THERE WERE SO MANY BUCKETS OF FLOWERS

We kind of took ourselves away from everyone this morning as we still had a few little bits to organise before the wedding, so it was mostly shopping! (It was nice not to have to organise anyone for a while). Oh and I got a spray tan - I am so brown all over. It's great!

I needed to stop by Walmart to pick up cakes and snacks for the dessert table at the Crafternoon. Once we'd done all that we headed to the flower market and picked up loads of boxes of flowers. There were a few that had died in transit to the market so I wasn't able to get everything I ordered by the garden roses and ranunculus looked incredibly pretty, and I love the yellow billy balls!

All the girls pitched in to help decorate and prepare the dessert table for the Crafternoon, and it looked beautiful (not quite my Pinterest vision, but still beautiful!) and then all the crafters started to arrive, along with Michelle the photographer.

Everyone was so good at making things and a lot quicker than I had expected! We got through the majority of tasks in the first 45 minutes (something I was quite pleased about as it meant we had more time to have photographs with the flowers!).
We made:

• Wedding programme fans
• Bunting for the bus
• Place settings
• Centrepieces
• Five bouquets - - All the bridesmaids did their own -  and they all did a great job! My bouquet took a couple of attempts as one of the main flowers I wanted wasn't available so I couldn't quite figure out how I wanted it. But it's really pretty. And all the little mason jar centre pieces look amazing as well.

Everything looked so pretty - I can't wait to see it all in action tomorrow!

After we wrapped the crafternoon up I packed up my things and headed over to mum's villa where I'm sleeping tonight.

PANCAKES FOR BREAKFAST, AND DINNER ON OUR LAPS

Well today was an adventure - in more ways than one!

We had the optional excursion to St Augustine planned today - our most popular trip with almost everyone tagging along for the ride. To make sure we had enough time to hit all of our stops we had to be on the road by 8.30am.

Everyone was excited for our first stop of the day: The Old Sugar Mill at De Leon Springs State Park. An all-you-can-eat, cook-your-own pancake house. Because there were so many of us we were spread over four tables around the restaurant, each with their own griddle pan in the middle. The lovely waitresses gave us the drill - spray the oil on, pick the batter, pout it on, wait for it to bubble and then flip.

We soon got the hang of it, and after a couple of rounds we were stuffed! We were still on schedule so we had a wander around the State Park, with natural springs and lots of wildlife, before we headed north to St Augustine.

Some of the group decided to walk the city, I took the trolley tour (I LOVE the Old Town Trolley Tours - I've done then about 10 times in different cities and they are such a fun way to see everything and learn about it as well). After we'd done the loop we hopped off, got ice cream and looked around the historic streets.

We left at around 5pm and we were racing the clock as Dad doesn't like driving in the dark. This meant that our dinner stop at the Daytona Pig Stand was more like a drive-through as we all had to-go meals and then held on tightly to our plates as we drove the next hour and a half home! The ribs were SO GOOD though...it was worth it.

HEADING OUT WEST

Today was our first day doing separate activities - Dan hit Universal Studios again, while I led the Tampa and St. Pete's Beach optional excursion in the minibus.

We were doing well - left on time and set to make the 10am tour at Gamble Plantation - but after getting stuck in traffic about 15 minutes away we knew that we weren't going to get there in time and with the next tour not until 2pm we had a quick change of plans.

The detour took us to Pass-a-grill, a really pretty beach set in the historic district of St Pete's Beach - white sand and turquoise sea all around. We explored a little, had a paddle and grabbed lunch before heading back to the plantation house for the ranger-led tour. It had a great history and is the last remaining plantation house in southern Florida.

After Gamble our next stop was Ybor City - home to Florida's Cuban community with an incredibly lovely main street. We were getting hot by then so we stopped for some milkshakes before touring round. I bought Dan a cigar (his only request of the day) from a great little cigar shop where the man sits in the window and rolls them by hand.

Then it was time to head back to Orlando ready for mini golf at Universal's Hollywood Drive-in course. We were quite good, but neither of us won. That honour went to James!