La Dolce Vita

Bonjour, friends! Here are some pics from my recent getaway to the beautiful Bay area. Isn't my Lola bear so big?? She was so well-behaved in the city i couldn't believe it. Those are some pics in our hotel room at the Westin. She's quite good at "high five" (actually ten but whatever) and "shake". The pic of the two of us was at a lovely bistro at which we dined in the city that unfortunately had a rather unfriendly restaurant dog. She attacked my poor Lola, and it was the second time i've ever heard her squeal out of sheer terror. :-( Luckily she recovered quickly and spent the rest of the evening at my side on the lovely garden patio. :-)

I had an INCREDIBLE time with my sister and the dogs in California. In fact, it's the first trip i can remember that we didn't have a single fight.. unbelievable! I don't even think we got annoyed at each other, minus my occasional crankiness from low blood sugar (my sister doesn't seem to understand that i really DO need to eat every 3-4 hours!!). We spent most of Saturday and Sunday in the city and visited a number of darling shops and eateries. The picture of my sister in front of the storefront is The Bell Jar, a darling (slightly overpriced) shop in the Mission District where i got a cute French cahier notebook and vintage cent stamp that i've decided is going to be a "C". The weather was gorgeous, as evidenced by the park picture where Lola did a little romping, and we enjoyed our "heavenly" bed at the Westin. We did oodles of goal-setting (physical, professional, and spiritual), and i introduced her to morning pages. All in all, it was a fantastic weekend.

On Monday, my actual birthday (yay 25!!), i had a petit incident in which i managed to lock myself out of the house after working out on their elliptical machine in the garage. Sooo my sister had to come let me back in (she had to work that day). I took a long afternoon siesta with the dogs, and then Jenn actually got off work early and we hit up Santana Row - a gorgeous, upscale outdoor shopping mall in San Jose. We went to Paper Source, my absolute FAVORITE paper store (rumor has it there's now one in Dallas's Northpark mall!), and she bought me a lovely Cavallini & Co. alphabet stamp set. I was inspired by a little store called Stumasa in the city. All of the shop's price tags and even their eco-friendly business card (cardboard!) were made with simple brown paper and vintage stamping. The stamps weren't cheap, but Ma Soeur is QUITE generous. ;-) I also got a fun little stamp that says "Shit", which i intend to use for sympathy cards, haha. I forgot how much i love stamps and the creative uses for them. Nothing like a fabulous paper store to inspire me! After another shop stop at H&M, we picked up my brother-in-law and then went to dinner at Los Altos Grill, formerly known as Bandera, which has THE BEST skillet cornbread you'll ever taste. We had a fun birthday dinner and finished it off with asian-style frozen yogurt w/ mochi for dessert. What a perfect birthday celebration!

I'm back in Austin now and have been busy with hotel reservations and train tickets and this and that for THE Bar Trip. I'm happy to say that all of our lodging reservations have been made, we have train tickets to/from our cities (Nice, Cannes, Lyon, Paris, and London), and i am SO ready to go. I felt like this day would never come!! I'm heading to Dallas on Sunday and then depart from DFW on Tuesday for a LONG day and night of travel. But it's all worth it for beautiful, gorgeous France and of course, our beloved Londy.

I always suffer a little post-sister depression after every visit to California, and this time was certainly no exception. But the trip definitely inspired me to make the most of this petit break between the bar and work, and i'm savoring every moment. Lots of sleeping, journaling, cleaning, organizing, packing, letter-writing, and of course, blogging! I'm debating whether or not to bring my laptop to France, and so far i'm thinking no... but I would like to keep up with blogging so maybe i'll just have to frequent les internet cafes while i'm there. In the meantime i hope you enjoy the pix and are having a lovely, albeit hot, summer!