throwback thursday

I mentioned in this post that Sam and I had been on vacation for a while in one of our favorite places on earth. Since I abandoned blogging around that time, I never wrote about our actual vacation!

Wouldn't it be your favorite place on earth, too?


Several members of Sam's family own property in Northwest Michigan, and let me tell you: it is to die for. Everywhere you go is so peaceful, and Lake Michigan is at it's finest. I've only been three times, and I'm in love. Sam has been there almost every summer (every summer?) of his life, and I'm so jealous!

 Eating some gyros at an art festival

These pictures are from the Sleeping Bear Dunes, which is a you-know-what to climb but is totally worth it once you get to the top! Look at that view!

Sam's best friend and his sweet girlfriend came up to hang with us for a few days! It was so wonderful to have another girl around with all of the testosterone (Sam has two brothers). 

Another one of my favorites--sweet shops in Fishtown. This one makes the. best. sandwiches around. 

Lots of beach time. As you'll notice, I'm wearing a sweatshirt in this picture. In August, it's not uncommon for temperatures to drop into the 40s at night!

Back porch sittin'

Here are a few pictures just to spark your interest. If you ever need a different kind of vacation, you should definitely head to the Traverse City area (we travel a bit more north) and check it out!

Can't wait for next year!

pardon the interruption

Lake Michigan

For the past two weeks, Sam and I have been soaking up the sun and 75 (yes you read that right, 75) degree weather in Northern Michigan. It has been wonderful, amazing, glorious, just about any other positive adjective you could throw into a sentence.

While I know that all three of my readers are begging for some updates, and I'd love to give you some, you might just have to wait a few weeks days for some posts with substantial content, because this is my to do list for our return home:

• Work 6 of the next 8 days
• Find an apartment to move into by September 15th (hahahahahahahaha)
• Organize all of the boxes that we threw things in when we moved
• Clean the place we are staying from top to bottom
• Host my mom for Labor Day weekend
• Did I mention working? 

Anyway, you can see why blogging has taken a backseat. It's not feasible to write about all the pinterest projects I'm doing for our house...when we are homeless.

For now, I'm going to soak up the last few days of Michigan sun(sets) and sand and try not to let any of that list invade my mind!

new york, new york (part 2)

Saturday started with a trip to Grand Central Terminal, which was few blocks away from our hotel. It was so gorgeous, and my picture doesn't do it justice (not even close).

We grabbed breakfast then took the subway down the the Greenwich Village area for S's final bridal appointment. The area near her appointment had several cute fair trade type stores and I even found a hole-in-the-wall bookstore that carried signed books (found a souvenir for Sam there!).

S's last bridal appointment was at a little bridal salon called Lovely.  I just happened upon it online by googling "new york city wedding dresses" and let me tell you all--this was such a find! All of their dresses were unique and so fun, the salon was adorable, and the sales staff was so friendly.

Here is a little glimpse of the store...

S just happened to get the biggest fitting room, which was the size of my living room and had some of the cutest decor ever.

I can't show a picture of her dress on here, because there are nosy fiances who may happen to read this blog, but it's gorgeous and will look amazing on her. I know they were also very helpful as far as getting her dress to Texas once it arrives at the store.


After her last appointment, we went to brunch at this little cafe called The Spotted Pig...

Do you spot the Spotted Pig?

...then headed back to Times Square to buy some theater tickets! Some of the shows we wanted to see didn't have seats together, so we decided on Mamma Mia!

S does not like the creepy Statue of Liberty man.

Since it was only around 4:45, we decided we had enough time to check out Central Park before the sunset. This was one area of NY I didn't get to explore when I was there the first time, and I didn't get to see much of it this time, so I'm going to have to put it on my list again for next time.

 I normally hate it when people take pictures of themselves, but I mean c'mon. I was in Central Park.

After the park we grabbed a quick dinner then headed back down to see the show. 

And mostly because I don't want my ticket stub to be the last picture you see of my NY trip, here is a sunset picture from Central Park.

Until next time, NYC.

new york, new york (part 1)

Disclaimer: Despite the fact that I have two great cameras, I left both of them at home...so you must deal with iPhone photos. 

This past weekend I went to New York City with one of my best friends and her mom so that she could look at wedding dresses for her upcoming nuptials. We have dreamed of J. Crew wedding dresses since we were freshmen in college, so it was an amazing opportunity for us to go!

I started out my journey by preparing with a fancy new purse. I had a perfectly decent purse that I use all of the time, but I wanted something that I could wear across my shoulder so it felt more secure. I found the perfect bag at Coach, and I'm in loooove. There are plenty of pockets and the color is beautiful.

My first purchase was this bottle of water in the airport. A note about airports: they take advantage of you. I mean, it's TSAs stupid rule that you can't bring liquids through, and then they charge you $6
 for a bottle of Smart Water? It's ridiculous.

We stayed at The Roosevelt Hotel, which was gorgeous in the lobby. The rooms were fairly nice as well, except one of our beds was so close to the wall with the bathroom door you had to sort of turn sideways and scoot into the bathroom. It was interesting. The only bad thing about this hotel is that they lost our reservation...oops! At least they had another room available!

Another thing of note: we were in SUCH a great location. We could walk nearly everywhere!

We all arrived Thursday evening at various times, so we woke up early Friday morning and went across the street to a little cafe across the street that served squagles (square bagels). It was delicious. We then prepared to head out into the blizzard...no joke, a blizzard. The snow was blowing so hard we had to bend over to walk against it. It was horrid. 

Here is S getting ready to brave the elements!

 We walked from our hotel (at 45th and Madison) to Rockefeller Center, which was only around 10 minutes but felt like forever in the frigid conditions.

Taking refuge in Rockefeller Center.

As you can see, the ice rink was completely covered in snow. Another note about NYC is that they have  sidewalk sweepers, which is maybe the greatest invention ever. The snow finally stopped around 4, and by the time we took a subway back uptown, the sidewalks were perfectly clear!

Anyway, we checked out the Lego store, which I think would have maybe held my little brother's attention for approximately 22140.235 hours when he was a little younger. Or maybe still, who knows.  Each of those little circles was full of different shapes and colors of legos...and it wrapped around to another side as well.

From the Lego store we headed to St. Patrick's Cathedral for a quick walk through. Even though it is being renovated, it is gorgeous inside! I highly recommend adding the cathedral to your list of things to see.

We then walked up Fifth Avenue to see some of the shops...

Cartier. I mean, I'd take it...

A girl's playground

We also checked out FAO Schwartz, where apparently I only took pictures of candy...seems appropriate.

Every color of Peeps you could ever want....disgusting.

This is for you baby brother.

I mean, this just seems so excessive.

From there we headed downtown to eat and head over to S's first bridal appointment. We ate a this cute little store called Pret a Manger (Pret) which has premade food (think your grab and go section of your grocery store), but it's surprisingly good. They also had super cute artwork.

I don't have any pictures from S's appointment at J.Crew, but I was not impressed. The bridal salon was small and less than exciting, and the bridal consultant seemed less than thrilled about helping us out...which was interesting, since that was her job. I'm not really sure what was up with that.


From there we headed to another bridal shop near Time's Square called R. K. Bridal...also not super impressed. If you guys are interested in hearing more about our specific experiences, let me know and I will write a post about them. I'm trying not to turn this into my first novel here.

We grabbed some dinner and headed to Magnolia Bakery, which has several locations throughout the city. Yum.

And since we were there, we went by the ice rink again...and it was totally cleared off with people skating on it! Totally different view than 8 hours prior.

Whew! That brings me to the end of our first day in NYC. It was a lot of walking, a little bit of rudeness, and a TON of fun! I'm so glad that S and her mom let me tag along on this trip! It was definitely a great experience, and I was so excited to explore new york some more!