My Bridal Shower

My bridal shower couldn't have been more delightful, and was the perfect sendoff before my big move to Kansas City! My sister, mom and aunt threw my bridal shower at my aunt's home in the Oakland Hills. The weather was sunny and warm, perfect for enjoying a backyard tea brunch. I was especially flattered that my mom's group of best friends, who have known me most of my life, all came out to celebrate. I can't thank my family and friends enough for creating such a perfect day and beautiful memory!

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*

Updates!

I've been a major blog slacker! My last post was in May! So let's get caught up.

After two years with a major retailer and a year and a half on the broker side of the CPG industry, an opportunity surfaced to move not only to the manufacturer side of the business but also into the highly desirable world of adult beverage. Another huge positive for me was being able to move back to San Francisco, the only place I've ever felt at home!

Anchor Brewers & Distillers

Last Wednesday, I said farewell to my old office and to the dear friends I made there, and first thing Thursday morning I loaded up a U-Haul truck with the help of three friends from Portland. Worth noting: They took an entire day of their road-trip to do that! I don't think I've ever laughed so much in one day, let alone enjoyed a move so much (this was my 20th move, so I can say with certainty that moving is not fun). I'm so glad I gave myself a four-day weekend to move because unpacking was a ton of work! Monday was my first day at the new gig and, as far as I can tell, it's love.

My Oregonian laborers

I am happy. Very, very happy.

The Adventure of Failure

I have started and restarted this blog a dozen different ways attempting to draw from some analogy that would mask the more venerable and personal aspects of its origin. Screw the analogies. This blog entry is about the raw ugly hard part of life that I don't usually send off into cyberspace for fear that it will taint others' ability to view me in a strictly professional light. However, I honestly believe that the most precious thing we have to offer one another are our stories, because in doing so we can inspire, motivate or even provide accountability to those around us. So allow me to begin by saying 2009 was not my year.

If you had asked me at 21 what the next ten years of my life would look like I'd have told you that I was going to finish my degree, get a job as a photojournalist, travel the world, fall madly in love, and that the rest of my life would be a long string of momentous occasions. Because why the hell shouldn't it be? Here's the truth. Two men have loved me enough to marry me, and those same two men have cheated on me and left me. For five years I immersed myself in all things journalism only to spend two years working in a corporate cubicle before watching my career swirl down the drain before it had really even begun. There are days, today even, when I allow the doubt, the defeat and the resentment to creep in and take hold of my mind and my heart. There have been countless times in my life when the only thing that kept me pushing was knowing that there were people who cared what happened to me even when I didn't. Perhaps that's the trick to a good life; always surrounding yourself with people who are supportive and love you through the tough stuff.

So back to 2009... After a year and a half in my cubicle I had gotten stir crazy and was itching to go back to school. My company had an opening in Tempe, AZ and would help me pay for my MBA at Arizona State. I told myself that if I got that opening it was a sign - I was meant to go. So when I got it, I did. Perhaps I should have seen the red flags popping up when HR messed up my transfer paperwork, or when my car fell off a U-Haul trailer just shy of Palm Springs on the drive over. I tried to stay optimistic and just passed it off as clumsy luck. As my three months in AZ slowly crept by, I found myself dealing with endless HR problems, drama with my ex back in CA, and even went into kidney failure thanks to the triple-digit dry desert heat. I threw in the towel. I shoved as much of my belongings as would fit into my Ford Focus and abandoned the rest. I headed back to NorCal, but this time through Vegas because, hell, who wouldn't have needed a weekend in Vegas at that point. Upon arriving home I didn't even apply for unemployment because I couldn't imagine it taking longer than a couple weeks to start working again. Four months later I found myself caving in and accepting a job pushing papers in a small office for barely over minimum wage. I worked hard and learned quickly and my financial situation slowly began to get better, but only as my personal life once again fell to pieces.

I could easily end this entry there and wait patiently for your, "I'm so sorry!" and "Keep your chin up!" replies, but that's not the point of this entry at all. The point is that 2009 might have topped my list of disastrously disappointing years, but it has been jam packed with adventure.

I went to a rave in Mexico City and got drunk at a soccer bar with the locals. I attended my second Southwestern Photojournalism Conference in Dallas. I had an action packed road trip to Arizona. While I was there, I got to deepen my friendship with one of my dearest girlfriends and hung out with cousins who I grew up only visiting every couple years. I watched the sunset from the top of "A" Mountain and played volleyball in Lake Powell. I road tripped to Vegas... twice. I spent a weekend helping my college best friend pick out a couch for her new apartment three blocks from Venice Beach. I went to a fashion show with an old friend who didn't mind sharing a bottle of cheap wine in soup cups. And perhaps most incredible of all, I watched my nephews start preschool and was able to be around when they began using all sorts of smart words.

2009 can't have been a bad year, it was just a year full of the unexpected. The author of "Eat, Pray, Love" wrote about how agonizing her transition was from who she was before the one-year adventure that became that book and the woman that book allowed her to be. By being stripped of everything she had, including her financial security and her relationship, she found a new and better woman inside herself and began to thrive. I challenge you, I challenge myself - Let 2009 not be a year of brokenness but a year of refiner's fire that segways into a 2010 overflowing with blessings and success.

The Decor of Sanity

As a college freshman living in my parents' home, I turned my bedroom into a "Tahitian bungalow" complete with bamboo ceiling. My college dorm room was shared, but it was very clear where the boundary was. My roommate had mismatched bedding, pig shaped lights strung over the window, and mounds of books and paperwork strewn across her desk. I had an alphabetized book shelf at the foot of my Tommy Hilfiger bed and two paper lamps hanging over a tidy desk where even the pen holder matched my color scheme. I have moved literally 18 times since I graduated from high school in 2000, and yet even when all my belongings could fit into my Ford Focus, I always managed to squeeze some style in the back seat. My current must have item regardless of the move is a large mirror with the most amazing vintage gold frame, which has hung in a bathroom, over a dresser, and leaned against several bedroom walls.

My mother may not have taught me about makeup or dating, but she definitely instilled in me an appreciation for keeping a neat home, or usually in my case a space, that is always "guest ready." When I come home it isn't to a space that looks as chaotic and disconnected as my mind often feels. There is an order to things, both in life and in the home, and they are meant to reflect one another. While my mother and I have very different tastes in decor, I think we are both good at creating spaces that are functional and appealing.

This standard often causes extreme tension in my shared space. The only thing worse than coming home to your own mess is coming home to someone else's, be it shoes in the hallway, mail strewn across the kitchen counter, knickknacks on the coffee table, or pet hair caked on the couch pillows. I haven't decided yet if God insists on keeping me at a roommate necessary standard of living to break me of my OCD or if he's just gets a kick out of watching me have mini-meltdowns every time I find my toothbrush holder sitting at the wrong angle on the counter. Either way, I greatly anticipate someday entering a life season in which I can have a place, modest as it may be, where I can create a Zen untouched by less acute sensibilities. I dream of lazy overcast mornings curled up in a breakfast nook with a newspaper in hand, Elis Regina streaming on Pandora, and the delicate scent of freshly cut stargazers competing with that of the steam rising off my French press. I don't care much where you place that scene... In a San Francisco Victorian, in an Ann Arbor loft, in a Cape Town flat... As long as there's a good man strolling sleepily into the kitchen after me, and a genuine anticipation for the job I'll head to a short while later.

On a lighter note! I'll share with you some of my favorite places to score decor bargains! Of course my favorite items are ones I've accumulated through my travels, but there are countless places to find unique pieces locally while shopping on a minimal budget. When I'm in designer discounter stores like TJ Max, Marshall's, Ross, or Nordstrom Rack, I always keep an eye on the clearance racks where I have scored $1 bathroom counter accessories, $5 towel sets, and $20 bedding. Pass up those outrageously priced vintage drawer knobs at Anthropologie and find yourself an estate sale! As tacky as it may sound to some, garage sales are a fun way to find beautiful pieces for pennies. Of course, there is Ikea, where European inspired minimalism descends upon broke college kids and frugal self-decorators alike. I also recommend Z Gallerie for their affordable and trendy decor that carries enough variety to satisfy all tastes and avoids the stigma of having "that Ikea stuff."