Home sweet home

October 23, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

I’ve got a lot of pictures to go through from my camera. Here are a few from my phone.

Those are the bouquets in the corner: succulents!

Leslie and Peter—they did it, they got married! My mom is in the background of that picture too. I’ll tell you more about the wedding later, whether you want to hear it or not 😉

Oh, and I have notified the winner of my Tropical Traditions Coconut Oil giveaway in case you were wondering. Sorry if you didn’t win. I’ve got more stuff to giveaway though, so stay tuned!

And I’m heading back to the gym today. A week or longer of "celebratory eating and drinking" certainly makes one feel flabby. I’m referring to myself of course.

What did I miss while I was gone?

Random thoughts

Key lime pie

October 20, 2012 hannahviolin 1 Comment

We are having a great time in Phoenix! Lots of family, friends, food and fun.

Random thoughts

Peslie wedding

October 17, 2012 hannahviolin 4 Comments

I’ve been tired all week. I wonder why 😉

bridetobe

I promise I won’t use that picture again. Well, I plomise.

We are heading (back) to Phoenix tomorrow afternoon. I’m doing something revolutionary (for me) and not packing until tomorrow. I have a packing list, and I think it will just be easier and faster to wait. I do have some piles of "stuff to bring" like my shoes, purse, "emergency bridesmaid kit" and stuff like that. I am so excited! I can’t believe my sister is getting married!! (Is this how she felt in January?)

(A knife for Hannah. This is a family joke, involving a time when Carrie got angry at me and drew a tiny picture of a knife, labeled it "A knife for Hannah" and left it on my desk. I think she was about five or younger at the time.)

I feel like I’ve just been on high alert/high excitement since last week. Even being here, in between, I feel like I’m still in celebration mode and nothing else matters.

(The girls)

I did have a good workout yesterday. I didn’t think it was at the time because Mike kept fussing at me about my lunges needing to be lower and how I should be more focused (how can I be focused this week??) and how my hip shouldn’t be hurting anymore and that a week is plenty long to recover from a half and I should either go to the doctor or just run through the pain. (Yes, okay, I didn’t go to the doctor for what may have been a slight rotator cuff tear and was something integral to my career, I’m totally going to the doctor for approximately two weeks of hip pain that is improving!). Anyway, my attitude was crabby afterwards but I woke up super sore this morning—my quads and shoulders and ribs are sore and I feel like I must have done a good workout after all.

Honestly, I’ve been in such a crabby mood other than my excitement for Leslie. There’s a memorial service for our friend Jim after we get back, I’m angry at the political bs going on, I’m angry at baseball…(don’t get me started because I will go on forever and there is no appeasing me). GAH. So much annoyance at the world.

Let’s get these crazy kids married then! I am ready to spend the next few days away from the annoyances of day to day life and away from St Louis and ignoring as much political talk as possible, and ready to spend it with friends and family.

We’re doing hashtag #pesliewedding for the weekend. Unless we come up with something better. (Unlikely, yet also nearly impossible to come up with something worse.)

I get to see all these lovely ladies again! (What, are you surprised I posted a picture from my wedding?)

Oh, and I’ll have to give a toast. I’m a little terrified of this: as much as I love attention, I don’t like everybody looking at me.

When Leslie came out of the dressing room wearing her wedding dress the other day, it occurred to me that some people might get teary and emotional. I hadn’t seen her dress before. The seamstress asked if I had seen a picture and I said no. But I expected her to look beautiful in her dress and of course she did. So it wasn’t a surprise.

And that’s as much sentiment you’re getting out of me tonight :)

(Oh, and writing this blog post and looking through pictures has put me in an excellent mood and I’ve almost forgotten all about what was making me angry—baseball—earlier tonight. Yay for old pictures!)

Food

Whirlwind Weekend

October 16, 2012 hannahviolin 2 Comments

I flew to Phoenix Saturday morning for my sister’s “Bachelorette Party.” I use quotations because I feel like we are too old for that sort of thing, but we did it anyway 😉 It was a last minute decision, and in retrospect I probably should have planned more in advance and thrown her a shower, but originally we didn’t think we’d be able to work that out. She’s getting a lot of presents already so I don’t feel bad.

Leslie had this hedgehog candle from Target and also bought me one.

Anyway, my flight left at 7:30 am on Saturday and landed in Phoenix around 9 am. Leslie picked me up and we hit the ground running.

Interesting fact: lots of restaurants in Phoenix serve Coca-Cola light. I can only hope this is a trend that is going to spread to St Louis soon! We had lunch at Pane Bianco and then it was time to get ready for our big night out. We were meeting at Loren’s at 3 pm.

I love this dress. I also evidently really love posing with my arm out like that 😉

The bride to be and me!

Karen and I had a hard time getting a good picture of the two of us. This was our best.

Loren made a cool thing which was jello shots in lemon peels. They were tasty!

Anyway, that’s enough pictures from the night 😉 I’m not actually going to recap it here but it wasn’t that crazy. Drinks, karaoke, sushi, and tater tots were involved.

The next morning we had some errands to run. Brunch was in order first.

I ordered Croque Madame! I didn’t realize it had tomatoes in it, and it wasn’t like any I had had in France, except it was very tasty.

After brunch we needed to go to the Japanese Garden where Leslie is getting married. They gave us some cheerios to feed the Koi.

Party time!

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful location. There was a wedding going out while we were there so we had to wait them out to do what we needed to do. (It involved talking through the set up and decor—there isn’t going to be a rehearsal so this was my chance to see it before the day.)

Afterwards we decided to hit up the pool and sweat a bit.

Me!

My view from the chair.

Sarah came over to hang out a bit and we had a relaxing day, culminating in a nice dinner at a place called Fez and going to bed by 9 pm.

The next day we tried a run (which I already mentioned) and then Leslie had her final dress fitting. This was the shop. None of the dresses pictures are hers—I’m not going to spoil it beforehand obviously. Her dress looked great and I learned how to bustle it and do a couple of clasps in the back.