1/11/11 - I Turn 29!

Well, I didn't intend for my last post of 2010 to be a Thanksgiving one...but I'm back in 2011!


And what a day to come back - I turn 29 today!

Love from Malibu, CA*

It's hard to believe that my 20s are almost over. (Although after this, aren't you supposed to celebrate the 1st anniversary of your 29th birthday, and then the 2nd, and so on, so that you never really leave your 20s?) So much still to do, so I better crackin' on making and crossing things off a 30 Before 30 list!


What have I been up to?

• I mentioned that I might get laid off from my job. Well, it happened at the beginning of December. But it's okay! I had been interviewing and (so luckily) had something lined up. Whew!
  
• I started my new job the week before Christmas, which allowed me to join James on the interview trail in St. Petersburg, FL, the LA area, and Chicago! It was so much fun, and we got to stay 3-4 days in each city. (The photo above is from Point Dume in Malibu. We had hiked up to the top and there was a group of 3 other guys up there...one a photographer, one a cinematographer, and I happened to ask the guy who was neither but just so happened to take my new favorite photo!)
  
• Christmas and New Years were there before I knew it. I hadn't finished Christmas shopping by the time I was laid off, and I was in town only for a few days up until the week of Christmas, so I pretty much ordered everything online this year!  All of our family is here in Dallas, so we spent the holidays at home and had a wonderful time.
  
• I got rid of 100 things in December...and I'm hoping to do it again in January! As it gets closer and closer to Match Day, the idea that we are moving is slowly sinking in, and we have some major decluttering to do! The sad part is, getting rid of 100 things didn't make a noticeable dent. About 25 things were books (we still have a million left), and 60+ were items of clothing (sadly, I had not cleaned out our closets in forever, seeing as how lots of things dated back to high school, and many items had been out of site, out of mind in a box under my bed). The books we sold to Half Price Books for like $10 (probably not worth it, I should look into other sources as well since we still have a lot of medical ones that may be worth something), and the clothes that were in good shape were all donated. Please tell me I'm not the only one who has this much stuff.
  
• We've been slowly planning our trip to Europe, and this month we're going to kick it into high gear and finalize everything! As always, we're trying to be frugal about things like our accommodations, so that always takes a lot of research. Our steal so far is that we got a 3* hotel in London on Hotwire for $70! (We used Better Bidding to help guess what the hotel was beforehand so we could scout location and read reviews before pulling the trigger, as described in this post.)

So, Happy Birthday to me! It's going to be a great year. Any ideas for my 30 Before 30 list? What is/was on yours?

P.S. I figured out where the leopard flats from this post are from: they are the Joe's Jeans Stella III

So Excited!

I am so giddy right now! We just booked a trip to Europe for late February - mid March (back just in time for Match Day)...and the best part is we booked it on points! (Non-stop and only 20,000 each way because it's off-peak - just before it goes up to 60,000 points for Spring Breakers!) 

I'm so looking forward to reading up on and planning the trip over the next several months, which I think is half the fun! We fly into London, will go to Paris (!!!) next, and the rest is still up in the air - we just need to end up in Frankfurt.

It will be a little colder than I prefer (this warm-weather gal dreams about jet-setting it in the summer to Saint-Tropez or Capri), but I quickly pinched my lucky self and am now dreaming about bundling up and strolling down the river Seine with my sweetheart.

I'd love to hear your suggestions if you have them. I've only been to Italy, so it will be all-new and all-amazing to me!  What's the favorite place you've traveled to or have been dreaming about visiting?

I have a feeling I'm going to be singing a lot of this in the coming months:

I love Paris in the spring time

I love Paris in the fall

I love Paris in the summer when it sizzles

I love Paris in the winter when it drizzles

I love Paris every moment

Every moment of the year

I love Paris, why oh why do I love Paris

Because my love is here

Stay tuned for my first giveaway in my next post! You're going to love it!

Images from the lovely Shabby Apple. I'm pretty sure this La Tour Eiffel dress is right up my alley.

In the Desert You Can Remember Your Name

Greetings from the Arizona desert!

I am here right now for work. The only time I've ever been to AZ was a layover in the Phoenix airport, so I've been having fun checking everything out.

Last night I strolled around a big-box store shopping center (not very cultural, but something to do), where I snapped the above photo. A much prettier setting for an ULTA, no?

Palm trees make everything pretty.

And then I drove around the ASU campus. Sun Devil Stadium, which is on the leftish side of the photos below, is pretty cool - constructed between two mountain buttes, so it "literally was carved from the desert". (Literally.) One of the buttes (hehe) is also in the leftish side of the photos, not that you can really tell.

Tonight, I'm going to check out some more buttes and maybe some cacti. Maybe check out downtown Phoenix. And maybe head to the outlet mall and IKEA to continue my non-cultural enrichment. (While I don't have room in my suitcase for an Expedit, I could probably fit something like these file boxes I've had my eye on.)

It's almost the weekend!  Have a good one.

On the Road Again

We were hoping to take a road trip this past weekend – J unexpectedly got the end of last week off, so we wanted to make the most of it – but we couldn’t settle on a destination.

via

We’ve been talking about Memphis for a while, and I was pretty excited when I found on Better Bidding* that we could potentially get the Peabody relatively inexpensively. Alas, marching mallards, Graceland and BBQ were not meant to be when we realized a seven hour drive was probably a bit much for a three day weekend.

source
helpful tip of the day: sunburns and 100 degree water don't mix

I’ve also been itching to soak in some hot springs since we wrapped up our Costa Rican luna de miel at the Tabacon springs, so Hot Springs, AR looked right up our alley. However, I wasn’t very excited by the lackluster hotel reviews I was finding, and I was confused by the actual use of the bathhouse, which looks like it’s a private experience. (Which means no canoodling with your spouse trying to pretend like you’re on your segunda luna de miel.) Has anyone been to Hot Springs that has any recommendations?

We went to Houston the weekend before, and have made plenty of trips down to Austin, San Antonio, and the surrounding Hill Country, so those were out, and J didn’t want to go Choctaw with me at an Oklahoma casino, even if I promised not to wear my fanny pack.

Running out of ideas, and remembering that the four hour drive to Houston the weekend before was a bit much to repeat so soon, I suggested a staycay at a local hotel, where we could lounge by the pool and sip cocktails and pretend like we didn’t have a pile of laundry to do at our house down the street.

Luckily, J nixed that idea. When I came up with this plan late last week, it was upper-70s and sunny. This is what our car looked like Saturday night leaving the bar:

Yup, it snowed in Dallas on the first day of Spring. Pool time was most definitely out. (And uh, maybe I should start checking the weather more often.)

So instead of making a weekend getaway, we:

I thought the "warm vintage" effect would be appropriate for this one. Sorry for the poor quality iPhone photos...maybe one day I will actually download photos off of my real camera.

• Ate at our favorite hole-in-the-wall burger joint. The waitress has worked there for 29 years, and I don't think anything about the place has changed for at least that long. But don’t be scared, this guy has been known to park his Maserati outside and come in for a juicy burger.


• Took the puppy to her first training class.


• Watched some of our friends play their first gig at one of our favorite bars. They played covers for four hours, and it went really well. So well that the guys at the table next to us (already drunk when our friends went on at 8 pm, so that might explain it) spent a lot of the time singing, air guitaring, and doing jigs in front of the stage, somehow managing to not knock over any of the equipment.


• Went to see our new niece for the second time. Hard to believe that I’m an aunt to NINE kiddos!

We’re still wanting to go somewhere new soon, and I now think we’ve found the perfect place! As we were catching up with one of our couple friends during the show, they told us all about…the awesome, only-two-hours-away road trip they took last weekend to Dublin, TX, home of Dublin Dr Pepper! (J was following a doctor recently named Dr. Pepper, and I can’t stop giggling every time. I want that last name so I can make people introduce us as Dr. and Mrs. Pepper! But I digress.) I think they stopped by the bottling plant, went to a winery, and saw cheese being made. They did it all in one day, so I’m now psyched to shamelessly copy their itinerary for a day trip or a whole weekend stay!

What about you, any quick trips you’ve taken or planned recently?

* Better Bidding is my secret to using opaque hotel booking sites like Priceline and Hotwire. It provides a listing, broken down by the area and star rating, of hotels you are likely to get. If you're using Hotwire, you can also match up the amenities listed, which helped me net a 4* hotel in Boston where a wedding reception we were going to was being held for half off the cheapest rate.

The site also has forums where you can see what price other people got a hotel for in the area you're interested in, which was helpful when I was booking our hotel for Houston last weekend. We got a 4* hotel in downtown for $55...never mind that it was a smoking floor and we're too chicken to ask to be moved, and never mind that when we came home late that evening that neither of our keys worked and I was stuck standing in the hallway listening to a rather loud amorous couple through what were apparently thin doors while J got a new key. I used Priceline for the first time to book it, where I recommend having a backup email and credit card if you don't want to adjust your bid or wait 24 hours to place the same bid.

Art for the Language Lover

I hope to still be able to travel when I have children, although I know I'm still going to want to take some baby-free trips! J's family took him to Peru and England when he was itty bitty, and I want to have cute photos of my offspring in Paddington Bear-like coats in London as well!

The world traveler baby will certainly need to know his ABCs in multiple languages, so I think these prints will look darling in a child's room.

Italian Alphabet Flashcards

Italian Alphabet Poster

French Alphabet Poster

Spanish Alphabet Flashcards

Above all from bibbity's etsy shop

Arabic Alphabet poster from Waafia's etsy shop ($5!)

NOLA-Bound

Hi Cupcakes,

Isn't this cupcake Megan decorated for me at work cute?

Needing a getaway, the hubs, our friend T, her dog B, and I are road-tripping down to New Orleans tomorrow for the long weekend.

The only other time I've been was exactly 2 years ago to visit our friend J, who is down there for law school and is kindly letting us visit again before he's done. Any suggestions for must-see eating or shopping in the Big Easy?

Travel Accessories

I want these for my next big adventure...

Coin Purse

Make-up Bag

Travel Pass Holder

Passport Holder and Luggage Tag

Paper Plane travel products found here

I've been wishin' and hopin' for a passport cover, and the one above may be the new front-runner. I was previously looking at these colorful options, preferably one that could be embossed with my monogram:

Personalized Passport Covers at (where else?) Personalization Mall

Island Leather Passport Cover at See Jane Work

Some other airmail-inspired goodies...

Air Mail and Personalized Postcard Pillows found on Etsy


Etsy again

...and more Etsy

Let's take a trip!