
Autumn Adventures – Update #1
One month ago I created a list of things I wanted to do this autumn. I’m excited to share some of those adventures with you today!

1. All the camping and hiking! ✅ Hooray! We camped for a few days at the Red Gates RV Park & Camping outside Hendersonville, North Carolina. We love this area (just south of Asheville) and this campground. We visited the North Carolina Arboretum and did some hiking there. You know we HAD to eat at HenDough! Fried chicken and doughnuts, y’all! We LOVE their Southern Chicken Sandwich; it’s topped with pimento cheese and slaw. Hallelujah!
We also just finished a weekend of camping near Charlotte so that I could attend The Nest Fest. Speaking of which…

2. Attend Nest Fest. ✅ I’m a relatively new fan of Myquillyn Smith, a.k.a. The Nester. She’s an author who is teaching me how to more confidently make my home pretty AND comfortable. Yesterday I attended The Nest Fest, an event she hosts at her home near Charlotte, North Carolina! **insert squeals of excitement here** She brought in talented vendors who offered everything from honey, to antiques, to hand-crafted dolls, and everything in between. Add in a few food trucks, some bluegrass bands, and a host of book signings with amazing writers, and we had a magical day! Please make a point to check out her blog HERE and pre-order her book The Cozy Minimalist Home. (There’s a fantastic special offer if you pre-order before midnight tomorrow, October 23! You’ll find that HERE.) I’ll share all about The Nest Fest here in a separate post! See my review of The Cozy Minimalist Home HERE.
3. Attend a Christmas concert. Soon!

4. Go on a progressive date in downtown Savannah with Gene. ✅ What a fun night this was! We started at The Grey, a highly-acclaimed (and expensive) restaurant in downtown Savannah. It’s in an old Greyhound bus station that has been restored, and I’ve been wanting to try it forever. We learned that it has a diner section (the diner of the original station!), and the food there is less expensive than in the main dining room (where the gates to the buses were). We shared an appetizer and a side there and then walked further into the downtown area where a movie was filming.
Next we went to Husk, another high-end restaurant, where we again shared an appetizer and a side. The pimento cheese and benne crackers were delicious! The menu here changes daily based on what local purveyors have available. I *might* be guilty of stalking their website just to drool over that day’s offerings! We walked around a little more and then ducked into Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream cones!
The goal of this date was to try three new-to-us places so we could try their food without committing to a whole (expensive) meal, and it was a grand success! We enjoyed the vibe–and the food!–of The Grey and Husk, and we want to go back again. This was a fun night, and I already have three more places picked for our next progressive date!
5. Have friends over so we can get to know their families better. We’re doing this tonight and hopefully a few more times too!
6. Have some one-on-one coffee dates or baking time with friends. ✅ I ran down to Jacksonville, Florida to spend some time with friends last Friday. I needed to see their eyes and hugs their necks! Lisa and I spent some quality time at IKEA, Chuey’s, Trader Joe’s, and Aldi! Bliss, I tell you! Bliss! Sheila caught up with us in Aldi, then I went to her house for a bit before heading home. Now I want to catch up with some local friends too!
7. Go kayaking at least twice. YOU GUYS!!! I have the funniest story to tell you about this, but I’ll save it for another day! For now I’ll let you know that we attempted a kayaking trip a couple of weeks ago!
8. Enjoy Christmas shopping and have it (mostly) finished by Thanksgiving. I need to get busy on this one!!!
9. Celebrate Advent. Looking forward to this! I’m thinking about buying this item as a special, new treat for the season. The lead-up to Christmas is one of my favorite times of year. What a joy to celebrate what God did for us!
10. Implement The Nester’s cozy minimalism ideas for decorating my home for autumn and Christmas. ✅ I’ve had SO much fun with this! I’m eager to show you some pictures! Watch for them!
11. Do the GYPO Fall Style Challenge. ✅ We just finished the 22 days of outfits and have started Round 2! Now that it’s finally cooler, we’re styling all the outfits again! You can see some of my favorite looks HERE. Learn more about these challenges HERE. It’s an affiliate link.
12. Prepare and mail Christmas cards to family and friends. I was thinking today about which photos to use. That’s a start!
13. Make sourdough bread. This hasn’t happened yet.
14. Go on a picnic. Looking forward to this now that temps have dropped a bit.
Hooray for doing fun things! What have YOU been doing lately?!? Do you have an adventure list of your own? Get inspiration from the links below and enjoy the fun!

7 thoughts on “Autumn Adventures – Update #1”
You’ve been having quite a few fun adventures! I look forward to seeing pics of your home decor and reading about your kayaking trip.
Thanks, Natalie! I shared about the non-kayaking trip today, so I hope you’ll check it out! Did a little more fall decorating yesterday! I’m about to bust to share some pictures! Hopefully tomorrow!
Don’t keep us in suspense too long, I am dying to see your fall decorations. So glad you attended Nest Fest.
Your progressive date sounds like a big hit. Pimento cheese, yes, please, reminds me of my mama. I think she used to make it years ago. We definitely ate it. In fact, I looked about sending her some through Amazon because I don’t know when she’s had a sandwich of pimento cheese on toast. YUM.
I thought the pieces for the fall challenge were so fabulous. So user-friendly! I have enjoyed everything I bought, and rediscovered in my closet. I just love doing them.
Always enjoy your camping and kayaking adventures and photos. Bring on the stories!
Leslie, you’re the BEST! Thanks for stopping by! I shared the non-kayaking story today, and I hope you enjoy it! LOL! I’m happy that you had fun with the fall style challenge. I did too! You would have loved the Nest Fest. I wish she could have gone further west so you could have met The Nester and seen her tiny cozy barn! About pimento cheese: I absolutely hated it as a child! I’ve come to like it only in the last few years. I think it’s because I finally discovered homemade pimento cheese instead of nasty, cheap, fake stuff! Have you tried making it from The Pioneer Woman’s recipe?!? Amazing stuff!
You left off “Gonwoth friends to see LOUISE PENNY”!!
How to edit?? Go with!!
Oh no!!! Thtt’ll have to be a BONUS adventure! I keep checking the calendar to be sure it’s on there! Can’t wait!