Weekend Recap

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Hello, everybody!  Here we go with another week.  Hopefully Wednesday comes fast because my baby has left me for work yet again.  Stevie and I shall do tons of snuggling together while bumming it up on the couch.  Or maybe we'll be awesome and go for long walks and be social.  Although the last time he was out of town we did go to a bar and she did sneak behind the bar and bark at the bartender after she barked at guys on the patio and then she escaped through the back door and ran down the street with me chasing her like a crazy person.  Maybe we shouldn't let that happen again.  Where was I again? Oh yes, the weekend.  It was a good one, folks. Some highlights include ::

• The Campaign - we had free tickets so we figured a comedy would be the best way to spend them.  It was funny but I'm not going to tell you all to go rush out and see it.  It is definitely Netflix worthy and you will definitely laugh.  I'm also sure that whenever you see pugs you will think of this movie.  
• Douglass Loop Farmers Market - we traveled down to the Highlands to get our farmers market fix.  It's not quite as easy for us to go to one here as it was in Chicago.  I mean, we just walked two blocks and voila - the Logan Square Farmers Market and all its glory was right there!  This one may not have been as big as the LS one, or as many people or as much variety, but it still made me happy and we still made it home with flowers and beets (we have no shortage on tomatoes this year!).  
• Tom + Chee - this is a new grilled cheese restaurant in town that is all the rage.  We were so close to getting food from the taco truck but when I realized I was planning to eat the same meal for lunch and dinner we opted to hightail it over to grilled cheese heaven.  It was pretty great but considering the fact that grilled cheese is my vegetarian staple I was a little disappointed with the lack of options for myself.  It was a meaty grilled cheese paradise, much to my chagrin.  But still delish - and cheap!
• We painted our stairwell! What a task.  We used this color again and it really brightened it up a lot.  It was so much of a task that we honestly only did one coat.  It could probably benefit another coat but if you saw how tall this stairwell was and how hard it was for my 6'4" husband to reach you'd opt to not paint another coat as well :)
• Captain's Quarters - what a strange place this is.  Going to this restaurant was like being on vacation in Florida mixed with a weekend at Kentucky Lake.  Insert a 1992 high school reunion, a one man cover band and people walking around in suits, bikinis and resort wear and you can easily fool yourself into believing that you've left Louisville and gone on a very weird vacation.  On the Ohio river, no less.  But hey, the weather was nice and a rich old sleazy man with very bad jokes bought my husband a tequila shot and a beer!
• After a Sunday brunch at home featuring biscuits and gravy, we got productive and did our chores.  But then I took advantage of the sunny Sunday afternoon and baked this and made the whole house smell heavenly!

Apparently this Monday is all about really super long sentences (see above).  How were your weekends? Thanks for all the good vibes you sent Anna-Maria's way, that lady is now a DOCTOR!  Holy guacamole, congrats, my friend!  

Here's to a wonderful week ahead, my friends.  Remember...wake up and be awesome.

Weekend Recap

Monday, again? Dang it.  Doesn't it always seem like it's Monday??  I'm particularly loathing Monday this week because it means a) I am husbandless for a few days and b) work will be crazow and c) well, c is a given - Monday just plain sucks.  It was a really terrific weekend.  Some highlights include ::

• Hang out / hot tub time / playing doggies / cooler-than-usual evening - the sister-in-law's house is marvelous and the hot tub ain't too shabby either ;)
• Lunch with D's grandma - indulging in Olive Garden is always fun and catching up is pretty great too.
• Schimpff's Confectionary - Poodle Skirts, an Elvis impersonator in front of a hot pink Bel-Air, 50% off soda fountain treats and candy dating back to the beginning of 1900s...pretty dreamy, if you ask me.  It was crowded which tends to shoo us away but we didn't leave without some cream-filled chocolates!
• House & yard work - the act of doing the housework is not so much a highlight (although it somewhat is) but accomplishing everything certainly is.  
• After a crazy busy social week, it was nice to have a quiet night in on the couch.
• Hiking - we hiked the Purple Heart Trail at Jefferson Memorial Forest, just south of Louisville.  I really wanted to spend some time in nature and dip my feet in some lake water.  I got my nature time, certainly, but no lake time.  Whatever, I'll take care of that next week :)
• My Week With Marilyn - I love Michelle Williams and I love Marilyn Monroe so it was a match made in heaven.

How were your weekends? Excellent, I hope.  My fingers are crossed that the week ahead goes by smoothly.  Here's to a great week ahead!

Weekend Recap

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What a weekend! I'm not-so-glad it's Monday again, because my weekend should have lasted forever.  Some highlights include ::

• Happy Hour @ Nachbar  - we met Raegan & Murphy (cute pups) for a drink and ended up being joined by all of our other favorite people
• Friday night in - we ate quesadillas, played with Stevie and watched TV all night
• Rainy Saturday - our garden plans were foiled but we made it out to a nursery to look for trees (didn't find any) in between the rain showers and also caught up on laundry/groceries
• The ballet! Raegan treated me to a date night at the ballet, which included dressing up and plenty of cocktails.  The ballet itself was a 60th anniversary celebration, taking the best of other stories and dazzling us with some of the most beautiful choreography + music you could imagine.  I loved every last bit of it! 
• After the ballet, we stopped for a fancy cocktail at Meat
• Sunday brunch - the mister's grandmother treated us to a delightful brunch at the Village Anchor.  It was sunny, the restaurant was perfect for the occasion and the temperature was just right.  It was so very good.
• Gardening - we got our soil, mixed it all up, planted some argula and lettuce and felt pretty good about our accomplishments.  Followed by mowing and weed-wacking, it felt like an incredibly productive day.
• Cards on the screened-in porch, followed by a fish supper, followed by an enjoyable and quiet evening together.

How were your weekends? As lovely as mine? I certainly hope!  Here's to a great and productive week ahead, my friends! And be sure to check back tomorrow for a very, and I mean very special post!

Etsy find :: Bookhou At Home

Totally crushing on all things Bookhou At Home.  I mean, just look at that tote and that pouch.  Total beauty.  The colors and prints of the tea towels are pretty much everything I want our decor to look like.  Don't even get me started on the calendars.  I think an order might be in place as soon as the family spending freeze has passed.

In other news, you can also find me today at Lara's lovely blog, Simply Irresistible.  Hop on over to see what I love (so far) about my (new) city - Louisville, KY!

Speaking of Louisville....

Do you live in or around the Louisville area?  If so, be sure to check out Blogger Blitz Louisville on Tuesday, November 29th!  Alison of {long distance loving} has kindly organized a night of fun for local bloggers to mix and mingle at Proof on Main.  For $10, you get guaranteed admission, a blogger directory, a name tag and most importantly, a chance to make some pretty cool new friends.   Should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email Alison or myself!

Thursday's Randoms

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First off, this picture really makes me smile.  I love the way it's styled and the hair is gorgeous.  I've been thinking about my hair a lot lately.  It's not in good shape, guys.  The ends are so frizzy and fried and split and I feel lost.  My bangs have become too long and the color is...ick.  I need some hair advice!  I'm trying to grow it long (it's currently pretty long but I'm afraid if I trim away all the bad parts it will be medium-length again.  About a year and a half ago, I tried out the ombre trend at the salon but it didn't quite work out.  Needless to say, I came out of there with overly bleached hair that I had to dye and re-dye myself to get it to look right.  The ends of my hair are blonde from that bad bleach job, so I'm chocking the damaged parts up to that.  Is there a way to repair it? I've never really encountered this problem before and I don't know if damage repair products will do the trick or if I have to sadly chop it off.  I need a trim, yes, but I don't want to lose the growth.  Any advice, sweets?

Etsy's handpicked items always draw me in - for good reason.  This mint and brass necklace from Etsy shop Fortune is absolutely gorgeous.  

I couldn't resist posting these too, because the more I look at them the more I love them.  Via Fail Jewelry

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I can't get enough of the color in these mouth-watering desserts!  They would have all been perfect to use at my best friend's bridal shower a year and a half ago, hah.  The zebra + Tiffany blue color combo is incredible and I'm in awe at the beauty of the display!  Via HWTM

Last, here are some shots from our first Waterfront Wednesdays. I had no clue we were going but it was pretty much just what I needed.  I really like this new city of ours.

Weekend Recap

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Sorry for the late post, friends...but I am just now hooked up to the series of tubes (haha) called the internet.  

Guess what?  

Any guesses?  Yes?  

Yeah, that's right.  WE FINALLY MOVED IN!!!

We're homeowners livin' in a home, enjoying every last bit of it.  

The weekend was great.  We had our closing on Friday, which took less than an hour and we immediately moved in after.  With the help of our awesome family, it took an hour to unload our moving truck!  Can you believe that?  I'm still having a hard time believing it.  Some highlights of one of the best weekends ever include ::

• Closing + the best feeling in the world
• Moving in in an hour, obviously a highlight
• Having everyone over to check the house out + hang out
• Waking up in our new house
• Mowing the yard - it was my first time and I gotta admit I liked it *
• Unpacking
• Bringing Gus home - it was love at first sight for the little guy
• Saturday w/friends, pizza, beer and oldies
• Sunday dinner with the fam - I've missed this kind of stuff and I'm so happy to be able to get together with everyone whenever we want! If only MY family could move here :)

So many things about this house make me so so so so very happy.  It's quiet out here.  The only sounds we really hear are cicadas and crickets and things.  It's the complete opposite of our life in Chicago, especially because we lived on a very busy street and right next to a bar.  At one point in the night, my husband got up to use the bathroom and looked out the window to see the biggest deer walking around in our yard.  Until we have vegetables planted** I can say that having deer in our yard is freaking awesome.  

Today the internet/tv was set up and tomorrow our brand new washer and dryer arrives.  I am so giddy with all the excitement, I feel like I could explode with happiness any moment!  

How were your weekends? I'd love to hear!  Also, if there is a radio silence from my end, do not worry. We're busy bees unpacking, arranging and painting, oh my!

* It was my first time mowing because growing up my mom and brother loved it too much to ever ask me to do it

** We'll get a fence, don't you worry.

Weekend Recap

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This weekend was good, but not as good as it was supposed to be.  I spent a serious amount of time by the pool, drinking beers and eating food - which in itself, is pretty freaking awesome.  We hung out with family and friends and laughed a lot.  Some highlights include ::

• Lebowski Fest - we made it out to see my sister-in-law's boyfriend's band play (what a mouthful) while we gawked at festival goers in their bathrobes and such.  I had no idea this festival existed but I have to say it was all really great - especially that stamp we got on our arms with a picture of the dude that simply said, "abide".
• Poolside all day Saturday - my in-law's pool totally rules.  It's sure been nice to spend my time in there these past 5 days. 
• Dinner with awesome people
• Poolside all day Sunday
• Hang out session with pooches + m-i-l
• Breaking Bad season premiere!

All in all it was a good weekend.  But did you notice something big was left out of it? I jinxed the house by writing the Friday post, I swear.  Something really annoying happened when the loan was with the auditors in the final stage - literally hours before we were set to close.  Imagine my dismay - the tears, my hopes crushed.  I have no idea when we'll move in and it kills me.  So for now I'm just trying to hold my head up high and enjoy as much of that pool as I can (I think I'm succeeding in that).  Wish us luck :(

How were your weekends? Any of you Chicagoans go to Pitchfork?  Hope everyone is doing well!

Summer Bucket List

As some of you know, this summer is kind of huge for us.  We bought a house and are packing up our life in Chicago for a new life in Louisville, KY.  We're moving in a super short amount of time, which leaves me freaking out on a regular basis.

Our house is awesome. It's everything we wanted, it has many bedrooms and bathrooms, a big yard and a lot of character.  We're both incredibly excited to move, to start a new chapter of our lives and to put down some roots.  But we're both sad, incredibly overwhelmed and feeling nervous about all of the change.

Last summer was huge for us - we got married.  But that didn't really change much of anything, except for the fact that we can say 'husband' and 'wife' and we both wear rings and my last name is different.  But we didn't pick up our lives and leave behind good friends to try and make new ones somewhere else.

So my summer bucket list is kind of a strange one.  As much as I want to do anything and everything in Chicago while we're still here, I keep finding that we're not doing anything we thought we'd do.  I haven't been to Millennium Park for a free Monday night concert.  We haven't visited any of the museums we said we would.  We haven't gone to those restaurants we'd never been to, or the blues bars I have been wanting to experience.

Even though summer has just begun - I feel like it's already ending.  I have to do all of this stuff within the next two weeks or else we'll have to save it all for when we visit.

Before we move, I want to ::

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Go see a show at one of the two best venues in Chicago - The Hideout or The Empty Bottle.  It's been too long since I've gone to either of these two places and that really kind of breaks my heart.  

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Spend an evening hanging out at Kingston Mines with two very close friends.  I think this one will happen for sure (hint hint)

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When I first moved here (and even before I moved here) I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art many, many times.  It's such an incredible museum - the art is so much more my speed and the size isn't at all overwhelming.  The first time I went, I fell in love because I was able to see some of Cindy Sherman's work in the flesh.  I haven't been in years and will be a little heartbroken if I don't make it down there before I go.  I would also like to go to the Museum of Science & Industry again, but I really want to go there with my littlest niece, Ally.  She is big into that kind of stuff and I can't wait to potentially see her face light up!

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Most importantly, I really just want to spend the remainder of our time here with my friends.  I've made some incredible friends here and I'll miss them with every beat of my heart.  They're the kind of friendships that will last forever and ever, and I can't even begin to express how much that means to me.  

After our big move, the bucket list includes spending as much time as possible outdoors, going down to the lake with the in-laws, going for long walks at dusk to explore our new neighborhood and most importantly - get a puppy!  Oh and then there's the whole "getting settled into our house and buying new furniture, painting and carefully decorating the house room by room".  But I imagine that will take a long time and I've got no plans of rushing it!

Thanks to Jillian of Cornflake Dreams for the link up - be sure to swing by her lovely blog to read more bucket lists!

Weekend Recap

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Sorry this post is a day late...I failed to mention that I wouldn't be back until today.  What a wonderful weekend it was!  Louisville is gorgeous, especially at this time of year.  Spring has fully sprung - there are so many lovely trees everywhere fully in bloom, the daffodils along the side of the highway are big and bright yellow and everything is GREEN!  It's amazing, but it totally makes Chicago seem like the saddest place on earth.  When will our trees bloom? The ones outside our apartment don't even have buds on them yet!  Sad.

Not only did we have an amazing time with our friends and family, but we are so freaking close to packing up and moving down there.  While we haven't made an offer on a particular house or anything, we did find two that almost met every single expectation we have.  We're not that picky but it has to be perfect in order for us to buy it.  One house we loved, which looked so similar to the image from Friday's post (I thought it was a sign), was perfect in every way except that it had a tiny yard.  It was a lovely manicured yard that was already set up for a little vegetable garden like we want...but there was no way a dog could really run around back there.  We went back for a second visit the next day and just didn't love it the way we did the day before.  Funny how that happens.

The other house we loved is one that is still in the running for us.  It's kind of far away from everything we'll want to do in the city, but honestly it's not that far.  It's pretty much country living in the city.  It's on an old road that has lots of farms (one sells honey!) with horses (no stinky cows!) and there's a nursery at the tail end (and also a quarry).  The house itself is pretty awesome with incredible wood doors and a front porch with not just one, but three ceiling fans.  It's on a big lot and there are tons of beautiful old trees everywhere.  But it has its down sides too.  The basement is weird, with really low ceilings and it doesn't have a garage.  But that garage part can be fixed.

We've begun the financial process, we finally found an agent that we like and want to give business to.  We're going back soon, because we're both incredibly excited and ready.  It's meant to be, hoorah!

Some highlights of the weekend include ::

• Beers with all of our Louisville friends on Friday night, ending with a hot tub session
• A good day of house hunting and stuff
• Good food and beer from the Bluegrass Brewing Company
• Final Four games watched in the hot tub and also at a delicious Mexican restaurant with margaritas and queso!
• Brunch with my MIL followed by a not so good house hunting day but an eye-opening one
• Beers outside in the 78 degree weather at The Beer Store w/Raegan!
• Dinner at North End Cafe with so many wonderful people + great food

The weather was divine - sunny and 78 degrees.  Does it get any better than that?!  Needless to say, it was hard to come back.  But having the National Championship game to watch with friends back home made it much easier.  Speaking of, I read this article from NPR about last night's game.  It's a good read! My favorite quote ::

"On a stage this big, you don't want to win in such a way that the next morning, the story is the historically poor performance of the other team."

It was almost too hard to watch, right?!  

Have a comfy weekend!

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Well friends, it's Friday again!  We're taking off for another round of house hunting in Louisville.  I'm excited about our possibilities this time around; my fingers are crossed that we find something good.  It's hard work to house hunt.  It takes so much patience, and just when you think you know everything you want out of a house, something new presents itself.  We've been down to KY so many times since deciding to call it home.  While we always have fun there, these trips are pretty exhausting.  So we'd like to stop making them and just move in already :)

The house in the image above is something that I've been envisioning for quite some time.  We're looking at bungalows or cape cods or something of that nature, and I definitely already told my husband that I long to have a house painted dark blue.  The yellow door is super cute but I'm rather partial to red doors, or beautiful wood doors in their natural form.  So when I saw this image I got a little giddy, thinking it might be a sign of our future home to appear to us, no?

So what are all of you lovelies up to this weekend?  Hopefully it involves you being comfortable inside the places you call home!  Aside from house hunting, we'll be catching up with some most excellent friends and family - I can't wait!  Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Weekend Recap

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We had yet another fantastic weekend.  Busy, but fantastic.  I think that 2 of these in a row is a little much for us, especially for my incredibly busy, hard working husband.  We went down to Louisville, KY this weekend to a) spend time with the mister's family and b) to look for our future home.  While we didn't find "the one", we came close.  We are definitely getting there and I couldn't be more excited!  Some highlights include ::

• Walking through a few houses and getting the feel for that
• Beautiful weather, seriously
• Family dinner(s)!
• Seeing parts of Louisville that not only I had never seen but also he had never seen
• Going to our first open house, which was a seriously charming bungalow that came really close to being perfect
• Some incredible talks that we had on our way home
• The feeling that this gave me - it's so hard to describe but I feel really good about this and I can't really wrap my head around it

I've been wanting to ask you guys for awhile now...do you have experience with buying a home and would you be willing to share any advice with me?  I'd greatly appreciate hearing from you.  

How were your weekends?