hatteras.

John and I tagged along for a few days with his father and friends on their annual trip to the Outer Banks.  We were super grateful they offered to let us stay in the extra room of their beach house, appropriately it was the "kids room" complete with bunk beds.  John actually lived on Hatteras Island for several years when he was a kid, and then again when he was in college he'd spend his summer on the island working & having fun.  It's a very special place for his family and I can see why, it's lovely.  It was my first time in the southern Outer Banks.  I've been to a lot of beaches all over NC throughout the years and I have to say, there's something magical about the Outer Banks -- the villages and beaches are wonderful, definitely my favorite in this state.  We can't wait to go back next year.  We're also going to spend some more time visiting different beaches, it's a shame really, we live just a few hours away from the shore & we hardly go.  We'll remedy that.

We had fun baking in the sun, reading on the beach, watching the crabs in the morning, watching the dolphins in the evening, visiting John's old haunts, hunting for shells, jumping the waves, eating & drinking whatever we wanted, giving a home to a rescue crab (some tourists left a hermit crab & a shop owner gave her to me for free.  her name is Hilary Duff), lounging on the porch & in the hot tub, falling asleep to the sound of the ocean, waking up to the early morning light, and loving life.  It was definitely a nice, relaxing week.  Much needed. 

blue.

Jim:  The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They're common as - weeds, -but - you - well, you're - Blue Roses!

Laura:   But blue is wrong for - roses... 

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winter sky // hat box // pashmina // polished nails // vintage plate // miso bowl // friendship bracelet // books // gnome & Norman Rockwell "Heavenly Dreams" plate // rosary // part of a Ganesh tapestry




and ... I love The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

2012. ahhhhhhhhh.

Hello there!  It's been so quiet on our blog.  John's the only one that has even thought about blogging - props to him.  He actually wrote a post about the Golden Globes the other night but he doesn't wanna post it.  Sorry.

I hope your holiday season was merry & bright!  We absolutely loved ours!  Over the holidays we got to spend our first Christmas together (we had just started dating last Christmas season but were not together for Christmas festivities).  It was so wonderful.  We spent time in Kentucky with my family for Christmas Eve & Day and then we headed over to Ohio to spend time with John's family the week after.  We were completely spoiled with gifts and love.  Although - our animals probably made out the best... so very spoiled are they.   It was so nice to be able to spend time with friends too!  I didn't want to leave after our time was over, almost entirely because of the pretty people we got to see.  But leave we did and headed back to our little country home in North Carolina for the New Year!  We headed over to some of our friends house and celebrated with two other couples by having a Harry Potter marathon during NYE day, then at night we walked across the street to their neighbors HUGE NYE party and ate and ate and ate and socialized with them.  John and I put on our dancing shoes and danced with some of the women there in the kitchen (how very The Big Chill of us... I put a link because I feel like that reference is lost on most.) to oldies on iPods.  We may have embarrassed our friends that were there with us!  Oops...

Life around here is wonderful!  We've completely cleaned & organized our house after putting away decorations.  We started P90X for exercising (I've already lost 5lbs & John's lost more than that!) and we absolutely hate it.  And by hate it I mean we love doing it and love the results so far and how we feel but we hate how dang tired & sore we are.  ;)  We've also kicked all our bad eating/drinking habits and have been eating super healthy.  We did this back in July and loved how we felt so we're doing it again.  Homemade over take out, water & tea (decaf for me, I cut out caffeine in November) over soda & alcohol.  John keeps exclaiming how productive he now is and I love that I don't need to nap anymore to make it through the evening.  I've also been calculating every calorie for the past couple weeks using an app on my new iPhone...

My big Christmas gift this year was an iPhone 4S.  It's so lovely!  I had a 3G up until April then I kicked the smartphone habit for months and months until now.  While the thought of being always connected to things still kinda gives me the skeevies, I still love this phone and am glad to have an iPhone again since the camera is better than my old point & shoot AND I can keep my music with me since my old iPod is basically on life support.  Speaking of music and pictures... here have some iPhone pictures of life lately.

Prepare for a dump.  Which may be redundant if you follow me on twitter, tumblr, or instagram.  Sorry!

Well... that's it for this post!  John will type something up for you next time.

Bye!

pink 'cause you are so very.

1. our guest bed with a vintage chenille bedspread I found; 2. a copy of A Little Princess I bought for $1; 3. a vintage pink rosary; 4. 1950s French textbook on top of Pop Impressions Europe/USA; 5. my pink lips wearing Cover Girl's Parisian Pink; 6. a sleep mask; 7. strawberry mochi (yummy!); 8. my pink nails wearing OPI's Strawberry Margarita; 9. a knitting project I'm working on.

sundays.

On Sundays we go kayaking.  It's so very lovely to live near a big lake.  

Here are pictures from this morning.

kayaks on Troy (my car)

there were a few other kayakers out there with us

but overall the lake was pretty quiet

kayaks are the best because you can get so close to the wildlife.
(we saw 2 bald eagles this time, too!)
we see a lot of blue herons when we are out there.

it's neat to watch them catch fish or fly away.

we kayaked up into a little cove to the right.

we dropped anchor to enjoy the stillness and read.
Mister is reading Moby Dick.

I'm still on East of Eden.

 

after sitting there for a while you start to think you have the place to yourself.
and it's awesome.

we'll probably make kayaking on Sundays our weekend routine. 
it's too nice not to.

Happy Sunday!