Weekend activities

This weekend was another fun one at home! We kicked it off by having friends over Friday night, which included a homemade dinner, walking outside in the beautiful weather, and late night hot-tubbing. Saturday morning hubby and I headed over to the Raleigh Farmers Market for some breakfast and just to walk around. We left with basil and cilantro plants, a couple tomatoes, a spring bouquet, and a bucket of perfect strawberries, which led to lots of strawberry-induced baking. Sunday included pool time and delving further into book two of the Hunger Games, as well as an evening of worship at church for the release of our worship team's new CD, "Jesus in My Place." I bought the CD and it is SO, so good. I feel like I truly got some R&R this weekend and it feels so amazing! I am now (hopefully) ready to take on another week. :)

Friday's here!

Friday, I've been waiting for you all week. I'm so glad you're finally here!

This week has had its share of ups and downs. As far as the downs go, I've been PMSing like whoa (TMI? sorry guys) and the hubs has been having to deal with it (thanks sweetie!). He really is a keeper. But anywho... let's move on to the ups :)

1. Last Friday was date night. Like fancy date night. I wore a sexy black dress and high heels, curled my hair, and we were treated like royalty at the Angus Barn. It was so wonderful!

We got the Chateaubriand (the absolute best steak there is) and indulged on their famous Chocolate Chess Pie for dessert, warmed with vanilla ice cream of course. We took a tour of the wine cellar also, which is pretty famous and has won lots of awards. I feel like we are officially Raleigh-Durham locals now that we've finally been to Angus Barn!

2. Saturday we picked up some strawberries from the local strawberry patch. We were in a hurry so we just grabbed a few cartons instead of picking them ourselves, but boy were they good! They were totally already gone by Sunday.

3. While grocery shopping at Target, I had a buy-one-get-one-50%-off coupon for accessories, so I wandered over to the purses and jewelry. I just happened to stumble upon the most perfect spring/summer purse! I love the bright punch of red, and the colorful stripes inside just make me so happy! And it was on sale for $21! I picked up a pair of sunglasses for half off and called it a day. A happy day for sure.

4. I created a weekly prayer schedule. I feel like whenever I seriously want to pray, I get super overwhelmed about all the things there are to pray for, and then I just get stressed because I feel like there will never be enough time to pray about them all. So each day of the week has a designated thing or person to pray for, things like: family, my husband, our future kids, the world, my walk with God and my struggles, our church and small group, our friends. This will take a while to get good at - my goal is to pray throughout the day but so far I'm having a hard time remembering because I'm so absorbed in my own activities, so I guess there will be prayer for that as well! Thinking about the fact that I am able to have an intimate conversation with the God of this universe really puts it into perspective and reminds me not to take that for granted. This is going to be a great thing :)

5. As I said before, my husband is more patient with me than I deserve. I'm so lucky to have him as my partner in life! I had no idea when I walked down the aisle that marriage would be this hard... but I also had no idea how amazing and beautiful it would be too. The good by far outweighs the bad and I love Michael so much more now than I did on our wedding day! So, so thankful for him.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! :)

Linking up with Lauren From My Grey Desk

for High Five for Friday

One month until bliss!

Lately I've been starting to think about all I need to do for an exciting trip we're taking in May. This will be our first true vacation together since our honeymoon almost two years ago (besides family trips), and I really can't wait! I think I'll hold off telling you where we're going until we get back (where of course I'll show pictures!). But I'll give you a hint - it's tropical :)

I picked up this bag at TJMaxx a couple weeks ago (for $12.99, woot woot!) and I wasn't totally sure about it at first but now I'm loving it. It will be perfect for toting around a towel, book, water bottle, etc. while we're vacationing in __________. Don't you love it??

I have running list of things we need to do to prepare:

update passport with my married name
stock up on supplies: sunscreen, toiletries, etc.
purchase a new swimsuit for myself and the hubs
maybe get a couple more fun summer dresses
decide on how much spending money we'll be bringing
book a hotel room for our 1-night layover
work on my base tan so I don't get completely fried
tone my legs and stomach by working out and eating healthy for the next month so I can look good in that swimsuit :)

I'm mainly just excited about getting there, so this list is basically just a way to trick myself into thinking that our time of departure is approaching faster! I'm also realizing that not having pets or children makes it so much easier to just pick up and go - I really need to savor this season of life!

What do you do to prepare for a vacation? Are you going anywhere fun this summer?

Growing up

I am not a morning person. I really really really wish I was, but I'm just not.

I've known this about myself for a long time, however it's taken me a good while into my adult life to figure out how much sleep I really need. The past few weeks I've been consistently getting about 6-7 hours of sleep a night, and while I can manage on that amount, let's just say I'm not in "tip-top shape" between the time I wake up and about, oh... 10:30 am. That's a good long time spent simply waking up. I think I'm figuring out that I'm more of an 8-hour person. So I'm starting to learn. That maybe it's worth it to turn off the TV at 10 so I can wind down and get ready for bed and actually be asleep by 10:30 or 11. Maybe it's worth it to make the best use of my time so I don't feel gypped at the end of the evening when all I got done was eating dinner, watching a show, and checking FacebookTwitterInstagramBlogs, aka all that is social media (seriously, how pathetic am I??). Maybe it's worth it to really push it in that after-work run so I feel that good kind of tired at the end of the day, so I sleep harder, so I feel more rested in the morning.

Yes, my friends, these things I'm still learning. I guess the summary of this post is that I'm still learning how to be a grown-up.

And honestly, I think I will still be learning this when I'm 45.

And when I'm 60.

And probably by 75 I'll have given up and just decided to act like a kid again.

For now, I'll be relying on this to wake me up this morning.

Does anybody else feel the same way?

Local blogger meet up

For the first time, I met up with some local bloggers this past Sunday via an invite from Kate from The Small Things Blog (you may recognize the back of her head from all her hair tutorials on Pinterest!).

Lauren, Kate, and Carrie

We met at a local waffle cafe called Benelux (delish!) and about 30 of us showed up! I'll admit I was a little intimidated. I mean that's a lot of girls to try to get to know in an hour and a half! It was really neat to meet some other bloggers in the area and get connected, even if I was only able to talk to just a few. Look at all these great girls!

via Carrie at Chasing Big Dreams



Thank you Kate, Lauren, and Carrie for organizing this get together! Looking forward to getting to know some of you ladies more through your blogs!

Lately

So lately I've been weaning myself off the internet a little bit. I love to blog, but sometimes it's nice to just sit back and enjoy life and not feel like I have to turn it into a blogpost. Don't worry - I've kept up with all of your blogs! I couldn't give that up. But I've just recently been having the desire to simply spend time with people instead of spending those couple hours conjuring up a new post for the next day. And it's been so nice.

Some things I've been up to lately?

freshening up my home for spring

family time over Easter weekend

exercising outside

rooftop restaurants & home cooked meals with friends

casual date nights with the hubs, involving Mexican food and How I Met Your Mother

filing our taxes

(not fun, but it had to be done. actually this was mostly Michael,

but I did add in all FIVE of my forms from the various jobs I had in 2011!)

using a Groupon to get my nails did.

I tried the gel polish for the first time - it's been 3 days and has yet to chip!

pretty awesome

What have you been up to lately?

Laundry + Laziness

pinned here

So I have to admit, I'm a bit lazy during the work week. The laundry piles up, the floor does not get vacuumed, and I'm doing well if I make it to the grocery store once. I have family coming in town for Easter, but for my day off on Good Friday I want to do something more fun than just playing catch-up on cleaning the apartment. So tonight I forced myself to fold the two loads of laundry that have been sitting in the baskets since the weekend. And, newsflash: it actually wasn't that bad! It only took me one episode of How I Met Your Mother (this is a great way to measure time I might add), and I got to laugh hysterically while doing so. Why do I allow myself to live with a mess for so long even though it doesn't take very long to clean it up?? I always picture it taking way longer than it actually does. I need to remind myself later that folding two loads of laundry only took me 30 minutes! [I think that if I had a laundry room like the one pictured above I would definitely be more inclined to spend time in there. Yes, of course that's my issue.]

I feel so much better getting all of that put away. If I wrap up my cleaning tomorrow night, I'll be able to sleep in on Friday and do some fun things instead of chores!

What sort of household chores do you put off just because you don't like doing them?

And do you have a pretty laundry room like the ones all over Pinterest?

If so, I want to see it!

Roasted Corn on the Cob

This weekend I had a wonderful date with my friend Jenn. We went to California Pizza Kitchen for lunch and then walked around the outdoor mall and browsed some of my favorite stores: Pottery Barn, Anthropologie, Crate & Barrel. As soon as we walked into Crate & Barrel we got so excited about all of their bright summery colors! I walked out with just a couple of items, but I'm very excited about them:

Just the other day I realized I didn't have any corn picks, and therefore I hadn't made much corn on the cob. When I saw these I knew it was a sign I had to have them! While I was checking out, the lady at the register told me about some amazing seasoning to go on corn. Apparently everyone has been raving about how good it is. So of course I had to get that too :)

I wish we had a grill, but since we don't I tried out roasting the cobs in the oven. I preheated the oven to 350, and then shucked the corn. (For some reason I always feel like a prairie girl when I do this. Is that weird?) I placed the cobs on some foil and sprinkled seasoning along with a just little olive oil drizzled over top.

I wrapped them up tightly, placed them directly on the oven rack, and roasted them for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

The result was pure, steaming deliciousness.

The seasoning was amazing and it had so much flavor I didn't feel the need to slather butter all over it. Served with some leftover cheeseburger pie, we had ourselves a wonderful and easy Sunday night dinner!

I'm so excited to have corn on the cob all summer! And hopefully when we move we will be able to grill it :)