A bit side railed

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...I woke up really late today and do not have time to put together a post for my brussels france trip. So I'm going to leave you with a teaser from Versailles. I hopefully will be back tommorow with some more photo's and an explanation of the trip!

Thinking about moving this blog....

to another user name! Will ya'll follow? Speak up now otherwise I think we will be moving this dog and pony show!

Anthropologie Wedding Line

Incase you hadn't already heard Anthropologie is rolling out a wedding line starting February 14th. The teaser site is up. :gush: I'm in heaven. Now I can officially get married!

BHLDN



By the way, super curious what the name stands for......Any ideas?

P.S. I kind of am that crazy that I would hold off my wedding till Anthropologie Wedding dresses came out. I really am curious for the price point too...

Super busy! Be back tomorrow!

France and Belgium - Part Three Continued

Apologies for not blogging yesterday, I was laid up most of the weekend and took off from work yesterday to sleep and rest. I feel about 65% today. We will see how work goes.

More pictures from inside Le Louvre! There was a section considered "Island Art." I was able to see my first Easter Island Head there. It wasn't exactly giant, maybe about 8' tall but it was cool to see!



I really fancied this guy. I believe he was from Hawaii. I loved how googly he looked.

Some other cool tribal statues.


Lots more classical statues! I loved the architecture inside it is very beautiful.



They had lots of heads from statues.

The main area of Le Louvre is beautiful. The giant cylinder on the right that is inside of the staircase is actually an elevator.


A view from the second floor of the Louvre looking out of the pyramid.

From the main entrance there is a little park and a main street for cars to drive through. I loved that you could see the Eiffel Tower from the park.

A view of the Louvre from the park. So beautiful at night when lit up!

France and Belgium - Part Three

Le Louvre - We went twice, the first time was in the evening and we were so tired we could barely keep our eyes open. So we ventured out again and came back in the day when we had much more energy. It was nice to not have to pay twice! The museum pass was accepted here so we didn't feel rushed and like we had to get everything in this one visit! Plus, where we stayed we were only a short walk to the Louvre so it was really nice.Personally, while the Louvre is impressive I really enjoy the British Museum in London. It was still fun to go see different exhibits here though. The Louvre is massive and has a nice sized shopping center attached to it. We probably spent three to four hours there on our second trip. I did love the architecture of the Louvre though.

One of the wings.



The latest architectural edition. It's very beautiful at night during the day well its very structural looking.

Addicted to bejeweled. I was playing it while he was snapping lots of pictures.


Another view of a wing. This architecture is all over the place in Paris. It makes for such a beautiful skyline.



Now inside of the museum there were many beautiful sculptures and paintings.

One of the main reasons for visiting this museum was to see the "Winged Victory."


The statue is very beautiful and the amount of people who crowd around her is amazing.


Luckily its not the same amount that surround the Mona Lisa.


This to me was the biggest disappointment. The painting is surrounded by guards and you can maybe stand as close as twenty feet away. Everyone is pushing and snapping photographs and its not a very pleasant experience but we had to see her. What's amazing is there is a giant, and I mean an enormous painting directly opposite of the Mona Lisa.

Hardly anyone pays any attention to it. What a way to be upstaged.

I'll have to continue tomorrow with more of the sculptures. We took LOTS of pictures in the Louvre.
Happy Friday!

Paris and Belgium - Part One Continued

Wandering the Pont Du Neuf - We stayed in a cute little apartment on the left side of the Pont Du Neuf in the fifth arrondisment. The apartment was tiny and the shower couldn't be turned on full strenght or the tub would overfill but it was charming and it was in Paris! So after we freshened up a little from the hours of travelling we decided to take a quick walk through our little neighborhood and see what we could find! We walked across the Pont and in the middle of it is the island that holds Notre Dame. Its truly beautiful. I could spend the rest of my life there, no like seriously I could and would.

On the pont there are several street vendors selling hot roasted chestnuts for 3-5 euro's. They come folded up in a newspaper cone and are sweet and nutty and sooo good. This was my first food since landing in Paris.Enjoying hot chestnuts and the river!



Woof. He's so cute sometimes!

We wandered around some more and had dinner at a little small cafe. We both kind of fell asleep at the table, literally. The owner was a little offended and she kept on asking if the food was alright and finally I explained that we had flown in from Los Angeles that day and she immediately understood. We made the trek back to out little apartment and crossed over the Pont once more for that day. It is beautiful at night!

Up tomorrow, Notre Dame!

Paris and Belgium - Part Two

Notre Dame - Notre Dame was only a short ten minute walk from our beautiful little apartment while staying in Paris. The first day and having not really planned out anything we decided we were going to go to Notre Dame. The really awesome part of Europe is that they sell museum passes. You choose your denomination and you can buy anything from two-six day passes. We choose the six day pass and probably should have planned better and choose the four day pass but oh well! So basically Notre Dame is free but the tower costs extra and you can use the museum pass to go to the Tower. Which we didn't; the line was excruciatingly long that day so we decided we'd come back and we never did. Regret #1.

The Notre Dame is so beautiful.

The inside of Notre Dame is just as beautiful!


Forgive me but some of the photo's are blurry. We didn't bring a tripod and flash is prohibited. I love this beautiful enormous rose window. Its amazing!

Beautiful memorial candles that are all throughout the church.

A famous sculpture of the headless saint, Saint Denis, that is depicted on the left side of the main entrance of Notre Dame.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip of us!



Notre Dame is simply stunning from all sides. I loved the park behind Notre Dame. It was beautiful! We spent a long time here talking and planning our trip.


Its even more stunning at night! Since Notre Dame is on an island we walked down to the lower areas of the island and there is a walk way that runs the entire span of the river.


After spending some time in the park we walked around to find some really great Parisian food treats.


Like a hot waffle with powdered sugar

or

eating this amazing fresh fig tartlette. It was amazing and so fresh tasting. The food tasted better in Paris in my opinion!

More tomorrow! This is only the second day of our eleven day trip.

France and Belgium - Part One

I've been putting off putting up pictures of my trip because of this blogger. She's one of my daily readers and about the same time that I went on my trip she took a hiking trip to Mt. Everest Base Camp. Upon returning she did a daily recap of her days hiking. I suddenly got very envious of her graphic designed blog recap of her trip. This morning it hit me, I'm not a graphic designer. Why am I holding back sharing my trip? Don't get me wrong! Her trip recap was fantastic but it was done in a style that is her own. So why should I try to come up with something like hers. Anyways, I'm not going to but if you have a few free moments please check out her trip here.

Leaving LA - We took a red eye out on Wednesday 27th. Let me tell you that packing for two weeks in a place you've never been is really hard. All the advice I was told is bring everything! Paris is really unpredictable and it can be gorgeous and sunny and cold rainy all within the same day! So we brought coats, lots of sweaters, jeans, a few different pairs of shoes and lots of jewelry. In the rush of getting to the airport and getting everything there we forgot to eat so we ponied up to some awful Mexican restaurant in the international terminal and had nacho's, margaritas and coronas. What a way to leave LA!

Nothing like a good old fashioned margarita before leaving!

or some trashy awful airport nachos!

We boarded Air France on time and to my surprise they had shifted our tickets and we were in the last row and in a four seat side vs the two seat side I had booked over seven months ago. I was pissed and in the future will NEVER book my tickets through travelocity. I'm convinced we got bumped because of that. AirFrance/Delta has classes A-U and U is the last class ( probably meaning you can get bumped at any time or for any reason). We were in U class which is also the last to board. Ugh.It wouldn't have been so bad but we bought our tickets in February to make sure we had good seats and good connections. Anyways, the trip was about 8 hours until we landed in Paris at Charles De Gaulle Airport. I remember being a little bit panicked when we arrived and all the signs were in French. Even the arrows faced different directions. It hit me. We were here and needed to make the best of it! I kinda of kicked myself for not brushing up more on my french before leaving.

I read a bunch of articles on how to get to/from the airport which is situated about 30 minutes outside of Paris. Some people claimed the metro was easy some claimed the taxi's were better. We felt unsure about if we had enough money so we opted for the train.


Proud ticket holder here! We've made it finally!

From the airport to Paris Central is about 15 euro's a person. We had to get off at Gare De L'est and change trains to take us into Paris. It probably took us an hour and half to actually get to the right stop but we finally made it to Paris!!

L.A. can be lonely.

This New Years marked the fifth anniversary of moving to LA. It's been a hard five years between LA and I. We've had our good time and our bad times. I pretty much hated everything about LA for the first 2 years. Suddenly when presented a choice of do we want to leave or stay? I choose to stay. We moved to a better house, we got our two puppies, I started working, I made more friends everything just sort of fell into place once I stopped fighting it.

The downside of LA is that in living here I've made lots of friends and four of my good friends have moved away. Two of them went to San Francisco, one to London and now my fourth friend is moving to Nashville. I guess its what's to be expected when most of the people living in LA aren't natives. So they have no real reason to stay or return.


via-wehearit.com

It's hard to have your best friends at opposite ends of the coast or the world or even the opposite end of your VERY long state but the good thing about LA is if you're looking there are always new people to meet and bond a friendship with. I've personally never had so many friends until living here. So to my friends living far and near I love you all and thank you for being in my life.

Friday!

Excited for the long weekend, hoping the boyfriend doesn't have to work; again. Work can be very stressful and I've found that I need to have a way to release some of the stress. Yesterday, was a pretty chaotic day from 11 a.m. till 6 p.m. and eating lunch while working through the chaotic day didn't help. So I managed to leave early enough and show up late to a ballet class. For me, ballet is complete body and mind focus. 45 minutes later I left feeling refreshed, recharged and relaxed. It was definitely much needed. Just found some gorgeous ballet photo's on weheartit.com



Simply gorgeous.


Is that a Chanel carpeting?

By the way, if you haven't checked out Black Swan yet, do it!

Travel Bug

I've got it again! I can't help it but maybe I can. I guess I don't need to make my homepage Budget Travel where they put these amazing photo's from all over the world as the first thing I see when I get up every morning.

I think this is in China. Not 100% positive.

Some beautiful place in Madrid.


I'd love to go to Russia!
*all images from budget travel

Not sure if 2011 holds a lot of international travel for us. We want to focus on saving and paying off unnecessary debt and while we did save and budget for our trip last year it left our savings account a little barren. I think this year we might plan a trip back home to Wisconsin and road trip it back! How much fun would that be? We've got several stops in the U.S. that we could do and it'd be nice to spend a few days just together driving. I also need to put together some posts about our trip to France and Belgium. It was amazing and even last night I was desperately missing France. Big city America isn't the same as big city Europe. oh well, C'est La Vie.

Christmas 2010 -- all wrapped up

A bit delayed but some photo's from our Christmas. First we had a party the weekend before Christmas at our house. We invited about 40 people and about 20 showed. Our little house was packed nice and tight but it was fun to have all of our friends over. They made fun of my insane little elf collection. I wore a really cute sparkly top that I snagged at F21 and wore some fake lashes.

A picture of our Christmas tree before we ripped open all of our gifts.

I guess I'm pretty lucky. Opening presents is about my second most favorite thing in the world and now at Christmas I have 3 separate Christmas sessions. One in our home in California and one in each of our parents home (Christmas Eve and Christmas Day). It makes this present happy girl very happy!
A somewhat blurry picture of what we got each other.

From Left - Grey Michael Kors Purse, Talk Dirty French Phrase book, Mini Diana, Kitson grey collared sweatshirt, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's vinyl, 2 screen printed t-shirts from Mr. Fuzzy Ink, a Burberry scarf, A grey cap, a passport holder and a "This is Paris" book.

We flew out on a red eye to Wisconsin and it was pretty darn cold but it didn't snow to much for us the entire time we were there. Major bummer. If you're gonna freeze it might as well be beautiful out!

We had a nice dinner at grandma's house.

and drank Tom and Jerry's

and played with Max. Max is our puppies uncle.

Afterward, we ripped into a giant stack of presents!

P.S. the tv wasn't a gift. Its the same one I had in my bedroom growing up and it has a clicky turndial for a remote.

Afterwards, we went back to my mom's house and proceeded to take some pictures. Here's one I absolutely love of us. I made him laugh really hard and we happened to catch it on camera.

The next moring was Christmas and we headed to his parents for some popovers. Its a tradition in my family and his and we've decided it makes the best breakfast on Christmas day. So for about the past 6 years that is what we've done and I love it!

The time change is really killing me! I'm proudly holding this years' batch of popovers. You eat them with honey and butter or preserves. I'm also wearing my new gray sweatshirt I got from his Mom from Anthro. Its too die for french terry and sooo comfy!

Later on in the week before we left we met up with my grandma again and took a few pictures outside.

I was naughty and stole his burberry scarf to keep me warm!
We stopped by a farm by my grandma's and took pictures of their sheep and the barn.


We had sushi with my brother and sister in law. Definitely, something I'd miss leaving southern California is the cheap sushi. While it was good it was expensive!


We shared a love boat of sushi.

After dinner, even though it was maybe 20 degrees we went and had frozen custard. We're crazy in Wisconsin! It's never too cold for frozen custard.

We also went with friends to see Black Swan. Which is too die for in my opinion. I don't think I breathed the entire time. The dancing was amazing and beautiful. Big props to Mila Kunis and Natalie Portman for doing their own dancing!

We had somewhat of a nightmare flight back to Los Angeles but was happy to be home before New Years and have some ramen from Asian Ya! All in all it was a great Christmas!