Weekend Recap//Back to School

Monday, we meet again! This weekend when by far too quickly, but then again they always do. It was so nice to be in town and mark some things off of my to-do list.

I made it to the gym after work on Friday, so I rewarded myself with some wine and cheese. My personal happy hour was followed by an evening of decorating inside the house.

I will admit that when it comes to putting lights on a tree my patience level is pretty low, hence the pre-lite artificial tree. It looked like a glitter bomb went off inside my house after digging through all the ornaments and table décor.

Before....

This is one of my favorite ornaments a friend of mine made for me. It has pieces of our wedding invitation inside...it's sentimental and pretty.

And here is the finished product. I started decorating the mantle and dining room too, but I'm missing some things, so no photos of those right now. Oh and I didn't decorate alone, I had a helper ...

My wild and crazy Friday night made for an easy time getting out of the bed on Saturday. I headed out to attend a Food Photography class at Southern Season in Mt. Pleasant. This place is a food lover's dream. I could have literally spent all day in there browsing the endless aisles filled with everything you could ever want or need when it comes to cooking and spending time in the kitchen.

They offer several classes each month at their cooking school just inside the store. This class was a bit different than the norm. We didn't do any of the cooking, but instead we learned how to photograph and style the food and we ate it of course. This may sound boring to some, but I saw it as a great opportunity to learn how the pro's create photos you want to take a bite out of!

This little panini was packed full of flavor. The nice thing about the class was that we each got a copy of all of the recipes for the food that we ate. I will definitely be making some of these at home.

Grilled Cheese Panini with Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper Cheese, Proscuitto style Country Ham & Olive Jam

So while we were stuffing our faces with this delicious food, we were also learning how to shoot and style each dish.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup with Pistachio Pesto

I want to mention that all of the photos that I took were on my phone and I sat in the back so they aren't the best. I didn't use my nice camera for sake of trying to pay attention.

Our instructor was Jonathan Boncek, a food photographer and James Beard award nominee, whose work has been featured in several local publications.

Jonathan Styling the soup

Roasted Asparagus with a Poached Egg topped Hollandaise Sauce

We learned a lot about lighting, angles and adding the perfect props to get the desired feel.

And last but not least, we had this amazing dessert.

Jam Cake with Caramel Icing

The styling for this shot was beautiful...unfortunately my photos don't do it justice.

Overall, it was a great class and very informative. Hopefully my techniques will improve along the way after learning a few new things.

Saturday evening Whit and I made our way downtown to Marion's for his company Christmas party, followed by a stop at Social Wine Bar. I wore a cut out sheath dress from Saks Off 5th paired with black peep toe ankle booties. (These particular boots are sold out.) Additional outfit links and info at the end of this post.

Sunday was spent running around town doing some Christmas shopping and looking for items to style our new TV stand that Whit built (photos coming soon). Apparently my husband is quite the craftsman, and I wasn't aware until now. But the piece turned out beautiful! Here is a sneak peak.