The Honeymoon Adventures, Pt. 1

This post is going to be about my honeymoon, but I have to preface it by saying: waking up on your wedding day is a weird feeling. The night before mine, walking through the ceremony with family and friends at the rehearsal dinner, I was more nervous than I have ever been. The next morning, though, I pulled on a pair of checkered pants and ate toast at a local diner with my parents, somewhat subdued, even though it was The Day. Then when the wedding was over, it was finally time to travel.

For our honeymoon, Peter and I ventured to Savannah, GA and Asheville, NC.

Our honeymoon was a supreme road trip, up from central Florida over to Savannah for a night, then continuing onto a remote cabin just outside of Asheville for the remaining nights. Because of all the driving, there was also a lot of music, and because there was a lot of music, I decided to write down my favorites from the songs that we played. I have included the tracks in a playlist at the bottom of this post!

The hotel we stayed in Savannah was called the Hyatt Regency, and it was right on the water.

Our room had a view of all the boats down along the river, and right below was (the aptly named) River Street. Because of all the traveling, we were too tired to explore Savannah extensively upon arrival, but we brought food in from Olympia Café, a fantastic Greek restaurant. 

The next morning, we sleepily emerged from our hotel room to go look around downtown Savannah.

I did not know, but Savannah is something of a walking town, so we walked the streets to get from place to place. We happened upon an adorable breakfast spot called Goose Feathers Café, and settled in at the window seat. I got a cup of orange juice and something called an Eggel Bagel(!) with avocado.

I wish we had had more time to explore Savannah before heading to our cabin in Asheville, and I definitely want to go back. There were a lot of cute shops we spotted on our walk that morning that weren't open before we had to leave for the next leg of our journey. I would definitely recommend Savannah, even though we experienced precious little of what it had to offer.

Please ignore the dumpsters lolol.

Our travels took us over a large bridge and through dense woods, and eventually we arrived (up the side of a mountain - big deal for a FL gal) at the cabin in North Carolina. The cabin had an adorable front porch, a loft bedroom, a hot tub outside, and a hammock. I already miss it, and the crisp mountain air that is infinitely preferable to the constant humidity we have here near the coast.

We spent a lot of time in the cabin cooking (Peter), reading (both of us), and eating store-bought macarons with abandon (me).

I could definitely see myself living in a cabin someday. It was just so green and peaceful - save for the times that the tree branches surrounding the house would creak so furiously against the roof that we thought someone was trying to break in. Save for that. 

 I have more adventures from our time in Asheville to share, but I will save them for the second part of this post, which I hope to finish drafting next week.

Until then, here is the playlist of the songs I jotted down from our honeymoon travels (basically a love letter to The Spring). I made an Acoustic Erin Spotify where you can listen to them, and will be updating it with more honeymoon tunes next week. I hope to add more playlists for y'all to listen to as time goes on. I also started a blog Instagram, which you can find here.

And now an interlude from my husband, who will be writing fun footnotes to my posts for the time being (click here to read the first installment).

~Peter's Paragraph No.2~

Hello all! Recently, I became interested in flash fiction. "What is that?" you ask. Well, it's short fiction stories, usually 3,000 words or less. I started writing some in the hopes to get published on a small-scale website, but then I thought to myself, "Why not make a website of my own?" This has been something Erin has been encouraging me to do in the recent months and I realized creating a flash fiction website would be a good hobby to have. So, yours truly has created The Creative Anecdote, a website of flash fiction that believes in paying for creators' works. The prizes may be cheap, but hey, it's being funded by me right now. If you like the idea, please follow us on Instagram (@thecreativeanecdote) and join our mailing list on our website. Just by doing that, you are supporting something that helps support others! Love you all. 

And there you go, that is the post! Have you guys ever been to Savannah or Asheville? Where have your summer travels taken you to?

Missing the woods,

E

Marriage, Blogging, & Everything Else

I never quite know how to awkwardly side-shuffle from stage left back onto the blog when I've been gone for any length of time, so...here I am. If anybody's out there, ~salutations~. Also if it's just me, hi, I love your work.

I got married in June, and wedding plans consumed my life for months before that, but now I've been spat back out into my new normal life, which includes 300% more cuddles but still my requisite amount of anxiety.

Side note: It's funny to me how fast my actual wedding went by. I know people are always saying that, but it's true. There were so many bright moments from that day (being tossed in the air multiple times during an impromptu mosh pit at the reception among them) but it's crazy that that was already over a month ago. 

I plan to share more about the wedding and honeymoon in a separate post, but for right now, I'm dipping my toe back into the blogging waters to see if anyone's still swimmin'.

I feel like a lot of the bloggers I used to love reading stopped posting content around 2019. Some of my favorite reads are still here (God bless), but to me it feels like blogging has been left behind. Which I don't completely hate - I feel like there's something inherently slow-paced about it, something decidedly old fashioned that might not be as popular in our fast-paced lives. It takes time to read or write a blog! It takes devotion! It used to be my Saturday morning ritual to run three miles, fix a bowl of oatmeal, then sip my coffee while reading and commenting on my favorites. That took hours.

Regardless, I will always have an affection for blogging. Something always draws me back in, no matter how long I've been away.

Offline, behind the scenes, I've been thinking and praying about what I want this space to be. I have thoughts of writing more long-form essay content or short stories, of creating a mailing list, of sharing more snippets of my daily life. My husband might even make his own blog - but for now he has contented himself with the addition of what we lovingly call "Peter's Paragraph," which, starting with today's entry, you will see added to the bottom of my blog posts (scroll to the bottom).

I sometimes still struggle with perfectionism when I come to this space, but my favorite blogs are authentic, unapologetic, and the writers say what they feel without any preamble. People like that inspire me to write even if I'm only writing for myself - which, in the end, isn't a bad place to be.

And, what's this?! A bonus Jonas? Don't look now, it's....Peter's Paragraph (which we invented on the honeymoon as a kind of joke but look where we are now).

~Peter's Paragraph~

Greetings all! My wife let me infiltrate her blog with whatever I want to say (LOL). Thus, “Peter’s Paragraph” was created. The best authors know how to use the paragraph as an outlet to let their ideas flow. That is why we see paragraphs that are pages long and some as short as one word. However, paragraphs in school are taught to be 3-5 sentences. This elementary objective limits writers from being creative and reaching their true potential. As a result, I would like to relate the paragraph to life… There are people telling us that we have to be this or that (3-5 sentences long for example), but our potential is truly greater. It is up to us to determine if we want to live in the parameters defined by others or create the parameters ourselves.

Bam! And just like that, the blog post is over. If anyone is following along, how has your summer been? Are you reading any good books? I would love new recommendations, as always!

Hello goodbye,

E