What I'm Loving Wednesday

It's National Skimm Day! If you're looking for a quick and easy way to catch-up on the morning headlines, subscribe now to get your daily news fix! Seriously informative with my kind of humor thrown in. It's definitely the best part of my morning.  You can thank me later.

Vacation planning

As I mentioned, Scott and I are in the works of planning a European getaway. I studied abroad in London with Brittany in 2007, and this is Scott's first time to go overseas. Flights are booked and now working to plan the rest. TripAdvisor has been a lifesaver but also accepting suggestions for London, The Netherlands and Munich. (Don't worry, Brittany, London is basically mapped out and includes a meal-but likely more than one-at Wagamama and the Texas Embassy.)

Award season

This is one of my fave times of the year! Definitely brightens up the end of winter months! The Golden Globes were a success -- and has inspired us to catch some of the nominated movies over the next couple of months. Looking forward to the Oscar nominations tomorrow.  Since I haven't really seen any of the movies yet, I'm not sure who to root for to be nominated.  I always enjoy predicting who will win, so hopeful I'll see many of the movies before the Oscars in March! 

And better late than never...my best and worst from the Golden Globes:

Tie for Best:  Lupita Nyong'o in Ralph Lauren

Photo from E! Online by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Cate Blanchett in Armani

Photo from E! Online by Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Worst:  Lena Dunham in Zac Posen.  Think she's so wonderful but yellow isn't a great color on you...

Photo from E! Online by Jason Merritt/Getty Images

And I leave you with these because most have given me a great laugh over the last couple of days:

• How big is your vocabulary?
• Watch members of Congress read their mean tweets.  Hilarious.
• Can your preference of booze determine your political affiliation?  It wasn't completely accurate for me, but had some similarities.
• True or not, great story about finding Jennifer Lawrence's cell phone in a taxi.
• In case you don't have a corkscrew to open some wine.  Learn how to open it with a shoe.

Weekend Recap

So this weekend was pretty low-key for me, which was just how I wanted it after last weekend! 

Friday:

Left the office around 6:30 and came home to have pizza and movie night with Scott. We watched "We Are The Millers" and while it was entertaining, I'm glad we used my free U-Verse movie rental on it. It wasn't the worst, but I wouldn't recommend spending $$ on it.

Saturday: um, lazy. I read the entire Divergent book. 489 pages. I'm cool. It was a great read, but was no Hunger Games. I am looking forward to the other two in the series, and if you liked Hunger Games, you'd like this, too. I did take a 45 min break to fit in a workout using the Nike Training Club app so I wasn't completely worthless. :)

Sunday: Another pretty lazy day. I'm actually way sore today from that workout yesterday so my planned 3 mile walk/run down at Town Lake isn't happening. I spent the morning researching hotels and things to do for mine and Scott's upcoming Europe trip!!!!! More on that later. Now I'm glued to my couch watching E's Countdown to the Red Carpet...patiently (or not so!) waiting for the red carpet and the actual show! I can't wait to see all the dresses and I cannot wait to watch Tina & Amy host again! 

Since I didn't take any photos this weekend, I'll leave you with this one I stumbled upon on Pinterest during vacay research. So glad our timing will work out perfectly and I'm hoping it will look just as gorge as this photo!

The First Weekend of 2014

So the week back to work following two weeks off has been nonstop!

I've been wanting to write a post about the weekend, so better late than never? I'm also posting from my iPad so I'm not sure how the format is about to look. Apologies for anything that runs together or looks off...still learning!

Scott is a member of Bachelors of Austin. Each year they have a huge deb presentation and make the celebration a weekend long event.

Friday night's cocktail party kicks off the weekend. We met some friends at a nearby hotel for drinks prior to the event then made our way over for the casino night events.

We posted up at the blackjack table all night. Only proved I'm a terrible gambler-but at least it wasn't with real money! Since it wasn't real money, the dealer had fun with us and helped us out a bit. At the end of the night you can turn in your chips for raffle tickets to try to win a prize. My luck continued and I won nothing...

The only picture of us from this night...

Our blackjack table!

Saturday night was the more formal (I got to wear a long dress!!) deb presentation fiesta night. We dressed up, met some friends for drinks then ventured over to the hotel to start the night. The deb presentations are still foreign to me (we never had anything like that in Lufkin) so we went upstairs to finish watching the Saints then went back downstairs to eat. Amazing buffet-with a mac and cheese bar-pretty sure my dress wasn't made for that kind of eating. But all was well once we hit the dance floor for the next 5 hours. They have two bands that take turn playing until 3am. They play all kinds of music-all the fun oldie dance songs to the current hits like "Blurred Lines." At midnight we went to hit up the breakfast buffet and then went back to the dance floor until 3am. Luckily we rented a room for the night so I went upstairs and was finally in bed around 4am. I slept all day Sunday and nearly a week later, I'm still feeling it!  I'm getting so old. I always look forward to that weekend every year, but I'm glad it's only once a year!

With Scott's brother & girlfriend

   

Photobooth fun!

Taking a dance break for a photoshoot.

This year, I got the chance to use Rent the Runway for the first time. Let me tell you, best experience ever! I highly recommend it for a formal event (although there are dresses for all occasions!) and they make it so easy. They send you two sizes of the same dress to make sure it fits. They send you a prepaid envelope to return both dresses in-just drop off at the nearest UPS! No dry cleaning or anything! I can't wait to have another event to rent a new dress!

This week I've been attending a public policy conference which has been fun and informative, but I'm so tired and looking forward to doing nothing this weekend! A friend let me borrow the first Divergent book so I plan on reading nearly all of it this weekend!

Hope you all had a great week and enjoy the weekend!

New Year, New Resolutions

Here I am, once again. It's a new year..so here goes the blog again.

Christmas and New Years were great - lots of family time and lots of food and drinks. Pretty much perfection. My boss was kind enough to give me 2 weeks off work - I'm finally feeling refreshed and I now have time to clean the apt and run the errands I usually don't have time to do. 

Between work, Junior League, and just life in general, I need a place to come to reflect on other things on my mind and to share things that inspire and make me happy. So here comes the blog again.

Resolutions are typically difficult for me to keep. I last a month - maybe two - and then it all goes down the drain. There are things I'd like to accomplish this year, but I'm going to take it month by month to keep me from becoming overwhelmed.

So for January:

Exercising 3-4 times a week (which also means learning to become a morning person because after work, all bets are off. The gym will not happen in the evenings) and keeping the blog alive by posting at least once a week.

I guess now that it's live on the internet, I must be held accountable. 

Happy New Year! I'm off to enjoy another day off work by taking down all my Christmas sparkles around the apartment. Even though the sun is out, I've got the lights on so I can enjoy it to the very last second. So it's not ok to leave this up all year...?