it's my birthday! / 24 before 25 list

holy moly! it's my birthday!

today i turn 24 years old. which is crazy because i feel like i just turned 18 like 2 minutes ago, but hey, i'll take it!

some of you will remember i made a 23 before 24 list on my last birthday. click here to see how i did (not very good, i admit, but wedding planning took up most of my free time..)

since i now have one whole year until i'm 25....

1. get married!!
2. read 12 books {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12}
3. cut my hair
4. go to 2 concerts {1, 2}
5. spend more time with family
6. get back into blogging on a regular basis
7. pay off my credit card (failed item from 23 before 24)
8. go on a wonderful & relaxing honeymoon
9. hand-make valentines and give them to all of my friends
10. go to 5 places that i have never been to before {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}
11. go on a hike
12. freshen up our kitchen (paint? refinish cabinets?)
13. go on a camping trip (probably more like glamping)
14. buy a vespa scooter
15. do a good deed for a stranger
16. buy myself a really really really really nice purse (coach, maybe?)
17. volunteer at an animal shelter (taken from my 23 before 24 list)
18. treat myself more often (massages, manicures, etc.)
19. help plan an amazing first birthday party for our godson, noah
20. spend new years 2014 in an exciting city, like new york or vegas!
21. participate in some sort of marathon/walk for a good cause
22. get wedding photo stuff done - albums, prints framed & hung, etc..
23. reorganize/redecorate our guest bedroom (also kind of from my 23 before 24 list)
24. take more pictures, iphone or otherwise


ps. yesterday was the 2-month mark on the wedding countdown, and tomorrow is my bridal shower! what a truly amazing birthday!

jason mraz/23 before 24

on friday randy and i went to a concert! i can't tell you how long it's been since we've gone to see a show, but it was definitely worth the wait :]

we saw jason mraz at the hollywood bowl. christina perri opened the show, but because of the heinous amount of traffic, we missed her set. she did come out at the very end and sang a duet with jason, which was phenomenal, so i'll definitely have to check out her other stuff.

jason mraz was unbelievable! he's such a great live performer. a funny tidbit - i've actually seen him before in san diego. i went with some friends to a secret show that was at a massage therapy school. it was this guy bushwalla, who is really good friends with jason mraz (if you've ever seen the old episode of la ink when jason and 2 friends get tattooed, bushwalla is the guy friend). anyway, jason came out and sang a couple of songs. flash forward probably 3 or 4 years ago and i'm sitting at the hollywood bowl watching him perform for thousands of people!

*please note: the dark spot on randy's face is a shadow i made with the phone while taking the picture. sorry babe!

*this is another item crossed off of my 23 before 24 list!

winchester mystery house whaaaaa!

i know i've completely fallen off of the blogging wagon lately, but instead of making excuses, i'm just going to get into this post..

2 weeks ago randy and i went to the winchester mystery house in san jose, ca!!!! i have been wanting to go there for sooooo long, and it happens to be #19 on my 23 before 24 list. we needed to be in northern california for a wedding that weekend, so we just left an extra day early so we could fit this in.

if you're not familiar with the legend of the winchester mystery house, you should visit the website so you can read up. but basically, it was built by sarah winchester, who was the widow of the 2nd owner of the winchester rifle company. while living on the east coast, sarah lost her newborn daughter and husband within months of each other, so she went out west to seek solace. according to 'legend,' a psychiatrist told her that she would be haunted by the spirits of people who were killed by a winchester rifle, and to appease them she needed to continue to build and add onto her house. it was said she would hold 'spirit meetings' where they would talk to her and tell her what they wanted done to the house, which is what is usually given as an explanation as to why there are doors that open to nowhere and stair cases that go into the ceiling and windows that look into walls.

being the skeptics that we are, randy and i have deconstructed the story a little bit, and we don't necessarily think sarah winchester was loony. first of all, she was a bazillionaire and all alone, so she could do whatever the f she wanted. and apparently she wanted to build. i bet with all the construction workers there she never felt completely alone. also, on one of the tours we took, the tour guide said the way mrs. winchester built was that she never tore down a wall - if she wanted another wall somewhere, she just build one right on top of the other, which would account for windows looking into walls.

the house was neat, but because we sympathized with mrs. winchester more than just thinking she was crazy, it wasn't as spooky as i thought it was going to be. they do have special halloween tours, and i would be interested to see if they dress the place up at all to freak you out. it's definitely one of those things where if you've seen it once, you probably won't ever need to go again. but hey, it was on my list and definitely worth the visit!

freakin' weekend *23 before 24 update

phew... this has been a crazy week!!

last weekend, randy and i went looking at possible venues for our wedding. it was also randy's birthday on sunday, and not that we did anything wild and crazy, but it was still nice spending time together (although i had a slight bridal meltdown that day and felt so bad that it happened on his birthday!)

we decided to book camarillo ranch as our ceremony and wedding reception venue, so i started my week frantically trying to get my hands on contracts and transfer money between bank accounts for deposits.. and somehow i also ended up going back-and-forth with a caterer and scheduling phone meetings with an officiant.. i felt like i was in the middle of a wedding tornado!

so i need this weekend, badly!

but after all some is said and done, randy and i have a venue and a wedding date! and a caterer and someone to marry us..

**another one crossed off of my 23 before 24!!

23 before 24

i had an engagement shoot a few days ago<3

the timing couldn't have been better, because randy was out of town and i was feeling a little lonely, so it was the perfect thing to occupy my time for a couple of hours.

another exciting thing is that because of this shoot, i am able to cross another item off of my 23 before 24 list!

item number 10 is to land my first paid photography gig.

vday celebration/23 before 24

i hope you all had a fabulous valentine's day <3


i get quite festive

 even though a lot of people hate 'v-day,' i think it's a nice time to tell people how much you care about them, even if you're not in a romantic relationship.

however, i am in a romantic relationship, and i'm gonna tell you about my valentine's day - so v-day haters, click away while you can!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

when i had left for work that morning, i sneakily rigged a giant ass reese's peanut butter heart to be poking out of randy's underwear drawer so that it would shock and surprise him when he got ready. needless to say, it did.

randy came and took me to lunch in the afternoon, which he usually does on his weekday-day off, but it was fun being all giddy about it being valentine's day.

when i got home, he presented me with a whole box full of my favorite kind of chocolate from see's - bordeaux. i hadn't had any in a very long time, so luckily i still like them!

we ended up making dinner together, even though i'd planned on doing it on my own, but things got hectic as it got later and later. we made spaghetti, because that's the first meal randy ever cooked for me. sappy, yes, but it was cute. then i baked a funfetti cake, because when we were dating we made them together a lot. in fact, for our first valentine's day, which wasn't even a month after we became 'official,' we both got each other a box of valentine's day funfetti cake mix. weren't we disgustingly cute?

anyway, the point of me telling you this isn't to make the singles hate valentine's day even more..

remember my 23 before 24 list?

item number 15 reads, "make randy a fancy schmancy dinner for our 4 year anniversary," which was on january 27th.

unfortunately, i didn't get to make randy anything fancy or schmancy because i had lots of work travel both before and after our special day, which totally burned me out. so i'm kind of turning that list item into "make randy a disgustingly sentimental dinner for valentine's day."

happy birthday/23 before 24

23 glorious years ago, my mother pushed me out of her va-jay and the world instantly became a better place!

haha i'm kidding. but yes, today is my birthday.

and because i have a whole year to go until my next one, i decided to make a 23 before 24 list!

for those of you not familiar: this is a list of 23 things that i want to do/accomplish/see/feel/hear/etc. before i turn 24.

1. decorate our bedroom
2. pick (and book!) a venue + set a date for the wedding
3. pay off my credit card
4. go on a real vacation with randy
5. do something wonderful for my parents to show how much i appreciate them
6. take a day trip to balboa island
7. get an awesome portrait of lilly tattooed (or at least started) <3
8. buy something from etsy.com - i bought some wedding stuff from etsy!
9. make a new, close friend
10. land my first paid photography gig
11. go to a concert - i haven't been to one in soooo long!!
12. complete a paint-by-numbers
13. re-purpose something found around the house
14. do something different with my hair
15. make randy a fancy-schmancy dinner for our 4 year anniversary (jan 27)
16. plan a solo trip to oregon to spend time with my grandparents
      i didn't make it up to oregon, but i did get to go to santa barbara with my grandparents!
17. volunteer at an animal shelter
18. attend + complete manicure school *not happening before i'm 24
19. go to the winchester mystery house in san jose
20. whip our extra bedroom into shape - i want an office/tiny guestroom
21. take some really nice self-portrait photographs
22. read a book about meditation
23. have >$1000 in my checking account after rent, bills, and savings

i can't wait to cross some items off of my list! and don't worry, i'll take you all along with me ; )