• Life

    5 Of My Favorite Pictures

    Today I’m following one of my favorite bloggers, Victoria and sharing five of my favorite photos! So fun!

    I think this is my all time favorite photo from our wedding because I think it (almost) captures just how excited we were. Best. Day. Ever.

    And this one is my favorite from our Engagement Session because I think it captures our love for each other so well. Even in the corner of Tommy’s face you can see the expression he has on. It’s great.

    This picture is from our first vacation we ever went on in the Bahamas. It was the first time Tommy had been out of the country. I have such fond memories of this trip and I am constantly reminiscing about it. This picture brings me right back to that resort.

    This picture is from our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. I love this because I think it captures Tommy’s fun, silly side.

    This is from my Bachelorette Party and I love having my closest friends all in one picture, celebrating the best thing that has ever happened to me. So awesome.

     

    Come join in with us and share 5 of your favorite pictures!

    (P.S. If you want to sign up for the online bible study or just want to find out more information, don’t forget to check out my post from yesterday!

  • Faith

    Online Bible Study Sign Up

    Good morning friends 🙂 This weekend was a great one. Yesterday Tommy and I went to a marriage bible study at our new church and it was so awesome. We were so encouraged and finally felt like we fit in at church. We still have a long ways to go when it comes to making friends, but at least we know we’re on the right track!

    Online Bible Study

    I wanted to share what has been on my heart for a little while now. I really would love to start a bible study or just walk through a book with some other girls. I was thinking of a book that had participation questions at the end of it like Entrusted – A Study of 2 Timothy By Beth Moore. I just wanted to see if anyone was interested before I started it. If this is something that you would like to participate in, please “sign up” below by commenting that you would like to participate in this.

    I also want it to be an easy group to participate in. I will give everyone an email buddy that you can email back and forth together with, to hold you accountable, and just to have a friend to do a discussion with. Also, I will create a Facebook group for everyone so we can all chat together as well. 🙂

    Within a week or so I’m also going to be posting a poll on my blog’s Facebook page where you can vote on which book you’d like to read with the group. We’ll read through the one that gets the most votes. Also, if you have any suggestions for the book, please let me know! 🙂 Make sure to follow my Facebook page so you don’t miss the poll! You can find that here.

    In Case You Missed It…

    On Friday I posted twice (!) and shared a guest post from another site. So in case you missed that and are interested you can check that out here.

    \\How was your weekend friends?! I’m so excited to hopefully start the bible study!

  • Devotional,  Faith

    5 Ways I Practically Cast My Cares On God and Why It Works For Me

    Hi friends! I promised I’d be back to share my guest post so here I am. I’m super excited about this one. I hope you all like it!


    Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken. – Psalm 55:22

    I’ve struggled with anxiety before I even knew what anxiety was. I’ve always been a worrier. The only thing that has changed as I’ve grown up and gotten married is what I worry about. When I was five, I worried about making friends. When I was eleven, I worried about my grades. When I was fifteen, I worried about what all of my peers thought about me. When I was nineteen, I worried that I wouldn’t find a husband to marry. And now that I’m twenty-five, I worry that this little family that God has blessed me with will be taken away from me, or something terrible will happen to one of us.

    To read the rest of the post click here.


  • Life,  Recipes

    Friday Favorites | Vol. 4

    Hi friends! I wasn’t planning on writing this post because I’m going to be sharing with you another post I wrote for a different site later on, buuuut I’m really loving both writing and reading Friday Favorite posts. So I figured I would just do both posts! 😉

    Check back later on today for the link to my guest post about ways to practically cast your cares on God.

    Friday Favorites

    o n e

    I’ve been experimenting with new recipes this week and this one was so. good. It was so healthy too. It was actually served with chicken as well, but I snapped this picture before putting the cooked chicken back into the pan because the colors just looked so pretty. The recipe can be found here. 🙂

    This was the first time I cooked gnocchi and they are delicious! Especially paired with the tomatoes, they are seriously just too good.

    t w o

    I’ve been doing so much crocheting this week, it’s been great. This blanket that I’m working on here is almost done! I’m actually headed to Michael’s after I finish this post to buy more yarn for it. I’m going to be selling it on Etsy as soon as I get everything up and running. Don’t miss the launch date! I’d love to have you along for the journey, so follow me on my Etsy Instagram (@ashleyzincrochets). 🙂

    t h r e e

    I told ya I’ve been experimenting with different recipes this week. 😉 This one was honestly so good too. It’s a great swap for a high calorie side dish. The insides are filled with heavy cream, cheese, pepper, garlic, and a crumpled bouillon cube! So clever. This recipe can be found here.

    f o u r

    I recapped our honeymoon this week and it made me want to hop on a plane straight to the Caribbean so badly! That’s what living in New Jersey in March will do to you though, haha. I am so ready for warmer weather and beach days!

    Tommy and I are making the drive from New Jersey to Florida two weeks from today though! I can’t complain too much about the weather since I’ll be in sunny Florida soon enough. 🙂

    f i v e

    I revamped my Pinterest account this week and I’d love it if you would follow along with me. I have created tons of fun boards that make me really excited – from Fitness Routines to Ways to Use Essential Oils. I also pin the recipes that I use throughout the week as well. I’m confident you can find something that will be useful. Leave a comment with your blog and Pinterest and I’d love to follow along with you too. 🙂

    Today I’m linking up with these wonderful ladies!

  • Life,  Marriage

    Zinhobls Say I Do: Our Honeymoon Recap

    Today is the last installment of our wedding series! 🙁 While I’m sad to see it go, it’s probably about time haha, I think I’ve been doing these for about two months. Today I’m going to share pictures and tell a little bit about our honeymoon in the Dominican Republic! We were actually really bad about taking pictures, but I will share with you what we did document. 🙂 If you missed any of the other posts in this series, you can check them out below:

    New York City + A Mishap

    Right at the end of our reception we took a limo from the venue to New York City where we would fly out right to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic! P.S. Let’s not forget though, the pastor who officiated our wedding forgot to sign and have everyone else sign our wedding license, so we technically were not “officially” married at this point! We had to meet him, and have him bring two random “witnesses” to sign our wedding license on the way into the city!!! It was crazy and stressful and definitely not how I pictured this time, haha. But now I guess we have a fun story to tell. 😉

    We finally arrived at our hotel in the city at close to midnight, but at least we made it and were now officially married! It was a gorgeous hotel room, which we actually didn’t take any pictures of because we were so overwhelmed with what had just happened and about the fact that we were now married!! This is when it actually hit me, and I still get so excited when I think back on this moment.

    Up Bright and Early To Catch A Plane

    The plane ride was about 3 hours and wasn’t bad at all. We still were so excited to be married that it really didn’t matter what we did at this point I don’t think, we were just so happy. We stayed at Confresi Palm Beach & Spa Resort, which was all-inclusive.

    Arriving at our Resort

    We arrived and got settled into our room and were just so thankful to be there. It’s actually killing me to write about this because I am so desperately craving a trip to a tropical beach right now, haha! Up above is the view right outside our hotel room.

    Fun in the Sun

     

    We spent our days by first waking up and making the most amazing coffee in our room, and drinking it our on the balcony while reading our Bibles. Then we would head to breakfast at the buffet, and go back to our rooms and change into bathing suits. We would then head to either one of the really nice pools they had or down to the beach.

    On the beach in the picture above, there were wait staff where they would bring you any food or drink you wanted right to your chair. It was awesome, but a little much for Tommy and I, haha.

    Our Fun Rings

    We bought these rings from Qalo to use on our honeymoon because we heard of all the horror stories of people losing their rings on their honeymoons. These rings are great, and we still use them to this day if we’re doing anything were we think we could lose them.

    Our Evenings

     

    After we were done spending the day at the pool we would go back and shower and get ready for dinner. We either would head back to the buffet (where we would also eat for lunch), or go to one of the restaurants we made reservations for. Our favorite was the Italian restaurant (pictured above).

    A Sick Day

    We did have one day that was not the greatest. I got sick during the middle of the vacation, and ended up going to the doctors on the resort. They gave me antibiotics and I was okay the next day.

     

    All in all though it was a great first trip to take as husband and wife. We headed back home after six nights there and it was so much fun. Now I am missing it so much and desperately want to go back! 🙁

     

     

  • Wedding

    How To Use Your Wedding Decor as Home Decor

    As many of you already know, I got married 10 months ago (to the day!). As many of you also know that planning a wedding is no joke. We were only engaged for about 6 months so we had to be very diligent with our planning. There’s just so much that goes into planning a wedding, and when it’s your wedding, you want everything to be perfect. (Or about as close to perfect as you can get!)

    One of my favorite parts of planning our special day was picking out, and making our wedding decor. We purposely picked a venue that was very limited on what it provided so that we could plan all the details ourselves. (Also so we could find the cheapest options too!) So since I spent countless hours planning exactly how our wedding was going to look, I was obviously very attached to all of those decor items after the wedding. The idea of getting rid of, or even just storing them in my closet where they were out of sight just didn’t sit well with me. I loved all of our decor and especially wasn’t done with using it since we had only done so for one day!

    So what’s a girl to do when she has all of her wedding decor and a new empty, undecorated apartment? Use her wedding decor for home decor, of course! And I loved it so much that even after I put away our winter decor this month, I brought back out our wedding stuff as home decor yet again. I still love it so much, and even more so now because it reminds me of our wedding! I wanted to share some pictures and ideas of how I did this and ways that you can too if maybe you’re about to get married and are wondering – “What in the world am I going to do with all of this stuff?!”

    How To Use Your Wedding Decor As Home Decor

    1 | Display Any Banners + Wedding Cards

    • Use a long string (I used twine), and hole punch each corner of all of your wedding cards and string through and hang as a banner! I would suggest a thick string otherwise the cards may not hold and slide down into each other. The twine worked perfectly. I actually left these cards up all year round because I just love seeing them and being reminded of the people who gave them to us.
    • Hang any banner you used at the wedding on your wall! I made this “Love Is Sweet” banner for our dessert table, and I think it looks so cute under the cards.
    • If you happened to use Silk Flowers in your bouquet like me, use them as a centerpiece on your dining room table! My mother-in-law actually made me the vase as well (it looks like my wedding dress) so that was perfect to hold them in, but any vase will do.

     

    2 | Hang All Of The Signs

    • If you had any signs that would work in your home, hang those as well! We had this cute coffee bar sign at our wedding, and needed more space because we don’t have much counter space, so I bought this cute little coffee cart and hung the sign above.

     

    • Similar to the last tip, that wood sign was also used at our wedding and works perfectly next to our kitchen sink to give the kitchen a little bit more personality. 😉

     

    • One of my favorite signs from the wedding.

     

    • You can even hang the back of your seat signs on the wall!

     

    3 | Hang/Display Your Guest Book (if possible)

    • If you haven’t gotten married yet, a suggestion is to opt for a guest book that can be displayed in your home somewhere, rather than a guest book that will sit on a shelf. We bought this one off of Etsy (as we did with most of our decor), and there are so many other variations if this type doesn’t fit what you’re looking for. They also have globes, or my brother and sister-in-law bought a foam pumpkin because they got married in October, and had everyone sign that. This is an awesome option because you can always read everyone’s best wishes so easily in your day-to-day life.

     

    4 | Use Smaller Items On A Bookshelf

    • The flowers on the top are bridesmaid flowers. This is obviously only an option if you used silk flowers, and if one of your bridesmaids are willing to let you keep their flowers. 😉
    • We used our unity candle as decor on this shelf as well.
    • The flowers on the middle shelf were from my “throw” bouquet. (Also the same as the ones our flower girl had.)
    • I’m not going to list every item, but everything besides the candy jar on the top shelf, are from tables we had used to decorate from the wedding. If you have a lot of smaller items like this, either buying a bookshelf to decorate or making one like this one (out of stained crates), they are perfect for adding a little bit of wedding to your home.

     

    If you are interested in seeing our wedding pictures, you can check those out below. Many, if not all, of these items and how we used them for the wedding can be found in the last post, Decor Pictures + Details.

    \\Did you use your wedding decor as home decor? How did you do it? Am I missing anything?