Peony Season

It's pretty much my favorite time of year: peony season. :) For a few, sweet weeks out of the year, Trader Joes carries inexpensive stems of peonies. Each bouquet is $6.99 and comes with 5 stems - I picked up these pale pink and hot pink bunches last weekend. 

I created a large arrangement for the kitchen table and then scattered around a few small arrangements around the house.

I'm hoping to pick up a few more bunches before the end of the season. Happy Summer, y'all!

Have a great long weekend!

Do you guys have any fun plans for this long weekend?

We're heading to Half Moon Bay this afternoon to see our dear friends Meredith and Andrew GET MARRIED! Check out their adorable wedding website, designed by our friend/colleague at Google, Brad Williford, who also designed our own website. Their rehearsal dinner tonight is at an Italian restaurant called It's Italia - we ate there during this trip, and it is delicious! Tomorrow they're getting married on the beach, which should be windy, but beautiful, and then the reception is at La Costanera, where the views are supposed to be out of this world. We're staying at the Oceano Hotel & Spa - the room has a fireplace in it, so I'm excited to cozy up with Lucas and drink some wine. :)

On Sunday and Monday, we're driving down to Santa Cruz, to spend some time with our friends Derek & Lena and Emily & Jeff. We all work together, but life is so hectic that I feel like I haven't caught up with them in ages. I am predicting lots of Italian food and Catch Phrase tournaments in our future.

Can't wait to spend some much needed time with our friends. Happy long weekend! xoxoxo

Bay to Breakers 2013

Bay to Breakers is an annual footrace, which occured yesterday in San Francisco! It was my first B2B experience, but it is quickly becoming my favorite SF tradition. People dress us in costumes, cheer on the real runners, and just act ridiculous.

Lucas and our friend Connor decided to run the actual race, so we began bright and early. While they headed towards the starting line, I made my way to North Beach, where I started the day off with mimosas, croissants, and lattes with my sweet friend, Tara. We sat in her living room with the windows open and enjoyed the 75 degree day.

Later that morning, we went to over to our friends' Jeff and AJ's apartment. They were hosting a little get together, so we joined for even more mimosas. Their B2B theme was gold and they all looked fabulous. :)

Next we went to Fell Street and Panhandle Park, which is near the center of the festivities. We drank red wine and Coke in the park and did some major people watching.

We ended the day with burgers and beers at Squat & Gobble, which was just about perfect. I love you, SF!

DIY Distressed Sign

When I was home in April, my mom and I made a few decorative signs for the wedding. We're having a rustic, barn wedding, so we were going for the shabby look. 

The first step was to pry apart this old wooden pallet. The boards were naturally old and distressed, so we just sanded them a bit, washed them with soap and water, and left them in the 85 degree Georgia heat to dry.

Next, we painted each board with an antique, off-white matte paint. We just asked the fine folks at Home Depot to mix us up a small sample of this color. It was more than enough paint and only cost us $3. Just take a brush and paint the color almost all the way to the edges. Again, leave it out in the sun to dry. If you want it to look a bit more distressed, lightly sand the board after it dries.

Print out the words/phrases you want to create onto computer paper. We used the phrases "let's celebrate" and "oh happy day", but the possibilities are endless!  Get yourself some tracing paper (we used the fabric kind because we had it on hand), place the tracing paper face down on the board, place your printed phrase on top, and then use a pen to trace each word onto the board. You might want to use a few pieces of tape to hold the tracing paper and computer paper steady.

The last step is ridiculously easy - you just retrace the letters with a fine-tip Sharpie and color them in. For the sake of time, we used a larger Sharpie to color the letters in. That.is.all. I was afraid it would look super shiny, but it turned out great. Again, you could lightly sand it again to make it look even MORE distressed, but we didn't really need to!

And there you have it - all done and ready for the wedding. I also painted this "Welcome" sign to put beside the guest book, but I'm not super happy with it, so I think I'll re-do it next time I'm home. :)

Anthropologie Swimwear

Lucas and I are putting together a honeymoon registry, which has me daydreaming about our November honeymoon in Hawaii. Anthropologie carries the most gorgeous swimsuits, so I may pick up 1 or 2 for our trip. Here are a few of my favorites: {1, 2, 3, 4}

Happy Mother's Day!

I know I've been bad at blogging this week. I'm sorrrrry! The truth is that I started a new job within Google 2 weeks ago and have been working 60+ hour weeks trying to get up-to-speed, we're in the midst of searching for a new apartment in SF (which is pretty much a full time job), and my parents were here Wednesday through Saturday and I wanted to soak up as much parent time as possible. I'll be much better this week, I promise. :)

Just wanted to take a moment today to say HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to my favorite ladies: my beautiful mother, my sassy grandma, my lovely aunt, and my sweet future mother-in-law. I love you all and wouldn't be the person I am without you. I hope your day is great! xoxo

PS - Google released this Mother's Day video - isn't it sweet? I know it's a marketing video but it still makes me tear up. Here's to the Moms! :)