Weekend in the Mountains

I come from a tiny town at the very tip of California.

Most people, especially people in the Bay Area don't realize that California extends above San Francisco. It does, in fact, and quite a bit actually.

Fun fact: there's about 6 more hours worth of California before it becomes Oregon.

 

Sometimes the traffic and the work week becomes too much to bear and I need to escape. Back to my tiny town with 4 stop lights, back to the comfort of my mom and dad, to made from scratch pancakes and the smell of the wood stoves burning in every house on the block. This past month has been one of those months that makes me crave simplicity. Nick and I have been busy, and we have been stressed, the need for an escape became overwhelming.  

 

We took off Friday afternoon before the impending doom of the BART strike traffic got underway. After spending 2 hours a day sitting on the freeway surrounded by other commuters, there is no better feeling than driving 80 on a highway with no other cars in sight.

 

 

 

We got to my dad's late and after a warm welcome from the dogs, we had a glass of wine and went to bed. We woke up Saturday morning to the sounds of coffee brewing and the nails of the impatient pups clicking on the wood floors. My dad made some amazing pancakes from a recipe in his head and we spent a long time talking and catching up. We went down to the river to see the salmon run and took some deep breaths. My favorite part of a trip home in the fall is the colors. The trees explode into bright reds, oranges, and yellow up there. It is just so beautiful.

 

Saturday night we made dinner at my mom's, took a walk to the park I played in as a kid, drank more wine and caught up with mama. The next morning we cooked a delicious breakfast and packed up to head back home. On our way out of town we stopped for stuffed breadsticks at my favorite small town pizza place and to see my friend Katelyn and her boys Benjamin & Noah. I love some quick snuggles with those big babies.

 

 

Sunday night as we got closer to home the freeway started to clog and we both sighed. Our escapes to the mountain always go by too quickly but Monday always feels just a little more relaxing after even a quick trip. Also? this is only a 4 day work week for me and that is preeetty awesome.

5 on Friday: Life Lately

I haven't been very good at blogging lately. You know it's bad when your husband starts asking.
The truth is I just haven't felt like I have anything new to share and as usual, work is kicking my back side and the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is look at my computer. Let's catch up shall we?

One
Dog Injuries - Nick & I had a very eventful week last week. It started the Friday before when we found a giant lump on the side of Teddy's head. It was hard to see since he is so freaking fluffy. We watched the lump over the weekend and took him to the vet on Monday. The morning after his first vet appointment we woke up to what looked like a murder scene on our bedroom floor. Poor Ted's head had exploded and we rushed him to the emergency vet at 6AM. They found he had an abscess that had ruptured and they had to do surgery to put a drain in his head. He looked like Frankenstein for about 4 days. He is doing just fine now and is back to his rascally ways. He's pretty stoked about not having to wear his giant satellite dish anymore too. No explanation whatsoever about what might have caused said abscess.

Two
Home Makeover - I caught a bug called "decorate every room in the house like a crazy person." Up until about two weeks ago we didn't have any photos of us up in the house except for in a little bookcase in the front living room. I've been bugging Nick for weeks to hang up some floating shelving that I bought and finally he caved. Our family room finally looks like real people use it! Now I've moved on to obsessing over our bedroom. I feel like that room should be my favorite room in the house, it right now.. it's my least favorite. I picked out some new bedding and have slowly been pulling pieces together that will fit perfectly. I am loving the new Threshold collection at Target and fell in love with the bedding we got. I'm pretty much designing the entire room around the bedding. I can't wait until it's done.

Three
Fall! - We pretty much had all of our fall decorations up by September 1st. I like to decorate in phases. I started in September with Autumn only and then slowly started adding Halloween decorations. As soon as Halloween is over we will transition back to Harvest & Thanksgiving pieces. I am very particular about how we decorate and I hate to rush the seasons. I cannot stand to start decorating for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving. It seems like the year passes by so quickly that I hate to rush through my favorite time of the year. I am absolutely loving how cozy and warm our house is feeling right now. And.. it smells amazing at all times with all the crock pot meals and spice candles I've been burning.

 

Four
Getting Crafty - I caught another bug called "craft all the things!!" I have been refinishing furniture like a fiend and spending more time at the craft store than at home. My favorite of all Pinterest successes is this pretty little burlap wreath. I am in love.

Five
This one isn't really relevant to what we've got going on right now but I'm excited about it and wanted to share. I finally found a phone case on Etsy that I liked, it showed up yesterday and I am in love. Bee Covered has some of the cutest designs I've seen and her prices are so reasonable. Also I love anything with a cute monogram. I always prefer a sleek, slim case to a bulky rubber one. My problem is that for my job, I spend a lot of time walking construction sites and have to have my phone handy to take notes and photos to send to my assistant. I have dropped my phone way too many times and the thin plastic cases never give the screen any protection. This case is firm rubber and has the tiniest lip that would protect the screen if it fell but is thin enough not to bug me. I will definitely be using this shop again.

 Happy Friday!! Hallelujah.

30 by 30: Update

1. Complete my professional certification. Done & Done

 

2. Be Matron of Honor in a wedding. My sister got married this last June and I was the only wedding party attendant & Maid of Honor. I'm not going to check it off yet though. My sweet friend Jeanette is getting married next May and asked me to be MOH. Two is better than one!

 

3. Work from home full time

 

4. Go parasailing

5. Take a hubs & me only trip to Las Vegas

6. Go skydiving

7. Become a mama {number one, most important ever lifetime goal. No pressure...}

 

8. Go stand up paddle boarding

9. Find our family church

10. See the Grand Canyon at sunset

11. Go on a hot air balloon in Napa - Check! My sweet husband planned a surprise hot air balloon ride in Napa for our anniversary weekend. It was one of the most amazing things I've ever done.

 

12. Become an aunt

 

13. Do yoga on the beach - Check! The resort that we stayed at in Maui offered yoga classes once a week. The morning we went it was raining, so yoga on the beach turned into yoga in the pool cabana instead. I didn't have my camera because, well I was doing yoga.


Source

14. Go to Disneyland

 

15. Buy our forever home 

16. Go white water rafting

17. Watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with my kids.

 

18. Become a confirmed Catholic & get baptized

19. Start a new job

 

20. Ride horses on the beach

 

21. Pay off my student loans

 

22. Get my real estate license

 

23. Spend 4th of July with my kids & family in my hometown

 

24. Go camping at the beach

 

25. Visit our friends in Denver in the winter

 

26. Have Thanksgiving with the entire family. {This means mom, dad, sister & BIL, and Nick's family. My parents divorced when I was in 5th grade. My 10 year old self is absolutely beside herself with the idea of this actually happening}

 

27. Visit our friends in Dallas & eat Texas BBQ

 

28. {Still need some ideas...}

 

29. {Need something else to put here... }

 

30. Go somewhere really cool for my 30th birthday

 

I added a few more items and I only have two more to go. In January I'll be 27 and I'm pretty quickly running out of time to make some of these things happen. The next few years look like they're going to be pretty fun!

See the original 30 by 30 post here.
 

Paper Anniversary



This weekend we celebrated our paper anniversary. It is said that the paper anniversary symbolizes the delicate nature of a young marriage, as well as the modest beginnings of a new couple. I love old traditions and we both stuck with the paper theme for our gifts for each other.

My in-laws loves gifted us the use of their Napa house for the weekend. We are so lucky to have a family home in a place like Napa. Visiting Napa is on so many people's bucket lists, and people spend thousands of dollars to vacation to this place. Our second home. It's important to keep that in mind and not take such a beautiful blessing for granted.

We drove up after work on Friday and found the kitchen decorated with a banner and a bottle of champs in the fridge. God love my sweet in-laws. Seriously. They are so cute.

Nick made a couple pizzas and we spent the night relaxing and reminiscing. I found out Friday night that we would be waking up at 5:00 AM Saturday morning to go on a hot air balloon!

 

We woke up early Saturday to the sound of the pouring rain. A call to the balloon company confirmed that we would not, in fact be able to go that day. We went back to bed and woke up to more rain. We sat by the fire and talked about our wedding morning and what a complete disaster it would have been to have had rain that day. Our entire wedding was outside except for the bar and dance floor. We seriously would have been screwed if it had rained and I couldn't help but think about all of the poor brides that no doubt had weddings happening in the valley that day. We ended up going downtown to get a coffee at Oxbow, which was packed because of the rain. We left pretty quickly and went to a brewery to have a quick lunch and watch the A's game.{by the way... Wooooooooo!!! We won the West!! See you at the playoffs!}

 

Saturday night we went to one of my all time favorite restaurants, Michael Chiarello's, Bottega in Yountville. Dinner was absolutely to die for. We had frozen wedding cake to eat at home so we skipped desert, but loved these cute little peanut butter chocolates our server brought.

 

 

Sunday morning we woke up {at 5 AM} to go get on the balloon. This was an experience that I wish everyone could have at least once in their lives. Watching the sunrise from 3,000 feet above the vineyards was just breath taking. The balloon company that we went with launches the earliest and from the furthest North so we got to see all of the other balloons filling up and launching. At one point there were 16 other balloons in the air. Amazing.

 

We got married right on that golf course! To the left of the pond you can see a section of wedding chairs set up for another wedding.

 

Sunday was our actual anniversary and we flew directly over the golf course where we got married. Having to postpone the ride actually worked out better than we could have planned!

 

By the time we were done it was only 8:30 so we went to breakfast and then back home to watch our wedding video, do our gifts, and definitely take a nap. For my gift I made a shadow box frame with the lyrics from our wedding song. Nick gave me an empty journal with a message in it, promising to fill the journal with love letters and notes to me. I honestly couldn't think of a more perfect gift. This man just melts my heart.

 

 

My heart just feels so full of love after this weekend.



The Crush

Is there anyone in the world that doesn't like fall? The pumpkin spice lattes, the crisp air, the changing colors, the new wardrobe, the football, and most importantly the food. 

For our family, fall is an exceptionally special time of year. Fall means the grape harvest. The crush.
Anytime between the beginning of September and the end of October, the entire family and a few family friends are on call for the harvest. When the sugars in the grapes are perfect, everyone is expected to drop everything and head to my in-law's in Napa to help in the vineyard. Our vineyard is small, we'll just call it 100 vines. Small, but mighty.

The fateful call came mid week last week and early Saturday morning we found ourselves making the short drive up to the valley. {I'm just going to be real here. I'm thanking my lucky stars the call didn't come this week meaning we would be harvesting with a house full of people on my anniversary weekend. As much as I love the harvest, I am not cool with it taking the place of anniversary fun.}

We knew ahead of time that we were going to have a lot of grapes this year. More than we've ever had before so we called in some reinforcements and planned to do a dinner afterwards to thank everyone for helping. By Sunday everyone was exhausted but relieved to have everything done so early in the season. 

I didn't get many pictures of the de-stemming  process but that took us the longest. We dump all of the grapes onto two tables, pour some glasses of wine, and get really dirty. Pulling the grapes apart is a messy job and I didn't want to get my pretty camera all dirty but I did snap an Instagram photo or two.

By far, the best part of the entire process is the crushing of the grapes. Since we don't have thousands of pounds of grapes to deal with, we get to crush them the old fashioned way... with our feet! {Don't worry we bleach ourselves sterile first.}



Saturday night my FIL bottled all of last years wine. It was super tasty and fun to watch. He usually bottles when none of us are around to bug help him.

Happy Harvest!