A tribute to my Memaw

My sweet Memaw went to Heaven on Friday. She was a wonderful woman and I am SO glad that the Lord blessed me with almost 30 years with her! She was a very talented writer and the woman who I inherited the writing gene from. She wrote us letters for each of our birthdays and she wrote me my final one for my wedding day. She was SO happy for me and Michael and I'm so glad that she was able to be there with me on my wedding day! She always told me that she loved my zest for life and just recently, she told me to "Keep traveling the World" because its something she wished she'd done more. Every time I visit someplace new, I know she will be right there with me and I will continue to carry on her writing genes through this blog.

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While I will miss her here, I have no doubt that she loved Jesus and that she's in Heaven and I rest in the fact that we are simply saying "See you later" and not "Goodbye." Please pray for my family and especially my mom as I am sure tomorrow will be a tough day.

Thrifty Thursday....Why I LOVE Outlets

It's no secret that I'm a fan of shopping at outlets. In fact, I'd say most of you are fans of shopping in them as well. Who doesn't love saving big bucks on items?!
Well, what's better than outlet shopping? Outlet clearance shopping!! M and I hit up the outlets recently and I got a CRAZY deal at JCrew! I'm so excited about it, that I just had to show y'all what I got for a whopping $40.

Dress, Top, Headband, and Beach Hat from J Crew :)

 Here's how I got them for so cheap:
1) They are outlet items so already cheaper.
2) They were in the clearance section at the store-where I ALWAYS head first, even when shopping outlets
3) They were on SALE in the clearance section for 50% off the already clearance price.

Here's a little secret that I have learned about outlets, and most stores, really. They begin clearancing out items right in the peak of the season. Summer items go on super clearance mid-July and Winter go on clearance in early January. I don't shop for clothes too often in Spring and Fall because I tend to just add layers to items I already have, so I can't say from experience what months those items get clearanced out. Regardless, outlets always provide awesome deals if you know how to shop smart. My motto is: NEVER pay full price for anything, even when it's in the outlets :) So, hit up those sale racks and save yourself some green!!

Happy Outlet Shopping,
Ash

Travel Tip Tuesday....Great Airport :)

Even though I'm a total Nervous Nancy when flying, I really do LOVE how we can get from point A to B SO fast. I also love that for most trips, it's actually CHEAPER for us to get there by air than by car. When you are travelling solo or with one other person to destinations over 8 hours away, you can really save some major green buy flying the friendly skies! Example: You can fly to FL for under $200 per person. If we loaded up the car and drove the 12 hours there and back, we'd spend MORE on gas and food than we would by flying.

DFW!!

I always try to fly non-stop, but when I have a layover someplace, I always try to choose my favorite airport, Dallas Fort-Worth aka DFW. I really do LOVE this airport for several reasons and I think that once you've been there, you'll love it too!!

Airport Map :)

Here's why I always say "Yes" to a flight that has a DFW layover:

1. It is ran SUPER efficiently. Everything from the trams to flights seems to run like a well-oiled machine. It's truly something unreal.

2. Their Customs department is AMAZING! I have never seen a customs area move so quickly and be more organized than my time in customs at DFW. You get in and get out in no time without having to wait in crazy long lines. There's no question as to where you need to go next (if you've never been through Customs it's a process with several stops) because it is all set up so well. The workers are even super friendly which makes everything more pleasant. I swear, the agents in Miami don't even smile, but in Dallas you get that friendly southern, "Hello!"

3. They are a pro-healthy eating airport! They have lots of healthy options and the trams even have maps in them showing you where each healthy place is located. There's nothing worse than eating nasty airport quality bad for you food and then getting on a plane with recycled air. At least in Dallas, you can easily find a healthy refreshing alternative easily :)

4. They have AWESOME chairs. Okay, so this may sound silly, but we all know how miserable sitting in those airport chairs can be. DFW has lounger chairs as well as chairs that come equipped with footrests and drink holder. Amaze!

The next time you have to have a layover, I highly recommend choosing DFW as your airport!!


Happy Flying and Layover enjoying :)

The Great Post-Wedding Chop!!!

I did it! I chopped it off and I LOVE it :)

Here's the before and after:

The hair with the Locks of Love offical form :)

Happy Monday, Friends :)

See this crazy long hair....

Wearing my $15 dress steal from Marshalls on our honeymoon :)

I am about to cut it off.......maybe. I have a hair appointment on Monday (a gift from the girl who did my hair for the wedding. How sweet is she?!)  and I'm 95% sure I'm going to cut off 10 inches and donate it to Locks for Love. If you're not familiar with this amazing organization here's what they do: they take donations for hair, 10 inches or longer, and make wigs out of your hair to give to children undergoing chemotherapy and have lost their hair. Amazing, right?!
When I began growing my hair,  I always knew that when I decided to cut it, that I was going to donate it- I just wasn't sure when I was going to cut it. Well, my hair has been giving me FITS the past few weeks and I decided it was time to make the big cut! I made my appointment with Amanda for Monday morning, and while most moments I'm totally ready to see it go, other moments I think I may end up going for a little trim instead. Since the hair is SO long now, I should be left with a decent length, and as long as I still have a good length to work with, I'm good- I think?! Ha!

I guess we will find out on Monday night what I decided to do.........Stay tuned and be sure to 'like' The Pink Pineapple Blog on Facebook to see pictures :)

Wedding Wednesday.....Our Honeymoon-last stop, South Beach

We left Antigua around 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon. We left the resort around 12:30 and had a short 10 minute ride to the airport. Upon arriving at the airport, we realized that there wasn't much to it-in fact, it reminded me a lot of the Port Au Prince Airport in Haiti. The check-in was outdoor, in a covered area-there was a nice breeze so it was actually pretty nice! We waited in line for about 15 minutes and then headed to the next check-in spot; I say next because there were several. We proceeded to the window and paid our $50 fee to leave the country ($25, each) and then went through another gate where we had to show our passport, a second time. We made it through that gate and then came to yet another gate where we had to show our paperwork again and then we headed to the actual security check. We put our carry-on luggage through the scanner and mine was flagged because of my medicines. They had to check my ENTIRE carry-on, down to EVERY last corner-talk about feeling a tad invaded! Ha! After finally making it through the security check, we were in the actual airport. 

We didn't each lunch at the hotel as we thought there would be plenty to eat at the airport and boy were we wrong- aside from a pizza counter, there was nothing. There were a few cute little shops, one in particular that we used to buy M's temporary wedding band.....for $7.95 :) The sweet cashier told us that she would be our official witness to make our new wedding band official! Ha!

The pizza counter and the new wedding band!

The airport did have free wi-fi which was really nice and after waiting around for a couple of hours it was time for us to board our flight. We lucked out and ended up being on one of American's brand new 737 planes- SO nice! It definitely eased my flying anxiety being on such a nice jet!

We arrived in Miami a few hours later and entered in the crazy mess of customs. If you've ever been through customs in Miami you know it can be quite the hassle, but overall it went pretty smooth. We felt like rats being pushed through a maze, but overall we made it through in pretty good time and without hassle. We grabbed a taxi and then headed to our hotel, which until we reached the taxi car, I had no clue as to where we were staying. The hotel in Miami was a surprise from M. He researched it and booked it all by himself and he picked a winner.....The Cleveander!

Stole this photo from Google since I forgot to sanp one!

M had also called the hotel earlier in the day and told them about losing his wedding band as well as the house flooding before our wedding. He asked the hotel to make sure our room was extra special and they totally delivered on his request! We arrived and were handed what is quite possibly the best pina colada I have ever consumed and then we were whisked away to our room. The hotel had upgraded us to what they called the "best room in the house" and had yet another surprise for us as we walked in- rose petals, EVERYWHERE!!!

They also gave us a sweet note and a bottle of champagne to enjoy! How sweet are they?!

View from our patio

We were super excited about our night in Miami so we changed clothes and got ready to hit the town! We were stoked about being in South Beach and couldn't wait to enjoy all it had to offer us!

As we headed out it started to storm, but we thought,"Eh, it's the beach, it will stop in like 30 minutes." Ha! Were we ever wrong!! It stormed, and stormed, and stormed. The streets filled up with water, the wind was kicking and here we are walking the streets under a dinky little umbrella! We stopped into one of those trashy beach shops for a bit to try to stay dry and then we ended up in the gellato shop- the same shop featured in the Jersey Shore.

view from the porch of the gellato shop

We grabbed some gellato and waited for about 30 minutes hoping it would let up, but by this point we were half soaked (me wearing white pants mind you) and we decided to head back to the hotel to re-group. We made it back to the hotel about 10 minutes later and were totally soaked. The hotel was CRAZY by this point with people EVERYWHERE watching the NBA Finals- and I mean C-R-A-Z-Y, like spring break style. We took our soaked bodies up to our room and ordered room service for dinner and decided to just call it a night! So much for our big night out in South Beach. Ha :)

elevator shot on the way back to our room- drenched.

We woke up at 4:45 the next morning for our super early flight home! We had a pit stop in Dallas, which has THE best airport that I've ever been in, and then we flew home to Lexington! We had a great honeymoon, but we were very excited to be home!! We are planning on cruising next summer for our one year anniversary, so we will try to tackle South Beach again next June. Fingers crossed for no rain!

Travel Tip Tuesday.....Travel Insurance

We were busy picking out items for our new kitchen yesterday, so I forgot to post. Whoops! However we did find an AMAZING place to get top of the line appliances for super cheap (we saved over $2,000) and will share about that soon! On the house front, we are FINALLY able to get started on the repairs- it only took State Farm 45 days to get their act together (I'm not bitter or anything. ha!). We have picked out almost everything for the house- Holy Overwhelming, (but in a good way) and are SO excited to see it all once it's complete!

Now, onto the trip insurance. I HIGHLY recommend getting trip insurance for any "big" trips you are taking. As we learned on our honeymoon, having it is SO important, especially when something goes wrong i.e. losing a wedding band in the ocean.

                                                       
Now, you have to make sure to really look into the details of the insurance before purchasing because a lot of them don't cover exactly what you need/are looking for. i.e. If you're cruising you want a plan that is going to cover "tours", if going to Mexico during hurricane season, a plan that has good evacuation coverage, and a trip that requires several flights, a plan that covers good flight/baggage delays.

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In my opinion, the BEST place to go for your travel insurance is www.squaremouth.com. This site compares several different travel insurance companies and allows you to compare plans to decide what's best for you. I always buy my travel insurance via this website and do not buy my insurance that say Delta Airlines suggest I use, or Sandals, or Carnival Cruise lines, etc. I have found that those plans are MORE expensive and cover LESS than plans I can buy through other companies. Why I like Squaremouth so much is that it does all of the comparison shopping for me and it is super easy to use!! Definitely try it out for your next trip and if you have any more questions about picking your trip insurance, just let me know :)

50 Shades of Grey: Why I chose to NOT read

I first heard of 50 Shades during spring on the Today Show. They were discussing this new "racey" novel that several women were raving about and how it was expected to sweep the nation over the summer. Well, they were right, it's swept the nation alright and I debated upon reading it, but decided to pass.

First off, let me say that I know LOTS of people who have read it and have loved it and I am by no means judging anyone who's read/reading it. But, I just wanted to share my views on why I chose NOT to read it, in case you are trying to decide whether or not it's for you.


Here's why I said "No, thanks"


1) As a christian I know that God designed sex and that he designed it to be amazing- between a husband and a wife. If you were raised to believe that sex was wrong, dirty, or something the Lord frowns upon read the book of Song of Solomon. Holy hot and heavy!
Fact: The Lord made sex. He designed and created EVERY ounce of it, and he made it to be a wonderfully, amazing thing -which it is. Between a husband and wife. Period.
The characters in 50 Shades are not married and while this may not be a big deal to some, it's almost glorifying pre-martial sex. Furthermore, the book is based around them engaging in extreme BDSM (bondage, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism)something I feel the Lord sees as wrong.


2) In our pre-marriage class we had a full session devoted to sex. It was a very open, candid session and lots of things were discussed. One of the topics discussed was porn and whether or not it was something that should be brought into the bedroom. Here's the gist of what we discussed:
Porn should never be brought into a marriage. Sex is designed to bond you to your partner and as the bible says, make you one. When using porn you are watching two people engage in sex that are not you or your husband, thus you are welcoming someone else into your bedroom; the sacred place that the Lord planned for you and your spouse to create a wonderful, intimate bond.
Additionally, by watching/reading something involving someone else, you are not looking to your spouse to satisfy your sexual needs-and that is NOT how the Lord intended sex to be.
Furthermore, porn is preformed by actors/actresses and is created by a producer/director. It's fictional and creating a false sense of what sex is really like.
Lastly, men are very visual and we all know the actresses in porn are far from average looking! ha!- Again, creating a false reality. 


Much like typical porn, 50 Shades is also fictional and is providing women with a false sense of what sex should be. So many women have been quoted as saying they are using it to "spice up their sex life" but what they may not realize is that they are using a source of porn to do so; containing very unrealistic sexual escapades at that.  I know women who would NEVER dare watch an actual porn, or who would kill their husbands if they found out he went to a strip club, yet she is avidly reading 50 Shades. To me, its a double standard because she IS engaged in porn- the book is, after all, labeled "mommy porn" and is so racey that even the man reading it on the Today show began blushing and said he "had to put it down."


For me, I simply see 50 Shades as a way of bringing porn into our marriage and also something that has the danger of creating a false sense of how things "should be." When ultimately making my decision to avoid it, I kept going back to two verses: The first reminded me to engage in what's pure and the last to guard my heart/marriage and I don't see reading the books as following either of those.


Philippians 4:8
 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.


Proverbs 4:23
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.



You may not agree with what I have said and that's totally "ok." Again, I'm not judging anyone who has/is reading it. I just wanted to share my views in hopes that it may help someone else with their decision on whether or not to read it.


Happy Weekend, Y'all :)

Wedding Wednesday.....Our Honeymoon-ANTIGUA!!

We spent a majority of our honeymoon, 10 days, at Sandals Grande Antigua. We left San Juan (to read about our time in PR, go back a few posts) around 9:30 Tuesday evening and arrived in Antigua an hour or so later. Upon check-in, we found out that we were upgraded about 7 room categories to the Verandah Concierge Suite. Apparently Sandals does this a lot, and we were more than happy to take the upgrade.

Pineapple accents everywhere! I was in LOVE :)

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Caribbean Grove Entrance

The resort is stunning and the grounds are immaculate. It's divided into two parts, the Caribbean Grove side and the Mediterranean Side. The Med side is newer and a big high-rise building where the Caribbean side feels very tropical where no building is over 3 floors tall and is set amongst the trees in a jungle like setting. We chose the Caribbean side because we LOVE having that tropical feel while we are on vacation! Our room was in a great location-almost right in the center between the two sides. We had both big pools within 50 yards of our room-one to either side.

Caribbean Grove Pool

View of resort from Mediterranean Building

At the swim-up bar :)

We set up a honeymoon registry through Honeyfund.com in order to register for all of the 'extras' for our honeymoon- massages, excursions, etc. We lucked out and ended up with about $1300 which made our honeymoon even that much sweeter! I highly recommend making one, especially if you're like us and you don't really need many of the typical registry items!


Here are some pics of some of the fun we had while there-sorry that they're all close-up's we snapped ourselves; that's what happens when you travel sans friends/family!!

We had a couples massage

We went on a sunset cruise

Ate yummy dinners

played in the pool

We went zip-lining through the jungle

We went jet-skiing through the bay

Took sunset walks on the beach

We also rented a car one day and took on the island ourselves. I had to get a temporary British driver's license in order to be able to drive and it was definitely an experience driving on the wrong side of the road! We went all around the island and got to see so many neat places. Antigua must not believe in street signs, because there were none around. We relied heavily on our cartoon map that they gave us at the front desk, but we somehow managed to make it around the island. It is, afterall, only 18 miles from one side to another :)

Our ride-straight off the set of the movie Just Married. Ha :)

With my driver's licence

We even found a pineapple farm- Antigua has a rare "black pineapple"

Sandals sliced and delivered this to the wrong room so I never got to enjoy it :( It smelled AMAZING though!!!

At Devil's Bridge- a rock bridge formed from the waves. So neat!

Then, on our last full day on the island, my sweet husband lost his wedding band.....in the ocean. We were out snorkeling off the shore and when we returned to the pool, we noticed it was gone. We searched and searched and searched some more, but it was gone. Thankfully, we had trip insurance so we will get to replace it. Until then, he's wearing a fabulous temp we purchased at the Antigua Airport! Ha! It even has a spinner band. Amazing.   


Now, for anyone who's wondering my overall thoughts/review of Sandals it's this: It's overpriced. Is it nice? Yes. Is it over-the top amazing? No. We paid a pretty penny to stay here and if it hadn't been for all of our excursions, we would've been very bored. The resort itself, while nice, was pretty boring and full of either 21 year olds or 60 year olds. Not that's anything wrong with either of those groups, but hubs and I weren't into acting like our enitre honeymoon was spring break 02' or our retirement vacay. Ha! There also wasn't much in the way of night-life and you were constantly hounded by spa people about setting up spa appointments. You always had photographers in your face snapping your picture and they charged you a fortune for the excursions and such. We had a great time, but it was not worth the price we paid to stay here-and we got a great deal vs what they normally charge. Would I go back to Sandals? Yes, but only if it was a crazy good deal and the only all inclusive available at the time, otherwise it's just not worth it. There are LOTS of other all-inclusives out there who offer more and cost a lot less!!

Coming next.....Our last stop. South Beach :)

Have you liked the Pink Pineapple Blog on Facebook yet?! If not, do so today :)

Travel Tip Tuesday....AMAZING APP :)

The Pink Pineapple is now on Facebook! Be sure to "like" The Pink Pineapple Blog, today :)
There's nothing worse than being stuck in traffic on the interstate. If you're anything like me, you try to race your GPS to get to your destination. Ha! I know, I know, it changes based on your speed, but I still always seem to see it as a race and I get excited when my lovely GPS, Rose (yes, I named my GPS. don't judge) has to change her final destination time. Even if you're not a crazy who races her GPS like me, you still don't enjoy being stuck in traffic, not matter where or when.

This is what the icon looks like in the App Store :)

My friend, Melinda introduced me to this amazing little gem of an App last summer and I cannot even begin to tell you the amount of headache it has saved me when driving. It's the MapQuest App and it's FREE!!!
It works like a GPS, but what is so amazing about it is that is has a live traffic feed. You simply "ping" yourself and then you can zoom out and see what the traffic is like around you. If it's green it's moving well, yellow is a slight slow down and red means it's basically stopped. It constantly updates and you can even zoom in to see exactly which side of the road the traffic is located so you know if it's going to for sure affect you or not. It is SO useful when traveling

Example: When heading to SC for my bachelorette bash, we checked the app before we headed down into Jellico (if you've ever traveled through there you know what a nightmare it can be) and it was showing up "red".....for miles. So, we switched up the GPS in the car from quickest time, to shortest distance, and it took us on another route to Asheville. The route was about 30 minutes longer than the norm, but the delay was a 4 hours long. My roomie at work was heading to FL that same night,  got stuck in it, and it took him 6.5 hours to get to Knoxville from Lex. Holy stinkin cow.

When M and I headed out to SC last Thrus for my cousin's wedding, we checked the app before entering into the Jellico Monster and saw that there were no delays and decided to for-go our planned detour (we know they've been doing construction and assumed traffic would be insane).

A screen shot of the app from our drive to Asheville

It's seriously awesome and definitely a MUST on my list!

Happy Mapquesting,
Ash

Welcome to our "Vacation Home"

M and I are still living in a hotel and will be here for a few more weeks (if you're new to the blog, our house flooded 4 days before our wedding).
We are less than thrilled with State Farm as they really don't have it together; but, hatred aside, here's a tour of our current digs- the Residence Inn. This hotel, unlike State Farm, is amazing and I am SO pleased with it!!
We will be keeping everyone up to date as our house gets reparied (We are changing up everything and going with a costal cottage theme), but in the mean time, welcome to our little vacation home! Ha!


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Ixnk2qVsw&feature=youtube_gdata_player



P.S. This blog now has it's own page on FB in an effort to make it easier for people to keep up with new posts! Be sure to 'like' The Pink Pineapple Blog page today!! I'm hoping to start doing giveaway's via it soon, so spread the word!!

Wedding PICTURES :)

Our final wedding images just arrived from our photographer! Here are a few :)
Feel Free to pin away, just please link all images back to this blog so that my awesome photographer gets the due credit he deserves!!!

Photography by Nelson Benton Photography. All images Copyright Protected.