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Friday, August 30, 2013

Fast Week & A Long Weekend {5 for Friday}

1. Barley got fixed this week! I wouldn't usually be so excited about our puppy having surgery, but this is really for the best obviously. He came through like a champ! The worst part was probably for us, I felt so sad Thursday morning sending him off with Bryan. And he couldn't have his breakfast either, so he was a little cranky! But seriously, how cute is this picture?



2.  Today I'm working a charity golf tournament for work, so I'm working but I'd say that's a pretty easy Friday!

3.  Barley and I had a great walk pre-snip snip and he is really getting better about being outside and meeting new people.


4.  We got Zoe's Kitchen for dinner Wednesday. Nom mom kabobs and Greek salads! 

5.  My sinus infection is basically gone! Hallelujah!

Wow this week was super boring. Sorry guys, I will try to actually so something this weekend!  We have no major plans which is awesome.  I love the casual possibility of plans without the expectation of having to show up somewhere.  

Monday night I'm closing out Houston Restaurant Weeks with a couple lady friends at Mockingbird, super excited!  I have never been and the menu looks delish!  Other than that, maybe some pool time and a couple runs to get back on track! 

What are your big plans for the long weekend?! 


THE GOOD LIFE BLOG 


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Thursday, August 29, 2013

Pinterest Obsessions {for a home we don't have.}

One of my biggest life obsessions now is looking at houses for us to buy.  Oh, but are we even in the market?  Nope!  We are saving, saving, saving, though and hoping that a year from now we will be ready to go for it.  So in the meantime, I spent a lot of time on HAR.com which is seriously the greatest site for Houston realty oogling houses that we aren't going to buy!

Is it a little sad?  Maybe.   It is a lot of fun though?  Yes.  Based off of all of this, we have determined that there are a couple things we will definitely be changing on most homes that are in our price range:

1. Floors, 2. Kitchen updates, 3. Crown molding, 4. Paint/Walls, 5.  Outdoor areas

You guys, what is a girl to do when imagining her home?  Go to Pinterest.  In the same way that some plan fake weddings, imagine baby nurseries, or travel the world on Pinterest, I obsessively pin home ideas, room flips, outdoor areas I love, paint colors, palettes for rooms, etc., etc., etc.  So here we go with some of my favorite inspirational home pins:
































So out of all of my pins here, my favorite is maybe the crate coffee table/storage idea. Bryan and I have basically decided we will be doing that in our future home, we both love it so much! What's your most recent pinning obsession?

Sunday, August 25, 2013

The Weekender {a junk run, F21 & a sleepy pup.}

Let me start by saying that I hear it's back to school week here in Houston, so good luck to all of the teachers and students and parents out there!  I would actually love to be a teacher, so props to all of you!! I'm a little jealy.

Onto the weekend....!!

Saturday I basically took Barley for an extra long walk to wear him out a little--which resulted in me sending all of the below pics to Bryan, who was at work:

 
Honestly our weekend wasn't much to write about until Sunday when we went into hyper mode and got a ton of stuff done. 

We will start with my junk run in the morning.  I'm calling it a junk run because I hadn't run in seventeen days.  Um that's way too long.  I did have a pretty bad sinus infection for most of it, and since breathing is a big part of running...well you get the idea.

So I kinda sucked, but also got my fastest mile yet (that is still super slow)?  Win/lose?! 


During the junk run, Bryan was walking Barley, so we all finished his walk together and then he was exhausted again.  Sooo Bryan and I went out to breakfast and then the mall for jeans!

I loveeeee American Eagle skinny jeans. A lot.  So when they have 40% off everything I'm all, "yeahhhh I'm gonna buy all your jeans!" And instead I get one pair and Bryan gets two pairs of boy jeans. Fail.


I also got some tops at Forever 21 (right now, based on where I've shopped, y'all are like, does this girl think she's 17??)


A totally cute lace back t shirt that I'm not sure what to do with yet and a work appropriate shell with a fun pattern!

Soo after all that, I was gonna get my brows waxed, go grocery shopping, and go home!  Except then I ended up getting a mani pedi. Oops.


To round out the weekend I sent my love and hate into the twitter-verse re: the VMAs:







What about your weekend?! I'm hoping you had only awesome runs, and lots of fun reactions to the VMAs!  






Wednesday, August 21, 2013

It's Friday & I'm So Excited {i'm so...scared.}

Do you like my Saved by the Bell reference friends?  Bad jokes are ok today, because it's Friday, and everything is better for just that fact alone.

This week was rough.  Work kinda crawled by, Barley is cutting his adult teeth (woof.), I have a sinus infection, and I think Bryan is still tired from driving back from the casino last weekend.   So needless to say, we weren't exactly "out and about" this week.  Still tho, here are the best five moments of the week:


1.& 2.  Lauren from Method to My Madness and I met up last night at Anvil in Midtown for cocktailllll hour.  Don't worry, I think this makes us real IRL friends now. 

I had a Pimm's Cup, she had the House Punch (why did I capitalize those??), and we both got the ridic pretzel with queso flameado. Um it was amazing.  And even better was our conversation about everything from family to work stuff to *gasp* husbands, and of course, blog world things.  


3.  You guys, if you aren't watching Orange is the New Black on Netflix, I want you to finish reading this post, drop everything else you have planned for today/tomorrow, and go watch.  

It's a hilarious/scary/thoughtful/well-written show based on a memoir of the same name (which I reallyyyy want to read), and it's about a woman who goes to jail for smuggling drugs in Europe for her ex-girlfriend who was also an expert heroin smuggler! And oh yeah, now she has a gentlemen fiancĂ© on the outside.  There are characters called Crazy Eyes, Tastee, and Pennsatucky. Just watch it. It's great.  

4.  This corn we grilled.  I know it seems simple & lame, but sometimes finding the little things in life is what it's all about.  Lauren, aren't you happy you beat out corn on this list?! ;)

5.  Bryan sneakily took this pic on my phone the other night, and it's great and our pup is adorable and he is just getting so big it's crazy. 

What was the best part of your week?! 



Living With Mean Girl Face {i swear, i'm nice.}

I live with a syndrome called mean girl face. Or bitchface. Or for fans of Juno and Katrina de Voort or whatever her name was, that's just how my face looks!


 A couple weeks ago we were at the bars, and I was walking back to Bryan and our friends from the bathroom, and he goes, "oh no, what happened in there?" Umm...nothing, why? "Oh well your face just looks so angry and cranky and unimpressed!" "I have chronic bitchy face!!" They actually thought that was pretty funny.


And it is, but it got me thinking that people might be getting the wrong idea.  To confess, I have heard it before.  I have lots of good friends now who have said, "You looked soo mean, I definitely didn't think you'd be nice!"  or "I was scared to talk to you!"  So I looked into it on Facebook (of course)...and today I'm sharing a historical retrospective of my mean girl face (also lots of cool hairstyles and outfits I've had since birth):



 First? second? birthday. Bored. Lame. Not even crying! 



 In the full version of this pic, my big sister is holding one of our newborn cousins. Maybe I wasn't cool with that? 


Casual sass face at my grandparents' 50th anniversary party. 

Followed up by even better mean girl face when my mom was probably telling me to smile! 

 Between the hair wrap and my mean girl face and my vest (which, shut up, it was amazing.), it's a miracle I had as many friends as I did. No boyfriend in fourth grade though soooo... 


I I'd like to say I'm regretting my outfit in this photo...but I feel like it's mostly just me looking like me. Crank face and all.


 Pre-gaming a Badgers game in college. People are actually dancing around me and I'm just hanging out, looking like I hate the world. 


 Kites are HARD and make you look like a mean person.



 Can't even keep my face together at our engagement party! What is wronggg with me?! I'm also surrounded by booze. I should be thrilled. 



 Finally, I think we all know what is lurking under that ski mask, hood and those sunglasses. 

 100% mean girl, stink-face. In my defense, Chicago winters on the lake are bruuuutal! 

 K so now it's your turn to dish friends, do you have something you so that makes you seem the exact opposite of your personality?!

Monday, August 19, 2013

That Time We Drove All Night {casino fun.}

Oh...casinos.  We are not huge gamblers.  Like 90% of the time, I would rather buy new clothes, go out to dinner, save for a trip, etc.  But sometimes you gotta say, "Screw it, let's go to Louisiana and gamble our faces off!!!"

Which is what we did this weekend.  Well, specifically Saturday night.  To summarize how I expected my casino experience to go, here is a tidbit of a text convo I sent to my friend Nippy (that's her codename, don't worry):
Clearly there is some bad history doing casino nights amongst our group of friends.  

We left for LA around 8, and got to the casino about 11. 

After withdrawing all of savings (kidding), we decided to start with roulette...Bryan actually killed it for a while, and finished with an extra $50.

FINALLY we got some adult bevvies, and I almost died a little....um let's not act like this place was a palace or anything, but I have not had well vodka in a long time.  Can anyone answer me as to how we choked down bottle after bottle of gross bottom-shelf vodka in college?  

Also, how frizzy was my hair??

As you can see, I switched to beer pretty quickly after that experience.  

Again w the hair frizz, wow.

Beer is my safety zone, I never really notice if it's bad (compared to Bryan who legitimately RETURNS beers at bars and says, "this has gone bad."  The plus on this embarrassing move is that if they question him, he gets to patiently explain that his job is to know how beer tastes, and if it's good or bad.  Sometimes he will even tell them their tap is probably dirty!!! FUN, and not at all mortifying for me.)  Great tangent there!

....so back at the casino, we decided to switch to blackjack.  And by blackjack I mean the $5 minimum table a couple of our other friends were at.  I sat down with my $60 (high roller, whhhat?) and seriously played for about an hour and half, maybe longer, and only lost like $5.  Sweet.  



Also, it turns out that at the tables, they don't give you gross well vodka.  So that made me happy.  

Around 2:30 am-ish, we were sort of even, one of friends was up $450, and the rest were even or wayyy down, so we decided to call it a night, and casually drive back to Houston.  Around 3:30 there was an obvious McDonald's stop somewhere in BFN Louisiana, and all were happy because both breakfast and the regular menu were available!  I stayed up most of the ride and kept Bryan company while he drove, and we got home shortly after 6 am, just when Barley was ready for breakfast!  

Sooo overall, really fun casino experience!  Next time I would seriously just post at that blackjack table and go with it all night, it was so much fun!  

And on top of that, can I get an Amen for having a TDI now?  We drove there and back without getting gas, and cruised at 42 MPG....um yes.  

So do any of y'all love to gamble or casually hang at casinos and drink the free booze?!

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Favorite Running Jamz {for now.}

For me, a big part of a successful run is music that keeps me interested and moving!  So today I thought I would post up some of my fav running jamz (always with a z, yes.) as of lately!

I pretty much switch my music up constantly because if I get too comfortable with it then I feel like I know the times of each song, and this start mentally timing myself and know how far I'm going.

For me the goal is to trick myself into not knowing how long a song is, and then I don't pace myself based on length! I actually love techno and mixes from Girl Talk for this reason, but didn't include them on this list because those are almost always in my rotation.

Here we go: 


Ok so I love Miley and I love this song, and the video is weird and great, and I love listening to it when I run because duh, not gonna stop!


I feel like this song was crazy popular and then I never heard it again...well truth be told, we were out one night and had So. Much. Fun. dancing to this together so I always think of that when I'm running and it takes my mind off of  what I'm doing.


Lana, Lana, Lana! Sort of picks up tempo and pumps me up!


Do the D A N C E 12345! All Justice is great to run to, enough said. 


This beat just keeps me moving. I think this is what Miley would agree is a "bangerz."  I could repeat this forever when I'm out there.  


RIP run, just killed it! 


Ummm I love some Bey for a run.  This song especially because it's crazy upbeat and I like to mentally sing the countdown part of the song to myself, like a straight up weirdo. 

If you see someone running around Hermann Park mumbling and rapping to herself while looking kinda spastic, it's definitely me!  So say hi and ask me hat I'm listening to!

What's your favorite workout song right now?! 



 


 


 


 


 


 

Monday, August 12, 2013

The Weekender {vol. 13}

Such a fun and busy weekend for us.  Lots of eating, touring, and hanging out!


Friday night we went to Pappasito's for dinner and of course I got this delish blackberry marg tequila creation again!


Um I also ordered this insane combination meal-pork tamale, cheese with chili con carne enchiladas, and a crispy beef taco! I hate like half of each and then just about died.

Saturday we drove out to Galveston, and spent the first half of the day shopping on the Strand. I found like 10 maxi dresses I would have bought were it not for something called "a budget" and "saving for a home."  Boooo.  

However, I did get some really great bracelets that I think are knock offs of ones I've seen at like Nordstrom, but whatever: 


Annnnd here is a blue tree to raise awareness of conservation because of Hurricane Ike (I think?)
 


We were all set to take my mother in law to an awesome seafood place so she could get something delicious and fresh, but then we saw this Mediterranean place and got hooked on the idea of a Greek salad:
 
Umm yes I got mine with gyro meat. No shame!

K so then we ended our day with a tour of the Bishop's Palace, I will let the photos speak for themselves:
 



Gorgeous! We grilled some dinner up, had some wine, and then everyone was pretty much exhausted from a long day!

Sunday, Sunday!! We went to Buffalo Grille for brunch, and omelettes and breakfast burritos abounded.

After that we headed to the zoo.

Rawwwrrrr

Oh hi sad zebra, let's be friendssss!

Crazy giraffe all splayed out!  They have like 400 giraffes, it's great!


Sea lion getting a drinky drink!

Sunday night we grilled again, and then ended up going to Dessert Gallery for some cake!  I got the "chip off the old block" which was white cake with chocolate chips and dark chocolate ganache.  yeah. and Bryan and his mom both got the Italian cream cake. 

A little HGTV later and we were all done for after two full days of walking, talking, eating and drinking!

What was your highlight of the weekend? Hope everyone had a great one!