Hello and welcome to a new week! Hope you had a lovely weekend! I didn’t get anything done and it. was. awesome. No projects, no cleaning, no decluttering, no organizing – just being lazy and hanging with my family and it was a welcome change.
I’ve mentioned a few times that I have a large family – both extended and immediate. I have six sisters and brothers (a mix of full, half and step) and with the addition of some grandkids now, the our group is BIG. It gets harder every year to get together for holidays because there are so many of us now. :)
Family means everything to all of us I’m sure, but my Dad is one of those people who is truly bursting with joy when his family is around. So every year now he and my stepmom rent a cabin so we can all get together and have a fun fall weekend with just family.
This year we had an amazing view:
It’s a little early for the leaves to change but you can see little explosions of color starting to happen. :) We were near Lake Monroe in Bloomington, Indiana and if you are nearby it is an amazing time of year to visit.
I didn’t get many pics inside our cabin because I was usually either eating or laying around and I was just too lazy, honestly. (It was fantastic.) It was a big place with plenty of room for all of us – not overly cabin-like, but rustic.
Saturday we rented a double decker pontoon boat and took off for the afternoon. This was especially fun for me because every weekend growing up was spent on this lake with my Mom and Dad. Most of my memories as a child (up till about seven years old or so) were camping and then hanging on that lake in our teeny tiny metal boat. There was room for the three of us and that’s about it. ;)
I’ve only been back to this lake as an adult a few times so it was special to be there again, especially with Dad. As a child I remember thinking the rocky shores were so beautiful and I was still taken with them as an adult:
Some people aren’t lake swimmers – are you? My husband is not – I think it freaks him out. :) Even I was a little hesitant at first, but then Dad and the siblings started jumping in and I finally did the same…and then you couldn’t get me out:
I’m in the middle with my boy. :) My son is so like me when it comes to things like this. We watch and take it in for awhile…then we do it and love it and you’ll have to drag us away. I was SO proud of him for getting in to swim (he’d never swam in a lake). The boy is a FISH.
When you sit on the life jacket just right you can just hang out there forever…it’s bliss. ;) The water was chilly at first but within minutes we’d get used to it and it was perfect.
I don’t share many pics of my son on the blog but I am so in love with this one:
He drove the boat with Grandpa pretty much the entire time. Like a boss. ;)
On Sunday it was raining and chilly (a perfect fall day in my opinion) and we took the long way home through Nashville, Indiana and Brown County:
Downtown Nashville is a treasure. A quaint little area with shops, wonderful food and fun stuff to do:
And of course this is the BEST time of year to visit!
It was SO lovely – the rain made everything smell amazing and the mums were popping:
Every single shop and restaurant is decked out for fall and it’s just gorgeous:
We also stopped at a roadside pumpkin patch on the way out of town:
We saved the regular pumpkins for when we go to pick them at the local patch but got a bunch of really unique ones here. I’ve never seen a selection of gourds and pumpkins like they had!:
I was giddy, I must say. It was just a lovely weekend all around.
I am so blessed for so many reasons, but one of the biggest is that I am a part of my big beautiful family. Thanks to Dad for forcing us to hang out together at least once a year. ;)
Have you been to southern Indiana in the fall? Do you have a favorite spot near you that you like to visit this time of year?
Hope your weekend was wonderful too – this week I’ll be sharing more fall-inspired posts as we continue our parties again tomorrow! See you then!
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| Karin Björklund |
Hey y’all. I’m talking about the south today so I can say y’all, right? I always want to spell it “ya’ll” by the way – must be the northerner in me. ;)
Last weekend I took a quick trip to Nashville to meet up with the Haven team – we were regrouping after this year’s conference and doing a little planning for next year. After meeting for a long while we took a break and drove to Franklin, TN to eat and shop just a bit.
I fell in love with this smaller city because, well…it was super cute and the shopping was amazing. But it also very much reminded me of the area we live in too. Felt like home in a way.
I just had to share some of the places we stopped along Main Street. The stores are not cheap – by…a lot. ;) But there was SO much inspiration, it was worth it to just walk around and take it all in.
We started by eating at 55 South, and didn’t realize till the end of our meal that we actually sitting in a place called Cork and Crow. I think they must share a menu. The food was amazing but the decor was what I was mostly focused on. This wood wall was so cool:
The meat cleavers even add a little something. ;) I loved the look of the wood in combination with the really delicate glass chandeliers. Just stunning.
On the other side of the room was a bottle light fixture that I loved too:
Not a great picture, sorry. I noticed while there how beautiful the light is coming through those bottles – it truly glows in ambers and greens…really cool.
We walked around a bit and one of my favorite spots was a shop called The Iron Gate. As soon as we walked in I knew I would love it:
It was a mix of industrial and glam with a little bit of shabby chic thrown in. None of which are necessarily my style, but I loved every bit of it.
They had a lot of older pieces, like these massive old doors:
They were perfect as they were – no paint needed on those!
This clock was just massive – probably five feet across? Maybe more?:
Loved the huge clock hands. :)
Like I said, they had some shabby chic decor and it was beautiful. I loved the touches of gray and purple on this bed:
And this one was just dreamy. Seriously, let’s not thinking about dogs or cats or kids getting it dirty for a second and just think about falling into that every day:
Lovely, right?
I thought that large metal table next to it was awesome too:
I thought it would look so cool on a big front porch. I can just see it.
The lighting in their was spectacular! Any one of these could have gone home with me:
If I a.) could have fit it on the plane and b.) had eleventy million dollars and c.) was cool enough to pull off that funky starburst one. None of which happened. ;)
Of course there was plenty that we would see and whisper to each other “Do you KNOW how easy this would be to make??” I’m sure the shop owners love people like us. :)
This nursery art was just adorable:
And…they were $44 each. Get a coupon for a canvas at the craft store and you could make this for less than $10 (if that). Just saying. If you wanted to. ;)
And I just loved this display of coral:
It was just so delicate and beautiful – they had some HUGE pieces. That blue one on the shelf really struck me and we determined it looked as though it was painted. (Is blue coral a thing?) Makes me want to grab some chalk paint and have at it.
We had such a lovely time walking around and ohhing and ahhing at everything. Then, being the DIY/thrifty girls we are, we headed over to the antique shops. :) I found a little old copper pot that was in my post earlier this week: 
It’s the one on the candlestick table by the chair – I lined it with some plastic and put a plant inside. LOVE it.
Later that night we took in downtown Nashville and it. was. crazy. We even had an Elvis sighting:
:)
I’ve been to Nashville a few times before and it was NOTHING like last Saturday night – so busy but fun!
So have you been to Franklin? We didn’t have time to visit many of the stores that I wanted to so I may have to check it out again sometime soon. It would make for a great girls weekend, that’s for sure.
Have a great weekend…y’all!
