Ring Protectors by Anamu

The creator of the blog Anamu has also been working away on a ring protector called The Ring Cozy. Such a genius product! Ring Cozies, which can be per-ordered now for shipping on July 31st, will be available in pink, gray and teal. The website has a size chart to help you identify whether you need a size small, medium or large cozy.

To all my fellow adventurers, yogis and new-to-this-rock-on-my-finger brides - Happy shopping!

Goodbye, house

Well, it's official. We're homeless. Okay, not really, but we're hotel dwellers for the rest of this week. Yesterday we finished packing up our lovely little house and said farewell to the home where we shared our first year together.

The most practical moving tip I can share from this (my TWENTY-FIRST!) move is to buy room label packing tape! It's not strong enough to use for assembling your packing boxes, but a strip across the top or around the side of a box sure makes a world of difference when you're trying to sort out which room your boxes belong in without having to open everything up.

My second favorite discovery from this move is that when you do your mail forwarding on the postal service website they give you printable coupons for a variety of things, including Budget, who we rented our moving truck from. Even though we had already received a quote, we were still able to take the 20% off coupon in when we picked up our truck and they applied it to our fees. It really only covered the taxes, which aren't included in their quote, but when you're renting a moving truck and car trailer for two weeks and driving them half way across the country, every bit of savings makes a difference. Another coupon that would have been really great was for Vista Print. Unfortunately, I had already purchased our change of address cards from Vista and they were already being shipped so I couldn't use the coupon, but hopefully I'll have just saved you some money on yours!

Goodbye, house!

Holiday Weekend and a Big Announcement

Hello, darlings! I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend! The beau and I opted not to take Friday off work, so it wasn't a long weekend for us, but it certainly was an eventful one! 

First of all, I have a big announcement... no, not as big as the last one, but perhaps more surprising... We're moving to Kansas City! And we're doing it in two weeks! That means the countdown has officially begun - the countdown of days left at work, of plans made with friends, of boxes to pack, and of wedding tasks to complete before we hit the road. 

I never could have imagined this year would be so full of huge life events, but what a delightful year it has been. Talk about finishing out my 20's with a bang, eh? 

Thursday we decided to spend one last holiday with my family, enjoying a perfectly summery dinner at my parents' house followed by fireworks downtown - the same ones I've been watching light up the skies over my hometown for 29 years. We ran around waving sparklers with my nephews in the same dead end street where I learned to ride a bike and climb trees.

Saturday we met up with my family again, this time at the Oakland Zoo. My fiance hadn't been to a zoo since he was a kid, so we decided that was a good item to put on the "lasts" lists for the countdown of days left in the Bay Area.

 

Sunday the beau and I spend the morning hiking at Mount Tamalpais. I got my first sunburn of the year. It is his favorite place in the Bay, so he really wanted to go one last time, and even though I'm a local, I had never been to the peak before, so it seemed worth a go.
 

We finished up our weekend with an award-worthy bargain shopping trip to the North Face Outlet in Berkeley. You know how much I love a good sale! We managed to pick up two snow jackets, three hoodies, one pair of gloves, and a beanie for... get this... $230. I kid you not. We added up the regular retail prices on all of our items and it totaled $830. *Patting myself on the back*

It's Wedding Season!

It's wedding season! And this year oh so much more than that. It seems I've been attending an endless stream of baby showers, bridal showers and weddings this summer, and I'm enjoying it to the fullest! 

Last weekend the lovely Chris and Chloe became Mr & Mrs at a winery in Livermore. Despite it being a blazing 104 out when the 5:30 ceremony started, we all sweated it out together and had a fabulous time late into the evening.