weekending-- Christmas party and girls day trip edition

 

Happy Monday, friends! I'm linking up with Holly and Sarah for today's post. I hope you had a wonderful weekend! I thought I'd talk about my Thursday night and Friday with you today since my weekend was pretty much the same as it is every other weekend. 

Thursday night was the Christmas party for my work. It was so much fun, and the location was beautiful! It was at a venue called Heartwood Hall, which is an historical house with a barn. We have been out there a few times for weddings, and it never ceases to make me pause and take a moment to appreciate the beauty. Of course I took pictures for you! 

This house is gorgeous! The inside is beautifully decorated, and when you walk up the stairs, you can feel the age of the home. The people who run the place live in the back of this house, but the rest of it is used for the bridal party on their wedding days. 

This is the barn, which is where the parties and wedding receptions are held. It looked so pretty when we were there on Thursday night!

Except for these three pictures, they're all the pictures I took. It was such a fun night! We sat with friends at our table and had the most fun catching up and playing games together. My friend took this picture below of Todd and me. I love how it turned out! 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I was reminded again that night of how thankful I am to be able to be a small part of our church staff. I love working with this wonderful group of people! I feel so very blessed and fortunate to be able to say this and you know I don't say it lightly. I never want to take this for granted! 

Then on Friday, I picked my best friend up that morning, and we drove to the Nashville area for the day. Originally we'd planned on meeting up with our friend Teresa, but she came down with some sickness with fever that morning and wasn't up to meeting us. I hated that we missed her, but we still went and had the very best time. I was so excited to spend this time with Missy; she and I are in extremely busy phases of life, she far more so than me, so it's hard for us to get together. We've both had so much going on in our lives for the past few months, that these times have stretched to few and far between. Even just the whole being together for six hours in my car felt fun, and we caught up on all the things! I wish I'd gotten a picture of the two of us, but I forgot. I did take some other pictures to share, though!

Our first stop was to Pucket's Grocery in Columbia, Tn. We put our name on the list and immediately walked next door to my favorite bookshop, Duck River Books.

This book tree is amazing! 

We each left with treasures. I love the courthouse on the square! 

Then we walked over to this really cute antique mall. I love an antique mall! I was trying to be quick about going through this place, but it went on and on and I wanted to see everything. There were three floors! I literally thought of my sister Trish the entire time. She loves these types of places as much as I do, and I hope to go back with her one day soon. It's so much more magical at Christmas! I don't know that Missy is much of an antique mall type gal, but she was a good sport. 

I love this little outdoor eating area. It would be fun to see this area at night! i love eating al fresco, do you?  

We went from Columbia over to Franklin, but we kept driving when we saw that it was Dickens weekend on the main street area. There were so many people! We ended our time by going to Trader Joe's, something we love to do and don't get into very often. We have one in our area, but it's really not convenient for us to get to easily. We each took home treats from there, and then started the drive back home. We had dinner at Chick Fil A, after what seemed like forever getting there. I thought I'd typed the name of the restaurant into my GPS, but all I typed was "Jackson". We went through some sketchy parts of town getting to CFA, and I was starving by the time we sat down to eat close to 7 p.m. We laughed and made new memories, we poured our hearts out for a while, and we got all caught up until the next time. It was a great day!

What did you do this weekend? I'd love to hear! Thanks for reading my blog, friends. Love to all!