30 Before 30: Staycation

A big thanks to mom for crossing this one off the list.  After reading over my list, she gifted us a free weekend stay at a local hotel that she won in an auction.  We tried to go in May right after Chris' semester ended, but that must have been a popular weekend as many of his coworkers had already requested off.  So June it was.

With Friday off, we decided to head over to Dealey Plaza and check out the Sixth Floor Museum which chronicles the presidency of JFK and the fatal shot that took place in Texas.  If you are ever in the Dallas area, I highly suggest taking the audio tour.  It was so informative and really interesting to see the exact window where Lee Harvey Oswald took that shot.

There's no photography allowed inside, so the shot of the door was the only picture of the museum that I took.

Looking down Elm street

Dealey Plaza

The sixth floor window, second from top on the far right

From there we headed over to Ft. Worth to check out the new food truck park.  I had such a great time at the last one, and knew this one would be even better because it was a larger space with a variety of  trucks.

The Cowtown Chow Down had 9 trucks parked when we arrived for lunch, as well as the stationary snow cone hut.

Chris enjoyed a Monte Cristo dog from Eat Jo Dawgs while I opted for a savory Chicken Florentine crepe from Cruzin' Chef.

We couldn't leave without a little snow cone action.  These things were HUGE!  It's hard to believe that these were smalls.  I can only wonder what the largest "bubba" size was.

After lunch, we checked into our hotel and rested before walking over to Benihana for dinner.  Always love the hibachi experience!

Saturday morning we enjoyed breakfast before heading over to check out some furniture stores to kill time.  It was really so I could get a better idea of the type of furniture Chris envisions in our future home.  The sales person at Ashley's was worse than a car salesman.  We were up front as soon as we walked in the door telling him we were just looking with no intent to make a purchase.  That man followed us around the entire store coming up 3 more times to say something as we walked around.  It was not an enjoyable experience.

With that behind us, we enjoyed an early movie, a freebie lunch at Chick-Fil-A (thanks Christmas bingo gift cards) and then a wine tasting at Su Vino in Grapevine.  I'm not sure if it was the time of day, or that summer has kicked off, but Su Vino was packed with people.  Thankfully, we were able to grab a couple of chairs at the counter when another couple finished up and enjoyed trying some new wines as well as some of our favorites from our last trip.

For dinner we headed over to Smash burger where I tasted my first black bean burger.

One last breakfast Sunday morning and back home we went.

Have you ever spent some time exploring your home town?

Delaying The Dream

Life isn't easy.

We've all heard it and I'm sure most of you out there have experienced rough patches before.  Last week we were dealt some not so great news that is going to delay our house hunt.  At first I was crushed.  I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I was frustrated and attempted to stay strong when all I wanted to do was curl into a ball and cry.  

So I did.  I let it all out and when I was done it was time to come up with a new plan. 

This experience reminds me of a time not so long ago.  Right after our engagement, we realized in order to have the wedding that we wanted it would take longer to save up.  25 months later we had the wedding of our dreams and proved to ourselves that with a plan and determination we could achieve our goals.

It may take a little longer, but with this new plan in place we will be far better off in the future.  Thankfully this plan should (if my calculations are correct) take a much shorter amount of time than our very long engagement.

No one ever said it would be easy, but we will make it work.

Travelin' Tuesday: Grand Cayman

Grand Cayman is the largest of the three Cayman islands and contains the nation's capital of George Town which is where we anchored for our final stop on our latest cruise.

We had to tender in for this port, and due to a 12:30 excursion we were on one of the first tenders after docking at 10 am.

Our ship on the left was one of 3 in port that day

I guess we didn't need to get off the ship so early, as there wasn't much to do in the small port area other then wait for our excursion to meet up and leave.  Shopping the local crafts was our way to kill time.

Our excursion for the day was to the ever so popular stingray city.  And by popular, I mean way overcrowded because everyone and their brother seemed to be there when we finally arrived.  We waited our turn to get off the boat and have a photo opt with one of our tour leaders holding the stingray.

We took a couple more shots with the underwater camera before getting back onboard to grab some pics with my DSLR.

They felt sort of like a portobella mushroom under the fins

Here's a better visualization of how crowded it was, our excursion alone had 150 people, and there were at least 5-6 other boats of varying size at the sandbar at the same time.

The second half of our excursion included some snorkeling at the Coral Garden.  I'm not that strong of a swimmer and didn't really want to deal with the crowd again, so I stayed on board the boat while Chris checked out the coral.

While Chris snorkeled, I took in some shots of the gorgeous surroundings.

It was a great experience to be up close and personal with the stingrays, but with the crowds it's not something that I would do again.

Five For Friday

1.  You brought home chapstick when I mentioned the one I had was making my lips break out.
2.  You never say no when I ask for company on my nightly walks.
3.  You spent your morning off helping mom paint.
4.  Life tossed us a curve ball, but with a new plan in place we'll make it.
5.  We're going to make the most of our day off today!

Sometimes thinking of colder times helps to get through warmer summer days

You Better Shop Around

After spending a good amount of time at the Alchemy bar and getting to know our mixologist on our past cruise, Chris and I were really looking forward to having a nice setup for our home bar.

Part of that set up included finding these glasses that held my favorite cocktail (raspberry infused vodka, muddled strawberries and peach puree).

When we got back to the states, I headed over to my go-to internet site Amazon and ordered 6 glasses for $38.68.  The first box came shattered, but Amazon was great about sending another box free of charge in less than 48 hours.

We were able to salvage 2 glasses from the broken box, so I was pretty happy about getting 8 for the price of 6.

As you might have guessed from the title, I was happy with my purchase until mom and I went shopping this past weekend.  I found myself walking around Ross looking for anything to jump out at me when I stumbled upon this.

Why yes, those are our glasses 4 for $5.99!  I even checked my old orders in my email to see if it was the same maker.  It was.  I could barely get any words out before mom had snapped them up and put them in her cart.  They only had one box, so we walked next door to Home Goods where she found another box (this time for 6.99).

Mom keeps calling it the deal of the weekend, all I can think is that I could have saved $24 if I had just shopped around.  You better believe I'll be checking out Ross and Home Goods before making any other home purchases!  Since our glasses are packed and in storage, we decided to break in mom's glasses with the wine smoothies that we picked up in San Antonio.   

Delicious!!

Have you ever purchased something only to find it later at a lower price?

Travelin' Tuesday: Roatan Island

Roatan is a little island off the coast of Honduras, and was the only port on our last cruise that was new to both Chris and I.  Carnival has invested in building up a pier area named Mahogany Bay which includes a beach just for cruisers.

There were no real plans for this spot other than enjoying the beach and picking up some souvenirs.  We walked through the brightly colored shops before making our way to the beach.

There was some sticking of our feet in the water before retiring to our chairs where I caught up on my reading.

We only stayed for about an hour and a half before heading back to the ship.  One of the attractions on the island is the "flying chair" which is a chair lift that will take passengers from the shops to the beach.  On the way back we spotted my aunt and cousin making their way to the beach in the flying chair.

Love, love, love that candid of my parents walking back to the boat!  Going on 35 years of marriage and still have little moments like that.

Roatan is known for it's wood work, so we picked up a couple of items including a vase, wine holder and an elephant (which surprisingly Chris picked up, not me).  We also picked up some liquor which was on average 10-25% cheaper than what it is in the states, and duty free.

I'm so glad that we made it back on the ship before the clouds opened up.

We try to mix it up on cruises with fun excursions and relaxing beach days.  Isla Roatan was a perfect, relaxing beach day!

30 Before 30: A New Computer Skill

A big thank you to my husband for helping me cross another item off of my list!  This one pretty much depended on him, but I'm still thankful that he took the time to teach me.

When we exchanged anniversary gifts, I took one look at his and knew which computer skill I wanted to learn: photo shop.  I loved the way he took wedding images and formed the letters, this was going to work so well with the shadow box of items we saved from our honeymoon.

I won't do a step by step because I am no photo shop expert (I don't even have it on my computer, we did it on his), but if you do have it below are some key strokes that helped me out.

We measured out the space in the shadow box and then created the canvas in PS with the correct dimensions.  After typing out the word I wanted to use, Chris taught me all about adding the layers for each of the letters.

Chris worked through the first letter, and then left it up to me to finish out the word.  Thankfully he left me with a little cheat sheet in case I forgot what step I was on.

- Drag in the image from my pictures

- Scale the image, then hit Enter

- Right click on the picture layer and select Rasterize layer

- Select the letter layer

- Click on the wand and select the letter

- Ctrl+Shift+I

- Hide the letter layer (by clicking on the eye)

- Select the picture layer

- Delete

- Ctrl+D (to deselect)

- Right click on the picture layer

- Paste Layer Style

It took a little playing around to find images that I liked that would fit in each of the letters shapes.  Once I was happy with the images, I printed it off and added it to a the shadow box that contained our room keys, airline ticket stubs and some Mexican pesos.

Hopefully I can learn some more photo shop before his summer classes begin!

Have you learned any skills from your friends or family?