Christmas can be a stressful time of year. Thats why I try to get most of my shopping done early.  I love shopping for my friends and family because I take pride in my ability to pick out gifts they will love. Sometimes it is something meaningful or just something small and goofy that I know will put a smile on their face.  This post contains sponsored links from Uncommongoods.com.  To pick out that perfect gift you have to think about what that person likes. Eric knows I really like hiking so a few years ago he was in a local outfitter store finishing out his last minute shopping. A salesperson asked…

We went camping this past weekend at Monte Sano State Park. Monte Sano is a Alabama State Park on 2,140 acres atop Monte Sano Mountain (1,600 ft elevation) on the east side of Huntsville. This was our first visit to the park and we will totally be going back to Monte Sano because the campground was nice and there are so many trails to check out. There are over 20 miles of trails in the park varying from easy to extremely difficult. It is about a two hour drive from our house so it was easy to get to and set everything up before dark leaving around noon on Friday. One…

Fall is great time of year to go hiking and enjoy being outside. Red Mountain Park is an 1500 acre urban green space in Birmingham with 15 miles of trails, incredible tree houses with views of the city, a 6 acre dog park, a climbing tower, zip line adventures, and more! It is my favorite place to hike in the city. You will see a lot of bikers and trail runners in the park too. The park was built on land that was once an iron ore mine. If you check out the Red Mountain Park website you can find out more info on the park and the history of…

Home sweet home! We got home last night and I am so happy to not be in a car right now. We had a great road trip but I am feeling exhausted. Our last day in the park we got up early went back to Sprague Lake and we spotted this guy walking across the lake. We left Colorado early friday morning and drove a little less than half way home. We stopped in for the night in Kansas City. We had dinner at Cafe Gratitude. This was our first visit there and the food was amazing. It was exactly what we needed after a long day on the road.…

We are loving Colorado! Sad knowing tomorrow is our last day to spend in the park. The first few days we took it pretty easy trying to adjust to the higher elevation. We were also surprised by the hazy skies caused by the smoke coming from wildfires in neighboring states. So sad reading about the fires and amazed of how large of an area they effect. Rocky Mountain National Park was also insanely crowded Labor Day Weekend. Rangers were limiting the number of cars into the most popular areas of the park. The day the smoke was heaviest we decided not to hike and went into Bolder. We checked out…

If you haven’t noticed we take a lot of road trips. We like to travel and we normally drive. Eric doesn’t like to fly and sometimes it’s cheaper just to drive. Throughout the year we will take quick trips. A quick drive up to the mountains in Tennessee (about 5 hr drive) or down to a gulf coast beach (about 4 hr drive). We consider those short drives easy trips we could do for a long weekend. Longer trips take more planning and of course more vacation days away from work so we really only plan one epic trip a year. The longest road trip we have ever done was…

I admit I don’t spend as much time flipping through cookbooks as I used to. I find a lot of my food inspiration online but there is something special about physical books. I maybe a little biased (this is not a sponsored post but I do work in the book industry) but there is something very calming about taking a little time out of your day to sit down with a book and just emerge yourself in that world. It also brings me an odd amount of joy just to collect cookbooks. I do try to limit myself. We have 2 ok maybe 3 shelves dedicated just to cookbooks. Whenever…