Sweet Love {Our Engagement Photos}

      Cole and I won a wedding giveaway with Very Important Date Photography, and along with the wedding day coverage we also received a free engagement session with Kaity (the owner/photographer of Very Important Date Photography). We actually got the opportunity to do a mini shoot with her at the South Carolina State Fair in October, and then in early November she came up to Clemson and did our Engagement Shoot for us. We just got all of our photos from her this week and I am so, so, so in love with all of them! Kaity is an absolute blast to work with, and her eye for beautiful lighting is truly amazing. She also does an amazing job capturing true love and honest smiles, which any photographer would know can sometimes be a challenge. She took so many amazing photos, but here are a few of my absolute favorites!

***Disclaimer: All Photographs in this post are by Very Important Date Photography***

Farewell 2013!

         I can't believe it's New Years Eve already! This year truly has flown by, and man was it a wild ride. This year was a monumental year for me, in many aspects.

I rang in the year with the two most important people in my life, my best friend and my boyfriend! It was a new years that will go down in history for us! 

I finished up my last rotation at my co-op in Charlotte. 

Cole and I went on our first real vacation, and it was with two of our best friends. 

The love of my life proposed to me in one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen!

Cole and I picked our wedding date :) 

My 22nd birthday was spent camping

I found my wedding dress! 

Cole and I officially moved in together!

I took a photography class, I loved it,

 I finally know how to use the manual setting on my DSLR!

I passed my FE Exam

 (literally an 8 hour exam that basically says when I graduate I am an engineer in training!) 

I signed up for my last semester of undergrad. 

     This year seriously has been one of the best ones yet, and I am so grateful and blessed to have such an amazing family and equally awesome friends, not to mention the best fiance ever, and the most adorable pets ever! 

3000 Views + GIVEAWAY!

Hi All,
      I mentioned before on facebook and on the blog that when The Poppies, Puppies and Pearls Blog reached 3,000 Views I would do a Giveaway as a thank you to all the followers that have helped the Blog grow over the past year and a half. Well the day has come, The Poppies, Puppies and Pearls Blog has officially reached over 3,000 views! I am so thankful and appreciative of all the support and views the blog has received. I am so proud of how much the blog has grown in its early stages and I am excited to expand and let it grow some more. So on to the giveaway! I don't know about ya'll but I love Monograms. I especially love Monogram Canvases. So for the giveaway I am going to send one lucky winner a personalized Monogram Canvas! Enter in the rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 If you win the giveaway I will contact you, and you will be able to chose your background color, font color, and font style from the following:

Background Color Options: 

Orange

Purple

Lavender

Green

Lime Green

Blue

Sky Blue

Tiffany Blue

Hot Pink

Light Pink

Red 

Yellow

Font Color Options: 

Navy

Black

White

Silver

Font Styles: 
Circle Script

Regular Font 

Interlocking Script 

 

 SEL

I can't wait to paint this canvas and send it off! The Giveaway entries start as of right now (So ENTER ASAP!)  and run through Friday! So make sure you get your entries in by Friday!!! I look forward to contacting the winner!  Again thank you all for the support!

Much Love,
Stacey


(P.S. keep in mind it will be hand painted so the actual canvas fonts/scripts may very slightly from the images above!)

Christmas Hustle and Bustle

      I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas! I know Cole and I have so far! 

              The weekend before Christmas we had a few of our close friends and my brother visit for a festive weekend in Clemson! Friday night we made tacos, and enjoyed a good old fashioned bonfire. Saturday we went bowling, enjoyed an early Christmas dinner (complete with tasty grilled steaks!), partook in our traditional Christmas cookie decorating and had a gift exchange! Sunday everyone said goodbye and headed back to Columbia. It was truly a great weekend. I am so glad we were able to enjoy some time during the holidays with some of our closest friends. The weekend seriously couldn't have been better!

Some of the Christmas Cookie Masterpieces

               Cole worked Christmas Eve, so I spent the day baking tasty treats to give as gifts. I made homemade Peanut Butter Cookies, Cranberry White Chocolate Bread, Forgotten (divinity) Cookies, Chocolate dipped pretzels, and hot chocolate mix! Cole helped with a few of them when he got home. I seriously enjoyed baking all of it so much. I will share the recipes on the blog soon! If I do say so myself, my peanut butter cookies are AWESOME! We made sure to get to bed early so we could get up and moving Christmas morning.
   
                Christmas Day was super, super busy! Cole and I left Clemson at seven in the morning, it was soooo early! When we got into Columbia our first stop was Cole's grandparents house, to catch up and spend some time with them. It was so great to see them, Cole used to live beside them so it has been an adjustment to not see them all the time. We headed to my parents house next. My favorite Christmas day tradition at my parents house is opening our stockings and eating our traditional Christmas quiche breakfast, so I insisted that we go spend the morning with them. I love, love, love Christmas breakfast, and of course it didn't disappoint this year! After we enjoyed breakfast, and opened our stockings and gifts with my family we went to Cole's parents house. It was great to spend some time with his brother, his parents and the rest of his family! Cole and his brother played Cole's new Call of Duty game, and we snacked (Cole scarfed down a ton of ham...because his parents cook a mean ham!), caught up and hung out with everyone. I made the pups holiday collars for Cole's mom, and they loved them!

The collars I made the pups

Dakota Loved hers!

She also loves her Dad! 

                We went back to my parents house for dinner with my parents and my brother. Finally we headed to Cole's Grandpa's house to drop in and say Merry Christmas and chit chat a bit before we headed back to Clemson with my brother in tow. We didn't get back to Clemson until after midnight, so we hit the sack and got up early the next day to take my brother to the airport so he could fly back to Pittsburgh.

My lovely parents, in front of their tree

Sibling Picture! (Two of my favorite men in my life)

The Essels - minus my sis! (missed you Ash)

My sweet boy - Next Christmas we will be "The Conners!"

 Our Christmases are always so so so busy, however I am so thankful we have the opportunity to visit and enjoy time with all of our family during the holidays. We are so blessed to have such a loving a supportive family, including our amazing friends!

Holiday Baking

        While Cole is at work today I have started to make some holiday treats to give to our families on Christmas Day. I am super excited, I love baking...I just hate the dishes part...(whose with me?). But really I do love baking and I am excited to continue baking this evening when Cole gets home, because we are making quite a few different treats for everyone! I'll post photos of the treats and the recipes for them after Wednesday...I don't want people knowing what they are getting before they get it ;)

Doggie Christmas

        While I was home visiting my family I got to spend a good bit of time with Deidre, which is always a blast. One night I took Dusk over to Deidre's Parents' house to have a puppy play date with Easton. And play they did!!
        When I was in high school I literally spent almost every weekend over at Deidre's house. We would stay up well into the night, watching movies, dancing, you know the normal sleepover stuff. I can't even tell you how many times her mom would come out to the living room and tell us we needed to go to bed, or be quieter. Almost every time I would stay over at D's house we would make rice crispies, and most of the time we would eat the entire pan the night we made them. It was so much fun, and it is definitely fun to relive those days every once in a while.

         That is exactly what we did,  Deidre and I made rice crispy treats, like always! Then when her mom got home we decorated their tree. While we were decorating our pups were running around, chasing each other, tackling and playing. They had an absolute blast, as did we! I love getting to hang out with Deidre, and being able to visit with her parents is always a plus.  We ended our night snapping a few billion pictures of the boys in front of the christmas tree...It took forever but we ended up getting a few good ones of them. They are too sweet.

Mid-Carolina Jeepers - Annual Uwharrie Ride

         I finished my semester early Friday morning...I had a take home test that took a lifetime to finish! Anyways I met up with a few friends Friday morning and we met up with the Mid-Carolina Jeepers Club to head up to Uwharrie National Forest to spend the weekend wheeling. The trip has become an annual one, that happens every December. This year was Cole and My third year going. I actually rode up to Uwharrie with one of our friends because I was in Columbia, and Cole met up with us Friday night after he got off work.
        Friday once we got there we actually got to go and wheel in a new place. The place is basically a man made training center for military and newbie wheelers, it is a guided trip. The trails were simple, and the guides were a bit inexperienced, but it was still a lot of fun! It was my first time riding with someone other than Cole offroad, and it was definitely very different. We headed to camp when we finished and made tent and dinner. Once Cole got there I went to bed. I was completely exhausted! Thank god I had a warm, warm sleeping bag, because I slept so well!
          Saturday we spent the whole day wheeling. We literally got up, made pancakes and sausage at camp, then hit the trails. We started the day on the toughest trail. Watching different jeeps and vehicles taking on the same trail is definitely a lot of fun. It is really interesting to see how each person handles the same obstacle in different ways. This trip was pretty good, nobody broke anything to detrimentally important. Everyone had a good time, it was just pretty wet. It rained most of the day.
 

I love this girl. So glad she goes on these trips! 

Me and my sweet Boo

Sam's Jeep, rocking its Christmas Wreath

(photos courtesy of Deidre, me dearest, bestest friend!) 

            Fortunately the rain let up, literally as soon as we headed to camp. Unfortunately all the rain flooded literally almost everyone's tents. My clothes got soaked...our tent had standing puddles...our sleeping bags were damp. We all learned pretty quickly that some of the jeeps were pretty good dryers. Cole and I dried our tent out, and put our newly warm and dry stuff back in the tent. This morning we cleaned up and packed up camp. Then headed to the Outpost where we gassed up, aired up, and ate up. Then we all headed home.
            All in all it was a great weekend, even though it was cold, wet and muddy! Sometimes weekends like that are fun.
     

It's the End

The end of the Fall semester that is! 

I am beyond excited that this semester is over. 

It has been an enjoyable semester, 

but it moved quickly

and I was very busy

with classes and homework. 

So a break is much needed. 

I am looking forward to my Christmas break.

catching up on sleep.

crafting my heart out.

This weekend I am excited to be going offroading

Cole, our friends and I are headed to Uwharrie.

We are camping all weekend. 

Wheeling all day Saturday. 

I am so exhausted

but I am too excited for this weekend 

it should be fun! 

Random Update on My Life

Well this is going to be a quick update post...very short, because I am procrastinating and I really need to get back to studying for my finals.

1. I am officially an Engineer in Training or an EIT for short...meaning I am one step closer to being a Professional Engineer (AKA a PE). It doesn't sound like a big deal, and it's really not because there are so many steps that still need to be taken to become a PE. However to become a EIT you have to be a senior at an ABET accredited university for Engineering and you have to pass the Fundamental of Engineering Exam. Again sounds simple..however the exam is an 8 hour exam. 8 grueling hours of pure mathematical, scientific and engineering torture. The first 4 hours of the exam covers the basics of engineering and then the last 4 hours covers your specific discipline. There is literally too much information to study to feel completely prepared for the test. I went in thinking I would FAIL, I left feeling like I was dead, and that I FAILED it. Well Friday I got an email saying my status had been updated on the website...and to my surprise when I opened my account the little green four letter word PASS was listed beside my status. I was excited beyond words! Now to be considered a PE I just have to work under a PE for a mere 4 years, oh and torture myself with another Exam. I look forward to that day...

2. It's FINALS week. My seventh Finals week. Fall Finals are way way harder to focus on than Spring ones, because all I can think about is Christmas, Friends, Family and Fun...I just have a few more days...and 4 test between me and all those things I hold so dearly. 

3. Funny story. Saw a dude in the library with a legitimate 12 cup coffee pot set up and brewing, along with a 12 pack of coke zero, and a whole bunch of snack packs of chips...somebody was doing some serious studying. Finals brings out the crazy in everyone.

4. I had a mini panic attack earlier today...thinking I had missed an exam...its not for another three years. Phewwww. It has been a very busy week. my mind is getting all sorts of scattered.

I hope you all are doing well. If you are suffering through finals, Good Luck. If you're not consider yourself lucky. I cant wait to go home after I finish my last final and cuddle my sweet pup, and sip hot chocolate and watch Christmas movies!

Warms My Heart

               A few weeks ago while my mom was up visiting me I stumbled upon some of the most adorable little holiday hats and crafts. As soon as I saw them I knew I had to get them for my sweet little nieces. So I scooped up what I thought they would love, and my mom sent all of the goodies off to my older sister's house for her girls to enjoy. Well tonight I got a few texts from my sister. Low and behold the texts held photos of my all too cute nieces sporting their new hats. Getting photos of my nieces makes my day instantly better, and getting photos of them enjoying a gift I sent them absolutely warms my heart. I sure wish we lived closer to my sister and her family! 

{Deck the Halls}

           Mine and Cole's little house literally has no halls,

 but we have decked our house with decorations... 

Well we have decorated our living room!

All of our glittery, colorful ornaments 

Our tree all decorated, lights, beads and ornaments galore. 

Of course, I had to include a tree lighting up the dark room

Our mantel decor, I want to add some more to it!

I love our cute little mantel glitter tree

 I still plan to add some more decorations,

 if we have a chance to hit a couple stores to search for some budget friendly decor. 

Right now I am completely obsessed with targets line of Christmas decorations!  

Our decorations are bright and bold (blue, green, pink, purple and red) 

and the target line matches perfectly! 

I just want to end this post with photos of me and my babies, the night I was decorating 

My silly Dusk

Sweet, sweet Cali

Whats the color scheme of your decorations? 

What is your favorite piece? 

Don't forget to follow the blog on facebook 

Follow me on twitter (@SL_Essel) and instagram (@Sessel91) 

Much Love,

Stacey and Dusk

Tis the Season {My Want To-Do List}

            I love, love, love the holiday season. It is literally my favorite time of the year. I don't know about you guys but my holiday "Want To-Do List" is always a mile long, and more often than not Cole and I don't get to do all of them. I want to share with you a list of all the possible fun ideas (including some obvious ones) to try out this holiday season .

My Holiday Want To-Do List 

1. Buy an Advent Calendar to Countdown the Days til December 25th 

 Cole and I always buy a German one from World Market, because advent Calendars are a German Tradition, and German chocolate is the absolute best chocolate!

2.  Pick a tree out and put it up 

or put up your artificial one, either one is a lot of fun.

3. Trim your tree 

This is one of my favorite things to do! 

4. Decorate your home 

garland, lights, candles, glitter, pull out all the stops!

5.  Decorate Stockings

Buy plain ones and added your names, or designs to them, we bought some from the dollar store last year that say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" on them and painted our dogs names on them with puff paint.

6. Find or make sweet outfits for your pets to wear on Christmas day, or for your family photo 

 I am excited to show you guys what I got for Dusk and Cali, and what I made for Cali. 

7. Go to a Christmas Parade

Just about every city/town has one, and the best part is that it's a great FREE date! There is one parade in the Columbia area at night, and all the floats and people are dawning bright amazing Christmas lights! 

8. Go to Starbucks for a Holiday Special 

My favorite is the Caramel Brulee Latte!  Or hit a local coffee shop. 

9. Have a Christmas Movie Marathon 

Some of my favorite movies are The Grinch (both the cartoon and the real one...They are must sees in our house), The Polar Express, and Elf. 

10. Go see the Nutcracker

Go see a local ballet company preform it. 

11. Go Ice Skating

It is even better if you can go to an outdoor Ice Rink, Greenville, SC and Columbia, SC have seasonal outdoor Ice Rinks

12. Bake Christmas Cookies

This is a tradition in our house. We always make sugar cookies, and spend hours decorating them with different colored icings and various kinds of sprinkles. 

13. Drive around to see all the Christmas lights 

I personally hate doing outdoor decorations, so I love going for a drive to see all the beautiful lights around the town. 

14. Do a Gift Exchange with your friends/family 

This is a great way to enjoy time with those you love. 

15. Host a Holiday Party 

Cole and I are hosting our first Christmas event this year, and I couldn't be more excited. 

16. Go see a Christmas Pageant

Growing up one of my favorite activities during the holiday season was being in the church Christmas Pageant. Now that I am older I enjoy being in the audience. 

17. Check out a local holiday event 

In Columbia, SC the zoo has an event called Lights Before Christmas, where they open the zoo at night, and the entire zoo is decorated completely in lights, Santa is there to visit children, and it's completed with fake snow, and marshmallows by an open fire. 

18. Enjoy a fire in your newly decorated fireplace

complete with hot chocolate and roasting marshmallows. 

19. Go shopping and Donate a Toy to an organization

We generally do Toys for Tots or the Angel Tree. 

20. Pick a price point, and go stocking stuffer shopping 

One of my favorite things to do is buy a silly, childish toy for Cole's stocking...Last year Cole got one of those silly straws that is a pair of glasses. 

21. Take Christmas Photos - Set your camera on a timer or grab a friend to operate your camera and have photos taken of you and your family in front of your tree. 

22. Spend an Afternoon making homemade gifts 

Cole and I like to make homemade gifts. We have painted canvases and baked treats in the past. 

23. Blare the Holiday Music 

I love playing the Holiday Channel on iHeartRadio. 

24. Make homemade home Decorations

like snowflakes, paper garland or popcorn garland. 

25. Spend an afternoon wrapping gifts together 

Gift wrapping is awfully boring when you are by yourself, doing it together is way more fun...just be sure to wrap your gifts for one another separately. 

End of Semester Panic

      I don't know about the rest of the college students in the world, but for me the last two weeks of a semester end up being the most stressful, and busy weeks. This semester is no different. I have a class project due,  and several homework assignments due this week, and four tests next week (Three of them are on the same day!) not to mention I have to finish a portfolio this week of some of my relevant work I have completed through my college career to graduate in May. I tend to get very anxious and very very stressed on top of being overly exhausted. My goal is to finish the semester strong and attempt to keep my grades up for these next couple weeks. I have a few things I do to keep myself in check and my mind on my work.

1. To-Do Lists are my friends when I am stressed and overly busy. They remind me how much I have to do and it is satisfying to watch the list shrink as I crank the work out.

2. Writing out due dates in my planner helps me decided what needs to be done first.

3. Taking sanity breaks every so often to surf the web, check blogs or Facebook gives my stressed brain a bit of a break.

So here is to hoping I can stay strong and determined for 10 more days! (I think I can, I think I can!)

What do you do to keep yourself encouraged and on track with finishing your work?