Walkin' Samster, Version 2.0

Last year I wrote this post about walking Sammie, and how she likes to take her time and mosey along. Well her mosey kept getting slower and slower until taking her on mile long walk really wasn't doable anymore. Enter, Sammie's dog stroller. 

When I ordered the stroller I wasn't sure if Sammie would even sit in it, she usually doesn't like being off the ground like that. When it finally got delivered to our house I put Sammie in it just to see how she would react. She loved it. She sat right down in it and seemed very comfortable being pushed around. 

Now going for walks in her dog stroller is her favorite thing! She likes to bark at other dogs from her little chariot. We're looking to upgrade her to a running stroller soon so we can take her to Town Lake, which I'm sure she'll love. 

Lexi

Spring time!

Twirling

 Yea an outfit post! It seems like Austin has its winter in February instead of December or January, and it's been chilly and dreary outside. Those conditions don't make me jump to get dressed in a cute outfit and take pictures. 

The other day though, the weather was perfect. It just so happened that I was taking my bridal portraits (hence the hairdo and fancy makeup in the pictures) on this beautiful day and it inspired me to put a spring dress on and take some pictures!

Can you see in the background of the last picture that there's a bunch of wood in the yard? Jim is building a greenhouse! I'm so excited to grow tomatoes and herbs and all sorts of awesome veggies! Hopefully it'll be done this weekend and I can share pics of the final product.

Lexi

Lately according to Instagram

I've been having a hard time taking outfit pictures lately, there's always something going on and I feel like most of my free time has been spent finalizing wedding details. We're less that 30 days out now and I can't help but feel the stress of it. The other night I was telling Jim how I was starting to stress out and he asked me what specifically was stressing me out. 

I realized then that there wasn't any particular thing that was stressing me out, and I didn't have anything that I forgot to do or lost control of. I think I've been stressed at the unlimited number of details that are going into this. Even though all the details have been discussed and decided on, it's a lot to juggle.

The good news is that we have an awesome day-of wedding coordinator that has everything figured out and answers my thousands of questions and makes my dozens of requests happen all while smiling. 

That being said, here are some lovely Instagram pics that I've taken recently. Enjoy. 

The capitol

Enjoying some strawberry shortcake with homemade whip cream

Our Valentine's Day dinner at Sullivan's, it was delish. 

A cute elephant planter with succulents

At East Side Succulents

Kind of obsessed with succulents right now

Austin

Deciding on Maui

via

So, after much much deliberation, we finally booked our honeymoon! It was so stressful really fun figuring out where we wanted to go. The first step was deciding what type of honeymoon we wanted. Did we want to backpack through Europe, visit Italy, relax on a beach? We decided the most honeymoon appropriate thing to do was to relax on a beach.

Jim's two requests were that we go somewhere that 1. spoke English, and 2. accepted US currency. Hawaii it was. 

After getting input from many people, we (meaning I) decided on Maui. We'll only be there for 5 days (not including 2 days of travel) so I wanted to focus on one island, and next time we visit the Hawaiian Islands we can focus on a different island.

We rented a fabulous condo on Sugar Beach in South Maui and plan on renting a Jeep (Jim's idea) to explore the island. I'm not looking forward to the 9 hour plane ride, but once we get there I'm sure it'll be well worth it!

via

Any suggestions on things that we must do?

Lexi

Our Sunday funday wedding shower

So in my last post I said that I was going to go back to document what I have been up too while on my mini blog vacation, and I still plan to but I wanted this post to be about the wedding shower that my lovely friends Ashley and Amber threw us last Sunday.

Just look at all the cute decorations! It looked like Pinterest exploded in there and I loved it. A make your own bloody mary bar, mimosas, french toast sticks, mac & cheese in a baby mason jar, just a few of my favorite things. 

It truly was exactly what Jim and I wanted, a party with all of our closest friends.

As I'm typing this I'm listening to Death Cab For Cutie and getting nostalgic, so indulge me for 2 seconds. Just look at these fabulous ladies, who really pulled out all the stops for us. It's such a great feeling knowing that your friends will gladly do that for you.

You can't really tell from this pic, but Amber decided to throw in a few slightly embarrassing pictures in our little collage. 

Playing the newlywed game, each question seemed to get more and more inappropriate thanks to Ashley. 

Ha the look on Jim's face as he holds up his sign that says 'Spice Girls' is priceless, because he knows they were my fave!

Lexi

South Padre

In December Jim and I went on a mini family vacation to stay at his parents condo in South Padre. The island was totally deserted and it was perfect. It was the first vacation in a long time where I was actually able to relax. Normally vacations are packed full of days spent trying to squeeze as many events, visits, and sights as possible. This vacation was different in that we came to see the ocean, and when we looked out the window we could see it, no additional travelling required.

Jim's step mom and dad

Check out Jim's beard! Love that thing.

Jim and I with his brother and sister in law

Pirate Jim

Insane pirate Justin

The girls

Relaxing in the condo

Back of our condo

Pool, where we spent most nights

Cooking!

I'm very passionate about shrimp!

Lexi

Here we go...again

Ok so I need to say that I just spent 5 minutes trying to remember my domain name... lexiandthecity? lexandthecity.com? lexandthecityaustin.com? Nope. I finally remembered it, lexandthecityaustin.blogspot.com. 

The last time I posted was on December 8, 2012. I'm not sure why I took the break, I didn't intend to, it just happened. I went to South Padre for a few days in December and remember thinking when I got there, 'oh, I should have done one last post before I left, and said in the post that I would be leaving. Oh well, not like anyone reads this thing anyway.' And then that thought stayed with me, 'no one reads this thing anyway, why bother?'. 

I think I've used these few months away to decide if I really wanted to keep my blog. I read a post on one of my favorite blogs that was about blogging (that's right, blogging about blogging). She said that unless you LOVE blogging, you shouldn't do it. That seemed really harsh to me and I think it probably pushed me further away. I felt like I shouldn't be blogging because I don't LOVE LOVE it, I just enjoy it. 

I think the other thing that pushed me away was thinking that I had to update this blog at least twice a week. I'm not sure where I got that number from, but I felt pressured to stick with it and was disappointed in myself when I didn't. 

Those are all the reasons that I kept silent over the last few months, and here are the reasons that I am breaking that silence. 

After I started the blog I felt like I really started to figure out my particular style and saw so many possibilities in my closet that I had never seen before. It was also a great way for me to remember the great outfits I came up with. All of my favorite outfits were cataloged in my blog. In the past I would put together an awesome outfit that I loved, and then forget about it the next day and never wear that combo again. In the months that I haven't been blogging, I've lost inspiration. I'm in an outfit rut where I can't be creative with anything that I have. I've been just rotating the same 10 dress shirts to work all the time, and can't ever find anything cute to wear on the weekend. Tragic, I know.

I don't want to lose that inspiration I found when I started blogging, which is what gave me the push I needed to decide to keep my little blog baby (it's a girl). 

I've decided that the only rule I must stick to going forward, is that I have to enjoy doing this. I'm not going to worry about how often I update, or how many people are reading this. If I'm going to do this, it needs to be for me and not for my audience (sorry!). 

Anyway, I've got so many pictures from the last few months just sitting on my computer that I think I'm going to spend the next few weeks recapping what I've been doing while on my mini vacation from blogging. So get ready, because here we go... again. 

Lexi