Spring Break: London

So we woke up Wednesday morning and made it to the big train station Gare de Nord, to take the train to London. It was an easy trip but you do have to check in and wait to board in a separate area than the regular trains so it was a good thing we figured that out and cleared customs in plenty of time. The train ride is 2 hours which seemed like nothing at all.

When we exited the Tube station (prices are ridiculous if you aren't getting a day pass to ride the tube (subway)) in London we wandered a little to get our bearings and find our hotel. We stayed at the Park Lane Sheraton and it was in a great location right near Buckingham Palace. The free breakfast we got there was awesome.... you could choose anything from fruit, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc. etc. It was much better than the bread and croissants you could get with Jim's hotel status at the Westin. Anyways below you will find some pictures from our few days of sightseeing.... the only super eventful things that happened was the fire alarm going off in the middle of the night at the hotel one night... and our flight back to the States getting cancelled and having to run through the airport to catch a flight to Miami so we didn't have to stay an extra day! We didn't get to sit together for the 10 our trip home but at least I was able to make it into work the next day!

After we left our bags with the concierge we were quite hungry and didn't feel like going to far so we wandered literally next door to the Hard Rock Cafe. Did you know that the one in London is the original?? Once our room was ready we unpacked then wandered around the city a little bit and caught a sunset ride on the London Eye (A giant Ferris Wheel that holds like 25 people per car). You get a great view of the city and I would definitely suggest it though it is somewhat expensive. Museums and attractions in London definitely have higher prices than the ones in Paris which is too bad... but you only live once and who knows when we'll be back!  I was also bummed that we couldn't take any pictures inside Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's... good think we have the internet to look pictures up to remind us how gorgeous they are inside! :)  We spent each day exploring everywhere we could think of and the weather was absolutely gorgeous! It was not the typical dreary London weather!

Buckingham Palace 

Big Ben 

View of Big Ben from the London Eye

The London Eye 

Me in front of Buckingham Palace 

Westminster Abbey  (though St. Paul's was my favorite church, the dome inside was AMAZING)

Olympics Countdown in Trafalgar Square 

Jim's fish and chips & mushy peas 

The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum 

The National Portrait Gallery in London... we just randomly decided to go in here since it was free... best decision ever... I was happily surprised when we wandered into the rooms with the impressionist paintings :) 

Piccadilly Circus  

The Tower of London... they were refurbishing a lot of it (and the city in general for the Olympics) and I was disappointed that more of the Crown Jewels weren't on display like the last time I was there

Tower Bridge

We took the tube up to see Jim's favorite team's stadium :)  

We had our last lunch at Harrod's.... I love this place... you could get lost shopping in here for hours and the food was awesome. I had an amazing truffle Mac and Cheese. 

We ended our trip by seeing a show in the West End... Rock of Ages. Now there is a movie coming out this summer. It was a great show and Jim loved all of the 80s music. 

All in all we had an awesome 1st Anniversary/Spring Break trip. I'm not sure we'll ever be able to top it. I got to go to my 2 favorite European cities and being in England brought back so many memories from when I lived there over 20 years ago!! It is so crazy how quickly time flies! I hope that Jim and I can take many more trips like this in the future.

Spring Break (Paris part 2)

So I'm not too good at keeping up with this whole blogging thing but here are a few more pictures and stories from the first leg of our Spring Break trip in Paris....

We woke up well rested and ready to start the next 3.5 days in Paris... We woke up early each day to start our sightseeing and went to bed pretty early (lame I know but it was exhausting walking around all day). I think it is easy to hit up the night life when you are traveling with friends :)

Outside the Louvre with our class moose Marty... he has been on some seriously awesome trips these last 2 years :)

 We hit all the museums and big attractions (with the exception of Versailles) as early as possible in the morning to avoid the crowds and lines. This was especially beneficial for the Eiffel Tower because they only had 1 elevator going that day!

Winged Victory 

Mona Lisa... obviously 

Ecole Militaire/Les Invalides where Napoleon is buried 

Arc de Triomphe 

 I would definitely recommend walking up the stairs to the top of the Arc. It gives a unique view of the city and the Eiffel Tower. One my first visit to Paris in high school I didn't even know that was possible! 

View from the top of the Arc

Opera House lit up at night. 

 Side note on that night... we ate at this place called Patata Cafe if I remember correctly and all of their dishes were served on baked potatoes.... it was awesome and not very expensive at all... I'm thinking it may have been a chain?? It was definitely a great place for a quick little meal.

Notre Dame 

 We did not climb to the bell tower level since there were more stairs than the Arc de Triomphe and I wasn't feeling too well that morning.... I do wish we would have done it though because I love seeing Paris from different perspectives.

Sacre Coeur 

The only picture we have of ourselves taken by someone else

Musee D'Orsay... 

 The museum above is my favorite in Paris... probably in the world because of all of the Impressionist Art... when I was there 7 years ago with KC you could take pictures of the art but not anymore... luckily a few pictures were saved after my hard drive crashed senior year.

View of the Arc way zoomed in from the top of the Eiffel Tower

View of part of the city, along the Seine from the Eiffel Tower

The Palace of Versailles 

Hall of Mirrors 

Behind the Palace 

Some of the gardens 

Statue of Louis XIV

Other than the cold weather that I totally didn't pack well for... Paris was awesome. I could remember my way around really well, everyone was friendly, and the only random thing that I can remember happening is that random people kept asking my if I was Spanish... regardless of whether I was speaking English or French. I did pretty well responding/understanding when people spoke slowly but was at a loss when people assumed I was French after I initially greeted them. The trickiest thing for us on this trip was dining... deciding on places to eat (we don't like it when people are standing outside trying to wave you into their restaurants) and figuring out what to do when we went inside... do we seat ourselves, is a waiter going to come over, do we go order our food at the bar (that happened in London), etc. But all in all it was a stress free first leg of the journey and I'm glad that I got to show Jim around my favorite city! I hope to go back again someday or at the very least send our children. :)

Next up: London

Spring Break (Paris part 1)

So this is at least a month overdue and all of the fabulous things we did and saw aren't quite as fresh in my memory but I figured I would write a few funny stories and travel tips down from our spring break adventure. Jim and I decided to plan a pretty ambitious spring break/1 year anniversary trip to Paris and London almost right after we got back from Europe last summer. I'm not sure that we will ever have quite an adventurous anniversary again but it was wonderful.

Here is Part 1 of a Paris Recap....

We started our adventure by arriving around 6:30 am at Charles de Gaulle airport being packed into a bus like Sardines to take us from our plane to the terminal to collect our bags. Once we picked those up we headed to the train station and took a train to the city where we then transferred to the metro that took us to the Jardin de Tuileries station (the same station that KC and I used to get to and from our hotel 7 years earlier).

Here are KC and I on that spring break trip in March of 2005  

The trip downtown wasn't bad at all and our hotel was in an awesome location right across from the garden with views of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. We stayed at the Westin and I would highly recommend it if you have the money or in our case the hotel points. Some of the Starwood hotels around the world allow people to use a combination of hotel points and cash per night and that is what we did (there has to be some benefit of Jim traveling so much right??). The food at the hotel was awesome and the staff was really nice. Anyways Jim used some sort of upgrade thing he had from being such a frequent traveler and therefore this is the view we had from our hotel room....

Needless to say I don't think this would ever happen again so I soaked it up by staring out the window as much as possible especially when it sparkles at night every hour on the hour for 5 minutes... it is probably one of my favorite things to see in the whole world. 

Here it is at night from our room but it's not sparkling. 

So after wandering around for a little while after unpacking some stuff in our room we were exhausted!! We grabbed a bite to eat and decided that instead of taking an afternoon nap we would just turn in early and hopefully sleep through the night. I was pretty skeptical  because if we fell asleep at 4:30 and slept until the next morning it would be almost 15 hours... I decided that we might as well give it a try since I didn't sleep at all on the plane and and we'd been up and traveling for way more than 24 hours.... and guess what... it worked! We slept until about 11:00 were up for an hour then fell back asleep until about 7:30 the next morning and we were set for the rest of the trip! So we did miss out on an evening of wandering the city but we were so refreshed and ready for the rest of the jam packed sightseeing days that the rest of the week had in store!  Ok I will recap the rest of the trip with more pictures in my next post :) 

4th of July Ribbon Wreath

Ok so I've figured out what is going to keep my busy while Jim is traveling... well other than trying to plan every little detail of our lives ;) .....Doing crafts... I mean 2 wreaths in 2 weeks is pretty good right? I'm about finished with a ribbon wreath I made for the 4th of July. I figured I would start with this holiday because if I messed it up I could just hang the balloon wreath since it's Jim's birthday as well as America's. I found a tutorial online that I followed pretty closely... I will make some adjustments for my next wreath but overall I'm happy with it!

Here's what I used
- a styrofoam wreath
- glue gun
- pins
- 11 different types of ribbon in a variety of patterns coordinating with the theme (the spools were anywhere from 4-10 yards)
- about 8 yards of thick (2+ inches) ribbon in a solid color

These were the ribbons I used.  The first thing you have to do is cut the ribbons into 4-6 inch strips... I mostly stayed closer to 4-5 inch strips. I cut about 330 but for this wreath that was too many. If I had gotten a wreath that was round instead of flat I think I would have used them all. Next time I will cut less and just make sure i have some back up ribbon.

Next you use your hot glue gun and glue the ribbon into loops. Make sure to leave at least a 1/4 inch at the bottom so you can make a little flap to glue flat onto the wreath. I didn't take a picture of this but I will for the next wreath I make. The sheer ribbon will definitely leave you with a few hot glue burns but I like the way it looks on the wreath. The wire ribbons look really good because you can shape them into wider loops.

After I made all the loops I wrapped the foam wreath with white satin ribbon using my glue gun and pins. If I did it again I'd use red or blue satin ribbon instead just to make it pop more on a door. 

 Once the wreath is wrapped you can start gluing your loops. Open up the little flap you created and glue it flat. I just alternated ribbons in no particular order. 

Here is the finished product. I may g around the inside and outside edge to make it a little neater and I would make the ribbon hanger a little shorter but I already hot glued it so it's good enough for me. :) 

My husband initially thought I was crazy for doing this as he wasn't exactly sure how it would turn out but encouraged me anyways since he knows I enjoy doing little projects and I must say he loves the way it turned out. Next up... a Halloween wreath. 

Balloon Wreath

So I've been spending more and more time lately doing some craft projects... it gives me something to do when Jim is away and something to do when he's home and playing video games :)

For the last few years I've been scrapbooking and getting better and better at that. Last summer I started making cards and now I'm starting to make other projects from my new obsession... pinterest. So my first project was a balloon wreath.

Here are a few pictures from my project. It was super easy and you only need a few items to make it!
Here is what you need: a straw wreath (don't unwrap it or else it will shed), floral pins (I used about 100 b/c I pinned 2 balloons with 1 pin), 3 packs of balloons (72 count each), white ribbon... that's it

It was a little hard for my obsessive self to not to plan out the distribution of colors perfectly.... but all in all I think it came out pretty well.

Tyler's 3rd Birthday!

Today is our doggy Tyler's 3rd birthday! I can't believe he is 3 years old already! It seems like yesterday we were driving all the way to Alabama to adopt him!

 I had been scouring petfinder.com for weeks looking at all of the sweet little puppies out there to adopt! Then one day this adorable litter in Dothan Alabama popped up and I knew I just couldn't wait a day longer. Jim took about a 4 hour lunch break to drive to Dothan check out the puppies and fill out the paperwork. When he arrived he got really nervous because the lady had told me when I called that there were only 2 left and there was a lady in the parking lot with 2! However she was bringing them back because the dogs she already had didn't get along with new puppies. So there ended up being 4 that Jim could choose from but I had already told Jim that I wanted the all black one. Luckily he was also the only dog not whining around all of the other dogs so Jim took that as a good sign.

 Here is the picture Jim took on his phone the day he went to fill out the paperwork...


He was so tiny. We had to wait to pick him up to take home about an extra week and a half because he had a little cold and they couldn't neuter him until he was all better.


When we finally got the call in the early afternoon that we could go pick him up, I was beyond excited! I was so jealous that Jim had already gotten to see him in person. We drove out there right after I got off work and made it just in time thanks to the time change. We thought he'd be fine just sitting in my lap on the drive home but he was so wild he was running around the floor board of Jim's car so we pulled over for a potty break and ended up putting him in a crate in the back seat. Here we are before the transfer... Tyler is definitely wondering what is going on....

When we finally got home we took him on a short walk and let him start settling in. He still wasn't so sure of his surroundings... he even had to keep an eye on us while he had some water. 

We have had lots of fun memories since the day we brought him home. He is obsessed with playing fetch, loves to swim, absolutely loves to snuggle (the lady who brought him out to us the day we got him said the same thing), is a ridiculously fast runner, is super excited to open presents, and fills our hearts with lots of love. 

Happy 3rd Birthday Tyler!!! 

We love you!