My Mom is Moving Back!

Six years ago my Mom took a job in Boston. 

 It was supposed to be for a year. But she fell in love with the job and the city so she stayed for five more years. 

 

So for six years my Dad and her have been doing the "bi-costal thing", flying cross-country a lot and living in two homes. 

And I've sure enjoyed visiting them in Boston several times. 

 

Momma's office in 2009.

But I must say that I'm more than a little bit happy that she's leaving her job in Boston....

And she's going going, back back, to Cali Cali!

Next month The Mr. and I are going out to visit her one last time before she leaves Boston. And then, at the end of July, for the first time in 11 years, she and I will BOTH be San Diego residents. How's that for crazy timing?

Torrey Pines Hike & Searsucker

Last weekend we made a good start on my San Diego To-Do List.

We started the weekend with a hike at Torrey Pines State Beach.

This beach and hike are seriously beautiful, with gorgeous rock formations leading into the sea.

We hiked for a couple of miles before we took a staircase carved out of rock down to the beach.

   
And watched around on the beach for a little bit.

And, randomly, on the hike back to car we ran into a friend of mine my from high school doing the same hike. Small world! 

Then that night we ate dinner at Searsucker. It's Top Chef Brian Malarkey's restaurant. The food is a "foodie" twist on American cusine.

The best thing we ate was the steak tartar with a tiny egg yolk on it. It sounds kind of gross but it was amazing!

I didn't get picture at Searsucker (I always feel weird taking pics in restaurants). But I did get a picture of us at home before we left.

Two items down. 16 to go!

Town Home Tour: Office/Guestroom and Guest Bathroom

This is the last stop on the Town Home Tour! Our office/guestroom and guest bathroom...

When you first enter the room you see the Mr's desk.

 

Across from the desk is the guest bed (i.e. the futon)

 Above the futon are our diplomas (since we don't have offices at work).

Then across from the futon is my desk. Yes, I have A LOT of books. I need to purge a few of those.

Next to the Mr's desk is our little file cabinet, DIY cork-board, and Judah's bed. 

Finally, attached to the bedroom is the second full bathroom.

That's it for the home tour! Hope you enjoyed it!

This & That: Olympic Trials, Cooking, Hair and More...

It's been a while since I've had a good ole fashioned "random" post so here goes... 

1. Tomorrow, my brother-in-law is running in the OLYMPIC TRIALS! He's running the 800m in Track. He's a long shot to make it to the Olympics, but I'll cheering him on from home like crazy (the trials are in Eugene, OR and televised NBC Sports Network). We're so excited for him and proud of him!

2. On Saturday I have my company's annual party at The Edison in Downtown LA. I'm so excited to go to this venue. I hear it's amazing! The theme is 1920s and I'm not dressing up. I don't love that theme and I just did that in November.  The party should still be blast though.

3. I couple of weeks ago I put this little gift in the front seat of The Mr.'s car on a Sunday night so he'd find it on Monday morning when he got in the car to drive to work. I got the idea to do something unexpected and nice for my husband on The Dating Divas website. They have such cute ideas! He loved it.

4. The Mr. texted me this picture of our cat, Judah, the other day. I died. So cute!

5. I recently bought these Ria Summer Drink glasses from Crate and Barrel. I love how they match our house perfectly. And they are such sturdy glasses (I hate how breakable a lot of margarita glasses are).

6. I decided that I need to "pin" less and cook more from my recipe folder on Pinterest. So I made Grilled Corn Orzo Salad with Chili-Lime Vinaigrette from Iowa Girl Eats. It was AMAZING! I'll be making this again. Such a wonderful summer salad and it tastes great with Mexican beer.

7. The Mr. made Tequila Lime Chicken on his new Char-Broil Infrared Grill to go with the orzo salad. It was really good!

8. I mentioned that I cleaned out a bunch of old pictures from my parents house of me in high school and college. From the high school ones, I picked a few favorites and made this frame. It's now on my desk at home. I love seeing how little we were! I'm so lucky to still be friends with most of these girls.

9. Looking though old pictures made me want to grow my hair out. Here's a pic of me a couple of years ago with longer hair. I want it to be that length or longer again. Any tips for growing my hair out?

10. Speaking of growing my hair out, I think I need to wash and dry my hair less, which makes me think I should invest in some dry shampoo. What's your favorite dry shampoo? 

Town Home Tour: Stair Decor, Half-Bath, & Garage

Our town home is three stories tall, so we have a lot of wall space along our staircases.

When you enter the house you see our photo collage wall. This wall has pictures from our wedding, honeymoon, childhood, and parent's weddings.

You'll see that I love decorating with photos. I think it's genetic. If you think I'm bad, you should see my parents and grandma's houses!

On the next set of stairs near the living room, we have these beautiful pictures of Huntington Beach that were taken by a local artist.

On the final set of stairs, I have two more photo collages of our USC days. 

 I recently went to my parents house and cleaned out my old room there (it only took me 11 years to let them have "my" room back). In that room were SIX photo collages from college and high school. Holy photo overkill Batman. So, I narrowed down my favorite pictures and consolidated the college ones into just these two frames. I just love looking at them. Such fun memories!

On the final part of the stairs is this nook/landing. I put the "Keep Calm" poster there, even though I want to replace it since that trend is a little overplayed. Good pop of color for now.

Also, I wanted to share the "half-bathroom" that is located on the second floor. 

I made this the "beach" themed bathroom and added our wedding shadowbox in there. The Mr. and I bought that fun hutch at Ikea on sale for $30. It looks great and added some much-needed storage space.

Finally, here is our garage!

 

I LOVE having a garage! You can see it's still a work in progress, but we've at least got pretty much everything off the ground/boxes and organized onto shelves. Now I just need to pretty them up a bit. Any tips?

These shelves are from Ikea and were very affordable and functional. Bikes and surfboards are also up on racks (not pictured).

Next, I'll share our Office/Guest Room. I was going to share that next but my pictures of it turned out to be total crap. So I need to retake them. So that will be the final stop on the tour.

Town Home Tour: Master Bedroom & Bathroom

Welcome to our master bedroom!

The master bedroom is located on the third floor of our town home, and it may be my favorite room in the house because of the size and view.

  

Here's our bed and the Mr's nightstand and dresser. You can see our engagement pictures on and above his dresser. Still love those.

This is my dresser and jewelry box. The shelves on the wall have our framed vows (from our first wedding anniversary), a picture from our honeymoon, starfish from our wedding, and my "everything happens for a reason" poster. 

  

It's a little empty on my side. I want another piece of art to hang over my jewelry box.

Here's a view of the bed facing the other way. Oh and there's the cat. Goofball.

The view (that you can't see) out of bedroom  is of a park, downtown San Diego and the Coronado Bridge. I love it!

Attached to the bedroom is the master bathroom. Two sinks = harmony in marriage. That's my (small) walk-in closet you see there in the reflection (The Mr's closet is actually in the other room).

The master bath also has a separate toilet area attached to it, which I think is pretty handy.

Oh, BTW, I finally hung that picture over the toliet after I took this picture.

Up next: Hallways, Half-Bath, and Garage!

Town Home Tour: Living Room, Dining Room, and Kitchen

Welcome to our new town home in San Diego! 

The first stop on our tour is our living room.

You can see I kept my turquoise and brown theme going.

And if you face the other way in the living room, you see there's a great balcony right off it.

Here is the view from the balcony... NTC park and Downtown San Diego!

We still have our gigantic TV and speakers.

 

 I love my C&B shelves with my favorite pictures, turquoise items, books, and photo albums.

Attached to the living room is the dining room. 

 

We put out wine fridge and buffet hutch in the dining area, which I think looks and works great.

 

And attached to the dining room is the Kitchen. Clean and white and LOTS of cabinet space. I love cooking in here. I want to put some kind of island/butcher block in the middle. What do you think?

 

That's it for the tour for now. I'll share the master bedroom next!

Recent Etsy Buys

I've purchased things on Etsy before, but recently Pinterest has been steering me toward Etsy more.

Here are some of the things I've purchased recently.

Letterpresss print of California. So cute and just my colors!

 

Here

California Love necklace. They place the heart where you want it. Will be perfect for USC games.

 Here

This "Latchy Catchy" as gift for my Sister-in-Law for her nursery. Did I mention that I'm going to be an aunt in less than three weeks?!

Here

Gold Filigree earrings.  Perfect for every summer occasion.

Here

I wanted to buy this. But I think I can make the 5x8 version myself in Photoshop Elements. Little craft project maybe?

Here

What have you bought on Etsy lately? What are your favorite Etsy shops?

San Diego: 18 things I want to do in our first year

Since I have not lived in San Diego in over a decade, and the Mr. has never lived there at all, there so much we want to see and do! The city has changed a lot since I lived there, but many things remain the same.

So I decided to create a little list of hings I want to do in our first year in San Diego and divided them into some fun sub-categories. I wanted to make a list and track it, since my Baby Bucket List was pretty effective at making me get things done (much less effective at making me have a baby, womp womp).

So here it is... 18 things to do in San Diego before May 2013...

Eat 
1. at Searsucker
2. at Prep Kitchen
3. at Craft and Commerce

Drink
4. at Wine Steals
5. at Stone Brewery
6. at Ballast Point

Hike
7. Torrey Pines
8. Cowles Mountain
9. El Capitan

Tour
10. Sea World
11. Cabrillo Monument
12. Wild Animal Park

Swim 
13. at Ocean Beach
14. at La Jolla Shores
15. at Coronado

Venture
16. Around the Kensington neighborhood
17. Out in a boat on San Diego Bay
18. To Tecate, Mexico


I've never done many of these before (like all of the restaurants are new) and many of them I've not done since I was a little tyke. Like this...

 Age 3 at the San Diego Zoo.

 Age 5 at a beach in San Diego.


 San Diegans or San Diego aficionados, anything that I MUST add?