it was a good deal and too cute to leave behind. I’ll probably end up selling this one, so let me know if you are interested and we’ll make a deal. Green polkadot fabric with a pretty fringe trim of red/gold and green. I walked around the house looking for a spot to use it, but there is no where to put it. It’s 36” wide and I didn’t measure the length yet. Email me if you’re interested!

This bronzey ceramic urn was $1. I’ll probably spray this one white to go with all my other white pieces.

Heavy iron white piece was $4.

Cute and comfy looking Gap cropped linen pants were $2.

And these 2 adorable Frenchy T’s were $1 each.

Now last weekend I went out too and found a great deal on this print for $30. The pricetag on the back was from BA Framers and marked $600!! Now, I know no one pays retail for these things, but I’m sure it was at least $150 to $200 originally. I had no idea where I’d put it, but decided to move another yardsale print I had over the bed and put it here. This is a HUGE piece, 50x50” and it’s a map of Versailles, which I’ve visited before in France, so that was pretty neat I thought. I love maps and this is a really cool piece.

It fits right in here in the cottage bedroom.

On Monday, I'll be leaving for the beach with these ladies and going to Gulf Shores, AL where we'll be staying here at the beach house. I'll post something while I'm gone and of course, you'll see some beach pics when I return!

Don't forget the giveaway coming on Wednesday. You will NOT want to miss it!