Currently

Well it's been almost three weeks since my last post. Whether I made it clear or not, I kind of made a deal with myself to take a break from blogging until life settled down for me. The last couple weeks we have been cleaning, packing, living in a hotel, unpacking our new place, and traveling a lot. It's nothing at all that I can complain about, because I am so fortunate, but it has definitely been exhausting. We literally finished unpacking the last box at our new home in Denver about 20 minutes before a taxi picked us up and whisked us off to the airport. Right now we are in Pittsburgh while Kerstan attends a conference, and tomorrow we are flying back to Texas to attend my brother-in-law's wedding and pick up Hans and our second car to drive back to Colorado. We get back and will have half a day before Kerstan and I both start our new jobs. 

I hit a weird rut when I hadn't met some of my blogging goals after the first year, and when you add that to the craziness that has been my life the last couple weeks (mixed with not having the internet hooked up yet), I just gave up on blogging for a little while. Luckily our new home is already inspiring me, and I can't wait to see how all the natural light it has helps my photos.

Today I am taking a little break from my blogging hiatus (can you take a break from a break? haha) because I was inspired by my sweet friend and one of my favorite bloggers, Kaelah. Here is what I am up to currently (besides avoiding the suffocating humidity that is taking over downtown Pittsburgh). 

Reading: With how hectic things have been, reading has been a really nice escape for me. Though I haven't had as much time to read as usual, I have been enjoying (and crying through) A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah. It's not one of my typical genres, but I have been really enjoying it. Ishmael writes about his experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone and how he recovered and regained his humanity after escaping the war. Knowing that it's a true story makes it even more chilling and often difficult to read.

Wondering: About our new life in Colorado. Everything is changing for us, in terms of our location, our jobs, and even all our furniture (so exciting!). Since I got only a small taste of life there before I had to leave, I have been daydreaming of being back within viewing distance of the beautiful Rockies constantly.

Feeling thankful for: At the risk of sounding cheesy, everything. Life is giving me everything I want and more recently, and I am constantly thankful. My wonderful husband has worked so hard and refused to settle for anything less than what we wanted, and that landed us in the beautiful city of our dreams with a great job. I am so fortunate to have found a job doing exactly what I want to be doing, and our new home is all that we wanted and more. And to top it all off, I have the love and support of both of our families. I pinch myself constantly.

Eating: Unfortunately, I haven't had a meal at home in two weeks now! This is so, so rare for us. We typically cook at home just about every night. We love eating on the patio together, and I love to cook. Since the movers took our stuff away, we have had to eat out for pretty much every meal. 10 days later we got our stuff back and unpacked, but we had to leave right away. I am so looking forward to getting home and cooking again. 

Watching: Whatever is on hotel tv. We've been lucky to stay in pretty nice places, so I've gotten to check out some HBO and lots of HGTV. We don't have cable at home, and our internet hasn't been hooked up to watch Netflix/Hulu yet, so watching House Hunters and Love it or List it in the hotel rooms has been kind of a treat. I caught Full House a few times on our hotel in Denver, and yesterday I got to see half of the first Harry Potter movie, which was very exciting.

Working on: Keeping my anxiety at bay. As someone who feels very stressed at all times, having a situation that is actually stressful (such as moving) is really hard for me. I don't like giving up control of anything, and watching other people handle my stuff and having to work on their schedule has been a challenge. I've been taking a lot of deep breaths and constantly counting my blessings to remind myself that everything is really great and I have nothing to worry about. It's much easier said than done. 

Loving: A new beginning. Starting fresh in a city where we know no one can be pretty frightening and stressful, but I am really excited about learning all about our new home. My favorite thing so far is getting to turn off the a/c and sleep with the windows open - the mild Colorado weather is amazing.

Hoping: To meet some friends in Denver. If you live there, let's get coffee!

Life Lately

It's been over two weeks since my last post....when I started this blog last year, I intended on posting every couple of days at least. I didn't quite realize how difficult maintaining a blog can be. I have read other blogger's posts about the struggles of blogging and the pressure to keep content interesting and frequent, but it wasn't until I started a blog myself that I understood. Even with my very small group of followers, I feel guilty when I don't post anything, but if I post something when I'm not ready, I feel like I am forcing it. In addition to my lack of content lately, I have been putting off putting time into this little site, because I am working on a total design re-vamp that I am hoping will re-motivate me to dedicate energy to blogging. I just haven't had the time to put it all up yet. The result of this has been a lack of posts.

 I have so, so, so many projects coming up that I can't wait to share, but right now I am in a weird in-between stage. Once we get moved into our new place, I know we are going to have lots of exciting things to post about. But right now life consists of a lot of cleaning out of closets and trips to Goodwill.

Speaking of the big move - the movers come in 13 days! I cannot believe it. We learned about Kerstan's job in Denver almost NINE months ago, after his internship. I don't know where the time went. He finished his thesis today, and he starts his new job in Denver in just a few weeks. I, of course, have made the entire situation far more stressful than it needs to be by putting all this pressure on myself. I have been frantically cleaning out every inch of our condo in preparation for our move. I am so excited about our new loft, and my desire for everything about it to be perfect has caused me lots and lots of totally unnecessary anxiety. But it will all be worth it once we get settled. We had the chance to see our place the weekend before last when we went up to visit and finalize all our plans. It exceeded my expectations, and I am even more anxious to get moved in now than I was before. We have two short weeks to say goodbye to all of our friends and the wonderful city of Austin before we beginning our new adventure. Oh! And also I got a job doing something I am so excited about. I can't wait to share all the details soon!

So aside from crazy moving preparations, life has been really great lately. Since I have been so quiet around here the last couple weeks, I'll try to sum it up with a group of photos from my phone.

The wildflowers are blooming here in central Texas, and they are BEAUTIFUL!

Hans and I enjoying gorgeous spring weather and some dinner outside

Hans taking advantage of a lazy morning

The new coffee table Kerstan built for our new loft. We found this really neat wood at a local antique shop, and my talented husband turned it in to a really unique piece for our new place.

Oh look, another picture of my dog.

Last weekend we went to San Antonio to celebrate the upcoming wedding of my brother-in-law. We got to enjoy a relaxing afternoon along the river walk downtown, and the weather was absolutely perfect.

I had the best Mexican food of my life, along with the "best margarita in Texas." It was delicious.

I've seen the Alamo a few times, and I am always a little disappointed at how small it is, but it's neat to see nonetheless.

So excited to call this beautiful city home!

I am so excited about living in Denver, but I was not so thrilled about 10 inches of snow in April during our recent visit.

My handsome husband on a lunch date in Colorado.

Life has been good to me. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks and all the new things that are in store for us!

Things I Love Thursday 4/11/13

It's been a hectic week in our house. With lots of extra hours at work for both of us and a final visit to Denver coming up this weekend (yay!), we haven't been up for much other than sleeping. We are trying to squeeze in final visits to all of our favorite Austin spots before we move, and I am trying not to be sad about it, but I am. Luckily we still have a month to enjoy it. Here are some other things I have been enjoying this week.

This baby armadillo!!

Zip lining in the Swiss Alps? Yes please.

Brainstorming ideas for my first tattoo, and I love this style!

Love this idea for a backyard - distance to places you've been!

This is hilarious, but seriously why don't we?

Ellen and Ryan Gosling in onesie pajamas. Just for you.

Perfect advice.

I want to make a print of this for my kitchen.

Ahhhh!!!!!! The cutest!

This little guy dressed as a perfect ewok! I cannot!!

I.AM.SO.EXCITED. Arrested Development has new episodes, with the entire cast, coming to Netflix next month!!

I don't know where this is, but I need to go like, now.

I hope you are having a perfect Thursday!What are you loving this week?

Anniversary Road Trip Part 3: Las Vegas and The Grand Canyon

The last few days of our anniversary road trip were well spent. When we left Yosemite we headed south to the Grand Canyon. We had to stop somewhere for the night, and at the last minute we decided to swing through Las Vegas because neither of us had ever been.

 I guess I'm glad I've seen it, but we were not very impressed by the whole Vegas thing. Everything was so fake and sleazy, and I just wanted to take a shower and go to bed the whole time. It was disheartening to see so many people vacationing in this (in my opinion) wasteful and dirty town, when there are so many beautiful things to see in that part of the country. But I tried hard to seize the moment - I even put on some platform shoes that were in the trunk - but the whole experience was really anti-climatic and left me feeling really depressed. I guess there is something about people throwing their money away and objectifying women that makes me uncomfortable. Go figure. But we made the best of it. We did some people watching on the strip, watched a couple free street shows, and ate a slice of pizza. Then we hit the hay early to get a head start on the Grand Canyon the next day.

After a very short pit stop at the Hoover Dam, we made it to the Grand Canyon. I'm not going to take back what I said about Yosemite being my favorite part of the trip, but this was a close second. Seeing it was kind of a weird experience, because it is referred to and described so often. But after the long drive there, looking over the edge for the first time was exhilarating. 

There are lots of hiking opportunities at the canyon, but honestly at this point in our trip we were so totally exhausted that I'm embarrassed to say we didn't really make the most of them. We had about a day and a half there, and we spent most of our time on short trails and driving around to different trail heads and viewing points. It was all breathtaking, and I wish I was able to take a picture that does it justice. I don't think one exists.

One of the most exciting parts of our time at the Grand Canyon (besides the beauty) was that my friend had left us a treasure hunt! He was there the week before us, and he arranged for a homemade word puzzle to be placed in our room. We had to find different clues that he had hidden around the canyon to solve the puzzle. He also convinced our hotel to upgrade us to this gigantic suite for our anniversary, and he sent us out to a fancy dinner overlooking the canyon at sunset. I'm a lucky girl.

After leaving the canyon, we stopped at the Petrified National Forest, spent the night in Albuquerque, and finally made it home. The exhaustion was worth it, because I think it was the best trip we have been on so far!

Have you ever been on a long road trip?

Road Trip Video + Things I Love Thursday

Earlier this week I made a little video of our anniversary road trip a couple weeks ago. I've been wanting to share it, and since it is one of my favorite things from this week, I figured this would be a perfect time! There's lots of embarrassing footage of me dancing and acting like a fool, but I guess those are the crazy things love makes you do. It was the first movie I have made in iMovie, so let me know what you think!

(video song credit: Two of Us by The Beatles)

And here are my other favorite things from the week! Lack of content today, I know, but I'm still recovering from vacation (at least that's what I'm going with).

Buster is my favorite. 

This pretty design and simple message. 

Jimmy Fallon is fantastic.

I am in love with this caterpillar vase from Nordstrom. 

This geometric garland is dreamy!

This poem is beautiful.

What are you loving this week? I am clearly missing out on all the internet gems lately, so link me up to your favorite things!

Anniversary Road Trip Pt. 2, Or, A Travel Guide to Yosemite National Park

For the second part of our anniversary road trip (part one can be seen here), we headed up through California and spent a few days at Yosemite National Park. This was absolutely the best part of trip. It was the perfect combination of adventure and relaxation, and it was the most beautiful place I have ever seen.

We stayed at Yosemite View Lodge, after purchasing a voucher through Living Social. We got there late at night, after driving 5+ hours from Los Angeles, and we were really too tired to take notice of the hotel until the morning. We were bummed that our promised "mountain view" was interrupted by the parking lot and another building, so Kerstan asked if we could move to a suite with a mountain/river view, and they said yes! There are so many perks to traveling in the "off-season" when no one else is around.

We spent the entire next day in the park. You have to drive for a while before the well-known spots start popping up, but once the trees cleared and we entered the valley, we were completely awe-struck. I've never used the word breathtaking in a literal sense until I described what it was like to stand in the Yosemite Valley. I can't even find words - you just have to go there yourself! Until then, I tried my best to capture some of the beauty with my camera (but in no way do they do the park justice). 

We went on several hikes throughout the day, to get up close and personal with the famous spots (Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, and our favorite, El Capitan). I'm not sure why spring is still considered to be "off-season" in the park, because everything was beautiful. The weather was absolutely perfect, and the waterfalls were flowing. There were a few trails and drives that were blocked off because of winter weather, but in the valley where we stayed, the weather was ideal. There were not a ton of people there, so we kind of felt like we had Yosemite to ourselves, which was amazing.

El Capitan//View of the Valley from above//Yosemite Falls//Our hotel balcony

I am so thankful we decided to put Yosemite into our road trip, even though it was the furthest place we visited. If you're considering any national parks for your vacation, I highly recommend this one. There are places to camp in the park, and a 7-day pass is only $25. Everything is inexpensive, and there is so much to see. 

Have you ever been to Yosemite? What are your favorite national parks (we are planning on another national park road trip soon)?