Friday Find: Marathon of a Wedding

I'm all for physical fitness, and running. And I admire anyone who can run a marathon, but this is taking it just a bit too far! Kudos to them though, perhaps Chris and I should get training for our first marathon for when we want to renew our vows!

I have a feeling that one's going to be a hard sell. 


One more week until Molly and Mark's Wedding!

"Style. I do!" Rue La La Boutique

A couple months back, I shared with you an exciting "STYLE. I do!" boutique that Rue La La was hosting. Tomorrow, Rue La La is having another exciting "STYLE. I do!" boutique that I just had to share with you all!

In addition to fabulous bride and groom essentials like dresses, tuxes, veils, and jewelry, this time, the boutique will also feature something a little different. For the first time ever, Rue La La will feature five destination wedding packages in the boutique! Members and brides-to-be can escape to exotic locales like La Maltese Estate Villa in Santorini and they won’t have to worry about a thing! Packages include luxury accommodations, dinner, make-up, flowers, spa treatments, the ceremony, wedding certificates and more!

 

As you know, I didn't have a destination wedding and sadly, I haven't yet been invited to one! I've always stayed at hotels, but that was either because it was too far to drive home, or really, so I could partake in any after-party madness. Perhaps one day I'll attend a destination wedding, or renew my vows in a destination ceremony! But for now, I can only dream of possible locations for the perfect destination wedding setting.

Source

Bora Bora seems to be an extremely popular romantic destination these days. I hear about it constantly and see pictures everywhere. So much so, that I feel like staying in an over-water bungalow in Bora Bora should now be on every person's bucket list, most of all...mine! ;).

I mean with pictures like this, how could you not want stay here at least once in your life?

I don't know exactly all the destination packages Rue La La will be offering tomorrow, but I do know that I will be looking to see what they are. With the discounts that Rue La La offers on luxury items on a daily basis, a trip like this might be within my reach!

The boutique opens tomorrow morning, June 28th at 11:00am for just 48 hours! If you aren't a member of Rue La La...what are you waiting for?!

California Vacation Part 11: Universal Studios and Santa Monica/Venice Beach

Our favorite day in Hollywood was our day at Universal Studios. Chris and I are suckers for theme parks. Give us Hershey Park, Universal Studios, or especially Disney World and we are Happy, HAPPY people!

The most exciting part was that we got to ride the brand new Transformers ride before it even officially opened a week later. This was a HUGE deal to Chris who loves his Transformers.

He had to try the special Energon Cream Soda drink after the ride, with collectors cup, of course.

We were at Universal on a Thursday and literally walked onto every single ride with virtually no wait times and even rode a few rides more than once. The Universal Studios Lot Tour is always neat to see movie sets, and production studios. I believe this was part of the War of the Worlds set:

That night we ate at Samba Brazilian Steakhouse and Lounge at Universal CityWalk. Here, the waiters bring different kinds of meat on skewers around to your table and you pick out what you want, as you want it. I got to sample a ton of different things, and had my choice of many different sides at their salad bar.

They also had live dancers and I had 2 of these amazing caipirinhas!

Finally, on our last day of vacation we headed out to Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier. This day was mostly walking along the beach and people watching...which resulted in me getting pretty sunburned!

I started off the day with an iced soy latte!

Santa Monica Pier

and dipped my toes in the pacific

I don't think Universal Studios hired this man...he seemed pretty non-legit...and crazy. He seemed to honestly believe that Transformers will ultimately bring the end of our world. Let's just say Venice Beach was a little bit "cray-cray" with some of the people around...

We ended our vacation with a dip in the pool and hot tub at our hotel for a relaxing last night. And that, my friends, concludes our San Francisco/Hollywood Vacation!

 California Vacation Recaps: 

San Francisco Part 1

San Francisco Part 2

Napa Valley
Alcatraz

Cable Cars and Irish Coffee

Ghiradelli Square
Chinatown
Lombard Street

Driving Down the Coast - Big Sur
Hollywood
Universal Studios and Venice Beach/Santa Monica

Friday Find: Foster the People Proposal

 Happy Friday!! Not much to say about today's Friday Find except:  Yep. I cried. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Zoey!

Yesterday Zoey turned 1 year old! (At least, according to her rescue papers - so it may be an estimation of her birth-date). The amount of joy this little dog has brought to our lives in just 8 months is astounding. We can't remember what life was like BZ! (Before Zoey).

Looking back on pictures of her, I really can see how much her face has matured....

Today:

And she is even becoming quite the swimmer! (She really doesn't even need the floaty vest)
:video:


Today, Zoey is featured in The Fluffington Post!!! Be sure to click over there and check it out!

California Vacation Part 10: Hollywood

Our first day out and about in Hollywood, our first order of business was, of course, to see the Hollywood sign!

Then we headed over to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre

My hands just happen to be the same exact size as Julie Andrews!

We passed this Transformer (Chris' favorite one) at Ripley's Believe it or Not on Hollywood Blvd.

 Drove down Rodeo Drive (but NO shopping!)

And visited the Hollywood Forever Cemetery...which mostly consisted of old famous and extremely wealthy people whom we had never heard of. However, it was beautiful and some of these tombstones were amaaazing. Many of them had full on picnic benches and tables built into the grave-site for families to get together and I guess...picnic?

 But we did see the statue of Johnny Ramone of the Ramones!

And finally ate at the Famous Pink's Hot dogs! (Seen in the recent Muppet movie!)

I think what really makes Pink's different and unique are all the different options you have to prepare your hot dog. Relish, Mustard, saurkraut, chili, you name it...it's an option.

I wavered back and forth between three different options for the 30 minutes it took us to wait in line and order. I finally settled on a plain old chili cheese dog, and Chris got a bacon chili cheese dog with fries. It was very good...I wouldn't say life changing...it is a hot dog after all...but good, and I'm glad I can say I've been there.

California Vacation Part 9: Big Sur - CA's coastline

It took us 10 hours to drive from San Francisco to our hotel in West Hollywood. We made a few stops along the way for pictures, bathroom breaks, and lunch. But all in all it was a long, but nice, day!

It was foggy in the morning as we started our way along the coast:

I was so surprised by all the livestock we saw along the way. I don't think I've ever seen so much farm-land with farm animals right along the ocean and beach like that.

 We stopped for lunch at a place called Nepenthe, part of Big Sur. This offered amazing views overlooking the pacific!

This was the view from our table!

I really enjoyed this light and tasty salad with a turkey sandwich!

Breathtaking views!

and I ate the best.cookie.ever!

As we got near the end of Big Sure, we came across the seal rookery! Many, dozens, I think actually hundreds of seals lined the beaches! Seal Lovers?

Look at them all!!

We were sad we missed the last tour of Hearst Castle. You can see it at the very tip top of the mountain here. But it would have added two hours to our trip anyway and we were anxious to get to our destination.

We arrived at the Beverly Garland Hotel around 8:00 that night, excited for our next day at Universal Studios!

California Vacation Part 8: Lombard Street and about town!

My favorite meal of the whole trip was at Brenda's French Soul Food, which was recommended to me by Beth, at The Weekend Mom. We had to go a little bit out of the way to get there, but in my opinion it was well worth it.

This New Orleans style restaurant had a very interesting menu, but one thing was for certain - we were ordering the beignets.

For our meal, I ordered a shrimp and goat cheese omelet with caramelized onions, topped with tomato-bacon relish, and served with hash and a biscuit (below, top right). Chris ordered the Egg & Bacon tartine: Bacon, scrambled eggs, gruyere and tomato-bacon relish on toasted french roll with hash (below, bottom right). The omelet was amazeballs, the tomato-bacon relish was so perfect with it, and the biscuit was amazing!

Continuing on our journey of San Francisco. I was excited to see Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. This street was Cray-Cray!

I can't even imagine trying to move into one of these houses while on such a small, curvy, slanted street!

After we spent some time at Lombard Street, and watched cars and motorcycles try to slowly navigate themselves down the hill, we had seen pretty much everything we wanted to see in San Francisco. So we spent the day leisurely walking around and enjoying the beautiful weather. Walking down by the water, we came across Tcho Chocolate. We had just missed the 2:00 free tour, which was a bummer, but we decided to stop and take a break there. We sat down with a Frozen Hot chocolate (for me!) and Hot Chocolate (for Chris)!

 I want to live on this street:

And of course, what trip to San Francisco would be complete without a visit to San Francisco's Painted Ladies, or "Postcard Row"? These are the most pictured houses in America, thanks to Full House (Cue: Full House Opening Theme here). Honestly - we didn't see what all the hoopla was about. We came, took a picture of the houses, and were like "Welp..ok, guess that's about it." But I'm glad I have the picture!

Here are some other highlights of San Fran  This was a hill we walked up, I mean is that 45 degrees? 'cause it felt like it! San Franicsco is so hilly!

One really cool thing about our hotel was that they have a glass elevator that overlooks Union Square. I had read about this on yelp, so I asked our concierge which elevator it was. We rode to the top and got some truly gorgeous views of the city. This was looking down on Union Square:

San Francisco skyline

The view at night:

And of course...a heart from the Hearts in San Francisco annual public art installation:

Down by the courthouse and city hall buildings:

A library on wheels!

Beautiful fruit at Pier 39

And amazing memories to last a lifetime:

Next - we drive down the coast to Hollywood!

Need to catch up?

California Vacation: Part 1
California Vacation Part 2: San Francisco
California Vacation Part 3: Napa Valley
California Vacation Part 4: Alcatraz
California Vacation Part 5: Cable Cars and Irish Coffee
California Vcation Part 6: Ghiradelli Square