Tag Archives: Road Trip

04.17.13

I am in love with Louisville....

Posted by Christina // 6 Replies

You may remember that Louisville, Kentucky was our first stop on our East Coast Road Trip. I declared my love then, and fell even harder this time around.

For Christmas I got my family tickets to go see our favorite band, Fleetwood Mac. Unlucky for us, no one ever deems Missouri a great venue for rocking out. So I decided a family road trip was in order to check a box on our bucket lists.

I grew up traveling with my family, and our trips are always at the top of my awesome-memory bank. As we grew older and went through the “can my friend come” and eventually “can my boyfriend come” stages of life the trips became rare. I miss those family trips more than I miss Zach Morris, sometimes I hate growing up. Throw in three members of our family going to school for a couple of years and you have quite a scheduling conflict, but somehow we made it happen. Call it a testament to our love for Fleetwood Mac. I suppose you could also say we actually like spending time together.
Gramma look away, there may have been a teensy bit of drinking going down. Ready for a photo-throwdown…. Please check out the bottom picture in the center, my mother was teaching my dad how to Gangham. Aren’t you sad you missed out on that.

The concert was fantastic, Lindsey Buckingham is my hero. Afterwards, we took our high (of the music variety, no illegal drugs in our veins) down the road to Fourth Street Live. We stopped in at the piano bar Howl at the Moon, where they successfully sang Nikki Minaj and Tupac. It was impressive.

If you follow us on Facebook you caught a glimpse of the horse playing drums….which made the night fantastic. Even though whilst powdering my nose I encountered a group of super-excited bathroom goers that couldn’t have told you who Fleetwood Mac was if you were holding a bottle rocket to their head. Look, if you have never karaoked “Sings a song it sounds like she’s singing…ohhh babay ohhh baby ohhh” well then I feel bad for you son. At the end of the night, my mom realized that we hadn’t eaten since 1 p.m. and declared a state of emergency. Everyone I asked said that there was only one place to go for some “effing great pizza man”. Everyone except our cab driver, who said it was too late for food. Too bad for him our hotel receptionist had our backs and gave us a menu for that “oh my gosh you are gonna love this pizza” place and their number.

I called and ordered some pizza and soda pop, then my mom yelled at me for not ordering fried Oreos. I thought I was being healthy by avoiding the fried dessert at 3 a.m. but Mr. Spinelli thought otherwise. Miracle of all miracles, they gave us fried Oreos. Let me tell you, fried Oreos after three buckets of beer is better than heaven.

So the next day, we did the only reasonable thing…got seconds. If you are local to Louisville, I am jealous.
If you are traveling to Louisville, go there and I’m jealous.
If you have no plans to go to Louisville, make them.

After lunch we explored a little and found eclectic little homes and shops.
This was my favorite. What is your favorite “family vacation” memory?
Ever been to Louisville, KY?
Want to be a gypsy like Stevie Nicks?

11.28.12

Make my art sentimental...

Posted by Christina // 17 Replies

Smack dab in the middle of our mile long to-do list…is a frame wall.

You know floor to ceiling frames covering the wall full of pretty prints, lovely photos, and sentimental art. Apparently that takes patience.

Frames are not cheap, but we started collecting on our recent trip to Ikea.

Now comes the patience part….filling the frames.

Sure I could just find pictures and throw them in frames, but I really want our frame wall to sum us up and make us smile. When people walk into our home I want them to look at our frame wall and say, “now I understand”. Ok not really.

You know what makes me smile….our road trip.
Yea, I’ll make a road trip tribute. If only it played 80’s cover music.

One frame down…seventy more to go.

Send me sentimental art y’all.

11.12.12

Meanwhile in Illinois....

Posted by Christina // 7 Replies

During our short jaunt up to Chicago for the YHL book tour we decided to stop by this little store we have heard about a time or two.

Yea you heard right, we had never been to Ikea…but we fixed that right up.

Even though we had been up for way too many hours, and I had gone all giddy crazy meeting the Petersik’s we still made room for some Swedish lovin.

We gave ourselves a $100 budget and only an hour to shop.
Hey, we are broke and had to get home before the energy drink wore off.

Most people would think that was crazy, and it was.

Holy speed shopping.

Every single person we told that we were going to Ikea said that we absolutely must get the Swedish meatballs. And ice cream, definitely ice cream.

They were tasty indeed.
Do they cater for Christmas? To St. Louis?

I of course loved all the pretty, Tim was shocked and thrilled with the prices.
So in short, we had more fun than a toddler on a teeter-totter.

We did make our time limit and got back on the road by 4p.m. to make the long trek home. The budget on the other hand, we blew by a measley $18.

We bought simple white dishes and lots of white frames so we can get crackin on that living room frame wall. I can not wait to show you all.

I know we said we want to add more flava and color in our lives, but we figure those are staples and can be spiced up with lots of colorful napkins and art. Am I right?

Now where can I start a petition to get Ikea in the Lou?

11.11.12

Highlight of my life...the YHL book tour

Posted by Christina // 59 Replies

Three years ago I ran across a blog.
Three years ago I don’t think I knew what a blog was.

I stalked John and Sherry Petersik’s wedding and home renovations for days….and those days then turned into everyday for three years.

I have followed their ups and downs and admired their ceramic animal collection from afar for a creepily long time.

So once the creators of Young House Love announced their book release, I prayed and prayed some more that they would visit somewhere within a ten hour driving radius. I don’t like limits but I felt like 20 hours of driving might be pushing it if I wanted someone to come with me.
Then they said the magic words….Chicago.

Game over.

Then of course the nervous list making began.

So here’s the part where most people will think we’re crazy….we left on Friday night at eleven o’clock at night. On three hours of sleep. And drove six hours to Chitown.

I obviously don’t have any road-trippin pictures like I did here since it was night time.
But once we got there….well picture frenzy commence.

I called West Elm to make sure that we could get in since I was unable to RSVP when they announced the tour. The girl was so sweet and told me to make sure I got there super early because some people might camp out, hence my boytoy’s loving text from yours truly. We got there at 5:30 am and there was not a soul around. And nothing was open.

I decided to set up camp since it wasn’t too cold and I needed to save my pep for meeting Sherry & John.

It didn’t stay lonely for long.
We met the most AMAZING people in line and we had a blast passing the seven hours of wait time.

It was so nice to meet all of you, and everyone else that came to meet the crazy girl who showed up at 5am.
The Petersiks really do have the best fans.

West Elm was seriously amazing.
The store was gorgeous.
The people were fantastic.
Joanie and Jeromy, holy amazing.

I also found out, St. Louis is getting a West Elm next year.
I am going to start saving now.

The whole event was surreal, and sweet.

By the time this photo was taken of me enjoying my sweets, we had been there for a little over eight hours.
The line was wrapping around the building, and it was pouring.
Dedication….we got it.

It was so worth the wait.

It was one of the coolest days I have had in a long time. John and Sherry are exactly how you would expect them to be….amazing.

So fun and happy, and the best part was all their fans are the same way.

I also ran into Nicole Balch from Making It Lovely, who also is a co-teacher in the e-course I took with Holly Becker of decor8. After I met Sherry & John I got to leave them a little note in their blank book that they bring to all the signings. Talk about pressure, even my girl Roo has written in this book.

If you all really want to see me geeking out, just watch this video that Tim caught.

He is such a good man…I figured I owed him a little somethin somethin for you know staying awake for 26 hours, driving me to Chicago, feeding me chocolate when I wanted to crash, capturing the magic, and wiping my tears when we got outside and I realized that I just met Sherry and John. Seriously, that happened. Soooo…as promised.

Amendment: As I was writing this post….this happened.

I am not going to deny getting up and doing the cabbage patch as soon as I read this….then I may have cried.
My life is seriously complete. I have to send a HUGE, wet, sloppy kiss to @westelm and @younghouselove for hosting such an amazing shindig. It really was the best.

10.05.12

If you could go anywhere....

Posted by Christina // 4 Replies

They say as soon as one vacation is over you start planning the next.

Oh wait…”they” don’t say that?
Well, I do.

We love to travel, we love to learn and see pretty places and meet the most interesting people.
Daydreaming of far off places gives us something to look forward to….more adventure I say.

We revealed in this post that we finally accepted that our priorities may not be the same as everyone else’s. Now that we are ok with that, we have given ourselves permission to dream bigger and take more risks. We aren’t going to eat raw bacon or anything, that is still too risky. But traveling has pushed its way to the top of our list.

Before you call Suze Orman, know that our first priority is to get out of debt and save like crazy to be able to run away like gypsies.

But saving is hard….especially when Pier 1 has a sale.

So we put together a list of places we want to go.
Our “Dream Bigger” List

Obviously we can’t do it all unless we win the lottery or have some rich uncle we didn’t know about, but you can bet your tooshie we are buying our lotto tickets and checking family trees.

The point is to make the list so you have a reason not to buy the adorable ceramic owl that is half off.
I mean you know how I feel about lists.

Can I get an amen….and maybe a couple plane tickets.

We are now accepting donations.

Where do you want to go? India? Costa Rica? Brazil or Russia?

10.04.12

How to travel together nicely....

Posted by Christina // 4 Replies

The most common thing we heard before we left on our almost two week road trip was, “oh this will be the ultimate test”.

Of course there were variations like, “pack a big bag of patience” and “please try not to kill each other” and even “whoa nelly you two will be enemies by day three”.

Not very encouraging.

T and I have always traveled well together, but we are talking small weekend trips here kids. We really started psyching ourselves up for 13 days of being in a two foot radius of one another. To our surprise, it was easy breezy fun.
Disclaimer: we do not have chittlins, I believe that to be extremely important information.

We of course had our moments of frazzled map reading, and insane traffic never made us giggly….but we did a good job of remembering that we were frustrated with the situation and not with each other.

Once we hit the downward slope, aka the drive home…we both got a little grumpy. But there were never any blowouts, which I think we both fully expected.

All my life I have looked at traveling as very hectic. Traveling meant arguing at least 32% of the trip, usually in the very beginning. I’ve been on some trips where people fight the whole time…not fun y’all.

Feeling like we might be onto something….we put together a list for you all.
We hope all of your travels are as happy as ours!