New Art

I ordered some custom paintings from Lindsay at Aisle to Aloha & received them last week.  Lindsay lives in Hawaii & her paintings are inspired by all the beautiful colors & surroundings where she lives. Lindsay paints the most beautiful, bright paintings & I'm happy to have a few of them displayed in my home now! I'm thrilled to place these "cuties" in little corners of my home because they bring a lot of life to each space they occupy! 

You should stop by & check out her etsy shop! She has a lot of cute stuff already in stock & she also welcomes custom orders!

Cute packaging

 a cute dahalia painting above my bed

 a cute ampersand to go with my movie collection

a camera cutie to go with my favorite saying...

Weekend w. the family & a Blog Re-design!

I've been getting tired of my blog design & decided to make some much needed changes for a more simplified & updated look. Thanks to Powered by Pastries for providing free layouts that you can customize, I came up with a design that I really like! & Pugly Pixel for the cute tape strips on my sidebar. Let me know what you all think!

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On Sunday I spent the day with the fam in Gig Harbor. We went out to lunch, placed pennies on the train track, took the pup pup for a walk & just went about the town.  Oh & I took lots of photos! Just another normal day w. the fam... 

Spring has Sprung - Blog Swap

Aly hosted a "Spring has Sprung" blog swap a few weeks ago. I got paired up with Becky & received some wonderful gifts that have me super excited about spring!

Becky sent me some cute nail polishes, a tropical scented candle & a lotion from B&BW that smells exactly like spring, I think it's my new favorite scent!
Happy SPRING, everyone!

I took some pictures of my neighborhood the other day & how beautiful it looks now that spring has arrived. I need to upload them & share with everyone!

The Flu

After two days of a painful sore throat, sniffly nose, major congestion & off/on headaches, I finally went to urgent care & I have the flu, supposedly the type that the flu shot doesn't protect against. At least I have medicine now & am on my way to feeling better!

[via icanhascheezburger.com]

i love weekends

I love:

long weekends

bf's birthday
beers
new restaurants
hockey games

birthday presents

quality time w. friends & cousins

(please pay no attention to my hair... I left my blow dryer at home - so I was left with awful hair all weekend...)

 

For the love of Ireland

St. Patrick's Day is one of my favorite holidays. Mostly in part because my grandma loved Ireland & often spoke about her travels there & her family that immigrated over to New York from Ireland. Whenever I see anything Ireland, I always think of my grandma.

When I was younger she would show me photos of our family castle over there [although not in the family anymore, but at one point it was]. She said that one day she would take me to Ireland for a visit. Sadly we wont be able to; she passed away a few years ago. But because of her, my love for the family castle & for Ireland is still there & I hope to get the chance to visit someday!

 

How gorgeous is this castle? I can't wait to see it in person one of these days!

I hope eveyone has a great St. Patrick's Day today!

Happy Birthday

Today is Luke's birthday [& St. Patrick's Day, too]! But more importantly, it's Luke's birthday! :) For the first time I actually get to see him on his special day! 
(Here is what we did for his birthday last year)
I'm taking Friday off of work & I'm heading down to Portland tonight to see him! 

Luke is pretty much the best guy ever, I'm sooooo glad he was born & that we found each other :)

Here are some pictures of us throughout last year on some pretty fun adventures:

San Francisco - our first road trip together

My most favorite vacation w. Luke. We went to NW Indiana to visit his parents & I connected with my counterpart at the Cubs & she took us to a game & down to the field for pictures. Luke was in heaven. 

My second most favorite vacation with Luke. We took a spontaneous weekend vacation to Denver & drank lots of beer!

I know these pics have absolutely nothing to do with his birthday, I just wanted to share some of the fun times that we've shared together! :)

puppy-sitting

While my parents were out of town [in Arizona without me!] - I had the pleasure of watching their pup pup! Yay me! This meant waking up early to let her outside, coming home on my lunch to let her outside, as well as letting her outside when I got home after work. [Boo - puppy-sitting doesn't sound like it's that much fun anymore]

Even with the annoyances of having to take her out all the time, I love this little furball! She is the sweetest pup pup, ever! She's always so happy to see me & always wants to play or snuggle. & she's super cute, too :)

Here she is:

happy puppy

cute puppy

sleeping puppies

lazy puppy

sleepy puppy

road trip puppy

This is pup pup when I leave in the morning
& when I come home from work.
I hope she doesn't really sit here all day...

Sorry for the puppy picture overload, at least she's a cute one!
I'm sure gonna miss this little munchkin when I have to return her tomorrow. 
(sad face)