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tralala summer's here, hard to believe it's nearly a year since steve and i moved down to texas.  things lately consist of much happiness.  steve and i both had four day work weeks, which is a pretty big deal for me since it means i actually had a work week because of my new job.  you might be able to tell from the balloons and big smile that it's a pretty awesome addition to life.  austin is definitely still my fave but i'm starting to warm up to life in houston (rightly so, it was 95 degrees today).

i have to admit, i'm still not complaining about the heat.  i don't miss winter one little bit.  for the most part lately we've been soaking up summer, hanging out poolside, taking day-trips to waterfalls, starting a routine, and chilling with our local pals (oh my god friends.  we have them here!  hoorah!)

we've decided that we'll be renewing our lease, which means we will finally be breaking the pattern of moving every single year! GAHH!!  in light of this we will be purging the apartment hard and hopefully making it a sane place to live (or at least as sane as 750 square feet can be).  i spend a lot of time on zillow checking out houses in metro austin.  i'm kind of obsessed with texas guys.

for now though houston is doing pretty well by us.  it kind of feels like we're hitting our stride and in a direction i'm excited about.  and the way there is a ton of fun lately.  i can't oversell it guys:  we're always happy to have visitors!  we can promise lots of fun!  all we need is a little less rain i think.

most exciting is our plan to travel up north this fall to visit friends, see a football game, and celebrate our anniversary (wait already, seriously?).  yesss we are headed up north starting labor day weekend and are planning a great trip between michigan and wisconsin!  i super can't wait for the cross country road trip where we can actually share a car!

otherwise we are celebrating our lease renewal with a deep clean and decor change... we'll see how it all turns out.

xoxo - b

we are santa's elves

happy holidays ho ho ho

skylarks jazz

as stated before, music was a huge priority for me in the whole wedding planning process.  one of the biggest highlights of the night i got to marry steve was our absolutely PHENOMENAL band.  i discovered the truth in jazz orchestra online when my grandma gave me the name of one my grandfather's old band buddies, whom he used to play with when he was a professional musician.

it was amazing getting to work with friends of my late grandfather, and dave collee, my point of contact with the group, was extremely kind and helpful assisting us with our plans.  though the truth in jazz orchestra was a twelve piece jazz band, dave and some of the band's other members comprise a smaller ensemble as well, called the skylarks.  the seven of them were perfect for our reception.

i received so many compliments from our guests about the skylarks and genuinely consider them to be a favorite part of the evening.  we can't thank them enough for the fantastic job they did.  click here to listen, learn more, or book them for your own event!

fira heights

our first stop on the island of santorini was the main town of fira.  we spent our first two nights on santorini in fira at a really charming little place called hotel antonia.  they were extremely well reviewed on trip advisor, and for good reason.  priced extremely affordably, we were welcomed by marios with wine and a quick map-rap session where we were directed to the best restaurants, views, and things to do on the island.  truly, the hoteliers of the greek islands are absolute gems.  we always felt like the most well-treated guests.

after enjoying a little welcome wine on the spacious balcony of our room at hotel antonia, we continued the somewhat lush, dionysian evening with a stroll through the winding staircases, considered to be streets, per marios' recommendation for the restaurants with the best views in fira.  we stopped for a few big mugs of mythos at a caldera view bar, to give the sunset a little catch-up time so it would be part of the entertainment at dinner.

of the many delicious looking restaurants over-looking the caldera in fira, we settled on fanari, where we enjoyed incredible service, local wine, and a sampling of the seafood specialties we would spend the next week eating.  i had my first taste of grilled octapus at fanari and life has genuinely never been the same.  goodness gracious is it ever fantastic.  i'm also pretty sure the waiters on santorini all have training in photography.  they are pros at capturing that view.

it's still pretty mindblowing to think the trip only got better from here, but our first night in fira really set an unimaginable tone.  if ever you're looking for a spectacular value in fira don't hesitate to check out hotel antonia.  we felt incredibly welcome and centrally located between all parts of the island we ultimately visited.

these are probably getting boring, but oh well, i'm going to keep posting one day at a time!  happy new week everybody!

wedding programs world-life and whatnot

obviously i fell off the grid before the wedding because i was busy doing things like cutting my fingers open with kitchen scissors while trying to tie 200 black ribbons on 200 printed programs. steve’s and my wedding programs were a shameless DIY rip off of these programs from etsy. i loved the way they look, but I felt the call of the DIY fairy and believed programs were an appropriate place to try my hand (because if I totally screwed them up they were only programs after all… also there’s a pun in there somewhere about ‘trying my hand’ what with how much my hand was bleeding from that scissors hack job). the interior and exterior spreads i designed in photoshop, then i had them printed by uprinting, and then spent a couple evenings binge watching jersey shore and tearing through ribbon like it was my job.

speaking of things that are my job: let’s talk about the other reason i was so M.I.A. before steve and i tied the knot. since coming to texas i have more than 20 job interviews of varying nature, and let me tell you i am still really really sick of recounting the professional version of my life story (which is still ongoing as people at my new office introduce themselves). though some of the hiring (or not-hiring) experiences were more horrific than others and though i’ve had my hands full since the wedding trying to juggle offers, i’m finally standing on stable ground with an awesome marketing job at a construction company less than a mile from where we live (in houston a commute of this scope is kind of a big deal). i’m still getting used to going to work every day again (alas, no more leisurely days of late morning gym, early afternoon pool time with infinite jest, cleaning, errands, and dinner-cookin’… sigh… housewifery suited me) but i’m loving the chance to get dressed up again, and i love being up for espresso and green smoothies in the morning with stevedor.

on the subject of green smoothies both combos below (which really yield more like brown smoothies) are both super yum:

2 cups spinach

4 pineapple spears

3 cups frozen cherry berry mix

2 cups almond milk

&

2 cups spinach

1 orange

1 peach

1 pineapple spear

2 cups frozen berries

2 cups almond milk

now that our wedding is done it feels like steve and i are fresh turn of the century immigrants off the boat on the atlantic coast staring west across the country. between the move, the wedding, the honeymoon, and the job hunt it doesn’t seem like we’ve had a chance to actually think about anything else, such as “what do we do now?” now that we’re lucky enough to be two, happy, married, stable, employed, cat-owning adults in a fairly new part of the country the world kind of feels like our oyster, all we have to do is decide what kind of adventure to have next.

vintage street style

life magazine sponsored by time.com is running a collection of photos featuring high schoolers' fashion choices in the year 1969.  it's pretty awesome and worth checking out.  view the slideshow here.

SANTORINIBOAT!!!

there are a lot of ways you can travel between the greek islands if you ever decide to make the best choice ever and go.  the best methods probably depend on how much time you have in greece to spend getting from place to place.  steve and i experimented with almost every option, standard ferry, high speed ferry, and a flight via agean airlines.

more on options 2 and 3 later, but if you are planning to travel from athens to santorini i must insist you take the standard (read: not high speed) ferry.  when i booked our tickets on the blue star ferries out to santorini i was a bit worried by the 8 hour sailing time.  not only does 8 hours on a boat seem potentially claustrophobic, but when you're in a place as amazing as greece you don't want to waste an extra moment cooped up en route to your destination.

little did i know the blue star ferries are like a day trip attraction unto themselves.  this is not your average ferry boat.  our ship, the blue star delos (though we booked our tickets for the blue star naxos so i'm not sure why the name swap) was really more like a luxury cruise line.  besides it being the only ferry with open air seating (as opposed to the high speed lines) we had no idea it would also be stopping at ports on the islands of paros, naxos, and ios before docking in santorini.  basically we got a espresso and photo filled boat tour of the cyclades before getting to our second hotel.  it was such a wonderful surprise!

after a very early morning cab ride from our parthenon hotel to the port of pireaus, we watched the sunrise over athens as we headed out into the agean sea and ate breakfast and lunch on the ferry getting the grand tour of other islands we know we'll need to return and check out.  since we were up so early it was a welcome benefit that there were coffee shops all over the boat and the weather shifted from a pleasant morning breeze to sun that made the water around us glitter.  the view from the ferry approaching santorini was absolutely breathtaking and when we rode in our hotel shuttle up from the port to fira we got our first unbelievable view of the caldera from over the cliff.

more to come!!

we got married!

i don't even know where to begin blogging about it (mainly because i've been waiting until the wedding was over to blog EVERYTHING about it from the cocktail hour playlist to the cake topper to the napkins) so for starters here are the two "sneak peek" shots our amazing photographer showed us while we were honeymooning.

more to come.  being steve's wife is definitely my favorite.