On Saturday we left Nashville and drove an hour south to Columbia for a 100th birthday party for Debbie’s grandmother. Yes, you read that correctly — we went to a 100th birthday party! Can you imagine living that old? She was born in 1912 and has seen oh so many things. Amazing.

We started by taking a little tour of the town — here is the sweet home of Debbie’s grandmother on her mom’s side:

Then we went to help set up the party and get ready for the birthday girl, Louise, to arrive. Here are some photos from the party:

Doesn’t she look great at 100?

After the party we stayed with Debbie’s cousin in Franklin and had a lovely time touring the town and hanging out in their gorgeous home. Sunday we went back to Columbia and visited with Louise at her home and she gave me a doily that she crocheted. I couldn’t believe a 100-year old woman had the eyes to crochet something so intricate and detailed! That evening we went back to Nashville for an evening at the Wildhorse Saloon to line dance, and then to Tootsies for some more live music.

We left Monday and I regret I didn’t take that many pictures the rest of the trip (sorry, my SLR was weighing down my purse!), but we had a lovely time and I feel so blessed to have in laws that I enjoy and love traveling with.

Now the question is… where shall we travel to next? :)

My mother-in-law Debbie and sister-in-law Katie have talked about going on a girl’s only trip for months (or maybe years?) and finally made it happen two weeks ago. We went to Tennessee for a family gathering on Saturday, but decided to arrive on Thursday to spend a few days playing in Nashville. I had been there once when I was 12, so it was a lot of fun getting to know the city as an adult.

Our mission on Day One: get Katie some cowboy boots! I think we went in 8 different stores downtown looking for the perfect pair. She wanted just a plain brown pair with minimal detail and you’d be surprised how hard that was to find! We finally found some at Betty Boots and they are perfect.

We stayed at the Homewood Suites on Church Street and certainly got our exercise walking to downtown and back in the chilly weather.

Thursday for lunch we ate at Jack’s Barbecue on Broadway. Mmm yummy bbq!

That evening we went to the Bluebird Cafe, which was probably my favorite part of the whole trip. We sat in the corner of the small room and watched as song-writers Lisa Carver, Don Poythress and The Henningsens performed for hours sharing the history behind their songs and funny anecdotes with the crowd. It was such a lovely casual evening of music and makes me wish there was something like this in Raleigh!

Friday morning, we ventured through the cold to the Country Music Hall of Fame where we wandered its halls for about two hours listening to old music and learning so much about the history of country music.

Afterwards, we were very hungry and ate at Puckett’s for some good southern food. Meanwhile it started snowing outside!

That evening we went to the Grand Ole Opry to see Josh Turner, among other performers, then went back out to a bar for some live guitar music and a cocktail. Here’s an iPhone picture from Katie. :)

We had such a great time and I really liked Nashville! In fact, there were a few times during the trip I thought, I could see myself living here.

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Have you ever been to Nashville? What is your favorite thing to do in Nashville?

One of the things on my 30 before 30 list is to make my grandmother’s caramel cake. Now, you may think baking a cake is a simple task and not worthy of a four-year countdown, but this is no average cake. (Okay, actually the cake is pretty easy. The not-so-average part I’m talking about is the icing. It take major skills [and for me multiple hands on deck] to help pull off this rich, caramel icing.)

But y’all, the end result is totally worth it.

I remember my grandmother making this cake every holiday growing up. I would sit at her kitchen bar watching her would whip up the caramel on the stove and manage to perfectly ice the middle, top and edges of the two-tiered cake. I wasn’t that impressed until I saw failed attempts by my aunt, mom and cousins and then marveled at how perfectly Gigi managed to ice it (sorry guys, no one can make it as pretty as Gigi could — me included!).

This year, Gigi wasn’t able to make it to our Christmas so I decided to honor her at our family gathering with caramel cake for dessert. It didn’t turn out as pretty as I wanted, but everyone there said it tasted exactly like her’s so I’m calling this a success. :)

Fun fact, my step aunt is a professional chef and published the recipe in her book Southern Cakes. Look for it in the next Williams Sonoma you visit and see if you can find “Gigi’s Fabulous Caramel Cake”. :)

Gigi’s Fabulous Caramel Cake

3/4 cup butter
1 cup milk
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
7 tablespoons evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans. Combine butter and milk in a small sauce pan and cook until the butter melts. Let cool. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl and mix well. In a large bowl, combine eggs and sugar, beat well at high speed until smooth and thick. Stir the dry mixture, egg mixture, milk mixture and vanilla together with a wooden spoon until smooth. Pour batter in to prepared bake pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Let cool.

In a sauce pan, combine the brown sugar, butter, evaporated milk and vanilla. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Adjust the heat so that the frosting oils and bubbles gently. Cook for 7 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool for 5 minutes.

Beat the warm icing until it thickens. Place a cake layer, top side down, on a cake stand or plate. Quickly spread some icing over the top and cover it with the second layer, top side up. Ice the top quickly and then spread the remaining icing over the sides. If the icing become too hard to spread, warm gently over low heat add a spoonful of evaporated milk and then scrape and stir well until the icing softens enough to spread again. Dip a table knife in very hot water to help soften and smooth icing out once it is spread.

Weekly Money Check-Up is a weekly series on My Pretty Pennies. To participate, fill in the blanks in the comments section, or post it on your blog and link below. If you do post it on your blog, please credit MPP and link it back here. Thank you for participating!

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on paying off our credit card bill. We use credit cards for the points and benefits, but never keep a balance.

2. Today I am thankful for President’s Day off!

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was go see Les Miserables at the Progress Energy Theater in Raleigh. J’s parents gave the family season tickets for Christmas. It’s the gift that keeps on giving!

4. I will consider this week a success if I workout three times and blog every day this week.

5. The last thing I ate was hearty mac and cheese at a family gathering last night. Mmm!

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1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on _____.
2. Today I am thankful ___________.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was_____________.
4. I will consider this week a success if I _____________.
5. The last thing I ate was __________.

Well, wouldn’t you know life didn’t stop when I went out of town. I came back from my five-day trip to a massive to do list and have been doing my best to catch up with that list all week. Soon, very soon, I’ll catch up on here.

What are you up to this weekend? Do you have Monday off? Thankfully I do and plan to have a fun weekend ahead of me filled with family, errands and hopefully some time to relax.

I’ll leave you on this Friday with a little thing I found on Pinterest:

How true that is?

Now, end your week thinking of all those free things in life.

(photo credit)

Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends!

I have always had mixed feelings about Valentine’s Day.

It was such a fun holiday when you are little. I remember my mom would serve us heart-shaped pancakes, give us little boxes of chocolates, and I’d walk to school in my new heart socks and “XO” earrings to bring my friends Lisa Frank valentine cards. (Those were the days, eh?) As I got older, it became the dreaded single-awareness holiday and my dad would step in and make me and my sisters feel loved with flowers or sweet cards. In college I’d find some girls and have Galentine’s Day (like on Parks and Rec). Later, when J and I started dating we never made it a big deal being long distance. Last year we tried the romantic get-dressed-up dinner, but learned we’re just not cut out for that kind of holiday cuteness.

So tonight we are picking up Hibachi take-out, getting in our PJs, watching TV and munching on the box of chocolates I got this morning.

This could possibly be my favorite Valentine’s Day ever

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What are your thoughts — do you love or hate Valentine’s Day?
Either way, single or married, dating or pining, I hope you feel loved and cherished and have a fabulous day.

Happy Thursday everyone! I am off to Nashville with my mother and sister-in-law. I’ll be back online Tuesday, which means there will be no Weekly Money Check-Up. Oops, I wasn’t that organized. :)

See you guys next week!
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PS- did anyone see that Duke vs UNC game last night? Amazing.

Last weekend when I was in Greensboro I stopped at that spot that I hadn’t been to in almost four years.

It was May 25, 2008.

I told him to meet me at 11:30 at the Triad Farmer’s Market on the Sandy Ridge exit. I wore a black eyelit dress with a pink ribbon around the waist. He wore a t-shirt and khaki shorts. I was waiting for him with a blanket and a picnic basket of chicken salad, Pringles, apples, and cookies that later melted in the sun. We drove around, looking for a quiet spot to have a picnic, and found a rec center down the road from the farmer’s market.

We ate and talked on the blanket talking for hours. A group of kids came to throw the ball in the baseball field next to our patch of grass. I don’t know why or who brought it up, but suddenly we were talking about kissing and I became the most awkward girl alive. I kept fidgeting and giggling and it’s a little embarrassing to think of how silly I was back then.

Next thing I know, he leaned over and we had our first kiss. My first kiss ever, actually.

When I was single, I would sometimes read Song of Solomon to gain some wisdom on relationships. I always found it strange that the girl in the book urges women three different times not to awaken love until the time is right. When a message is repeated in Hebrew, it’s something serious the writer wants to get across. I remember thinking, when do you know if the time is right? How will I know if he’s the one? What does that mean for my life? So many uncertainties.

I can’t answer those questions for you now, those are answers you have to find on your own journey. But I give the same plea as the author does:

“I adjure you, O daughter of the world, do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.”

Because believe me, once you find that love, it will be worth it.

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PS – See Song of Solomon 1:7, 3:5, 8:4

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed some strange switching around with my account. Well, I have officially merged my two Twitter accounts — my blog one, and my personal — into one “Ginna” Twitter account. Huzzah!

This has been on my list to do for a while. I would tweet more from my @thatginnagirl than my @myprettypennies, but I had more followers at the @myprettypennies one. And I tried tweeting the same message sometimes to both accounts, but some people followed both, and that was slightly annoying to see the same tweet in a row.

So! Here are the simple steps to merge two twitter accounts. I realize this may not be timely or pertinent to you now, but if you ever find yourself in the situation I was, here’s how I did it:

1. Open two different browsers and login to both accounts.
I used Chrome and Firefox.

2. Decide which account you want as your official account.
For me, that was @myprettypennies since I already had 900+ followers. However, I wanted to keep  @thatginnagirl as my name instead of @myprettypennies. I knew my (100) twitter followers would remember it and not have any trouble finding me again.

3. Change the name on the account you want to lose to something else
For me that would be @thatginnagirl, which I changed it to @thatginnagirl2. Twitter recognizes your email and account settings as who you are, not your Twitter handle. Confused yet? Stick with me…

4. Next, go to the account you want to use and change the name to what the former name was in the account you don’t want to use.
So, I went into my @myprettypennies account and changed the Twitter name to @thatginnagirl, since it is now available. So now my @myprettypennies account had @thatginnagirl as the name. And all of my old @thatginnagirl followers were actually following @thatginnagirl2.

5. Tell your old account followers about your new account!
I wasn’t able to find out how to merge the followers from your old account to your new one. I am not sure it’s possible, unless you work at Twitter.  If anyone knows how, holler! But in order to tell your former followers about your new account, send out a tweet, something like this:

Then make sure you follow them from your other account, and they may be thoroughly confuse, but will soon catch on.

Voila! That’s it. Now… who wants to follow me on Twitter? :)

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PS- I also created an updated Facebook page… so head over and like it!

Weekly Money Check-Up is a weekly series on My Pretty Pennies. To participate, fill in the blanks in the comments section, or post it on your blog and link below. If you do post it on your blog, please credit MPP and link it back here. Thank you for participating!

1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on so many things, mostly bills. The largest expense was on rent.

2. Today I am thankful for my parents and in-laws.

3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was going to a play, a hockey game, a wedding brunch, and making and eating yummy food for the super bowl. It was a busy weekend!

4. I will consider this week a success if I have a wonderful time in Nashville this weekend!

5. I can’t start my day without coffee, naturally.

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1. The most I’ve spent this last week was on _____.
2. Today I am thankful ___________.
3. Money can’t buy happiness. One free thing I did last week that made me happy was_____________.
4. I will consider this week a success if I _____________.
5. I can’t start my day without __________.