Step Into My Week 8.10

I didn’t intend to have so few new posts up last week, but with plans to be out of town again this past weekend and a lot going on at work for shoots, blogging didn’t happen as much as I would have liked it to last week. Hopefully, that will be different this week since I have lots of posts planned for y’all and am even in the process of working to have a new site live in the coming months (something that has been on my to-do list for longer than I’d care to admit). But for now, here’s a recap of what I have been up to! 

Last week I told myself to do a better job of taking advantage of the days that I can work from home, and on Monday, I did just that. I still had a full day’s work, but I mainly did it in my pajamas while doing laundry. I even got to watch my “friends” Jenna and Hoda while responding to emails from the couch. The first time I left the house aside from grabbing the mail was to go to an afternoon workout class at True40 to celebrate their second birthday. As I left the class, I was handed a Cookie Fix cookie and wished that all workout classes ended that way. I went to Publix on my way home to get food to have for the week and then showered. My roommate wanted to have a wine and movie night so we could catch up after I left her for the weekend, and I think we were both in our pajamas by 6:30. We watched Father of the Bride, ate our dinners, and were both in bed before 9:00.

Another stylist offered to take on my shoot on Tuesday since she only had one image to get for hers making the day a little calmer than I expected it to be. I worked from home until around 9:30 and then went into the office and was greeted by at least thirteen boxes that needed to be unpacked for the shoot I had on Thursday. It’s probably a good thing not very many people are in the office currently given how noisy I was being. I eventually got those items packed into storage bins so that I could take them on location. I did a few other tasks before heading to Trader Joe’s to start gathering flowers for that shoot and headed to my house to do a workout there once those errands were done. Afterward, I showered and got ready to go to dinner with a friend that evening. We ended up at GianMarco’s Wine Bar, which is one of my favorite spots in Birmingham. If you’ve ever asked me for recommendations while in town, I have no doubt that I included it on the list I sent back. We finished our meal just in time since the sky was getting really dark and eventually started to rain. We watched a few episodes of The 100 before I went home. 

I got up early on Wednesday morning to go to a True40 class and stopped to get some more flowers for my shoot the following day on my way home. I showered, got ready, and headed to the office to finalize everything and make sure that all the props fit in my car. I spent most of my time at the office waiting on a box of vases to be delivered (in my defense, they were supposed to arrive Monday) so that I could start arranging the flowers. In the meantime, I was able to send out emails I needed to send and pull props for my shoot on Friday. I finally gave up on waiting for the vases to arrive and ended up making arrangements in vases we already had in the prop room. I finished doing that around 4:30 and loaded up my car so that I wouldn’t have to go into the office before the shoot on Thursday. Once I got home, I quickly changed and was back out the door to play tennis with my friend Hallie. We played for about an hour and a half, and I went home to make myself dinner and shower. We didn’t end up having bible study that night, so my roommate and I watched Father of the Bride Part 2 before going to bed.

On Thursday morning, I was up early and put away my laundry and packed for another weekend trip before arriving at the location of our shoot at 9:00. It wasn’t as hot as it could have been but definitely warmed up throughout the day, reminding me that August in Alabama is still very much summer. We were outside all day since the shoot was a farmer’s market supper theme, but unfortunately, we had about an hours worth of a downpour right as we were nearing the end. We had to wait until that cleared up, and I had to pivot a bit with my initial vision for those shots to get it done. When we had finally wrapped, I had to load all the wet bins into my car and eagerly went home to take a shower. I arrived home to the sweetest package of flowers from Lee and her team at Do Say Give as a thank you for helping with her etiquette course. After showering, I figured out my plans for the evening, and a friend and I and his roommate went and got dinner at a hamburger place called Jack Browns. After that, we watched a show for a while, and as per usual, I fell asleep during it and have some catching up to do. 

 

Friday morning was a bit of a blur as I rushed to make sure I had everything I needed for the weekend in my car so that I could leave town directly following work. I had to unpack all my props from the previous day before starting my food shoot scheduled for Friday. We didn’t have too many recipes to get through and were able to wrap up that shoot around noon, which I was thankful for. I ran to Publix on my way out of town to grab a few groceries for the weekend and a pub-sub and was on my way. Nell’s grandmother has a house on Dauphin Island, so I was meeting her there for the weekend, along with another one of our friends. I arrived around 5:00, and we hung out and settled in until our other friend, Anne Holman, arrived closer to 7:00. We made dinner and sat up talking until around 11:30 when we finally went to bed.