summertime hello.

A few fun things from around the web!

1. What it costs to eat at every 3-star Michelin restaurant in the world.

2. Genius Picnic Bag on my wish list. 

3. Consider this yet another reason I dream of being gal pals with Kristen Wiig. 

4. Can't wait to visit the giants in Mariposa Grove with my parents this weekend!

5. Grown men reenact conversations with a toddler. 

6. Rent in SF is actually the worst. 

7. Lowland Hum plays at the Garage. Their album Native Air will be available two weeks from today. I already have it and man is it good.

8. I will be playing on this beach in Costa Rica with my handsome husband love in just 2 weeks! 

Hope everyone is having a full and happy summer : )

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and the answer is....

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Dubai!

How exciting is that?! We are thrilled and can't wait to fly Saturday morning. Finn's co-founder and sales exec will be joining us Sunday and we'll all spend a week there. I can't believe it. Also, tomorrow is my birthday so this surprise adventure came at quite the opportune time. It's funny that the same thing kind of happened last year too. Thanks for the comments and sweet text messages - I'll be sure to share photos!

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back with a surprise...

Hello wonderful people,

Mr. Finneran and I have some very exciting news (it's not a baby or a puppy so you can all exhale). Finn just found out he'll be traveling next week for work and (even more exciting) I'll be joining him. This coming Saturday, we will be leaving for a week long trip to one of the destinations below:

     1. Cape Town
     2. Dubai
     3. London
     4. Rio de Janeiro
     5. Oslo
     6. Hong Kong

Please place your votes for where you think we're headed. Then tomorrow, I'll reveal which one is real (because let's face it, building suspense is way more fun than just telling you). 

Whoever guesses correctly gets a postcard from the secret location while we're there! 

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going to the chapel.

We are boarding a plane first thing tomorrow morning to head east for Jacob & Alison's wedding. I've been looking forward to this January weekend for months and am so excited it's finally here! Three days filled with celebration, dear friends, thankfulness, toasts, wild dancing, and seeing one of my favorite friends enter into a most beautiful blessing with her Jacob. It's going to be a wonderful weekend. Here we go!

photo by Sarah Der Photography

(PS - remember when Alison asked me to be her bridesmaid?)

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snow wall.

Lake Tahoe snow is no joke.

This is my middling attempt at a blog post for the week. Fifty words and a photo of me pointing at (an undeniably impressive) wall of snow. It can only get better from here folks. Thanks for hanging in there.

love, beth

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lake tahoe: 3/3

Aside from our drive around the lake, an evening at the movies (seeing Wreck-It Ralph), and a fancy dinner date, not much was planned or scheduled for our time away. We tried to see the sunset every night and other than that, our days were wide open for time on the porch and hanging out by the fire. We spent time talking about all that's come to be since our last anniversary (quite a lot we realized) and wondering what might change by next year. Life with Finn is an unknowable adventure. I love it. I look forward to our anniversary trips down the line and all the changes and refinement that will happen in the years between them.

Sidenotes:

1. Sadly we did not see a bear, though I certainly tried.

2. Is that pinecone impressive or what?

3. The house we stayed in was amazing. A friend of TwitSpark lent us his vacation home for the weekend and it was ballin, for lack of better words. Leather sofas, a huge bathtub, a TV (!!!), and a king sized bed! Their living room and kitchen were easily bigger than our whole apartment. If this house hadn't been lent to us, our trip to Tahoe probably wouldn't have happened so we are very thankful. I hereby declare that if we ever have a vacation home, we will lend it to young couples to pay it forward. 

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lake tahoe: 2/3

We spent one of our days driving the entire way around Lake Tahoe, which takes about 3 hours. My most favorite of all our various stops was the beautiful Emerald Bay. It's known for its vibrant colors and it has the only island in all of Lake Tahoe, in case you were wondering.

We had lunch high above the bay on some sunny boulders and although we just had bread, jam, and BBQ chips, I felt like a king! What a view. After lunch, we hiked down a windy trail to the edge of the water so we could see its "emerald" color up close. I think we stayed down there for an hour and a half, just looking around. It's of the most naturally beautiful places I've ever been. 

Several people warned us about the steep hike back up the trail but it turns out that San Francisco hills have basically made American Gladiators out of our lungs and we strolled up casually and actually had a conversation the whole way up. We felt very proud of ourselves at the top - the grueling SF landscape has apparently paid off.

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lake tahoe: 1/3

Our anniversary trip in Lake Tahoe was the best. We spent 3 nights away in an area called Incline Village on the northeast side of the lake. It was our first California excursion since living here and spending a few days out the city was refreshing and fun. I love nature and miss its presence in our city life. Getting away for weekend trips is more of a challenge since we don't have a car and our generous friend Jeff was kind enough to lend us his for the whole weekend. Thank you Jeff! Our time away was filled with relaxing by the fire, watching sunsets, playing frisbee, napping (that one was mainly me), and generally enjoying the incredible natural beauty by being outside. The whole weekend felt like one giant exhale and I'm so thankful we were able to visit, especially at such a beautiful time of year.

There was a also a very nice frisbee golf course (what providence!) half a mile from our house so we played a few times over the weekend. I wish I could say I totally smoked my competition, but that would be a bold lie.

It turns out my frisbee skills have diminished over the past few years. This kept happening....dang bushes.

On one hole, I temporarily got my act together and we tied. Our reactions are pretty telling.

More photos coming soon!

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back from tahoe.

We are back from Lake Tahoe and man oh man, was it an amazing time. 

It is seriously such a beautiful place. We were not at all ready to leave and the drive back yesterday was full of wistful sighs for the scenery and trees. I loved it all! Our time away was restful and fun, just as we'd hoped it would be. I'll definitely share more photos over the next few days. I hope everyone had a good weekend!

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baby animals while i'm gone.

We're away in Lake Tahoe for the whole weekend! We'll be hiking, lazing around, and possibly enjoying some snow. I've left some photos of baby animals to keep you company while I'm gone. Enjoy!

Who's your favorite? 

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(all photos sourced from pinterest)

the anniversary trip.

We're going away to Lake Tahoe this weekend to celebrate our second anniversary. I can't wait! When we got married, we decided that we'd try to take a trip every year for our anniversary, even if it's little.

For last year's anniversary, we biked the Virginia Creeper Trail in Damascus, Virginia. It's one of our favorite trips we've ever taken. We stayed in an old bed and breakfast on the river and had the best time biking down the trail. It's 34 miles long and slightly downhill the whole way. We stopped at different pastures and bridges to explore and ate hotdogs for lunch at a stand along the way. Although the changing leaves make October the most popular month to go, the trail didn't feel too overcrowded. It was all cinematically beautiful. We had such a nice time.

And as real life often goes, there are some funny mishaps to share too:

1) We went to see a play on our non-biking day and it was terrible. 

2) On day 2 I went down the creaky stairs to the kitchen in the middle of the night and there was a man in there. In the dark. That's like a female-imagination-worst-nightmare come true. Turns out it was the owner's hooligan grandson who stops in to take food. Still, it scared me so bad.

3) When we took the shuttle to the top of the mountain to bike, I decided we should sit in the back of the van because "it would be more swervy and fun". I then got super carsick and almost threw up. When we finally got out of the van, I had to lay in the grass for half an hour before we could start biking. Finn loves this story.

I'm really looking forward to this year's trip. Neither of us have been to Lake Tahoe and don't know what to expect. It will all be a surprise! I'm mainly excited to spend a whole weekend with Finn, ride in a car, eat s'mores, and see lots of trees. Everything else will be extra goodness.

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P.S. - This was during my Katniss stage, which explains the second picture down.

surprise dessert.

Finn was in NYC for work this week so as a little surprise, I had some fancy cheesecake sent up to his hotel room the night of our anniversary. I coordinated with his co-worker/our friend Johnny to get their room number, sneakily called the front desk, picked out his favorite dessert from the menu, and had them write a note too. I wanted to surprise and bless him and felt pretty good about my idea. The hotel they were staying in was pretty nice too, so I envisioned the cheesecake arriving to his room looking something like this: 

I imagined a service cart, a fancy tray, or even just a plate.  Maybe the note 

would be written on some hotel stationery. Not too big of a stretch, right?

Well folks, this was the reality of its presentation:

A crumpled brown paper bag with the cheesecake in a tin to-go box, WHICH was on its side inside the bag so everything was looking pretty rough. And my note? Receipt paper taped to the outside. Crookedly no less!

Being the visual person I am, I wanted to know how they had delivered it and when he texted me a picture, I laughed so hard. We both did. The contrast between what I'd envisioned and what was in front of him was comical. And although it didn't go exactly as I had imagined, he still liked the gesture (and the cheesecake!) nonetheless. And best of all, he was surprised. It was so fun hearing a knock on the door, then him saying "who is it?...who?...oh, one second...hi...thank you!..what is this...?". I was smiling so big into the phone. And to be honest, I think I like this memory more for the fact it went awry. It will be more fun to remember.

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home sights.

Living away has undoubtedly heightened my appreciation for the little things that make the south feel like home. I made a quick trip to North Carolina this weekend for a friend's wedding and was so taken with the details around me. These snapshots might have crossed my field of vision a year ago without much notice. Now, they all kind of seem frame worthy to me. Isn't perspective a funny thing?

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