Wrap it up

I genuinely LOVE wrapping presents.  Using excessive amounts of tape (although I think I've really toned it down in recent years - people were actually able to open their gifts this year without using pocketknives or excessive amounts of force) and folding corners and making all the shiny things go together just gives me great joy.  Most of this wrapping has been destroyed by now, but fortunately I have just a little more wrapping to do tonight for friend festivities tomorrow night - yay!  Shiny shiny shiny...

Yes, I'm insane and ridiculous and who actually enjoys spending hours wrapping presents?  This girl!!

Wordless weekend

Makeover!

For the blog, not for me.  Although I probably could use a haircut...

A little more streamlined, a little more functional, always a work in progress, but I think it's pretty darn cute now.  Still have some tweaks to work on, but I just like looking at it. =)

Happy weekend, y'all!  We're about to embark on an epic weed/clean/landscape fabric/mulch adventure in the flower beds, and if you'll recall past experience, I foresee some physical pain in my future.  Manual labor, ick.  At least we're tackling it in March instead of May...

To Edisto we go!

To the beach we go!  First fascination of mine along the way - boat parking.  Boat after boat after boat, all stacked up.  And they take them down with forklifts.  That's just fascinating to the West Texas gal in me.

Second fascination - you really can find everything in Wal-Mart, provided you can actually find the Wal-Mart that's hiding behind all these trees.  We scored floppy hats and awesome floats and beach chairs and all the supplies we could need that we figured would have a pretty steep uptick in price at our few Edisto shopping options.  Score one for Wally World!

We wound our way along the edge of South Carolina, keeping our eyes peeled for creepy Spanish moss and really old churches and maybe even a roadside gator or two (didn't actually come across those, thank goodness) as we made our way to Edisto.  After a quick call to Craig to figure out where the beach house actually is (I had the wrong address written down, oopsie), we hauled in all of our goodies and immediately headed for the water, just to splash our toes and know that, yes, we are really at the beach.

Sandy feet are happy feet

Piggly Wiggly (I have an irrational love for this store - I don't know why.  I bought a Piggly Wiggly coffee mug) adventures to stock up on supplies, dinner at The Waterfront (pimento cheese every day!) and we were ready for an early night.  Hit it, ocean waves.

Giant big deal #1 - we totally went and bought a house

Can you believe it?!?  Normally I'm a huge overanalyzer and delayer of doing and major procrastinator...but we just DID this thing.  We'd spent a few weekends with our realtor checking out houses in various areas to get a really good idea of what we really wanted in a house and where we wanted to be geographically...and did you know there are about a million things to consider when you're buying a house?  Things like square footage (Craig won this battle - his belief is bigger is better) and number of bedrooms and school districts and size of backyard and age of home and how much do you really want to spend and dear HEAVENS the commute time and so on and so on and so forth.  And imagine two people who both like to have their way making this decision together.  We made it through this - good pre-marital test, methinks.

And while I wasn't 100% really ready and totally on board with buying a house RIGHT NOW - it just worked out.  We both fell in love with this place, and it has absolutely everything we want, and I want to live in this house for the next fifty years.  I love it.  And Craig loves it, too.  And when that actually happens, you dang well better just buy the place.  Especially when the sellers are more than happy to do a sale-leaseback so the buyers (ummm...us) aren't stuck with rent+mortgage for a few months.  It just all came together.

So I crunched spreadsheet numbers and panicked while Craig told me it would all be ok...and it was.  I'm such a worrier.

Yay for our own little slice of Carrollton!!

That day we celebrated with lunch at Abuelo's (extremely close to our new home AND site of many fond A-town memories AND delicious Mexican food!!), and then we also had giant steaks and a bottle of bubbly for dinner.  Because food is really the best way to celebrate, you know.  A little anticlimactic since we don't actually live in the house (and won't be there until December/January, btw), but still really, really exciting.  And really, really real when we make that first mortgage payment here in about ten days.  Yowza.

I grabbed the pictures from the realtor website and tossed them into a Picasa album if you'd like a better look.  It's all perfect and wonderful in those pictures (except for the color of the dining room - I'm dying to paint, and other than that it's pefect...and maybe some more painting, because I'm demented and actually really love to paint walls), so it might look a little more sad when we move in and have less furniture (fact of new home ownership, right??  there is a dining set in our near future...), but it will be our home.  For a very long while.  And I'm so, so happy about that.

Oh?  What was that you said?  We're totally insane for adding "home purchase" to the list of life events occuring over the last month or so, especially with the wedding coming up?  I totally agree.  Hoping my stress levels at least burned some calories.

Back to the mountains, please?

I'd like to go back to the mountains for a plethora of reasons.  Very near the top of the list is absolute relaxation, which is due in large part to Day 3.  For Day 3, we spent an obscene amount of time basically living at the Allegria Spa at the Park Hyatt.  Massages, spa lunch, poolside time, excessive amounts of reading and relaxing in these amazing heated stone chairs...pure and utter bliss.  Now THAT is vacation.  No pictures necessary.  Not even small children poolside with plans to flood every possible dry surface could dampen our relaxed spirits.

After becoming semi-human again (since our spa experience transformed us into blobs of happiness and not much more), we had high, high hopes about an evening at the Ritz in nearby Bachelors Gulch.  Just look at these smiling faces ready to go.

Maybe we were setting our expectations a little too high.  But the Ritz...the Ritz was a bust.

Fail #1 - lack of options for drinking and/or dining.  As in...apparently the Ritz is the place to be in the winter only.  So many things were just closed!  How sad.

Fail #2 - table stealers in the form of sweaty mountain bikers.  Noodle-heads.
Fail #3 - incompetence and basic lack of caring from wait staff.  And bar staff, for that matter.  Even if you don't know how to make a champagne cocktail, you pull out the interwebs and just look it up.  So much for customer service.  Not that we don't love just plain ol' champagne...

...but come on, even the Blackberry browser with spotty mountain reception can get you to a champagne cocktail.

So we gave up on the Ritz and headed back through the Beaver Creek gates for dinner at Rocks Modern Grill.  And it was pretty tasty, and they took good care of us, and they sold us another bottle of wine to take home when we realized we all just needed one more glass and everything was closed.  Thanks, Rocks.  Rocks 1, Ritz 0.  Day 3 in the books.

Day 4 dawned...well, it didn't really dawn because it was pretty rainy and kinda gross.  We kept our hopes up, though, and drove over to Vail to check out some different hiking trails.  It took a bit of doing to actually find the trail we were going for, but our brave mountain driver got us there safe and sound!  However, when we got there...

...we encountered this kind man, a real hiker, with poles and shoes and double layers of clothes and the whole shebang...and he basically told us we would die if we tried to tackle the slippery trail.

So...we turned around and went back home.  But at least we got to see Vail.  And we proceeded to take our hiking picnic and turn it into a living room picnic, which isn't entirely a bad thing.  It also gave us the chance to do some fireplace testing to make sure our s'mores plan for that night was a go (and by "fireplace testing" I mean "stuck our heads into the fireplace to make sure the flue was actually, truly, 100% open"), and I brought in wood, which made me feel like a good provider...or something.  Really don't be impressed, though - the wood was pre-chopped and sitting on the deck approximately ten feet from the fireplace.  Still, it had to be done.

Then to work off our picnic, we made the uphill trek back into town, stopping along the way to make some more new friends.  With inanimate objects.  But friends all the same.

We chilled around the fire pit for a bit...

...and then some ominous clouds starting rolling in pretty quickly, so we decided it might be in our best interest to hurry home and have a roof over our heads.

Ahhhh, more relaxation at our home away from home.  Thank you, mountains.  At least until the bat showed up.  Next installment.

Escape from The Oven

A little over a month ago...I escaped.  From The Oven.  To The Mountains.  And it was everything I thought it would be.  Except for the bat that swooped into our lives, which I was not expecting at all.  Don't worry, I'll tell you allllll about that particular adventure.  Just not yet.  First let's start with beer.

For our annual girl trip, this year Kami and Carolyn and I opted for something a little close by, a lot relaxed, and INFINITELY cooler than The Oven (also infinitely cooler than last year's trip, thank goodness) - to Colorado we go!  Specifically to Beaver Creek, where you're not exactly roughing it.  I mean that quite literally, since that's the slogan for their ad campaign.  We really did leave everyday life behind when we went through that magical gate.  But before we got there, we spent a little time at Wynkoop Brewing Company in Denver (source of the beer sampler above - I really loved the chile beer...imagine that!) and made the drive through some rather cool and picturesque scenery to get to our mountain escape.

I see mountains!!

Really, REALLY glad we never needed to make use of the runaway truck ramps - YIPES.

Since we were in the land of microbreweries (and since we had a late check-in at our condo - might as well kill some time with another stop for alcohol, right?), we stopped along the way in the cuteness that is Breckenridge and checked out the offerings at Breckenridge Brewery.

Just look at all of those adorable tiny beers!  I was actually very pleasantly surprised by the vanilla porter - dessert beer, yum.

After navigating the mountain passes and picking up provisions, we checked into our ENORMOUS (yay for summer rates!) condo at Ridgepoint and got settled.  Which for us means...

...wine and cheese hour in the living room.  There's really no better way to start the night.  We barely managed to rouse ourselves from the really comfortable couches, but we pulled it together for a late dinner at Vin 48 (it was outside the prestigious gates of Beaver Creek!!  but the food was really delicious) - boots and all.  We embraced the slight chill in the air and went all out with sleeves and cardigans and boots.  Coming from The Oven, it was a truly wonderful sartorial experience.  Day 1 in the books.  And yes, I realize that in the five pictures above, two feature landscapes and three feature alcohol.  We have our priorities right.  Pictures of actual people to come, promise.

The next morning we made the hike into Beaver Creek proper/the village/land of really expensive stores and hotels and restaurants and promptly made a new friend while grabbing lunch.  Meet Lexi.  Carolyn almost stole her.

After carbing up, we decided to tackle some hiking - after consulting a very large, very informative map, of course.

 

And into the woods we go!!

Byeeeeeee

Some notes on hiking:

• if you're on a paved path...or a freakin' ROAD...it's not hiking
• if you encounter your dream home along the way, possibly inhabited by a delightful young man named Hans...it's not hiking

• aspen trees are really lovely - you might even refer to them as nature's Q-tips (so skinny and so fluffy at the top!)
• if there are signs telling you how to avoid bears - then it's probably really hiking, at which point my ability to actually hike will fade considerably

We made it back safely, no bear attacks, and made our way back home...DOWNHILL!!...with short stops along the way to investigate the most enormous dandelions ever and some really beautiful views.

Chill afternoon at home, and then we again donned boots, cardigans, and sleeves (yay!!) for a drink on the gorgeous patio at the Park Hyatt and fancy dinner at Grouse Mountain Grill.  Great night.  Day 2 in the books.

Don't worry, that bat story is still coming.  I'm saving it for you.  You can check out the full photo spread here, though, and just know that the bat lurks within.

Showering, no shampoo needed

Last weekend...ok, wait, make that weekend BEFORE last since time is completely disappearing and sneaking away from me...I got to spend the afternoon surrounded by dear family and friends at this only-comes-around-once kinda thing known as a bridal shower.  And it was absolutely fantastic.  Craig's mom flew in, the amazing Dana made the journey from Virginia, my MOHSOB (maid of honor sister of the bride, duh!) trekked halfway across the country, Mom & Dad (although no boys allowed at the shower!) drove down along with a wonderful aunt and cousins...and then there's all the people here in the oven who made it a point to be there, too! 

To celebrate me.  Well, and this Craig guy.  It was pretty awesome.  Mexican food, margaritas, Bob Armstrong, and absolutely no games.  I'm not really a games kinda girl, especially when it comes to...myself.  But I do love board games.  Excessively, actually.

It goes against every ounce of my being to NOT take pictures at an event, but my goal here was to actually be present and enjoy the time with my family and friends. Which meant no picture-taking allowed - just soaking up the moments and memories.  Therefore, all of these pictures are courtesy of the amazing Sarah and her fantastic fixed lens that I just might go out and buy for myself.  And she's a pro at uploading and Picasa sharing in a timely manner.  Just one of the many, many reasons I love her dearly.

That being said, here's the one picture I'm contributing to this event, which was taken on my phone mere moments ago with a nifty little diddy known as Vignette, which I've completely fallen in love with.

Love love LOVE these invitations so much!!  Carolyn, you do good work.

And now...thank you, Sarah, photographer extraordinaire!

That sweet, crafty Sarah went and made me the cutest apron...with a "P" in the corner!  I think I wore it for half the shower.

Wonderful Sarah friend person crafter photographer amazing.  Just summing her up.

Diana was an absolute pro with the cake balls.  For bringing them AND for serving them so beautifully.  What a fantastic friend!



Ok, yes, I was enjoying my margaritas.  Amanda looks perhaps a touch concerned.

Quite a pile to work my way through!



My beautiful, amazing, wonderful beyond words bridesmaids (MOH and sistah friend is sitting next to me stage right, of course).  Love these girls more than you can ever know.

A giant thank you to everyone who could be there!  I had such a fantastic time celebrating with all of you!

Two sweet little peas in a pod

A couple of weekends ago I journeyed (yes, a journey - we had to stop for provisions and everything!  Ok, maybe just carbonated beverages, but that definitely counts as provisions in my book...) to Ft. Worth with car buddies Kami and Sarah to celebrate our dear friend Amy, who's due with TWINS in September.  Double baby blessings!!  Also, double poopy diapers, but let's not get too caught up in that right now.  Stay tuned for total baby shower cuteness.

Adorable peas in a pod cookies!!

And there they are in all of their sonogram glory!  Can't wait to meet you, babies!

Jenny brought sweet baby Taylor!  She stole the show for a bit...

...much like this.  Floor gymnastics and model poses.  She's too much.

Sarah always makes the CUTEST baby things, and this was no exception!  I think Amy kinda loves it. =)

Teensy and adorable bundt cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes, which were AMAZING.  Plus you get to try more than one flavor if you split with a friend...

The cutest idea!!  We all wrote messages and notes on teensy diapers, and now when Amy and Brandon change them in a few months, they'll (hopefully) get to smile a little bit when dealing with the poo.

It was such a cute shower, and we had a great time celebrating the growing Davis family!  Photo spread here, which disproportionately consists of many pictures of the adorable Taylor - she can't help her photogenic cuteness.

Capturing moments

We had engagement pictures taken a couple of weeks ago by our FANTASTIC all-things-wedding-related photographers, Sara & Rocky, and I'm so excited to share some of the shots with you guys.  I 1000x love our photographers, and I can't wait to see what they capture on our wedding day (142 days to go!).  If you want to see many, many, MANY more pictures, just let me know and I'll send you the password to our share site.

Deep Ellum first, White Rock Lake second.  We had a fantastic time, even if it was a touch on the hot side.  I love that we'll have these moments captured forever.  And yes, photo overload to follow shortly after these words.