Honeymooning

Kyle and I decided to use our honeymoon to visit a part of the country that has been on both of our bucket lists for quite some time....the pacific northwest!

On Monday morning we flew in early to Seattle, where we grabbed a rental car and roadtripped it to about two hours north to the small town of Lynden, WA. This was our home base for the week (Thanks Tom for letting us use your timeshare hookup!)

We spent Monday evening just getting our bearings and getting settled. On Tuesday morning we decided to drive in to the larger town close by....Bellingham. This was surprisingly the only day it rained on us!

We walked around town a bit and eventually found a beautiful park that came complete with waterfalls!

Those who are close to me know that apples are one of my most favorite foods ever so you know that we had to find an orchard ASAP!  They were some of the BEST apples I have ever had. I probably should just order apples straight from orchards in the fall and have them shipped!

 

On Wednesday we decided to drive up to Vancouver, BC. It was a pretty easy hour and a half drive. We got an awesome deal on a downtown hotel.

 

 This was our view from the 29th floor!

We spent the majority of the day wondering the city. Vancouver had just enough of an international feel without the culture shock I have experienced in other countries! On Thursday, we explored a bit more before heading back to Washington. For the whole week, we used Yelp to help us pick food and site seeing destinations! We found a delightful french restaurant for brunch on Thursday morning. I had a bit of food anxiety because the menu was mostly in French and when you have a severe food allergy like me...You get worried! I couldn't even use my phone to look things up because I didn't want to pay the outrageous international data charges! ( We didn't need it enough to buy a plan). Luckily I could recognize enough to order what I thought would be pretty safe..a delicious skillet with rib meat, potatoes and eggs. It was amazing!

 Since we were a little late for whale season, we decided to go to the aquarium!

 While we were admiring the beluga whales...These two little girls walked up to the glass and held hands while singing " Baby Beluga...live wild and free..." at the top of their lungs. I was pretty sure my heart was going to explode from all of the cuteness.

If you ever venture up to Vancouver, I highly recommend you check out Stanley Park. This is where the aquarium was located but is also a GORGEOUS park with amazing views of the bay and the downtown landscape. I was too busy admiring with my eyes that I forgot to take a picture. Oops!

We headed home Thursday evening to rest and get ready for our next adventure, San Juan Island!

It was about an hour drive down to catch the ferry on Friday morning. The San Juan Islands include a few islands, but because we were limited in time, we chose to go to just one. The ferry was a gorgeous ride!

We wore our "play clothes" and grabbed some snacks in order to enjoy a full nature day.

 We didn't see any whales but we did see quite a few seals! San Juan Island was honestly one of the most beautiful places that I have ever been to.

 

 On Saturday we drove back to Seattle to explore before we flew out on Sunday.

 We visited all of the tourist spots ( Pike's Place Market, Space Needle, etc.). It was unfortunate that it was a Saturday and a mad house every where we went! I loved the vibe of Seattle though. It was really fun to explore!

I have to admit that a honeymoon that relied on a lot of teamwork was a nice test for the beginning of our marriage.  We had to do a lot of communicating to figure out specific plans and figure out how to drive ourselves around unfamiliar cities (especially when we didn't have our phones in Canada!). Kyle has always given me a hard time about my lack of map reading abilities but I think I was doing pretty awesome by the end of the trip. I like to use the "follow your instinct" method. It's genetic. ( Wink, wink mom!)

I'm really excited to be home again and back into our normal routine. There haven't been any major adjustments in our daily life since getting married but there is something special about being an official family. I feel like this is the beginning of this next major part in our lives and I'm so excited to experience it with my best friend!

 

Been A Long Time...Shouldn't Have Left You

Without a dope beat to step to. Anyone?!?

Welcome back to me! Now that things have slowed down a bit around here, I thought I'd get back to this little love of mine. 

We did it folks. We are MARRIED.

 

Everyone talks about how fast it goes and they are so right. A lot of parts about that day/night are blurry. What's not blurry though is how appreciative we are of both of our families and amazing wedding party/best friends.

Thank you to our wonderful best friends for being the best people ever. We love you guys.

And we really could not have made it happen without the support of our fantastic families! I've heard horror stories about families not getting along, let alone working together seamlessly on the wedding! Kyle and I are incredibly lucky to come from such fantastic loving families. I'm so pumped to be a part of Kyle's and he feels the same way.

I don't feel like we even got to talk to everyone that we wanted to at the wedding, but please know that we are so grateful for your presence! I can't wait to get the photographers' pictures back. I know they will be incredible.

Now Kyle and I are excited to start our (much calmer) married life. Thanks to all of you we had a fantastic honeymoon. I'll be recapping the trip later this week!!! 

26 Days!

Pretty much the only thing on my mind right now is wedding, wedding, wedding. Hence the lack of blog posts. I don't want to wear you guys out before you even attend the main event!

If "wedding brain" is a thing, I definitely have it. Amazingly enough, I haven't grown tired of looking at wedding related things although I have grown tired of making decisions. Kyle has been super nice to me by taking me out on dates to my favorite places where I can eat things like this:

Our Friday night consisted of Company Cafe and a movie on the couch. Somehow, I escaped my teenage years without ever seeing Varsity Blues. Now I finally know what James VanDerbeek is talking about in that commercial.

I had to work on Saturday morning so Kyle took advantage of the free time to clean his car (he's obsessed. Love you!) and get in some disc golf. We then ventured out for lunch to this delicious place:

 

We don't go out to eat often so twice in one weekend is a treat! They recently started offering gluten free bread and you know I have to support that! I'm simultaneously grateful that being gluten-free is such a fad right now and incredibly annoyed that everyone thinks you are a super hipster if you are gluten free. Oh well. YOLO!

Just kidding. But for real, you only live once. Maybe. 

We used today to catch up on some chores and relax to the max. Apparently it was the start of some big American past time? I can't really remember. I've been trying to figure out who all these guys are on the television today. My favorite moment was definitely when Kyle paused the Atlanta game to say "Hey! That's the guy from the Bravo show!" Clearly we share TV time. ;)

I have to admit that "wedding brain" has me seriously uninformed about current events. All I want to look at and read about are incredibly girly and glamorous things. I'm heavily lusting over everyone's pictures from New York Fashion Week.  That's incredibly unlike me, so don't worry guys, Normal Allison will likely be back in about five weeks.

My shower and bachelorette party are coming up next weekend! I promise to share some of that delightful-ness with you all.

 

Kyle and I are so grateful for all of the help and support we have had for this wedding as well as for us as a couple. We are so excited to see our closest friends and family soon!

The wedding website has been updated a bit so feel free to head over and check it out. If you are coming from out of town, I really suggest you book your hotel room if you haven't already! It's quite a busy weekend with the State Fair and football games going on.

You be the peanut butter, I'll be the jelly.

Kyle and I have talked recently about the whole "getting cold feet" thing. It's safe to say that neither of us are worried about that at all. In fact, I'm a little more sure every day. 

 Today was the perfect example.

I've had a basket of clothes sitting on the floor for about 2 weeks. Somewhere around then I lost motivation to keep hanging up because my closet was a disaster zone. My wreck of a closet has been looming over me and I've been trying to psych up to clean it for the last week. I finally decided that this weekend it had to be done.

Once I started I realized that I was really going to have to clean out two closets, my main one in my bedroom and another one in the guest room that I have been storing random clothes and crap in. I got far enough in to make a huge mess before I got overwhelmed and really wanted to quit. Yes, quit...with a huge mess all over my bedroom. Because that's how I roll. I get an idea ----> I bite off more than I can chew ---->I get overwhelmed ----> I give up ----> I get upset because I can't do it / quit. 

Kyle saw this happening and immediately rescued me. He gave me a game plan. Here's how it went:

I focused on one small part at a time ( much more mentally hand-able for me). I worked my way through one closet and then the other just piling up the clothes that I need to get rid of. He put the clothes in bags/ baskets and made multiple trips while I worked to donate them. I then was able to move all of my winter clothes to the guest room closet and hang back up all of my work/summer clothes.  

I am not joking when I say that he probably took 10 bags of clothes (and a laundry basket of old shoes!) . I had a couple of bags of clothes still in a closet that I packed a year ago when I cleaned out once before. Oops. We then cleared out all of the wire/ broken hangers and took them to the dumpster. It took about two hours but now we both have clean closets and a clean bedroom.

And without Kyle, I'd probably be sitting on top of huge pile of clothes surrounded by tangled hangers and trash bags crying, trying to figure out how I'm going to get to my bed to sleep tonight. ( <-----hey mom, you were wondering where that girl you used to know went...There she is!)

 It seems like something minor but let me tell you, it matters. It matters to have someone who knows your face well enough to read your feelings right away and know exactly what to do.  His strengths mirror my weaknesses and for that I will forever be grateful.

 

Titles are the Worst Part!

Things have been super busy around here. Lots and lots of wedding stuff going on around here ya'll! I'm so sorry that almost all of my facebook posts and blog posts are wedding related lately. Really that's all I have time for these days. The wedding is going to be fabulous and amazing but I'm just ready to marry my very best friend and get the next stage of our life started!

More things have been finalized...Cake..suits..details. No more sneak peeks though. You'll just have to be surprised. :)

The last exciting thing around here is that Kyle bought a car! He had a wreck around 6 months or so ago and has been driving a manual we borrowed from his dad. We were very grateful to have something while he figured out what the next move was going to be.  The bonus was that he discovered that he liked driving a stick shift versus automatic. The downside is that now I can't drive the new car. Driving lessons here I come!

 

 I've been dying to blog lately but haven't had a lot of inspiration. With what little down time I have had lately, I've been finding myself seeking out creative avenues...Pinterest, fashion blogs, etc. Clearly, I'm still lacking in using that right side of my brain lately. You'd think I'd get my fill planning the wedding...but honestly I figured out the look/creative styling pieces a long time ago. It's the pull-everything-together stress time now.

We're still in super save-mode (what with the wedding, honeymoon and now a new car!) But I've been dying for fall when it feels appropriate to wear things like this:



 



 Find the theme? And I'm not usually an animal print girl!

 

Here's to August

I apologize for the lack of posts lately. It's been a busy summer and I have just been completely brain dead until the weekends, which I have used to soak up energy to make it through another week. I'm definitely a left-brainer (lists, logic, etc.) but I feel unbalanced if I go too long without appropriately using my creative side. I've been soaking up creative inspiration via Pinterest lately but I am sure glad to be back here!

All of the big parts of the wedding have been planned (excluding the cakes which will be done shortly!). Now we are down to the nitty-gritty and what is turning out to be the more stressful part. All of the hows and whys and whens. Whew. It wears me out just thinking about it.  As long as this handsome man is there, I'm good.

 

 I'm officially done working in Fort Worth and I could not be happier. Some of my students will be commuting to Dallas for the next few weeks before school starts back up but I will no longer have to make the miserable trek to and from Fort Worth. The morning drive was peaceful and I honestly enjoyed the quiet time.  However, if I wasn't tired at 5 o'clock every day, I was exhausted by 6-6:45 when I got home after sitting in traffic everyday.  Hooray to getting home in fifteen minutes and getting back to my normal routine!

I'm also in a particularly good mood because I turn 26 tomorrow! I really cannot believe that I am that old! I know everyone says that, no matter how old you are. My refrigerator and facebook newsfeed have let me know that I am officially in wedding and baby primetime (Mine included! My wedding. No babies yet. ) We did a little bit of birthday celebrating this weekend and it has been wonderful.

 I know that August is going to fly by and September is going to go even faster with pre-wedding festivities. I'm extremely happy and grateful to be where I am this birthday and look forward to many more!

 

Adulting

We've had a pretty relaxing weekend. Yesterday we ventured out to find Kyle a suit for the wedding. We decided that we would just buy his suit and figure out his whole outfit before matching the groomsmen. I know Kyle was a little anxious about it but I think overall it was a pretty easy experience. 

 He'll be wearing a dark grey suit....shirt and tie TBD :) They are doing just some minor alterations and then we will have the suit officially so we will finish off the outfit in the next two weekends! My table runners should be arriving pretty soon ( I ordered them from Etsy) A few more do-it-yourself projects and most of the wedding stuff will be done! Yesterday we also started our registry at Target. All of the scanners were being used but thanks to technology, I was able to use my cell phone. 10 points for 2013.

Everyone knows I LOVE to read. Work has been stressful and particularly exhausting lately ( same as every summer) so I've been reading A LOT. Here's a list of what I've been devouring lately. Nothing too deep obviously!

 I read "Adulting: How to become a grown-up in 468 easy steps" in about two days. I was pretty sure that I was an adult and the book did confirm this. :) I think that "becoming an adult" has been delayed a bit in my generation, as almost everyone I know moved back in with their parents, or were still relying on their parents somewhat right after college. Thanks economy. I'll be 26 in a month but I certainly don't feel like it. Reading through the book did make me feel pretty good about where I'm at though. Learn your way around the kitchen? Check. Decorate your house a little so you don't look like a college kid still? Check. Hold a job for at least a year? Check. It made me feel a little better that its not unusual for other twenty-somethings to still go to the grocery store in your pajamas, have to give themselves a "You're a freaking grown up" pep talk at work or to have trouble developing new friends. Whew...I'm still doing okay.

 Plus it's peppered with little jewels of totally relate-able bits of funny like this:

 

 

 Hope everyone is having a great Sunday! Feel free to leave some book suggestions if you have any.. I read EVERYTHING!