365 days later...

The weekend of our anniversary, Kevin and I went to Napa to celebrate our first year of marriage.

He surprised me with a hot air balloon ride - which was completely awesome! If you ever have the chance to do that, I highly recommend it. Apparently, there's a lot that has to do with weather and temperature so they're not available everywhere, but it's definitely something you should add to you bucket list.

I'm just going to let these pictures speak for themselves because they are just too amazing not to share.

Us! :)

Can I get an "Amen" for the beauty God created!? It was breathtaking.

For my gift to Kevin, I got him a private golf lesson on Sunday. He was a fan. :)

In between all that we did a lot of eating, napping and a little wine tasting.

It was great to get away for a weekend and spend some time together. On one hand it feels like we've been married for more than a year, and on the other hand it feels like our wedding day was just yesterday! It's been a year full of tears, stress, changes, laughter, surprises and love and I wouldn't want to spend all that with anyone other than my Kevo.

Flashback Friday - Wedding Edition

I haven't done one of these in a while, so I looked back to around this date last year and apparently we were one week from getting married!

Here's the post I did for that Friday.

It's funny how as your life goes by and you evolve, what you think was important then may not seem like it is so much now. For example, all that worrying I was doing in the week leading up to our wedding was not worth it. Everything turned out fine and our day was perfect.

I should give myself the same advice now for our home buying process. Ha!

I hope you all have a great weekend and you're able to soak up this last weekend of July. Time goes by way too fast!

Hugs,

M.I.A.

I'm still here!

We've starting our house hunting process and it is such a time-suck!

Who knew that house hunting would be so time-consuming and STRESSFUL!

I'll tell you what. Finding a house, making offers, waiting for offers to be accepted are not good on my anxious self. Ha!

So, I haven't had the time to focus on blogging; but I wanted to document the process somewhat.

There's so much you have to take into consideration when buying a home: location, distance from workplaces, neighborhood (which is high on our list), absolute must-haves, absolutely nots, and the list goes on and on.

And even though this is a "Buyers' Market" it's a tough "Buyers' Market." You have to just get in quickly and hope your offer is picked.

*sigh*

Like I said...stressful.

However, I'm very thankful we can afford to buy a home and I know that eventually we'll find one that we both love and that will be perfect for a future family of ours.

Thanks for listening to me vent.

Xoxo,

Five on Friday

#1. My hair is really long right now. I'm thinking the longest it's ever been. I'd like to grow it out even longer so I can do all those amazing hair tutorials I find on Pinterest (so I keep telling myself). I sometimes get an urge to chop it all off, though. That urge is right now seeing as it's been over 100 degrees this week and blow drying it is torture.

#2. Kevo's birthday is on Tuesday so I have a full day planned of fun stuff tomorrow. It's all a surprise so I can't share, but it should be a nice day.

#3. I love my job. I hardly ever do the same thing each day, it's fast-paced and the people here are generally really nice and really funny. However, if I were to have a baby I would still want to be a SAHM. What can I say? I like being home!

#4. I got my nails done last week and had them painted white. Worst. Decision. Ever! They're all dingy now and gross-looking. I plan to re-paint them this evening.

#5. We've decided we're going to Napa for our anniversary! I'm excited. Kevin has a surprise planned that he won't tell me about so I'm extra excited to find out what that ends up to be.

Have a great weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Your eyes do not deceive you.
That is indeed an El Camino with beer spigots on the back.
There are no words.
Love it or hate it?

Red Solo Cup...I Fill You Up...

{If you haven't heard the "Red Solo Cup" song by Toby Keith, head over here so you'll know what I'm referring to during this post ;)}

On Saturday Kevin and I threw a pool party / birthday party (for Kevin) / UFC viewing party - all rolled into one.

When we decided to have one I couldn't figure out how I wanted to decorate for the party. And yes...I know I didn't need to decorate. But seeing as we don't have our own place, I really needed something to do.

We talked about getting a keg for the party, and when you have a keg you have to have red Solo cups, don't you?!

Hence, the theme of the party was developed.

I tried to make it as "classy" as possible. I'm sure based on the song the whole theme would seem somewhat ... what shall I call it? White Trash? But I was aiming for something a bit nicer.

I pinned some ideas on my Party Time board on Pinterest and went from there!

 I'll be honest - this wreath was not easy to make. I (and by "I" I mean my SIL) cut the cups in half longways, and then I hot glued them around a plain wreath I got from Michael's. It took a sweet forever! I tied some rope as a bow.

What better treat to put in a red Solo cup than red licorice!? ;)

I got the signs made from a vendor on Etsy. She was great to work with and I was able to customize the colors to fit the theme (which was basically red, white and blue - I thought it fitting since July 4th was just a few days prior).

A little drink area. I am a fan of striped straws and I finally had chance to use them!

The recipe for the punch was a six pack of beer (I used Corona Light), a container of frozen, pink lemonade, vodka and lemon slices on top. It was TASTE-EEE!!!

Another great Etsy find from this vendor! I love this rock. And don't doubt that I wont be putting this in our garden once we get a house! Ha!

Red Solo cups on strings of lights. These were fairly easy; made a hole at the bottom of the cup and stuck the light in them. They're still up right now so they're pretty sturdy!

A fun little banner. My SIL cut these cups in half too, I hot glued them onto the paper and we put white stickers on the cups. If you can't see it, it says "Lets have a party!" It was hotter than a mother out that day so the glue started to melt! We ended up taping the sides of the cups to the paper and it worked just as well.

Where it all started. ;)

My SIL (in the bikini) and her friends. These girls are young and skinny. I'm not envious at all...nope...not me... Ha!

Kevo, doing what he does best!

My BIL, Kevo and SIL.

It was a really fun (and late) night. I was pretty sick that day so I had to turn in early which I was really bummed about, but everyone had a great time and that's all that matters!

Now we're still recovering and enjoying the quietness of the house (my MIL is away on a cruise this week). 

My dilemma now is what to do with all these decorations!

{If you don't know the Red Solo Cup song by Toby Keth, head over hear so you know what I've been talking about this whole time.}

A Man's Bouquet

Hi Peeps!

Since I actually have the motivation to blog, I figure I might as well get 'er done before that motivation passes.

Nothing new has been going on here. Still living with my MIL. It's harder than I thought it would be. Not so much living with my MIL part of it, but more of having to deal with not having a place of our own. I just don't feel settled. And I feel like Kevin and I really haven't had a good, solid chance to focus on each other and our first year of marriage. It will be one year next month, by the way. How did that go by so fast!?

*sigh*

I'm trying to be patient though. Soon enough we'll have a nice home to call our own. Patience seems to be the main theme in my life this year. 

*double sigh*

Remember Father's Day? ;) 

Well, for my dad's gift I made him a Man's Bouquet. I found the idea on Pinterest (of course) and kind of ran with it. My dad's favorite hard liquor is Jack Daniel's whiskey (which also happens to be one of my favorites as well).

I got the following from Michael's:

Clay pot

Black and white paint for clay pots

Wooden sticks

Round Styrofoam ball

Some of the stringy packaging stuff

I got the following from BevMo:

Four kinds of each mini-Jack Daniel's whiskey that BevMo carried

Two cigars

1. I painted the pot black.

2. I printed out the Jack Daniel's logo from the Internet onto really thick photo paper, in the hopes that I could just cut out the logo and use it as a stencil. That didn't really happen as I had expected. The white paint bled all under the stencil so it was a big white blob. But...it gave me somewhat of a guide to go off of to fix the logo so it looked decent.

 

3. I hot glued the wooden sticks on the back of the mini JD bottles and the cigars.

4. I put the Styrofoam ball in the pot, put the stringy packaging stuff on top of that and then stuck the mini JD bottles and cigars in and that was it.

My dad LOVED it!