Aaaannnnd … it’s October. Wow. The last couple of months have flown by and so much has happened. We went on vacation. I started moving to the house (it’s a long process). And now we’re right smack in the middle of the Holidays (yes, with a capital “H”). For me, the Holidays start mid-October and go through the end of January and my birthday. And as I said to Z earlier this week, the Holidays are my happy place, and the weather in Georgia is cooperating beautifully right now – giving us warm, sunny days and cold, crisp nights. We even had a fire in the fireplace this week!

• We spent our Fall vacation in Jekyll Island this year. It was amazing. The most relaxing vacation ever. The house we rented had a huge Florida room and any time we weren’t on the beach or biking around the island, we were in that room hanging out, and enjoying the cool fall air.
• Disappointingly, there was NO good seafood on Jekyll Island. I was kind of stunned. We were there for 7 days (6 nights) and we tried every restaurant on the island. None of it provided good seafood and there were NO oysters to be had. Brunswick oysters are world-famous but none of the restaurants on the Island served them! On the other hand, the Half Shell on St. Simons (about a 20 min drive away) had amazing oysters and I highly recommend them!
• Yes, I’m still talking about vacation. The one day that we had an actual plan was the day we went to Cumberland Island. We had to get up at the crack of way-too-damn-early to drive to St. Mary’s to catch the ferry, but it was absolutely worth it. Cumberland Island is a National Seashore and there are no vehicles on the island other than what the Park Rangers drive. We took our bikes and spent the day riding around the island, shell hunting on the beach, and watching the wild horses.
• I treated myself to an early Christmas gift. What with the move and planning to have Thanksgiving and Christmas at the house this year I decided it was time to replace the old, failing stand mixer with this Kitchen Aid Mini in matte black. Y’all, it’s adorable and it looks great in the kitchen at the house. I’m looking forward to getting a lot more use out of it than the big 6-qt bowl-lift one that is gathering dust right now.
• Speaking of buying things and the Holidays, if y’all aren’t using Rakuten for your online shopping, you should be! Depending on where you shop, you can get anywhere from 1% to 5% cash back on your purchases. I joined in 2019 and so far my lifetime cash-back is over $300 – averaging $100 a year. And right now I have $19 pending my next deposit. If you’re not using it and want to join, check out my Rakuten referral link. If you join via my link, we both get a $40 bonus!

That’s about it for this week. I hope y’all have a great weekend.