My Town

I'm linking up to Kelly's Korner for Friday's Show Us Where You Live.

I too live in Arkansas, but on the opposite side of the state in a small city atop Crowley's Ridge.

We are the second largest city in the state in area and the fifth largest in population, but constantly growing. We still have a great deal of agriculture in the area, especially in our surrounding cities with rice and soybeans being the two major crops. (Yes - these really are 2 of our local farmers! This is a photo from the magazine where I work on their farm and our Farmer's Market held in the spring and summer. I work for a local magazine - Jonesboro Occasions - and many of these photos are from our publication or my own.)

We also have strong industrial production with major food companies like Frito Lay and Post and green industries are quickly moving in as construction on a wind turbine producer is currently being finished.

We are home to Arkansas State University - the other big university system in the state (don't worry, we're still big Hog fans too!) My husband and I both graduated from here and is where we met.

We are home to the Red Wolves...

Until 2 years ago, we were the ASU Indians, but the NCAA required us to change our mascot or face not being able to compete in tournaments or bowls. So, the Red Wolves were decided to be the new mascot.

When I first moved to Jonesboro 15 years ago, it had an old, run down mall, very little shopping and only a hand full of restaurants. Wow has that changed! About 3 years ago, a business developer in our town built a brand new mall that has now become a model for many other malls built around the country. It's fabulous and we no longer have to go to Memphis (an hour away) or Little Rock (2.5 hours away).

The kids and I spend way too much time and money here now!

And we now have great restaurants, both local and chains, where we can eat. Especially Downtown...

Like many cities across the country, we too went through a Downtown Revitalization. But ours really worked. Our Downtown is now a destination with little shops, great local restaurants and music...

and Art. We have a great art community including 3 downtown galleries and the community ran Foundation of Arts.

The Foundation has art, music, dance and theatre classes for all ages. It also produces 6 plays/ballets/musicals a year all with community members.

And I have to brag on our Parks & Rec. I say all the time that I think we have one of the best park systems in the country! This is one of our playgrounds at Craighead Forrest located just 5 minutes from my house - and basically in the middle of the city. This playground is handicap accessible and was built by our Rotary Clubs completely on donations.

Just across the lake is our newest playground, The Fort. There are similar playgrounds, splash parks, community centers and tennis courts scattered throughout the city.

Also just about a 7 or 8 minute drive from my house is Crowley's Ridge Nature Center, an educational building/museum, gardens and trails - a great place to spend an afternoon.

I am from Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, but I've come to really love this town! The people here are very giving, friendly and while most of the country has gone through very difficult financial times, we've survived basically unscathed. I love raising my boys here!

Show Us Your Life - Reception & Honeymoon

Kelly at Kelly's Korner is hosting Wedding Receptions and Honeymoons during her Show Us Your Life blog party this week.

This is the only photo I have scanned of our wedding reception. This is as we entered our reception. Our reception was very layed back and relaxed and we had a good time. It was nice to have so many of our friends and family all together in one place.

And there were lots of special moments, like when Kevin met one of my aunts, who is very special to me, for the first time and when my mom met his uncle. This is such a good story I can't help but tell it. When we were dating, Kevin was looking at a book laying on the table next to him. It was my moms book from her high school reunion. As he leafed through it, he said "That's my aunt." When my mom looked at it, she said "That was my best friend in high school. The last thing I heared from her when we gratuated was that she was moving to Hughes to marry some boy." Kevin said, "That boy was my uncle." She had passed away 2 years before that with cancer, but my mom was able to meet her husband and daughter at our reception.

We honeymooned in a little town in the northern part of our state, Eureka Springs. It's a beautiful town in the Ozarks and really cateers to honeymooners. In fact, they are called the Honeymoon Capitol of the South. We talked about flying somewhere, but decided that for our honeymoon we really wanted someplace close enough that we could drive that night and somewhere we didn't feel like we had to do a lot of sight seeing.

It ended up to be a great choice because it is somewhere we can easily return whenever we want. In fact, these pictures aren't from our honeymoon, but from out 10 yr anniversary trip we took this past June.

The town has lots of great restaurants. This is one of our favorites, a little Italian place that makes you feel like Grandma is in the back yelling orders in Italian.

We stayed in the exact same cottage for our anniv. trip as we did our honeymoon. It was so neat to return there. Almost as if the past 10 yrs hadn't happened, but with so many memories of the past 10 yrs at the same time.

The Cottage is on Beaver Lake. This was the view from our deck.

Another really neat thing are the guest books they have in each cottage for the guest to sign. Guest leave words of encouragement and advice on marriage and tips on places to eat and things to do. The very first thing I did when we got there for our anniv. trip was to go back and read what we wrote 10 years ago.

Show Us Your Life - Wedding Dresses

Starting this week, Kelly at Kelly's Korner is hosting Weddings for the next few weeks. This week is all about the dress. Visit Kelly is see more dresses!

This will probably be the only week I participate because these are the only 4 pics I have in digital format. So unless I just get froggy and start scanning pics, this will likely be it.

I really did love my dress. And I tried on many! Being from Little Rock, living in Jonesboro and marrying someone from the Memphis area, I had lots of opportunity to visit many different stores. And like any true Arkansas girl, I did spend a day a Lowe's Bridal in Brinkly. But I ended up getting my dress as a well known bridal store here in Jonesboro. It was two pieces, the dress itself and the embroidered and beaded top. I wish I had a picture of the back, it was really pretty with buttons all the way down the top. At one time I could have told you the designer, but that was 10 years ago and I have let that information go to memorize more important things like Goodnight Moon.

I loved my veil too. I found the veil at a bridal store in Little Rock that was having a clearance sale. It was the exact length I wanted and trimmed in lace, but I did not like the hair comb it was attached to. But for $10 who could pass it up! So I removed the hair comb  and made my own head piece. I used embroidered flowers similar to my dress and it turned out great. 
My dress is still hanging in my closet at my parents house. The question afterwards is what do you do with it? I recently heard about a wedding that someone went to where they had both of the mother's dresses and one of the grandmother's dresses on mannequins at the wedding reception, what a neat idea!