Savannah with Friends

We went to Savannah, GA over Labor Day weekend!

Our friends Mitchell and Rebecca bought a house in August, and we were the first guests to make a mess visit and tour the new digs. My friend Sam has been in Korea for TWO YEARS and the last time I saw her was our wedding, so overall the weekend was a big fun reunion weekend and was TONS OF FUN.

Mitchell's and Rebecca's new house is awesome, and they've done a lot for only have been in it a couple weeks. Its in the Ardsley Park area of Savannah, and the house is a really cute 1940's house that has been upgraded over the years. It's different from the house we are building, and absolutely perfect for them. I asked them about ten million questions about the home buying process, the moving process, and generally - everything. 

We stayed for the long weekend hanging out, tasting beer, and going to the beach.

On Saturday we went to a beer festival. So naturally, we started off the day with - mimosas. We went to Treylor Park for lunch (yum!), then took the ferry over to the Savannah Craft Brew Festival. There were over 60 breweries there, each with a few selections, and you could walk around and sample anything you wanted. 

Waiting in line for the free ferry across the river. We have all lived in Savannah for 5+ years, and this was the first ferry ride for all of us!

We bought upgraded tickets to get into the festival early, which turned out great since it got really crowded and the lines got a lot longer an hour later. 

and we had a lot of fun tasting as much as we could

and we tried to take as many cheesy photo opportunities as we could. I love these guys, they are just wonderful.

On Sunday, we had planned to go to the beach. We woke up, and it was dismally overcast, but we headed out anyway. Thankfully, it ended up being perfect! The clouds cooled it off enough to not make it scorchingly hot, but the sun came out enough to make it a great beach day. 

The selfie stick did not make it to the beach, much to Sam's chagrin. 

My friend Sarah come out with her two boys, all of which I hadn't seen in ages, so it was a lot of fun. Then... the rain rolled in FAST and we headed to a local Tybee restaurant for lunch. 

The last night we were beat, so we kicked on our pajamas, played games, and got silly. We had a great time all weekend, but moments like these when we are doing nothing more but hanging out and enjoying each other's company were some of my favorite.

And, crisis averted - we found the selfie stick.

#wedrinkbeeronfridays

B and I started a fun tradition of trying to visit a local brewery every Friday, and I wanted to wait till it was officially a tradition to label it. It actually started out of inspiration from a friend not from Charleston: our friend TJ. His mom lives here, but he actually lives in Chicago and comes down to visit. TJ is a beer connoisseur, and makes the most of his visits down south, and triggered us to do the same. 

When B and I left Charleston, there were 4 brewerieries : Holy City, Palmetto, Westbrook, and Coast. We moved away, came back, and the brewery scene had changed dramatically.  We met up with TJ on a beautiful afternoon at Free House Brewery and basically slapped ourself for not coming there sooner. 

We tend to be homebodies at heart: a date night involves dinner at home and a movie; we love low-key evenings where we do nothing much outside of enjoying a great meal and each other's company. That being said, we chose Charleston as our HOME and wanted to immerse ourselves and enjoy it as such. So out of that became: Beer Friday's. Every Friday that neither of us has prior obligations, we head to a local brewery, sample delicious micro-brews, cheers to a great life together, have fun and try something new. 

Where it all began: Freehouse brewery. DELICIOUS and a beautiful backdrop of the Ashley River. 

COAST! One of our favorites right around the corner, hard to believe this was our first time!

Holy City, one of the most established breweries in Charleston. 

We did Holy City a few weeks in a row. They had a seasonal saison "Madame Basil" and we couldn't resist, plus they serve food and are kid friendly!

Westbrook! This was our favorite beer of the night, with a killer name to boot: Citrus Ninja Exchange.

Revelry! Not our favorite so far, but a really fun time. 

I will try to take more pictures of we places we go, but we enjoy this silly part. We have a long list yet to go which includes Palmetto, Frothy Beard, Southend, Tradesmen, and a few more.

Our friend TJ who inspired this whole thing has his eye on Frothy Beard next, so we are saving that one for him, which has added #savingFrothyBeardforTJ to our Instagram regime of #wedrinkbeeronfridays. 

Cheers! Next week we have our home inspection!

You can't resist it, it's electric!

Whoops, where have I been for 2 weeks? Not updating, obviously!

We did our walk through of the electric plan on Thursday and it was SO EXCITING. I feel like a broken record, but really everything moving forward with the house is very exciting at this point. The water lines and most electric has been run, and they have boxes where all the electric and cable outlets are going to go. We were able to add a few boxes where we plan on putting night stands and maybe hanging a TV, so I'm glad we were able to be there. Plus, they'be framed out the island, so it's feeling more and more like an actual house.

Per code, there are plenty of outlets in each room, but we still shifted some things around and added a few extra. For example, there were 0 outlets originally in the his and hers walk in closet, and we thought that was kinda strange. 

We also caught a few changes. They forgot to frame in a second hall closet upstairs (they're already working on correcting this one), the attic acces is now in the hall rather than the closet, and we now have a mini wall between the shower and tub in the master bath. Originally they abutted each other, but I think that plan included a humongous tub, so our builder changed it to a 5-footer (still plenty of space I think) and there is a wall that will have some exposed shelves in between. I like the shelves so we were ok with the change, but it would have been nice to get a phone call before they went forward with it. 

After speaking with a few friends that are building/have built (thanks, sister!), we also have scheduled a pre-drywall inspection. We originally planned to do this before closing, but we realized that this was our only shot of getting the 'guts' of our house looked at, and we could always schedule another one later. For first time home owners, we want to make sure we have good bones. The next week most of the tradesmen will finish up their work, so the house will be inspected wither late next week or early the week after. We payed extra to have the inspector check out the crawl space, because no lie, crawl spaces are CREEPY and I doubt I will ever be brave enough to go in there. 

The BEST news is that the house is on track for a November 1st close! Once the walls are up this will become even more secure, but we were thrilled to get this news. 

A month and a half to go.