Hill Country Road Trip

This past weekend we headed out on a Road Trip to the Hill Country with a few of our friends from UTD.  We had spent the last month or so planning the trip.  Our friend Barton found a list of scenic drives in the US, so we modified one of them a little to try to fit as much into a weekend as we could!

 We stopped Friday night in Waco to eat dinner.  I had given the group a few options of places to eat in Waco and they chose Vitek's BBQ.  I was excited, because in all my time at Baylor (and going back since then) I actually had never eaten there!  So we had some good dinner and then drove to Austin to the stay the night.

 We were up pretty early Saturday morning to try to fit in some hiking before it was too hot. Luckily, the weather was great most of the weekend.  For breakfast Saturday we introduced them all to Breakfast Tacos which are one of my true loves.  We all tried a variety of tacos and they were a big hit with the group!

 Then we headed to the Hamilton Pool Preserve.  Our friend Yali had found it on a list of the most beautiful places in the USA, so we knew we had to check it out.  They opened at 9 and we got there between 9:15 and 9:30 and the line was already pretty long.  We got one of the last parking spaces and hiked down to the pool.  It was a really beautiful place (see below) where you could walk through the rock and look out onto the pool and the trees.  

 After Hamilton Pool, we headed to Pedernales Falls State Park for another round of hiking!  We had picked out a few trails we wanted to try, but first we went to try to find the falls

 We ended up exploring on the various levels of rocks that they had, hoping to find the falls somewhere near the top.  It seems that most of it was dried up, so we explored some of the rocks and the small pools created by the falls.  Then we set out to find the trail.  Unfortunately, the trail was not well marked, nor did it look like it had been well-traveled so we ended up bushwhacking through the forest for a while.  Luckily, we had Lucas leading us and with his GPS and his trusty watch he was able to get us back to where we started!  But we ended up out there a lot longer than we expected (which I feel is the story of my life when it comes to hiking...)

 After a morning and mid-day full of hiking we decided that some wine tasting was in order!  So we headed to Becker Vineyards off 290 on our way out to Fredericksburg

 It was definitely a nice way to relax after hiking!

After we checked into our hotel in Fredericksburg, we all got cleaned up and headed out to dinner at the Alamo Springs Cafe.  Our friend Jon had recommended it due to the good food and fun atmosphere and it really was a perfect way to enjoy dinner Saturday night.

 Luckily the weather was still beautiful Saturday evening, so we were able to enjoy sitting out on their patio while we enjoyed our burgers and drinks!

 Sunday morning we woke up (early again!) and headed to New Braunfels for some tubing!  We spent about 3 hours on the Comal River and enjoyed relaxing and being in the cool water--although toward the end we were all ready to be done and heading home

 One last stop to introduce them to Buc-ee's and grab lunch and then we were on our way home!

 

We had a really fun time hanging out with our friends for the weekend.  It was David's first "vacation getaway" (other than visiting family or going to weddings) since our Honeymoon!  We also got to celebrate our 1 year anniversary this weekend and we both really enjoyed this trip together.  Hard to believe it's already been a year!

Pinterest Find: Ribbon Organization

So David and I are officially house hunting!  It's a very excited and crazy thing to be doing.  Us house hunting means I spend quite a bit of time on Zillow and Home Snap and Realtor.Com looking at available houses; but I spend even more time on Pinterest looking at Home Decor and Organization ideas!

I love a lot of the organization ideas and finally decided maybe I shouldn't wait to move before I organize things...I can get organized here!  So I decided to tackle my craft stuff first, because honestly it's a huge mess of baskets and boxes with ribbon, fabric, paper, etc all thrown in! 

Here is a before of our den closet... the pink tub on the floor was full of craft stuff, the bag to the left has all my knitting stuff and the shelves were full of bins of things thrown together

 

I decided to start with a way to organize all my ribbon and thread that have up until now just gotten out of control.  I did a variation of this tutorial... basically I just got a few long pieces of wood and had my husband drill holes in them (because he was available to do so!) and I put in dowel rods to stack the ribbons on

You can see some of the finished product on the shelf to the right in this picture below (Sorry, I didn't take a picture of just the ribbon holders).  But it worked out very well!

I had also seen on this site the idea of filing scrapbook paper.  So I organized all of my scrapbook paper and put it in various file folders in a tote box.  Then filled the rest of the tote box with baskets of paints and glues 

And there's the floor of our den closet again!  

I love finding simple ideas (the kind I can't believe I had to actually find a tutorial for) for organization!

Year of Dates: Bowling

Last Night we had our July date of bowling.  I created all of these date cards back in January and February and I was really excited when last month a Groupon came up for bowling near our apartment--and it didn't expire until August!  So I went ahead and bought it (without telling David what the Groupon was for)--so it was an added bonus that our date night was cheaper than bowling usually would be!

It was fun atmosphere with black light bowling!

The very first frame of the game, I got a STRIKE!!  I'm pretty sure that's the first strike I've ever gotten and I even got 2 in 1 game!  But David ended up winning that game because he got 3 strikes in a row at the end

 My goofy bowling date!

We took a break for dinner between games.  The groupon I bought was for 2 hours of bowling, so we had plenty of time!

 David won the first game and I won the second, so we played a third tie-breaker game... and it ended in a tie!

For the last game I pulled out some silly rules that I found from one of the dates on the Dating Divas (called the Funky Town date).  There were a lot of people around, so I felt a little silly doing some of these.  We didn't want to kick the ball so we changed "Yellow" to your date bowls for you with the opposite hand.  

It fun changing things up a little.  Although I did end up bowling 5 frames in a row because David kept drawing the ones where his date bowled for him!

After Dinner and Bowling we came home to watch a movie.  David had never seen Dodgeball and I thought it's silly tone would go along well with this date night!

Summer Nights

Summers in Texas are hot.  Last summer was fairly mild, so I was thinking this year would be really hot to make up for it... but so far our summer has been mild again (although it's just now July and I know the heat is coming!).  But one of the beautiful things about this time of summer are the beautiful summer nights.  Since it hasn't been too hot, our evenings have been perfect.  There has usually been a light breeze and it's been clear and nice.  So we've taken full advantage and enjoyed some wonderful Summer Nights so far.

 Top Golf with friends

 It may just look like some patio furniture, but if you look in the middle right you'll see a dog relaxing on the patio :)  The week we housesat, Lily really enjoyed having a yard and this evening after I let all the dogs out she decided she wanted to stay outside by herself and relax on the patio.  

 We had dinner with some friends a few Saturdays ago at Stackhouse Burgers a place our new friend Todd recommended.  The food was okay, but the reason we went was for the rooftop seating where we were able to enjoy a view of downtown

 Last Friday night we decided to check out one of Rockwall's Family Fun Fridays.  We took Lily along for a movie in the park.  She did pretty well and we enjoyed a fun, free activity

 This past week our groups took a break from Bible Study so we met up with both groups combined for dinner at Rudy's in Allen.  Our friends didn't want the fun to stop there, so we headed over to the Top Golf in Allen afterward.  The guys all played a round of golf and the rest of us enjoyed the beautiful night catching up on the couches.

And of course one of the best summer nights is July 4th!  Last night we met up with our friends and headed to Breckinridge Park for Richardson's fireworks.  For the last several years we have walked over there and sat right near where they set off the fireworks (you can see the fence in this picture where they've sectioned off the area for shooting off the fireworks).  It is way less crowded than the main hill where the festivities are supposed to occur... and the view is spectacular

 Happy Independence Day!

Here's to hoping for many more beautiful summer nights!

Wedding Weekend

On Saturday night, David and I attended a wedding for his best friend from High School.  

The ceremony was at an old theater downtown and then they had a backyard reception at a family home nearby.  There were lots of fun personal touches throughout the evening and a fun live band!

We enjoyed getting to celebrate with the bride and groom and catching up with some of David's friends that he hadn't seen in a while!

 I am so very thankful for my wedding date!  I've been to many weddings by myself over the past years and I will not take for granted getting to go to weddings with this man by my side.  We went to our first wedding together just a week before we got married... but we've now been to 7 together as husband and wife (since our own!).  It's been a fun year celebrating with lots of friends and there's no one else I'd rather have with me!