Hi Everyone! Long time no see over here on my Blog! I thought I would take a little time today to show you what I’ve been up to here in our home. I’ve been working diligently at this year’s Fall decor and I am just about finished. All that I have left to do is to decorate our outdoor spaces. I will come back with another Blog showing pictures of what I come up for our front porch/sidewalk/mailbox designs when I finish those tasks.
Just to let y’all know, I do spend most of my time working over on my Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner YouTube channel, and there is where you’ll find my 2021 Fall Decor Playlist that is the holder of many decorate with me/tutorial videos that go hand in hand with the following pictures. I encourage you to join me and subscribe over there at my YouTube channel as that is where I am much more consistent with my content. 🙂 Here we go with some pictures. 🙂 I created every wreath, centerpiece, & vignette that you will see in these pictures.
This is the mantel & hearth, I always start my decorating here, this sets the tone for the rest of the decor for whatever season with which I’m working.
Well there we go with the indoor Fall decor for this year. I’m super happy with how it all worked out. I have really enjoyed working with my blue and white decor and in effect plugging in Fall simply by adding touches of Fall accents and a bit of burnt orange here and there.
Here is a little bonus picture for you, I created this funky bow topper for a lantern that sits out on our front porch, it will set the tone for where I’m going with our outdoor Fall decor. Can we say “traditional Fall colors”?! 🙂
Now, let me go into my final words that I always relay at the end of every video that I put up over there at my Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner YouTube channel.
Thank you all for stopping by today and I hope that all is well with everyone! For those of you who might be struggling or suffering a catastrophic illness or chronic pain, I hope that there is someone there with you, taking care of you, helping you make the best of each and every day. I hope that there is nothing weighing on your heart or mind pulling your attention away from where you want it to be or from where it should be. I love y’all to bits, to bits, to bits and I keep you in my thoughts and prayers every single day. AND with all of that said, I’ll just say, y’all take good, good care!! 💗
Good Day Everyone! It has been forever since I took the time to write a blog; these days most of my time is spent over at my Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner YouTube channel. I hope everyone has been great and has weathered this last harrowing year okay! We will get through this y’all; this too shall pass, we just need to keep looking up and having faith.
Let me introduce you to my beautiful 1st cousin Stacey, we are actually more like sisters. (She is wearing the striped sweater)
Here is the thumbnail that you will see on my YouTube channel that goes hand in hand with this video:
Stacey has a very special offer for you! I have shared Stacey’s “FLOATING FRAME HYMN ART TUTORIAL & DECAL OFFER” video on my YouTube channel today, she guest stars on my channel sometimes and as I just mentioned, she has shared a wonderful offer with my Subscribers. She can work wonders with her Cricut machine and she is offering to make lovely decals that you can order from her and that will go hand in hand with hymn sheet music. You can print off the hymns that I have available below (or you can email Stacey and she will be glad to email you the jpeg) and place them in a floating frame. Speaking of a floating frame, here is a link to a floating frame that would work beautifully for this project, it is available from my Amazon Storefront. Just click here FLOATING FRAME and it should take you straight to the frame on Amazon. You would order the corresponding decal from Stacey (price list below—VERY reasonably priced) and place the decal that Stacey is offering on the outside glass as per her instructions in the video. Here is what the finished product looks like. 🙂
Here are jpegs of all of the hymns that she is offering for download. You can either drag and drop these pictures onto the desktop on your computer or into your photo program, or you can right click and share them to wherever it would be easiest for you so that you can utilize them for printing. When you print these off, use an 8 1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper and use the “fit to size” setting on your printer, in other words fill as much as the sheet of paper that you can with the music. An old 8-1/2″ x 11″ piece of paper will look the best in the 11″ x 14″ frame that I’m offering in my Amazon Storefront.
IN ADDITION, Stacey also is offering decals that you can place on the front of any lantern that you may have, she created a video for my YouTube channel where she explains and give another fantastic tutorial where she shows how to put this project together. Here is a link to that video: MEET MY COUSIN STACEY & CHECK OUT HER SPECIAL LANTERN DECAL OFFER! MADE WITH LOVE FOR YOU! Here is one of her lanterns adorned with said decal (the beautiful white lab is Stacey’s pup Piper 💗):
Aren’t they AMAZING?!! NOW for the best part of all! Stacey is offering to sell you her decals for a fantastic price y’all! Here we go with all of the pertinent information. Please feel free to reach out to Stacey via her email “Porchswingcraftables@gmail.com” and order yourselves up some of her gorgeous decals to help to enhance your lanterns and/or try your hand at creating one of her floating frame projects, I think you’ll be super happy with the results of both!!
Here is that price list and Stacey’s pertinent information, please email Stacey with any requests (please do not request via a comment, comments may get lost in the shuffle):
THANK you all so much for stopping by today! MUCH love and tons of hugs all around!! Y’all take good, good care!
Hi Everyone! First, let me apologize for my absence here at my Blog! My YouTube channel “Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner” kind of took off on me, so I have turned most of my attention over there; I so love to Blog though, so let’s go with this post. 🙂
We moved into our home over 6 years ago and since then I’ve been searching for a decor genre that I could call my “every-day decor”. For a long time, one “side” of our home was decorated in a bit of a country sheek sort of way while the other side leaned more toward the primitive country style. I’ve outgrown both styles if I’m honest and I really wanted to find a more grown up, soft, yet, interesting style in which I could add my Seasonal decor without having to recreate the wheel every time we had a Season or Holiday change. The only time that that will not be the case will be for my Christmas decor, I will continue to switch pretty much everything out. But, for the rest of the year I will be working with this new decor, my “Blue and White Cottage” feeling decor. OH BTW, Chris, my hubby, repainted the entire main level for us last Spring. I wanted a paint color that I could pair with grays as well as with beiges, so we chose “Perfect Greige”. It is a Sherwin Williams color that we had mixed at Home Depot in their best Behr paint with primer. I feel it has warmed our space up and my accents just pop against the new color. I LOVE IT! ANYway, getting back to my new decor I had been collecting accent pieces for months and I already had some vintage pieces that were passed down to me from my grandma. After Christmas I started to switch this house’s decor over to my new vision in earnest. I will show y’all some pictures of what I’ve created here, but, please do take a peek at my Playlist of “Decorate with Me” videos that I shared on my YouTube channel as I worked my way though the entire main level of our home. That playlist can be found here on my “Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner” YouTube Channel: Blue and White Cottage Decor Series
Here are some pictures for you to peruse through so you can see where I’ve gone with my decorating. I am super happy with every single centerpiece, vignette, & room’s decor;
Here is a link for the video where I created this huge burlap wreath (this particular wreath’s tutorial is not in the Playlist that I shared above):
Stacey, my first cousin came to visit me and brought her Cricut along with her, she made that sign and I hung it on a grapevine wreath form and created that big swag to hang on it. This tutorial is not included in that main link for my decor Playlist. But, I will share the wreath tutorial for this creation here:
For the first time in my life in any home that we’ve been fortunate enough to own, I finally have a decor that is coherent and runs throughout the main level of our home. I cannot tell you the feeling of accomplishment that I obtained when I was finally finished. I worked super hard on this, physically and I also worked my creative juices as it was a challenge to be using the same color scheme yet make it look and feel just a little different in each vignette/room.
Thank you all so very much for stopping by here at my blog! I will share with y’all some “final words” that I say in every video that I put up on my YouTube Channel. Over a year ago, I felt as if these words were given to me from above, honestly guys, I feel like I can almost read these words on a chalkboard in front of me. 🙂 So here goes. I hope that all is well with everyone! For those of you who might be struggling or suffering with a catastrophic illness or chronic pain, I hope that you have someone there with you, taking care of you, helping you get through each day, making the very best out of each day. I hope that there is nothing weighing on your minds or your hearts, pulling your attention away from where it should be or from where you want it to be. I keep you all in my thoughts and prayers every single day and I love y’all to bits, to bits, to bits! So with all of that said, I’ll just say, until next time, y’all take good, good care! 💗
Good Day All! Here we go with Episode #2 in our latest Alaska adventure. 🙂 Last I left you, Chris and I had just stepped on board the beautiful Ruby Princess after taking our transfer from the Seattle Westin to Pier 91. I’ll start this little ditty with a wee video of us right after we boarded. At the end, you’ll see us greeting our dear friends Barb and Don–Boy oh boy was it ever good to see and hug them again!! We just love those two great people!
Let me show you the Princess Patter for embarkation day:
For those folks that might not be aware, Princess always has one Main Dining Room open for lunch from noon-1:30 on Embarkation day. Here was the menu for this day as you probably saw in the last page of the Patter above there next to the blue arrow, in the Da Vinci Dining Room:
Barb, Don, Chris, and myself were seated just about first. 🙂 We were sitting there chatting away and then I look up and see my friend and co/admin in the ALASKA CRUISES ON PRINCESS Facebook Group–the group for which we were hosting the Group Cruise. We had never met in person up to this point in time and as you will see in this little video, we were sure happy when we finally got to hug for the first time in person!! What an awesome, sweet moment this was!
Here is a pictures of Pam and myself along with Barbara and Jen…we were 4 happy ladies!! I’m sure the men were super happy too! 😉 Hahaha…
I lost my brain for a while after that sweet meeting, meaning that I didn’t take picture one of our scrumptious lunch, I was having too good of a time socializing. After lunch, we headed to our Stateroom, Mini Suite D506, here are some pictures of our room and I will give you a link to my Arlynn’s Travels narrated YouTube video tour of our stateroom after I show you the pictures:
The balcony is uncovered (didn’t bother us a bit):
Here I am standing out on our balcony, it was quite warm on this day, I’d estimate in the 70’s…hence my bare feet…trust me, those feet were well covered for the rest of the trip. 😉
Here is a link to my narrated video Stateroom Tour:
It was just about time to head off to the muster drill, you can always find where your muster station is located by looking at your cruise card or on the sign on the back of your stateroom door:
Here is a bit more paperwork that was sitting on our desk when we arrived to our stateroom:
We had also ordered a case of water before our cruise via our Cruise Personalizer…it was like $6.90 for 12 bottles of water…a deal. The water was waiting in our stateroom on arrival–important note here, you cannot order a case of water once on the ship, you must do it via your Cruise Personalizer before you board. They also were aware that I had purchased an “Unlimited Soda & More Package” which included fountain sodas, fresh fruit juices, hot chocolate and hand-crafted “zero-proof” mocktails. Also, Chris headed off to the International Cafe to purchase a Coffee Card. Note: Stickers are no longer placed on the cruise card for drink packages and one is not given a coffee card any longer. It all done electronically and when your cruise card is scanned they know what is what.
So I have no memory of the muster drill, other than I know that we no longer need to carry our life vests with us which is a fantastic new perk on Princess ships. YaY!
Our next stop, was our Group Cruise get-together. Pam and I had arranged for a meet-up at the aft pool directly after the muster drill. This is where we would meet all of the lovely folks who we’d been conversing with for months and months in our Facebook group. I was super excited! I had created these magnets to give out as gifts:
And Pam and I had pulled together and each of us provided some little gifts for door prizes…AND check out our sweet necklaces, that sweet lady between us hand made those for us…what a treasure!!
Here are some pictures of our meet up, it was a lovely time of fellowship, laughter, and many hugs!!
We had such a lovely time meeting everyone and putting sweet faces with the names…what a wonderful time we had!!
It was then time for sail-away, here are some pictures that Chris and I caught…Seattle offers up a lovely cityscape:
After we sailed away, we all dispersed and for us, we stopped by the ice cream place for a little cone. 🙂 And I took a few shots of the pool deck and the beautiful outdoor tv screen. 🙂
******BTW Side note****** I had been losing weight before this cruise…I had lost 30 pounds when we stepped onto the Ruby Princess…I have now lost 53 as I write this…I’m hoping to lose 40 more pounds. Seeing these pictures again, are giving me some incentive to continue on my new weight loss regimen. I am not doing anything special except that I have just changed my eating habits, taken my portion size down, I don’t eat a lot of carbs, and I follow that old adage…”Everything in moderation nothing to excess”. Here is a recent picture of me:
And now back to our regularly scheduled programing. 😉
Barb and Don and Chris and I had a lovely dinner together that evening and after that, Chris and I headed back to our room…I was one bushed lady!! The next day would be a sea day which would provide me a nice day to rest up and ready myself…for, I was once again well on my way to my very happiest of happy places, Alaska. I felt blessed and content as my head hit that lovely pillow that night. 🙂
Until Next Time…Y’all take good, good care!! ❤
***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***
Hi Everyone! I hope this little post finds you all doing well! Guess what y’all? Last summer, I was approached by the “Divisional Secretary of Women’s Ministries” for the Salvation Army of the National Capital and Virginia Division. She asked me if I’d be willing to come to the Salvation Army “Girlfriends’ Getaway Weekend” here in Virginia this October 2018 and teach and share how to make and decorate with my Funky Bow. I was blown away and honored to be asked and I jumped at the chance to help! I will be teaching two different classes. In the the morning session, I will be demonstrating and teaching how to make the Funky Bow and I’ve also been asked to teach how to do my Tiered Bow as well. In the afternoon session, I will be teaching and demonstrating how to create a Funky Bow Lantern Topper/Swag…I’m also going to throw in how to make said lantern with bow topper/swag into a lantern centerpiece. 🙂 I have written up a “Funky Bow Cheat Sheet” to provide as a hand-out. I thought y’all might be interested in having these instructions as well. 🙂 I do many Funky Bow demonstrations on my YouTube Channel, and I will provide a few links below, but, this little cheat sheet might be of a help and should go hand in hand nicely with my tutorials. 🙂
Here are a few pictures of some of my Funky Bow Lantern Toppers/Swags/Centerpieces:
And here is a link for a “Funky Bow Extravaganza” Playlist that I’ve created for my YouTube Channel”; I make tons of bows in each of the videos in that linked Playlist. And here are a few links for some of my Funky Bow Lantern Bow Toppers/Swags/Centerpieces:
And, here is the “Funky Bow Cheat Sheet” that I will be printing off and taking with me as a helpmate for those ladies who attend. 🙂
This is in PDF form, so if you click on this link, you will be able to print this out if you’d like to do so:
I hope that this little cheat sheet will be of a help to those of you who’d like to try to make a Funky Bow.
I am super excited to go to this “Girlfriends’ Getaway” and help some sweet ladies learn how to make and then utilize a funky bow! I am honored and blown away that I have been asked to help out in this way. This is the perfect thing for me and it is yet another way for me to share what little bit of knowledge I have collected over my many years of crafting and decorating. No, I am not formally educated in such things, but, maybe just maybe, He saw fit to provide me a conduit so that I could help folks in some way. I am humbled and blessed. ❤
***In crafting there are no mistakes, only unique creations***
Hi Everyone! I have been busily about in the last month and have now finished decorating our home for Fall. In this post, I will show you many pictures of each space that I have decorated. At the end of the post, I will give you a link to my YouTube “2018 It’s Fall Y’all” Playlist in which I share many tutorials of me literally creating many of the crafts, cozy corners, not to mention nooks and crannies abounding that you will see in the following pictures. The very last video in the Playlist is my 2018 Fall Home Tour in which I walk you through our home and explain every little thing and then set it all to music as I travel around the house in the evening hours while all of the soft lights glimmer and glow. 🙂 Here we go!
All of those pictures covered the rooms that span the back of our home…Now let me show you how I lightened up the pallet and give a little nod (with a pop of color) to the Farmhouse. 🙂
Hi Everyone! I hope that this blog post finds you all doing well. Wow, it is now October and Chris and I returned from our Alaska Seattle Roundtrip cruise way back in August. It has taken me that long to be able to sit down and to begin writing my blog for this wonderful trip! I’ve been decorating for Fall and as a lot of you know, I have a pretty busy life with my Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner YouTube Channel where I share many hours of my time crafting, decorating, and chit-chatting with some of the most lovely people on the planet. 🙂 But, my first social media love is right here, my blog, this is where I started sharing my life…yes, all of my crafts and decorating, but, also another love of mine, our travels. So, I’m excited to be able to sit down and start sharing about our latest cruise. As some of you know, I am one of the Administrators on a Facebook Cruising group called ALASKA CRUISES ON PRINCESS (yes, its name is presented all in capital letters on FB). My co-admin Pam who is an awesome friend and also a great Travel Agent and I sponsored a “Group Cruise” to Alaska. Pam is a lovely lady who I have become very close to in the years that we’ve admin’d together…trust me, we’ve had some harrowing moments and we definitely run a tight ships (pun intended). NO negativity or rudeness is allowed in our group and we have upwards of 8000 member nowadays. WOW!! ANYway, we decided to do a one of the roundtrip cruises that Princess Cruise Lines offers in Alaska. I was excited about this as Chris and I had never done one of the roundtrip itineraries. One other thing that I was so very excited about was that my dear friend Barbara and her hubby Don would also be on this cruise with us…Chris and I just adore these two and have become very close to them. 🙂
ANYway, I will not yammer on here…even though this is my blog and I tend to yammer a lot in here, let me get started sharing first how I prepared myself (packed) for this cruise, then about our travels to get over to Seattle (seamless travel day), & then we’ll transfer over to Terminal 91 at the Seattle Cruise Port where we’ll be ready to embark onto the Ruby Princess for yet another wonderful adventure in Alaska–my very, very happy place.
First, let me share what our Itinerary would be for this cruise (excuse the month of May dates, I just went onto Princess.com and found our same itinerary):
When I was preparing for this cruise, I of course took some time to choose my Alaska Cruise Wardrobe. I created a video highlighting said wardrobe for my Arlynn’s Travels YouTube Channel. Here is a link:
I also shared my new “What’s in my Carry-On & “My” Must Haves video:
Pam and I had a plan for Embarkation Day, we were planning to have a little get-together that day where we’d have a drawing for some door prizes (she and I both donated items that we had received on past cruises), and I created these magnets as a gift for everyone to take back to their Stateroom Door (which as we all know by now are metal as are the walls and ceilings in a cruise ship’s stateroom). More about the get-together in an upcoming blog post:
It was finally time to pack up for our next adventure, so I’ll share a video of me literally packing for our cruise. I utilize my packing cubes and garment folder in this video:
As usual Chris handled his own packing which for an Alaska cruise includes all of his camera equipment. I was pretty excited about one of those pieces of equipment btw, Chris chose a brand new *big* camera lens for his Birthday present (a Sigma 150/600), and wait until you see some of the pictures he captured with that lens. ANYhoot, it was finally the morning that we were to embark on our journey. As is usually the case, I just didn’t even bother going to bed the night before because we had to be at the airport at an unGodly hour…haha…we left out house at 2:45am on August 10th, 2018. Here I am standing at our kitchen island ready to go, adrenaline pumping and a bit sleep deprived. 🙂
Christin our daughter had arrived and was going to be staying as, bless her, she always does to house and doggie sit for us. I knew that we didn’t have one worry in the world about how our home and pups would be treated while we were gone. So off we zipped, we got on I-95 and headed South as we were going to be flying out of Richmond International this time around (thank goodness y’all…I cannot stand Dulles airport). So we parked our car in the garage where I clicked off a picture to help us remember where exactly we parked and headed into the terminal and before we knew it we were taking off and heading to Seattle. Honest to goodness, our flights were all on time and smooth as could be…I was very grateful.
And there is a shot Seattle from my window on the jet, notice the cruise ships in the picture…yep, that is Pier 91 and where our cruise ship the Ruby Princess would be sailing into and then out of with us on board the next day. 🙂
We landed at the Seattle Tacoma airport on time and headed to baggage claim to collect our luggage and to meet the Princess Representative as we had arranged for a Princess transfer to our hotel. We did have a bit of a hiccup with said transfer, we ended up waiting for about an hour and were finally put in a “limo” (a large town car) because they deemed we had waited way too long. I don’t think it was Princess’ fault, instead I think that the shuttle folks at the airport were the ones that dropped the proverbial transfer ball. 😉 Regardless, we were transferred to the lovely Westin Seattle Hotel (arranged through Princess).
Our room was not ready when we arrived, so Chris asked them what they did have available and they said that they had a room that would cost us an extra $50, Chris jumped on that, we were both pretty tired by this point. So up we went to our room on the 44th floor (pretty high…haha):
Here are some pictures of our room and then after that, I’ll share a video tour narrated by me:
Here is a close up look at that piece of paper that I read to you during that video:
BTW…It looks like TSA searched one of our suitcases. I had all of those magnets packed in this bag and I’m betting that is why, of course I don’t know for sure, but, I found this note when I opened this bag while at the hotel:
And here is the menu and a couple pictures of that sweet restaurant the Blueacre Seafood:
My head did not even hit the pillow that night before I was snoozing away! I never got to take a picture of how things looked out of our hotel room window at night because, well I was asleep before the sun went down. <go me> 😉 But, we did catch some pretty neat shots the next morning. First of all, we looked out right after sunrise and low and behold there came our lovely cruise ship the Ruby Princess into port.
Then unbeknownst to me, Chris took this lovely little video of how things looked that morning. You’ll see the Space Needle at the end of this little ditty, I was so tired the day before that I didn’t even realize that it was right over there. 🙂
Shortly after the Ruby arrive, here came Holland America’s Eurodam:
~~~Side Note here about the room at the Westin, one thing that I wasn’t thrilled about was that they did *not* offer free wifi. I was pretty appalled about that honesty, for all of the money we spent for that hotel (and it was quite a chunk of change), you’d think that they’d offer free wifi in the rooms. That said, they did have plenty of USB ports in the room, here are a couple of shots of them, these were located on the bedside table:
I was up and dressed very early on embarkation morning, this is the outfit that I chose to wear that day…it was going to be warm, so I chose to wear capris, but, I paired it with a jacket because I knew it would get cooler once we sailed away. 🙂 BTW, I’ve been on a weight-loss journey, in this picture, I had lost close to 30 pounds since our Caribbean cruise in March (I’ve lost close to 40 now).
Quick comparison picture for y’all… 😉 Picture on the left was while we were on our Caribbean cruise, picture on the right was taken last week here at our house.
Back to our regularly scheduled programing now…
Chris and I didn’t do too, too much that morning other than have a cup of coffee (Chris) and tea (me) and relax till it was time to go to the lobby and meet up for our transport. At 10:45am we headed down, our luggage had already been collected and whisked away to be loaded and transported separately to the port…OH and yes, we did tip the bellman a few dollars. As we were standing in the lobby with our group, we were all chit-chatting and exchanging stories and such. As I was standing there chatting with a sweet lady, our conversation finally brought us around to know that she was in our Alaska cruising group and was part of our Group Cruise..haha. Small world! Once on our motorcoach, I was able to capture a picture of Beate!! Here she is, to say that she and I were excited is a bit of an understatement. 😉
It did not take us long at all to get from the Westin to the Seattle Cruise Port and to Terminal 91. As always, everything ran like a well-oiled machine with Princess, they truly have this stuff down to a science.
Beate and I stopped and posed for one more shot as we were heading in to the terminal:
Check-in, as always, went off without a hitch, I didn’t take one picture of that process though, but, one thing that had changed was that we didn’t have to fill out one of the health questionnaires; they’ve done away with that. Chris and I agreed that that was a good thing, it was always a pain to stop in mid-stream and fill out that form…and we also agreed that plenty of folks probably were not truthful when filling it out anyway, so really, what was the point…they were there to cruise they weren’t going to let a little cold or stomach ache stop that <sigh>.
Regardless, I did catch this picture of what I saw as soon as I entered the Cruise Terminal:
Before we knew it, we were walking down the Promenade deck after stepping aboard the Ruby Princess, and our adventure had begun in earnest:
AND we were finally on board the Ruby Princess…YaY!!! I was so excited because I knew the day was going to be a good one, not only were we going to be setting sail for Alaska, I was also going to be meeting Pam and her hubby and so many others that I’d come to know so well through our Facebook Group. 🙂 OH yes, this was going to be a good day indeed!!
I’ll close this one out for now, next up, I’ll tell you about our first day on board the Ruby Princess, share pictures and videos of Pam and I meeting for the first time, and much more! Stay tuned!
***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***
Hi Everyone!! This is “Mrs. Procrastinator” (which I truly *never* am) here coming to you to with my 4th installment of my Southern Caribbean blog series. We went on this cruise with friends, and I completely enjoyed their company and the sweet time that we spent together at meals and beyond, and that is what I will be focusing on mostly in this Series. Of course, I have pictures of the Ports and will definitely share those, along with the Port Guides, thoughts about each Port, the Patters from every day of the cruise, etc… But, the majority of this blog will be focused on the wonderful friendships that we have formed online and now beyond while cruising with Princess. Princess has a way of making any occasion special, and of course on this cruise, they did not disappoint. So here we go for 2 Sea Days, one unexpected and one planned for.
Unexpected Sea Day
The first full day of our cruise was supposed be a day that we’d be stopping and enjoying Princess’ Private Island, “Princess Cays”, unfortunately, the weather did not want to cooperate with us, so we couldn’t anchor and therefore our private island day turned into a sea day…which was absolutely fine and dandy with us. I’m so glad that the Captain erred on the side of caution…you will never hear me complain about a change in itinerary or any such thing. Natural disasters happen, weather happens, and that sometimes impedes plans…just refocus, regroup, and move on along. Here is the Princess Patter for that day, I will also include all of the paperwork that we received about Princess Cays and what excursions are usually available on said island. I’ll also show you the revised Patter:
So, we regrouped, and started to peruse around the beautiful Royal Princess, here are a few shots that I took around the ship that morning, it was a very relaxing, laid back time. 🙂
Some of our friends went to Alfredos for lunch, I stopped in and sat with them while they ate, here are some pictures of the menu:
The rest of this day was spent relaxing and hanging out talking and enjoying some of the entertainment in the Piazza–I truly don’t remember what we did for dinner that evening…but, I do know that Chris and I spent the evening in our stateroom watching a movie and just spending time with one another. 🙂
Sea Day
The next morning arrived before I knew it and this was going to be a true and scheduled Sea Day. 🙂 We ladies had a fun little time planned on this day, we would be attending the “Ladies Spa Day” talk and demo. But, first let me show you the Princess Patter for this day:
Before I met up with the ladies, Chris and I scooted off to Sabatini’s for breakfast; as Suite dwellers, that is one of the perks, a quiet breakfast every morning in Sabatini’s. Here is the menu:
Everything that I ordered was wonderful…always nice and fresh and delicious!! Next up, the ladies and I would be meeting up for our Ladies Pamper Party (facials), but before we did that, we wanted to grab some pictures of us in our “Cruising With My Peeps” shirts. We had a blast doing this (even though I didn’t have a lick of make-up on–they wanted us to come bare-faced to the pamper party). Here are some fun pictures that Chris clicked off of us that morning. 🙂
↓↓↓↓BLOOPER lol ↓↓↓↓
SIDE NOTE: After I got home from this trip, I started on a new eating regimen…I have lost over 26lbs. to date since this cruise…these pictures were what convinced me that enough was enough and that I was larger than I had ever been in my life…whew…I was a size!! That said, it didn’t stop the size of the smile on my face…I was having a BLAST with these sweet, sweet lady friends!!! ❤
After our picture taking fun, we hustled on over to Sabatini’s and that is where the Lady’s Pamper Party took place…I unfortunately was busily about enjoying being pampered that I did not take one picture except for this one…haha…go me eh?! 😉
We had a lovely time there, trust me on that one. 🙂 We separated for the rest of the afternoon because we knew that we’d be coming back together for a lovely dinner at the Crown Grill later that evening. 🙂
Chris and I grabbed a selfie on our balcony right before we left to go to dinner–BOTH of us have been on a new eating regimen since this date…wait till you see my next Blog (Alaska again…coming up in the summer of ’18), he looks like a different person now-a-days!
And here is the entire group of us sitting amongst all of the wine bottles in the Crown Grill, we had made reservations for the 8 of us on our first day on board, and they really treated us like kings and queens that evening and sat us all by ourselves in this little wine out-cove in the restaurant, it was very nice, and very private. Amazing, amazing service and food.
Here is the menu:
Here are some snapshots of us and the food from that evening…and a video snippet too. 🙂
We also celebrated our wedding anniversary that evening, Princess provided us this wonderful dessert:
And here is a little video snippet from that evening. Our waiter Miguel was amazing and quite funny. He kept us in stitches for the entire dinner service. We had a lovely, lovely time:
We stayed in the Crown Grill till pretty late in the evening, after that a couple of the ladies when to play some trivia and Chris and I headed back to our stateroom. It had been an awesome first 2 full days of our cruise, and we still had many more days ahead of us. Next up, I’ll tell you about a couple of the Ports that we stopped at, share some videos and pictures with you, and I’m sure provide more tid-bits of information. 🙂
So, for now, I’ll just say, until next time, y’all take good, good, care!
***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***
Our eyes popped open after having a delightful night’s sleep at the Marriott and the realization quickly hit that it was embarkation day! First though, we needed some sustenance, so off to the morning buffet we trekked, we happened to meet Barbara and her significant other at breakfast and we all had a lovely time together. I neglected to take any pictures of what I ate, but, if I remember correctly, I had a bagel and cream cheese, a little spoonful of eggs and a couple of links of sausage. Everything was hot, fresh, and very tasty. Of course I had a couple of cups of tea as well, I was ready to go after that meal and conversation time with my lovely friend.
The Marriott offered a shuttle service over to the cruise port when we checked in. We signed up for the early shuttle time of 9:30am and committed to pay $10 each which we felt was a reasonable cost. I’m glad that we did the early shuttle (there was also one offered at 11am) as it took us a long time to get the short distance from the hotel to the cruise port, I’ll explain. The bus was extremely crowded, well let me back up for a second, the bus became very crowded because our bus driver stopped at various locations, 5 not including our stop, to pick up more and more passengers so as to fill the bus I would imagine, and that took some time. Regardless, once the bus was good and full, we headed on over to Port Everglades. We had chosen to sit right in the front seat, so I was able to get a few little pictures of our trip over to meet our beautiful cruise ship the Royal Princess.
Those familiar butterflies started to flutter in my belly when the beautiful Royal Princess came into view…my goodness she is quite a site to behold. The bus driver pulled right up to a line of Princess baggage handlers standing beside large rolling carts. We did not have to touch our suitcases, instead, the baggage handlers took possession of them and placed them in one of those large carts and the next time we saw them was when they were sitting at our Stateroom door once we boarded. I did not take a load of pictures of the cruise port building, they don’t like you taking pictures in there…and being that I am a rule follower, I didn’t take many pics…haha. Regardless, the check-in process went super smoothly as it always does. You are directed by Princess representatives every step along the way. Because we are Platinum members of the “Captain’s Circle” club, we get priority boarding, so we were directed to our seats and that is where we stayed until it was time to board. Princess Cruises has recently refurbished the cruise port building in Ft. Lauderdale, so when I sat down, I looked up and this is what I saw. Now, forgive me for not taking a longer video, but, I didn’t realize I had my video on, I thought I was taking a picture…hahaha…go me…But, you’ll see the movement of those pretty turtles and such as you look into what looks like an aquarium.
Wow, that was one of my very best videos huh? LOL <Slapping Self On Forehead> I did take a still shot of it though:
It wasn’t long before it was time to climb aboard the Royal…Here I am taking my first step onboard…yippee skippee!!
One of the first sights I saw as I walked on board was the beautiful Piazza, check it out!!
As I’ve mentioned, we were cruising with 3 of my lady friends and their significant others, and our plan once aboard was to meet in the Piazza and then figure out what to do first from there. But before I go further, let me show you the Princess Patter for Embarkation Day:
Our Staterooms wouldn’t be ready till 1pm (a first for us truthfully). We were aboard around 11-11:30am, so of course, we were famished by this point. There was one Main Dining Room (MDR) open for lunch on Embarkation day, the “Concerto” dining room, so we headed right on over there and were seated immediately at a lovely oval table for 8. Here are some of the wonderful things we chose to eat for lunch…(Bless their hearts, everyone was so patient with me knowing that I am a blogger and knowing that I’d want pictures of their food…haha…they took turns placing it right under my camera view).
Well *that* was delicious!! YUM!!
After lunch, the girls and I headed over to the Crown Grill which is one of the Specialty Restaurants (meaning that one needs to pay an extra $29 per person over and above what is covered in the cost of the cruise), we wanted to make reservations for the first formal night evening. And the fellas headed to our Staterooms. So we made our reservations and then we separated and each went to our Staterooms to unpack and get settled in. We made a plan to meet at our Stateroom after the Muster Drill took place for our own little sail-away get-together.
Our Stateroom:
Chris and I got lucky with our Suite, yes, yes, I said Suite this time around. We did this cruise in March, and had booked a mid-ship Mini-Suite and were quite satisfied with that, honestly. BUT, when we got an email in January offering us an “up-sell” to a Suite, we jumped at the chance. We did have to give Princess a little bit more money, but, it wasn’t an exorbitant amount, and wait till you see the tour that I’ll post below. So, that said, in our Suite we were going to have a separate bedroom and sitting area and we were going to have a bath tub *&* separate shower, BUT, wait till you see our balcony. Chris and I were given the choice to upgrade to any available “Penthouse Suite” onboard the Royal. We chose an aft facing Penthouse Suite. That means we were sitting right on the back of the ship looking at the ship’s wake…glorious I tell you, just glorious. So first, let me show you some pictures of our very lovely Stateroom, and then I’ll give you a link to my YouTube Video tour.
Also, here are some of the special perks that Suite passengers enjoy:
All right, we were getting settled into our room for the week, we’d met our Steward Kalim, who was awesome from the first moment that we met him until we said goodbye to him 10 days later. I’d also managed to unpack *some* of our clothes. It was then time to head off to the “Guest Safety Assembly” (the Muster Drill). One major thing had changed since we’d cruised, we didn’t have to take our big, bulky, cumbersome life jackets with us!! Woohoo, this girl was doing the happy dance about that. That meant that after the drill we could walk around the ship and be more relaxed instead of being stuck in a hoard of people trying to make their way back to their Stateroom to put their life jackets back away. What a pleasure!
Here is a little snippet that I barely caught of the “Love Boat” song with the words changed to safely assembly speak…hahaha. 😉
After our Assembly Drill was over, we headed back to our Stateroom and everyone came on over to just relax for a little while. Here are some pictures and a snippet of a video of our time on our aft balcony. 🙂
And here are some pictures of the group. 🙂
And we were off and sailing away from Fort Lauderdale on our way to Princess Cays (Princess’ private island). We were having a blast already, I know without a shadow of a doubt that spending time on this cruise with these wonderful ladies and gents was going to be just awesome! ❤
All 8 of us met for dinner that night in the Anytime MDR, “Symphony”, I didn’t take one picture of that time though, but, trust me, everything was fabulous; the food, the friends, and the fellowship!!
WAIT: I did take two pictures of dinner that evening, well, o-k-a-y, it’s just dessert, but, trust me, it tasted wonderful!!
When my head hit that pillow on that night that I was out like a light and was rocked asleep by the gentle swaying of the big, beautiful, Royal Princess.
Next up, a couple of “Sea Days”, one planned and one not. 🙂
***If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there Your hand will guide me…Psalm 139***
Late last summer I had ventured into Walmart and was tootling around just looking to see what was what. I knew that the Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond) had her entire line of loveliness available for sale, so I tripped on over to where all of her bright and beautiful items were displayed. The colors that she highlights in her items and the way she mixes up said colors really excited and inspired me so I picked up several items to bring home try and figure out how to incorporate into my decor. When I got my goodies home where at that time my “Cozy Country” decor (soft and subtle burgundies and khakis) were abounding, I just couldn’t figure out how to incorporate all of the brightness that the Pioneer woman line offered. Right then, I promised myself that in my next “Spring Decor Series” I would try my best to give a nod to the Pioneer Woman. Below I will show you a smattering of pictures of what I came up with this Spring to recreate the wheel and transform our home into my “Pioneer Woman *Inspired* decor. I walked *way* outside of my comfort zone with this decor, BUT, I completely enjoyed the challenge and I do feel as if I succeeded in transforming my home into a bright and fun place to dwell all the while giving that not to the Pioneer Woman.
Here we go with some pictures and below I will put a link to my entire “Pioneer Woman Inspired Decor Series” playlist that I’ve posted on my “Arlynn’s Country Craft Corner” YouTube Channel so you can go and check out exactly how I brought this new decor series to fruition.
And here is a link to my “Pioneer Woman Inspired Playlist” that shows you how I created all of these spaces and includes tutorials for my lantern centerpieces, funky bows, that wreath, and much more. 🙂
Thank you all for stopping in to see what I’ve been up to lately!
***In Crafting, there are no mistakes, only unique creations!***
⚜️ Arlynn's Country Craft Corner ⚜️ 