GRATITUDES + BREAKTHROUGHS // JULY 12, 2016

Gratitudes

Up top you’ll find a collage of our three animals. Ava Jean my 8 year old Miniature Pinscher, Mosby our 6 month old Boxer pup and Tom Bergeron his black + white kitty. All three love sleeping in our bed…with us. So yes, that’s one round snuggly small dog at our feet under the covers, one medium size puppy smack-dab in between us with his head out of the covers, and one cat that likes to sleep on the pillows on top of our heads.

I’ve slowly started loving board games or should I say games in general with small groups of friends. That was never my thing before but there is something so fun about playing together. This past Thursday, our friends Carlyle + Jeremy – you might remember them from their mini engagement session in Iceland, you can see that here – came over to get organized for their upcoming wedding. I won’t be shooting their wedding but they needed a little help building a timeline and organizing their vendors before locking down all of the details. They came over with their pup Sammy and after knocking out the wedding business we downloaded a game off of my boyfriends PS4. It was hilarious! We grabbed JackBox Party Pack 2, it had a bundle of 5 games that were interactive and entertaining. We each used our phones as remotes, signing in through Safari to participate. If you are hosting friends over or are looking for a way to kill some time amongst friends I highly, highly recommend the download. My favorite was Fibbage!

I got word last week that I’ll have an engagement session published on the local DMV blog United with Love. I can’t wait to share the full post, but I will say it is for one of my favorite engagements!

I have been slowly gathering things to pack for my big trip next week to Italy. I have two suitcases set out in the spare bedroom and I have been setting things next to the suitcase. I went to Target to pick up a few extra toiletries and essentials for the trip and walked out with 2 pairs of shoes, 10 pairs of undies, one yoga tank top, and a bunch of tiny, cute toiletries. Target gets me every time. I also hopped over to TJMaxx just go check out a few cotton dresses because it is going to be HOT in Rome. When I walked back into the dressing room the attendant asked me how many items I had… 17. There goes my plan of just picking up essentials. I ended up purchasing 6, but still.

Back to nail polish for this week, I am riding out the ElePhantastic Pink until the weekend, I have a gorgeous UVA wedding on Friday and plan on repainting on Saturday for a day at the winery and polo. If I can’t handle a few chips I’ll take it off and go with OPI’s Pink with Envy nail strengthener. It helps strengthen with just a hint of pink so that they look manicured.

Breakthroughs

Recently I’ve had many people asking me, “Are you excited for Rome?” Honestly, it has been on my mind but with 1000 other tasks that need to be completed like wedding galleries, portrait galleries, packing, laundry, making arrangements for the animals and let me say packing again, my excitement usually falls to the wayside until about a day before. I started to wonder why I push back those feelings of excitement until the last minute. I’ve come up with two potential ideas: maybe it’s because I’ve been disappointed before from lost or broken travel plans, or the pressure of checking everything off of my to-do list before boarding the plane to feel like it’s vacation. I find that other people are able to check out from their regular lives days early if not a week earlier, saying that they’ve already got “vacation on the mind.” For me, I also find that I try to add non-essential and sometimes non-realistic tasks to my list. For example, cleaning out my closet, completing all of the laundry and have it organized before I go. Why?! This was a task I should have completed on a separate schedule, not cramming into my “Rome To-Do” list. I have found other things there, like clean the bathroom and scrub the floors…why?! My boyfriend will be home and he can handle those additional chores without me. So this week as I work toward prioritizing and completing my to-do list I’m actively trying to enjoy the process and get excited for a month in Italy.

As always, thanks for reading. xoxo.