LABOR DAY WEEKEND IN LA!

I went to my aunt and uncle's house in Southern California for Labor Day Weekend! It was a relaxing weekend to escape to. We went to the beach, collected sea glass in the sand, went to the Oxnard Farmer's Market by the harbor, went boogyboarding, viewed model homes in Ventura, ate the yummiest food, played games, and just relaxed together.

My mama + I spent some time looking for sea glass together on the beach and we found some really fun pieces! I found a yellow one which my aunt said is really rare! She said she's been looking for seaglass for years but she has never found a yellow one before. I guess the ocean just knew I love yellow!

Anti + Greg took us up to the Father Serra Cross in Ventura which was a really pretty lookout over the coastline in both directions! There were a few couples at the top sitting in camping chairs or on the grass just looking out over the views which seemed like such a perfect way to spend a morning. I'm just a little romantic at heart, I suppose.

My elote from the Oxnard Farmer's Market! How smart is this! All the delicious things about elote without the mess! Elote in a cup is my new favorite thing. They just take one of those electric carving knifes and cut all the corn off of one grilled cob and put all the ingredients on top. This photo was after I stirred it all around. :)

I really love Southern California and each time I come back to Salt Lake City, I get a little more serious about moving there. This time I've been looking into buying a home/condo near where my Aunt and Uncle live. I just love that area and I love the beach! And I was so pleasantly surprised to find that I can buy a nice condo really close to the ocean for less than 300k. Who knew I could have been living near the beach this whole time! haha

Here's to saving all my pennies for the next few months. :)

HAPPY SEPTEMBER!

It's the first few days of September so that means it's birthday month! 

I have mixed emotions about this birthday however. On September 12th, I turn 25 years old and 25 seems a little scary to me. It's such an official number, such a monumental age, and I don't know if I'm truly prepared for it. I know older people will read this and laugh, but just remember that despite how old you may be, this is the oldest I have ever been.

I think I just also thought things would look different by 25. Not by much though because I truly am very happy with how my life is going and the things I have done, but I do think I thought I would be married by 25. Honestly when I was little, I thought I would get married when I was 22. In my little kid mind, 22 was the perfect age. Not too young and not too old. But 22 came and went and I sit here single and happy. (I really am okay with not being married though, I don't think I would have truly been ready if I got married any younger than now.)

25 also just seems scary because I will no longer be early twenties. 24 can still easily pass as early twenties, but instantly overnight I will suddenly be "mid twenties". 

Mid twenties, you guys! That's so scary!

I know everything will be okay, and that I will love being 25 just as much as all my other years, but for now I will just sit here and freak out about it a little. 

PIT STOP IN BEND, OREGON.

On our drive through Oregon, we took a little pit stop in Bend, Oregon to check out a coffee shop. Bend was such a cute city, and this coffee shop was the perfect little stop on our roadtrip! We got to stretch our legs, see part of the town, and enjoy one of the best mochas I've ever had! Oh my gosh, it was so good! And it was iced on a hot sunny day and that was so refreshing and just what I needed.

I don't know the next time I'll be back in Bend, but I can't wait to go back to Spoken Moto to get another iced mocha in the cutest little glass! It was such a cute coffee shop! If you're ever just passing through Bend and you have some free time, take a break, have a seat on the cute green couch, and enjoy a yummy mocha. 

It was just an all around peaceful, sunny, cool coffee shop/motorcycle shop.

OUR FIRST TIME TO THE TRACY AVIARY!

I finally went to the Tracy Aviary yesterday after work and it honestly was so much cooler than I thought it would be! It was also a lot bigger than I thought it would be! I've walked around it so much, but on the outside, I didn't realize just how much of the southwest corner of Liberty Park the Aviary took up. 

My favorite thing in the Aviary was the flamingos! I just really love flamingos and I think they are so lovely to watch. If I had to be a bird, I would definitely choose to be a flamingo! They get to live in the most beautiful tropical areas, they spend their days playing in water, and they get to look so glamorous doing it!  

I also really loved the Rain Forest exhibit! It was so lusciously green, and gorgeous! The birds in that exhibit are free to fly around inside so that was fun to have them fly overhead and around us.

Outside the Aviary, there are fun little carnival type rides for kids and that's where the fun Ride/Camp sign is. It was such a nice day. I love getting to explore new places in this city.

SOLAR ECLIPSE 2017!

Okay, today was fun! I loved the solar eclipse but I think I especially loved how it brought everyone together! Everyone at work pretty much hung out outside for an hour today and didn't work haha. 

I thought about going up to Rexburg for the Eclipse but I think the idea of all the traffic coming back deterred me. Who knows, maybe the traffic won't be bad at all but everyone kept saying it would be. We got a 91% coverage here in Salt Lake City though and that was really cool! It was such a neat experience to see the lighting shift into a weird dim light I've never experienced before and to feel the temperature in the air drop.

It was also really fun just to hang out with all my coworkers for an hour and see all the other businesses around us with their employees outside together too. 
I mean just look at all these adults who gradually turned more and more into little kids in a matter of an hour! Everyone started putting the truck tailgates down to sit on and it just started feeling more and more like a little parking lot party in the middle of a work day.
 

Really though, nobody at our dealership worked for a good hour and that just felt like fun company morale! Jeremy even walked over and hung out with us during the eclipse since all of his co-workers were being boring and working during all of it.

I really loved the eclipse and I cant wait to see all the cool videos and photos that will come from it! Now to watch the movie Sunshine tonight with Jeremy! He's never seen it and it's such a good SciFi space movie! If you haven't watched it before, that should be everyone's movie to watch tonight in celebration of the solar eclipse!


Solar Eclipse 2017, you were so good to me!

APPRECIATING THE LITTLE THINGS

Lately, I'm all about the little things. The little moments that easily get overlooked, but strung together make up an entire life. 

Jeremy and I have been watching (or re-watching for me) Seinfeld from the beginning as we eat dinner after work. It's such a small thing but I always get so excited when we make our food, or more realistically lately, go out and get our food, and come back home to watch a little Seinfeld. It's the perfect summer escapism show and it just has been making us laugh so much! So as silly as it may seem, the couch, Jeremy, and Seinfeld have become a little happy place for me these past couple weeks and I couldn't love it more!

So here's to reminding myself to stop and enjoy all the little happy moments in life even if they seem as silly as eating yummy food and watching a TV show.

HOUSE HUNGRY

You know how people start to get baby hungry the older they get? 

Well, I don't have that at all, but lately I've been super house hungry! 

I'm so content to not have a baby for another 5 years or so, but lately all I want to do is buy a house. I just love the idea of having something to decorate, and fix up, and call my own! The problem is I have no idea where I want to live for the next few years so it makes house hunting kind of difficult. I look at the market in Salt Lake City just about everyday, but I also look in Southern California almost as regularly haha. 

I guess the first step would be to figure out where I want to settle for a few years and go from there, but it's just so tough trying to figure out all of that. Also, houses and condos in Utah are just so much cheaper so it's always a little disheartening to see what you can get here for a certain price, and then see what you get in LA for the same price. 

It just seems so fun to have my own place and actually put my money to good use. I just feel like having money in the bank isn't really rewarding these days. Interests rates are so low and I just want my money to work for me, not just sit in a bank accumulating barely any interest.

So until I solidify my life plans a little better, I'll just regularly be checking house listings and getting excited over the idea of buying one one day. Hopefully in Southern California. :)

HAPPY LITTLE THINGS.

Because sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy all the little pieces of happiness in your life no matter how small and insignificant they may seem. 

1. At work, the Portlandia theme song came on and it instantly just made me so happy. Part of it was because it subconsciously tricked my brain into thinking I was watching the show. But also because it reminded me of driving through the canopy tree neighborhoods in Portland and listening to that song in the car with Jeremy. 

2. Coffee shop mornings with friends. I always look forward to Friday mornings for this exact reason. Good drinks, good toast, and good friends. 

3. Today at work, a guy came up to me and asked "You love your job huh?" When I said yes, he said "it really shows" and just told me how he appreciated how happy I always look walking around. That was just a really nice thing to hear. 

4. We had pizza day at work yesterday and we're having it again today! Yay for pizza days!

5. It's been a lovely cloudy drizzly day up until now (noon) which is so nice! I love a good overcast morning. I drove to work with all my windows down this morning and couldn't get enough of the fresh breeze through my hair and the nice rain smell in the air.

6. We watched a really dumb movie last night called "The Belkno Experiment" but sometimes I secretly really love bad movies. It just seems like no one on the production team realized just how cheesy it was before they sent the final product out into the world and I find that funny!

7. I organized and cleaned up my shop so I can really start focusing on Confetti Heart more! It's so nice to have an organized shop, and I really want to concentrate more energy into my business.

8. Today I got the urge to learn French again so as I've been sitting here editing photos I've been listening to French lessons on YouTube and it's interesting just how much comes back when you hear phrases again. I just want to be able to speak French so badly! One day I will. :)

9. Mama has been here for the past couple of weeks and it's been fun to have her here! We go on little drives, we watch TV together (one of our favorite pastimes!), and we get to chit chat in person instead of on the phone so that's been nice.

10. I'm just really happy today! I've been having a lot of good days lately so I'm very grateful for that.

IT'S FRIDAY, I'M IN LOVE.

I felt reeaal cool today. And I have photos to prove just how cool I felt thanks to Jeremy and my friend Ryan. :)

 

Every Friday morning, we all go out to coffee before work and it's pretty much the highlight of my work week. Today we went to Publik; I got my mocha, and cinnamon sugar toast and had the peachiest little time. I love Fridays.