30 Before 30

I recently turned 25 and I think it's time to retire my "25 before 25" list 

and work on some new goals for the next 5 years!

I blogged a few months ago with some goals for the 2016 calendar year,
but this goes beyond just this calendar year!

So here we go, here are 30 goals I hope to accomplish before I turn 30 on May 19. 2021:

1. Write a list of 30 goals and encourage others to do so (Please comment me a link to your own list!)

2. Read my Bible more, as well as faith-based devotionals

3. Start our own company

4. Attend a blogging conference

5. Send my mom flowers out of the blue

6. Learn calligraphy and use it!

7. Have a picnic with Houston in an Atlanta park

8. Get a puppy!!!! We just need to agree on a breed we like first... stay tuned!

9. Read 5 books cover to cover

10. Work at meal planning... so we stop making 5 trips to the grocery store each week ;)

11. Have friends over for a blind wine tasting

12. Successfully plant herbs (and keep them alive) in our backyard

13. Consistently workout and more importantly be content and happy with how I look

14. Get our porch updated and hang Edison lights outside

15. Run (and walk) a half marathon

16. Travel abroad with Houston

17. Cook a big meal and host a dinner party for friends

18. Watch a meteor shower

19. Go on a couples vacation

20. This is a stretch - learn to speak another language. Hopefully French! Oui oui

21. Then we should probably travel to France to use that French language ;)

22. Join Junior League of Atlanta

23. Spend time serving the homeless in Atlanta

24. Take a golf lesson. How proud will Houston be of me?!

25. Unplug for an entire weekend. I should do this at least once a year.

26. Invest in real sunglasses. No more $5 sunnies.

27. Get better at budgeting, especially when it comes to groceries

28. Become a Pure Barre instructor - I have fallen in love with Pure Barre and would love to teach classes if the opportunity is available!

29. With our recent interest of wine the last few years, go to Napa Valley with Houston

(Maybe for our 3rd wedding anniversary trip?? Yes please!)

30. Throw a huge birthday bash for Houston's and my 30th birthdays!

There it is! I'll keep you all posted on how my goals are coming along by posting to a separate page as well. You can find it at the top of my blog under the "30 Before 30" page.

Thank you Business Insider for some inspiration!

It's fun to think about where Houston's and my life will be five years from now. Where do you see yourself in five years? And what do you hope to accomplish?

xox, A

Our 9 month wedding anniversary!

I know I'm going crazy now, blogging twice in one night after going silent for a few months but I couldn't go to bed without sharing that it is Houston's and my nine month wedding anniversary today!!

Oh, how time has flown already so quickly! We just got our full wedding video (on Christmas morning, and what an amazing Christmas gift that was!) from our wonderful videographers, Imprint Cinema and I just had to share our wedding video teaser with you!




Thank you Imprint Cinema for making such a beautiful teaser and feature film for us! Thank you to our Dream Team of vendors, which you'll see their fantastic work throughout the video, and the one and only Brandee Gaar of Blush by Brandee for your vision, and going above and beyond anything we ever imagined for our special day!

xoxo,
A

Chicago Girls Weekend

Another item to cross off my list of 25 things to do before I turn 25: Plan and pay for a trip on my own!

Several months back some of my best college friends decided it was time for our first big girls weekend trip and we decided on Chicago! I had only visited Chicago once before when I was much younger with my family, so I knew this would be a completely different trip filled with shopping and fun-touristy things!

I have to say, Chicago is now one of my favorite cities! There is so much to do and I love getting to walk almost everywhere! There was tons of shopping (obviously), beautiful architecture and works of art to see. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, which was in a great location and I would definitely recommend it, plus we found a great deal on it!

Another recommendation I would have is this awesome app my friends told me about and we used on this trip, it's called "PhotoCircle." It's free and we used it the entire weekend! You can upload pictures to it, similar to other social media apps, but you can invite your friends and share you pictures through it. It makes it a lot easier and faster than texting pictures to your entire group, especially for a weekend full of pictures! Plus you can share all of your pictures with one another without having to post them for everyone to see, just your friends!


Friday
My roommate, Juliann and I both had to work half-days so we met up with the other girls in Chicago Friday night. 

We went to this delicious asian restaurant for dinner called Sunda, I ordered pad thai with chicken (It was a lot of food, I definitely could have split with someone!). Our friend knew the chef and he brought us some delicious appetizers to try, the crispy brussels sprouts and some kind of delicious sushi rolls which were to die for! 

After dinner, we walked across the street to Paris Club, which was a really fun Chicago bar! To make it even more fun we met up with one of our sorority sisters we hadn't seen in several years and loved getting to catch up with her! Lastly, a few of the Chicago Bulls players showed up to this bar too, so we felt pretty famous to be hanging out where the celebs go!

Oh, and we took a limo home, it seemed more efficient than 3 separate taxis! :)

Saturday
Saturday morning we woke up early and grabbed ourselves some Starbucks, it wasn't as chilly as we were expecting but still cold! We grabbed some brunch at a place called Sweetwater Tavern that was pretty good. Then we went to the famous artwork in Millennium Park at The Bean for pictures, which as it turns out it is actually called Cloud Gate. It was such a beautiful, fall day! We got lucky to have such great weather while we were visiting, we ended up just sitting in the park for almost an hour just people watching and taking pictures!

Then we headed to the Magnificent Mile to do some shopping! Some of us got the famous popcorn from Garret's. We thought about doing the riverboat cruise, but they were already closed so we headed back to the hotel to freshen up.

We attempted to walk to the John Hancock building, but walked too many blocks in the wrong direction and so we gave up and called Uber to come get us. If you haven't used Uber before, I highly recommend it! They are growing quickly and are in several major US cities already including Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, LA, NYC and many others! It's nice because they charge you based on distance, not time - so if you know you might be sitting in a lot of traffic (umm Atlanta) you only pay a set fee. They pick you up in a sleek black SUV or town car and you put your credit card information in the app so you don't even need to worry about having cash!

One last app suggestion I have for a trip with friends, is Venmo. It makes it really easy to split tabs like cab fares and dinners when you're traveling (or even when you're home) with friends! For example, Juliann paid for our Uber ride and we could all pay her back through Venmo immediately so she didn't have to worry about asking each of us for a few dollars, because it definitely adds up quickly! My roommate and I also use it monthly to repay each other for bills, it's so easy! And it doesn't charge you any kind of fee unless you use a credit card (3%), but if it's linked to your bank account or debit card, it's totally free!

After waiting in line we finally got to take the elevator up to the Signature Lounge at the top of the John Hancock building, on the 96th floor to get a drink together. Of course the drinks are pricy, but it is totally worth that incredible view!! There is also a restaurant and observatory you can go to, but the observatory is $18 so we opted to get a glass of wine for $12 instead and get the view!

Then we split up, two of the girls went to see Wicked while the rest of us went to a delicious Italian restaurant Volare for dinner. I ordered the most amazing pasta, the Spaghetti Neri al Pesce, which was black spaghetti tossed with shrimp, lump crab, scallops and sage. If you love seafood, I highly recommend it! All of their pastas (and maybe all of their entrees) come in half portions. My half portion was still huge!

We were so exhausted after a long day of walking around and sightseeing we called it an early night to rest up for our final day of adventure!


Sunday
We tried this place for breakfast the morning before but it was too packed, so Sunday we woke up earlier and walked to the Wildberry Cafe, which was incredible! We waited an hour but I think it was definitely worth the wait! I could have split this too, but I ordered their signature Wildberry Pancakes, if you love sweet things you'd LOVE these like I did! 

After that, we did the Wendella Chicago River Architecture Tour which was so fascinating! It was freezing for us southern ladies! I would highly recommend anyone visiting Chicago to do one of the river tours!

We finished up our trip with some necessary deep dish pizza at Lou Malnati's Pizzeria. We quickly ran back to the hotel to get our bags and headed to the airport. 

The trip went fast, but I felt like we got to do everything we all wanted to! We all hugged goodbye at the airport and went our separate ways Juliann and I went back to Atlanta and the others jumped our their planes back to Birmingham. Glad we had Homecoming to look forward to the next weekend, so it wouldn't be too long before we would be reunited again!


Any suggestions for our next girls weekend trip next year??
A

#16 Get a blowout

I finally got to get a hair blowout with my mom and sister when they were in town! As you might remember, getting a blowout was on my list of things to do before I turn 25.

Houston's parents threw a beautiful engagement for us a few weeks ago 1 thought it would be an appropriate time to get our hair done.

Picture from: www.myglowdry.com

Mom, Betsy and I went to GlowDry here in Atlanta to get pampered before the engagement party.

Houston and I with our sweet parents. It was such a gorgeous party, Houston and I felt so loved!

My handsome groom :)

I would definitely recommend trying a blowout bar! There are several all over the country, GlowDry's only location is here in Atlanta but there are many others you can try. I loved getting my hair done there for a special occasion. DryBar is another popular hair blowout bar, I'd love to try that one soon too!

Have you tried a blowout bar before? Will you go back? 

My first job!

So today marked a very large milestone in the history of… my life.

Last week as I was approaching the end of my three month internship, I was given an offer letter to become a full-time, full benefits, indefinite employee!!!! 

I cannot tell you what a blessing this company has already been to me and I am so humbled and honored to get to stick around with the awesome people (seriously, the people are my favorite part!) that work at my public relations firm.

My sweet, big sister sent me gorgeous sunflowers last week when I told my family the great news and my fiancé and I made a yummy dinner together to celebrate too! It is such a joyful relief to know that I have my first job!

photo from instagram

Today, the first of the month, marked the first day of my job! I already get to check an item off my list of 25 things to do before I'm 25! You can see the entire list here.

xo,

A

25 before 25

So thanks to some inspiration from some of my favorite bloggers Mackenzie and Carly, I have decided to come up with my own "25 before 25" list.

I've always been a goal-oriented person (I definitely get that from my dad!) and love having something written down so I can know how I'm doing in my progress of accomplishing those goals, so here we go...

1. Write a list of 25 goals and inspire others to do so. (Please comment me a link to your own list!)
2. Get married (hurry up March 29, 2014!)
3. Take a girls trip to Napa Valley.
4. Start my own company.
5. Get a full-time job.
6. RUN an entire half marathon (I've ran/walked two before with my sister, it's time I actually run the whole thing!)
7. Attend a blogging conference.
8. Make an address book with contact information for my friends and family. (Already on my way using Postable.com!)
9. Send out Christmas cards.
10. Take a cooking class.
11. Actually make ten of the recipes from my Pinterest board and blog about them.
12. Send my mom flowers out of the blue.
13. Learn calligraphy. (You can use my link to get $10 off your class if you want to take it with me!)
14. Find glasses I'll actually wear.
15. Have a picnic with Houston in Piedmont Park.
16. Get a blowout at DryBar.
17. Plan and pay for a trip on my own.
18. Open an Etsy shop.
19. Be featured on another blog.
20. Return to Samford for Homecoming.
21. Get a credit card not connected to my parents' bank account.
22. Attend a Chi Omega alumni event.
23. Create a budget and stick to it!
24. Go to the gym 3 times a week for a month.
25. Read 5 books cover to cover. (Might not sound hard for some of you, but I don't think I've read an entire book since high school... I'm more of a movie girl, okay?)

Well there's my list and I can't wait to start crossing things off! I'll keep you all posted here on how my goals are coming! :)

Do you like to set time-sensitive goals? What are some of them?

-A