preview of yosemite

Hello everyone!! We made it back down safely from Yosemite, really late on Monday night. There was a lot of traffic on the roads with everyone returning home from their weekend getaways as well. It was truly an amazing experience and I am excited to share all the pictures and memories with you. This first post is just a little teaser of all the pictures to come, because we took over 300 photos! I have my work cut out for me - trying to scale them down and pick out the best ones to post.

First let me tell you a little bit about our trip. On Saturday morning around 7am we packed the car, grabbed some breakfast and hit the road. We made good time to get into Yosemite, however about 4 miles away from the park entrance we hit traffic. Bad traffic. Where we sat in the car for 2 hours moving a couple of inches every 10 minutes. We started snacking on some food I had packed and watched a couple episodes of Whale Wars on my iPad before finally getting into the park. That day we just spent our exploring and figuring out what we wanted to do for the rest of the trip. We made it out to the lower Yosemite Falls and climbed on the rocks to get the best view and full experience of the waterfall's raw power. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and there were lots of low clouds hanging in the valley.  Saturday and Sunday were absolutely stunning with bright blue skies and a couple of white puffy clouds in the distance.

Sunday was our big hike day and we were gone from 7am to 7pm just hiking through the mountains. It was a long, tiring and trying day but we came out on the other side both physically and mentally stronger both as individuals and together in our relationship. Even today {Wednesday} I am still feeling the after math of blisters and sore muscles, but the experience was 100% worth it.

Then on Monday we had a 2 hour horseback ride booked and we biked around the valley floor enjoying the beautiful weather and taking it all in before we had to come back to reality. Then about 6 o'clock we said goodbye to the beautiful forest and made the trek back home.

Stay tuned for a couple more posts in more detail with amazing scenic photographs and the beauty that is Yosemite National Park.

X x

going off the grid

Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn {okay, 6.30am} Brett and I are heading off to Yosemite for Memorial Day Weekend! We have been looking forward and preparing for this all week. I haven only been to Yosemite once in my life and I was very little with my family so I don't remember much. But today is crunch time so I am grocery shopping, finishing up laundry, packing up, charging; cameras, cell phone's, ipad's you name it.

We have a big all day hike planned for Sunday so this week I have been trying to load up on protein, also I haven't had any soda {ok, I cheated once at lunch} lots and lots of water and keeping the exercise pretty light this week as I don't want to be sore before I even get there. We also have a 2 hour horseback ride booked on Monday that I am really looking forward to because it is something I always loved and used to do when I was younger. Unfortunately, the weather report says rain on Saturday when we arrive so we are just going to play it by ear for what we want to do. Also, we cleaned out Brett's explorer with shock vac and all because if there is one crumb of food in there a bear will smell it and rip the car apart to get to it. {no seriously} There have been so many stories about this happening, I even heard a bear ripped open a car because there was gum on the floor - yikes! At least we took care of that earlier in the week. All that is left today is the finishing touches.

Here are some of my pictures as I am still finishing up packing. I hope you all have a wonderful 3-day weekend with your family and friends. This weekend... we are going off the grid and I will see you when I am back to civilization!

X x

exploring uncharted territory

I have lived in California my entire life, grew up in the bay area and went to LA for college, but I think you already knew that. From there I have ventured elsewhere, San Diego - Santa Barbara - San Luis Obispo - Napa - Sacramento - Tahoe - Kirkwood... you get the idea. But I have actually never been to Davis! Which, in case you aren't familiar, it is just south of Sacramento.. like 20 minutes south. I guess I have never really had a reason to go, it was always just a little dot on the freeway as I drove past it. Well this weekend Brett and I drove up after work because one of his friends just graduated from UC Davis with his Law degree. We arrived later in the evening and went to dinner and bar hopped a little, celebrating and toasting every step of the way- it was really a great evening. The next morning we woke up and I wanted to explore the area a bit more since it was dark last night. I am pretty much just in love with Davis right now. It is the perfect quaint-but-not-so-quaint town at the same time. Everyone is riding their bikes and walking to the town, there are fabulous little restaurants everywhere all with out door seating available. I thought I was in love then, until I came across the most amazing frozen yogurt place {although really it was a candy shop with frozen yogurt on the side} There were six different kind of frozen yogurt followed by an entire wall dedicated to different kinds of candy. Then they had jars full of  chocolate, peanut butter, caramel sauces, jars of cookies and then tons of fresh fruit to choose from. You can see the pictures below, it was incredible. After that we found our way back to the car to hit the road.

As we are driving back in the direction of home, we decide to swing by Berkley and visit a another friend of Brett's and his girlfriend who live there. Surprise!! I have never been to Berkley before. I am sure most of you where where it is, but it is just north of Oakland and across the bay from San Francisco. It was a nice day but there was fog so you couldn't really see much of the city :[ But we got a tour of the campus, it was absolutely amazing and the huge clock tower that is in the middle was a sight to be seen. After walking through it all, we ended up on the main downtown area and had a bite to eat. There were all kind of restaurants and shops of course in true Berkley fashion "organic" "all natural" signs everywhere :] but it was still so much fun.

After leaving Berkley we had to quickly head home to do a quick clothing change and then go to a family friend's house to celebrate their daughter who just graduated from USC. The weekend was pretty non-stop but I really enjoyed getting to see two new places in California as well as celebrate the accomplishments of others!

X x

hair chalking

I have been wanting to try hair chalking ever since I saw the post about it on Lauren Conrad's  The Beauty Department a couple months ago and I have finally worked up the courage to give it a try!

I have naturally blonde hair and have never died, bleached or done anything like that to my hair. This is really the first thing I have done to it besides the usual shampoo, hair spray, or what have you. I was a little nervous at first but forged ahead. I took a small piece of hair and kind of twisted it up together a little, then just took the chalk and started to almost "brush" it into my hair. I tried out most of the colors since it was my first time and I wanted to see what it would look like.

Unfortunately the pink did not turn out at all. Blue and green was very strong and dominant. The purple was also pretty light & you could hardly see it. I then did end up giving the red a hair and it kind of turned into a pink-ish/red-ish color so I guess that worked out pretty well.

The only problem I seemed to have was that after I took the chalk through the section of my hair, it made it very tangled and almost kind of frizzy, like if you were to tease your hair.. so then when I used to brush to smooth it out, half the chalk came out with it.. that was a little disappointing / frustrating.

After working on this for about 20 minutes, I decided the best way to show off the colors was to put it into a braid to see the different colors come through my hair. Once it was in the braid, in person you cold definitely see it well, although the picture at the bottom doesn't quite show it off.

the chalk

Anyway, this was my first experience with the chalking! It was fun to do and I think I will definitely give it another try. Has anyone else given this a try & had a good or bad experience? Share below in the comments, I would love to hear about your trials and errors. :]

X x

mother's day

Yesterday started out rather gloomy, we had a fabulous bike ride planned, a bbq happening later and the sun was nowhere to be found. However, we forged ahead and went out for a bike ride down to Starbucks where we sat outside with our bikes and coffee as the sun started to wake up. Then we took a couple detours home and by then it turned became a nice and warm afternoon with not a cloud in the sky! We had cocktails, sat by the pool and munched until we could smell the food cooking on the bbq. My mom is wearing her new purple Under Armour top that I bought her, looks fabulous don'tcha think?

Hope your Mother's Day was relaxing, sweet and spent with someone special.

X x

cinco de mayo festivities

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day with lots of sunshine! In the morning through lunch time I went round to the local community pool my parents and I belong to. I swam there on the team until I was 18 as well as coached and gave private swim lessons every summer for about 5 years (also where i met Brett!) Anyway so they were having a little party with strawberry margaritas, and gin fizz's and lots of great snacks. After it was over we decided it was such a beautiful day we went back on our bikes to get swim suits and towels, make our own batch of margaritas and took them back to the pool to take a little swim and then tan a little. Then as the sun was starting to go down it was back into normal clothes and off to find some delicious tacos, the one picture above was a $1 street taco Brett tells me was delicious! I had my own fish tacos later with of course another margarita close by. I also decided to take my new light faded ripped jeans from Zara and my new neon yellow shoes out for some fun, what do you think? I hope you all have a fabulous week ahead!

X x

and that's all my iPhone has to say about that

This week was pretty busy, work wise. I was at the Santa Clara Convention Center with other co-workers representing our company and showing off our new products at our booth. It can be nice to get out of the office for a few days and experience a lot of face to face communication with people, but then again.. those long hours took a lot out of me and I am exhausted now. Really looking forward to this weekend and hopefully getting to play in the sunshine! {with a margarita or two for cinco de mayo :)! }

a little pop of color!

little candies at our booth to give away

Happy Friday & weekend to you all!

X x