Surprise Shower & First Photoshoot!

So the wedding is literally right around the corner…with only 3 weekends before the big day!! So exciting but still so much to do…so the blog posts will probably be fewer and far between for a while. On a wedding related note…my co-workers through me an amazing surprise bridal shower last week!! You can see I literally had no idea when I walked into my cube!!




Surprise!

I was surrounded by balloons, bright streamers, cute little mints, wonderful presents, and flowers! It was hard to get to work but it had to be done. One of my co-workers left her Nikon SLR camera so I took some pictures of the festivities with that since of course I didn’t have my camera.



Fun Decorations

  

Yummy Cake

   

Me with my cake & presents

 On Friday Rachel and her sister Jesyca came to Austin for one last visit (for Jes) before she headed back to Israel on Sunday. I got to do my first (human) photo shoot! We went downtown to the hill by the Long Center for a little photo shoot. I really couldn’t ask for better subjects…they’re so FUN and willing to do serious & goofy pictures. It was hot and humid (wait were we in Houston or Austin??? Hard to tell by the weather) but they were troopers…even with some outfit changes. I have too many favorites but I’m going to TRY to narrow it down to a couple to post here. We started pictures at about 5:30 so the lighting was awesome. We wanted to take some pictures downtown before it got dark but our hunger and cravings for Jamba Juice and Pita Pit got the best of us!! Here we go...




Beautiful day in the ATX!



Love the jumping pics!

 

Check out that air she's getting!



Cute sisters! Looks kinda like a fake background...promise we were there!






Sporting the awesome stashes & doing the lawn mower...nbd





So pretty!



Oh the tree poses...



Help a sister out!





LOVE their outfits!





Jesyca's cute tree pose





@ the top of the hill...what a beautiful day!



New Frisbees?!

I finally got to break my rebel out this weekend after much too long of it keeping the arts & crafts company in the closet. Saturday afternoon Justin and I went in the backyard to play with the dogs. The weather was pretty nice - breezy and cloudy. I got a lot of good pictures of the dogs. They got some new frisbees at Barktoberfest on Saturday morning and they looove chasing and chewing them. Here are some of my favorites.

Friday I'm taking pictures of Rachel and her sister Jesyca (who is here from Israel for month) somewhere in Austin. I'm really excited because they both love pictures and are so photogenic and I get some more practice with my camera!!

Italian Sandwiches=LOVE

Okay, so I thought about putting this in my last post about our New England trip but I decided that I love Italian sandwiches so much that they totally deserve their own post. Unless you've been to Maine (or even if you have) you probably don't know what a REAL Italian sandwich is. Let me get some myths out of the way: No it does not have a bunch of meat, no it does not have a crunchy roll, and no you can't just get them anywhere.




Italian Sandwich

 A "real" Italian sandwich has fresh Italian bread, ham, American cheese, tomatoes, onions, sour pickle, green pepper, black olives, salt & pepper, and oil (optional). Their sour pickles are the BEST!


Many different places in Portland, ME sell them but the original is from Amato's. Amato's was opened in 1902 - the same year they invented the Italian sandwich! There are now a couple of locations outside of Maine in New Hampshire, Vermont, & New York. I think the fact that a sandwich shop has been opened for 108 years has to tell you something.


When we lived in Maine when I was a baby my parents would cut pieces of their Italian and give it to me - I liked it so much that they had to start buying me my own because I was eating too much of theirs! Keep in mind I was under 2 years old!


During our mere 24 hour visit to Maine last week - I consumed 3 Italians: one for breakfast Friday morning, one for dinner Friday, and another for breakfast Saturday morning. If you know me you won't be surprised that I had a sandwich for breakfast - especially an Italian! When we go to Maine my dad and I load up on these things!!




An Italian paired with some delicious Salt & Vinegar chips - a winning combo!



While you can only get a real Italian Sandwich in Maine, we do make them here on occasion. They're good but nowhere near as good as the real thing!


So moral of the story is...I'm really hungry now and want an Italian AND if you ever go to Maine you must go to Amato's and get one of these delicious culinary creations!!

New England Trip

This past weekend Justin, my parents and I took a trip up to New England so Justin could meet my family (especially those who aren’t coming to the wedding). We got into Portland, Maine late Thursday night. On Friday we went out to lunch at Clambake with my grandparents and then took Justin on a tour of Portland all afternoon. We started out with a quick drive through Pine Point (where my great grandparents had a beach house) and then went out to Portland Headlight. It was such a beautiful place! We had nice weather considering Earl was supposed to hit – so the overcast day was not a problem for us! After Portland Headlight we went out to Bug Light Park and then East End Beach. After our Portland tour my mom and I took Justin to Freeport so he could see L.L Bean. It’s changed so much since I was there 2 years ago – too bad we didn’t have time to shop!!





Justin, Mimi, Bampy, & Me @ Portland Headlight

 

Portland Headlight

 Saturday we got up and drove to Boston. It was only about a 2 hour ride and it was a nice sunny day. We were making a game of trying to get all of the state welcome signs - I did better than Justin, just saying! ;) Once we made it to Boston we went on a trolley tour all around. It was a really good way for Justin to get a taste of Boston. We ended up getting off and walking through the Boston Common and going to the North End for a wonderful Italian dinner. We found this little place off the main street that my mom had read a lot of good reviews about and oh my gosh…it was DELICIOUS!! It tied the restaurant we ate at it in San Francisco last summer as the best spaghetti I’ve ever had! I made sure not to stuff myself so I could fit in some gelato after dinner! After dinner we decided to walk off our dinner and walked through Quincy Market on our way back to our hotel – which was near the prudential center. It ended up being about 2 miles but was needed after our dinner!


Frog pond - Boston



Really old cemetary in Boston

 Sunday we got up and drove to Torrington, Connecticut – where my mom grew up. It was a little longer ride than Saturday but not bad at all. The weather was in the 60’s all day which was AMAZING! When we got to Torrington we decided to go to the Goshen Fair – only about a 4 hour drive – that ended up taking over an hour. All this traffic was for this fair so you KNOW it was good! We got to eat lots of yummy (and SO bad for you) fair food including shoestring onion rings, a funnel cake, and apple crisp. After stuffing ourselves in the wonderfully cool weather we decided to go back to my grandpa’s house. It was a really fun day. On Monday one of my mom’s cousins had a Labor Day picnic so Justin got to meet most of my mom’s side of the family. We had another day of gorgeous weather and had so much fun with everyone!




Us @ the Goshen Fair



Me, Dad, & Gee playing bean bags!

 Sadly our trip came to an end yesterday but I was really missing the dogs so it was something to look forward to come home to! Yesterday was Lexie’s 1st birthday so I made her a cake and we had a mini-celebration for her. Of course the new toys we got her are half chewed up/destroyed today but that’s ok!


Get excited about my next post…it will be fully dedicated to Italian sandwiches!!

Off to New England!

I decided to do one quick post before we leave tomorrow. It's been a busy week with work, getting ready for our trip, neighbor dinner, and finishing up the invitations. But hallelujah they're done and sent (almost all of them are sent at least)!!! We finished stuffing, sealing, and double checking our list on Monday night...you can see the excitement in our faces because we are SO glad to be done with these!!

Look at all those invites!

Tonight we have to take the babies to Bastrop to meet Justin's parents because they are watching them for us while we're gone. Since we had to do that tonight we had our neighbor dinner last night. I decided to try a new recipe - Shepard's Pie. Sandie gave me the recipe at my shower and I decided to be brave and make a recipe I had never made before for company. Usually I go with something I've cooked before because I know there's less of a change I'll mess it up. I guess I got some kind of cooking confidence with all of our new kitchen items from my shower!! The Shepard's Pie actually came out really well...at least everyone said they liked it - and I don't think they were lying becuase there was barely any left!! I was so happy that it came out...but was short on time so no pictures :( but it wasn't a very pretty dish anyways.


We leave tomorrow for our very quick trip to New England. I have to pack tonight because I've been putting it off because we don't know what the weather will be like with that crazy hurricane Earl making his way up North. And sadly I'm not taking the Rebel...we are carrying on our luggage and it's such a short trip I have to leave it at home :( but I will have my little canon point & shoot so I will come back with awesome pictures still! So as of right now this is our sched...


Thursday: Get into Portland, ME late at night
Friday: Spend all day with my grandparents in Portland
Saturday: Go to Boston and do touristy stuff because Justin's never been there :)
Sunday: Go to Torrington, Connecticut
Monday: Mom's side of the family is having a Labor Day Picnic! wahoo!
Tuesday: Come back to Texas BRIGHT and early...actually probably dark and early because our flight is at 6am




Hopefully Boston will look like this...



and not like the great hurricane of 1938...

Portland Headlight on a beautiful day...

the surf @ Portland Headlight during hurricane Bill

Hope everyone has a fun @ safe Labor Day weekend!!