Mom's Birthday Weekend: Mountains of Fun

Pumpkins and funnel cakes and Dollywood, oh my! We just unloaded the car and unpacked from a weekend in the Smoky Mountains, celebrating my mom's birthday (say it with me now, Happy Birthday, Susan). This time of year is the perfect time to head to the mountains and enjoy the changing leaves, all the fall decorations, and some quality family time at Dolly Parton's theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It has become an annual tradition for mom's birthday that we look forward to each year.

We met Friday for lunch in downtown Gatlinburg, and enjoyed the cool fall weather walking around the tourist-packed downtown and seeing the sights. Naturally, we brought our dogs and their strollers, and they lapped up all the attention they were getting from passers-by. It was peak tourist season and crazy crowded, so we prioritized: after stopping for fudge and taffy at the Smoky Mountain Candy Kitchen, we headed out of town and checked into our cabin for the weekend.

The dogs, relaxing in their strollers outside the Smoky Mountain Candy Kitchen.

Our home for the weekend.

Friday night, we ate apple fritters and comfort food to our heart's content at the Applewood Farmhouse, and then headed to indulge in our guilty tourist trap pleasure at the Titanic Museum. If you have ever driven by this attraction, how can you resist going inside? The building is a half scale replica of the Titanic ship!

The exterior of the Titanic Museum. We are powerless to resist a gimmick.

When you enter the museum, you each given a boarding pass with a real passenger's name and biographical information. You see where on the ship they would have stayed, and at the end of the tour you find out if your passenger survived or not. I was less than thrilled when I got a third class passenger, but pleasantly surprised when I saw her name on the survivor's wall (only 26% of third class passengers made it off the ship).

My boarding pass from the Titanic Museum. I made it!

Clint, using a shovel weighted to give you the feel of what it would have been like to shovel coal into the furnace of the ship. It was so heavy!

To access the second story of the museum, we got to walk up an exact replica of the ship's grand staircase, recreated from the original blueprints.

We got to see plates and silver from on board the ship, as well as original life jackets worn by surviving passengers. There is even part of the exhibit where you can walk out on a deck and feel water chilled the temperature of the ocean that evening--28 degrees! One of our most favorite parts was a Lego replica of the Titanic built by a 10-year old autistic boy; it is 26 feet long and five feet high. That's a lot of Legos!

The massive Lego ship built by a 10-year old. It was astonishing.

I promise to move on from the Titanic Museum, but let me just also add that we closed the place down and bought Christmas ornaments at the gift shop, if that gives you any idea of how much we enjoyed our experience. We headed back to the coziness of our cabin to a box of Gigi's cupcakes for the birthday girl, and to get a good night's sleep in preparation for a full day of Dollywood the next day.

If you've never been to Dollywood, I can only describe it as the cleanest, friendliest, most family friendly theme park I've ever visited. Not only do we love the rides (and the food), each fall they go over-the-top with their LumiNights festival with thousands of carved and illuminated pumpkins. We got to the park around 10:30 Saturday morning, and were some of the last to leave when it closed at 9:00 p.m. that night (okay, we did take a couple of breaks to go back to the cabin and check on the dogs, but still). I think it's safe to say we didn't miss a thing.

Dollywood has a section that looks just like a 1950s town.
After lunch at Red's Diner, I dared Mom to climb on the hood of the police car parked outside.
Old enough to know better, still too young to care.

A rainy afternoon in Dollywood is still a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.

Hooray for Dollywood!

A pumpkin spice funnel cake, with caramel sauce and brown sugar pecans.

We never met a seasonal, limited time product we didn't want to try.
This was even better than it looks.

I hope your weekend was half as much fun as ours.

Even though she never ages a day, I want to wish my mom a very happy birthday and year ahead. She is the hostess with the most, always an entertainer, a firm believer in eating dessert first, and the glue that keeps our family together. Wishing you many more, Mom! xoxo

Football & Friends: A Saturday Recap

I realize I've been saying this a lot lately, but I love this time of year. There's no place I would rather spend a beautiful fall Saturday than in my college town of Clemson, cheering for my Tigers and seeing old and new friends. This Saturday, Clemson kicked off versus Florida State at 3:30, and we made the most of a full day of football and friends.

For the tailgate, I decided to go all out with a Bloody Mary bar. Typically, I just put out a bottle of Zing Zang (the best Bloody Mary mix there is, in my time and taste-tested opinion) along with a few fixings and let that be that, but this week I upped my offerings with pretty much any and everything I could imagine.

For me, this is basically a breakfast buffet. Most important meal of the day, after all!

Is there such thing as too much? Not in my opinion.

I even found this charming hot sauce to spice things up a bit.

The weather was gorgeous and the drinks were delicious. If you're looking for ideas on what to serve in a Bloody Mary bar setup, here's what I included:

Vodka (otherwise, you're just eating gazpacho)

Bloody Mary mixes (I chose Zing Zang, Charleston Mix, and Bruce Julian,

 a local brand from Charlotte)

Assorted hot sauces and Worcestershire sauce

Pickled okra, carrots, asparagus, and green tomato slices

Dill pickle and pearl onion skewers

Boiled shrimp with Old Bay seasoning

Candied bacon jerky

Beef jerky sticks

Celery

Colby Jack cheese cubes

Jalapeno stuffed olives (these were my favorite, hands down)

Lime and lemon wedges

A perfect start to the day.

Meet Rebecca, another satisfied Bloody Mary bar customer.

Our friend Tom brought back a rock from Death Valley, California, 
and now our tailgate has its very own version of Howard's rock!

One of our fellow tailgaters was nice enough to smoke two pork shoulders, and around noon we feasted on barbecue, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and homemade potato salad. For a little something seasonal and sweet, I made one of my favorite fall recipes for pumpkin dip. It's easy and oh-so-good, with all the flavors of fall. After all, I've got to get my pumpkin spice fix in any way I can.

I like to serve this with gingersnap cookies. Enjoy!

After lunch, we walked off some of our calories by heading over to our friends' spot at Tiger Park and also made a quick stop at the Esso Club--no game day is complete for me without a stop at the Esso, after all.

Enjoying catching up with Kristy and Holly; these girls are worth every laugh line they'll give you.

Cheers to game day!

I'm just going to admit it: my friend Will beats me for Best Game Day Outfit.

I have known these characters since 1998.
Time spent with old friends is time well spent.

We had a fantastic Saturday, full of football and fun. I laughed until my face hurt, walked my college campus until my feet hurt, and fell asleep with a full heart and a Tiger paw still on my face. You can't beat weekends filled with your favorite people in your favorite place. The best part? In two weeks, we'll be back for homecoming to do it all again. "CU" soon, Clemson!

Finally, Fall

October is here, and it looks like (mercifully) fall has finally decided to come along with it. Don't get me wrong, we still have some 80-degree days in the forecast ahead, but the humidity is lower, the air is cooler in the mornings when I walk the dog, and you can't go more than a jack-o-lantern's length without someone offering you more pumpkin spice (cinnamon and nutmeg are being thrown around like confetti this time of year, and I'm a fan). In my last blog I was wishing for fall, and this week I feel like a genie popped out of a giant pile of leaves and granted that wish. I hope I'm not jinxing us when I say this, but I think we made it. Finally, fall.

This past Saturday, we woke up to a cloudy but delightfully cool day. Despite any plans Clint may have had for watching football, we needed a pumpkin and I had heard about a real, actual pumpkin patch just 20 minutes from our house. Serendipitous, don't you think? I'm sure Clint did too (ha), so we headed out in search for gourds and anything else this beautiful autumn weather might bring with it. (It was even mild enough to wear a sweater...granted, a whisper thin sweater, but we both wore jeans without any risk of fainting from heat exhaustion, and friends, that is progress when you live in the South).

Hall Family Farm in south Charlotte has a little bit of everything: hayrides, a corn maze, the pumpkin patch, plenty of face painting and games for kids, and all kinds of delicious apple and pumpkin, and pecan deliciousness as well. If you know me at all, you know I love a gimmick, so I was giddy over all the offerings. I also have never actually seen a pumpkin growing on a vine in real life, so I was mesmerized to see the rows and rows of beautiful orange--and even some still green--pumpkins just primed for picking!

The farm had all kinds of animals
 (and a sign saying that they bite, so please note my hand safely outside the fence), including goats.

This guy clearly had his fill of apple cider doughnuts. Totally worth it.

Can you tell how much fun he's having?
Way better than watching football on the couch, to be sure.

The only thing better than an apple cider doughnut is an apple cider doughnut sundae.
Warm doughnut, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, and caramel sauce (and delicious).

We are both grinning ear to ear simply over the fact that we were outdoors and not hot!
Happy fall, indeed!

I think we caught a case of fall fever from the afternoon at the farm, because Sunday we got out the Halloween decor and made the house ready for the occasion as well. If you want to meet your new neighbors, may I suggest putting a five-foot skeleton walking a bony canine companion out in your front yard? It's an instant conversation piece.

Mr. Bones and his dog, Fang, are also new residents on Kimblewyck Lane.

A spooky wreath and some pumpkin topiaries have the front porch ready for trick-or-treaters (or, in the meantime, Amazon deliveries)

And inside, I added a little bit of spooky to our family room as well.

We are Halloween ready (and yes, that's Hocus Pocus you see on TV).

In case you hadn't guessed, I really love this time of year. The spider webs I've been dutifully cleaning around the house can now just be considered decoration, I ate pumpkin mousse for dessert last night, and the AMC network's glorious airing of "Fearfest" each year means a scary movie a day for anyone that wants one (raises hand enthusiastically). For me, fall always means we are moving closer and closer to the holiday season. First, spooky month and then turkey and dressing month, and then that holy grail of all the holidays: Christmas! I, for one, am planning on enjoying every minute of it. Finally, fall!