Erin Akin Carroll

So far this week, we’ve had three 100+ degree days here in Columbia. I’m not a huge fan of the heat. I’ve already mentioned that I’m creating my online shopping carts full of Fall clothes.

Here are a few of my favorite things that are intended to keep us cool:

Is everyone surviving the summer? Hang in there… it’ll be over in November.

I’m trying to plan my fall trip to Dallas to see my parents and two best friends. The Texas State Fair falls right around our fall break at USC. This year, in addition to my regular event planner duties, I’ll be teaching a class. I teach on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which is great, but it makes it hard to take some Fridays off to have long weekends to go to Dallas. Since fall break comes at the same time as the Texas State Fair, I’m going to go out on Thursday and stay until Sunday. I’m pretty excited because my brother is always able to go to the fair with my parents and I’m just dying to see my Dad in his boots and hat that he’s so proud of. And I really miss my parents. I can’t wait until Christmas to see them, so I’m headed out there in October! Yee haw!

Hostess with the Mostess and Simply Stated are both talking about candy buffets today. I know they’re such a trend in weddings and almost everyone and their brother are doing them, but I am still wild about them!

It reminds me of our wedding and the fun we had picking out all the pink and white candy. We loved shopping at Market for the most adorable and most tasty candies in pink and white!

We used sugar to take up some of the space where we needed fillers. It was great for holding the sticks in place on the rock candy and the lollipops and it tasted good, too!

On a side note, we’re headed to Richmond for a wedding this weekend and I get to see these little girls! I love going to other people’s weddings now that ours is over!

Yesterday on the Today Show, they showed this video of Christian the Lion. I cried. You’ve probably all seen this, but wow!

They interviewed the two men in the video and they confirmed that this is a true story and it was a wonderful experience. So sweet!

I know, I know. I probably start to sound like a broken record when I constantly gab about my wonderful photographer, Kelly Moore, but I just can’t get enough. Her blog provides hours of inspiration and entertainment and her baby is precious. She just changed up her blog and it’s really beautiful!

Kelly recently shot a wedding at beautiful Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. The setting alone is breathtaking, but the couple’s style is so Carolina! The seersucker suits and green ties on the guys are so charming and there a couple of shots that I think are exceptional!

I think one of the things that makes this wedding seem so wonderful is that they look so secluded out there. No onlookers, wedding crashers, loud city noise. It’s just the couple and the people that they love and God’s beautiful work. What amazing inspiration for photos, right?