Happy Birthday Nevada

I am originally from Nevada and one of the great perks of being from Nevada is that you get to celebrate Nevada Day every year (and for a long time Nevada Day was on October 31st which is also Halloween).

I've always taken pride in the fact that I am a Nevadan and this year has been no different. I designed a NV Day(that says Battle Born) sweatshirt for my husband and made a sweatshirt for myself as well in honor of NV turning 150 years old this year. 

I hope you all will celebrate Nevada Day in your own special way this year, and always remember that "Home means Nevada" 

How I traveled to Europe

My husband and I were able to go on a month-long tour of Europe this past summer. It was absolutely amazing, so I want to share a little bit about how we were able to take the leap and fulfill my lifelong dream of traveling across the pond.

We have known that we wanted to travel the world before starting a family since before we were married, but we only started seriously planning two summers ago.

When we saw how much it would cost us to do the trip solo, we figured the only way we could afford a month-long trip would be to go with a tour group. After some intense searching, we found EF College Break, a tour agency that specializes in trips for college students aged 18-26. It would still be expensive, but we found that we could both travel with hotels, meals, flights, transportation, and entrance to major attractions included for just under$6,500 each (I know, this is a lot of money, but it was 100% worth it).

 

My favorite places were London, Engelberg, and Madrid. In London, we saw all the major sights like Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, and Abbey Road, but the place I loved the most was Harry Potter Studios. We spent 8 hours touring a museum of the Harry Potter sets, costumes, and props. It was the most magical place I have ever been.

Engelberg is located in the German part of Switzerland, and it is exactly what you’d think of when you imagine the Alps. We stayed in a beautiful and romantic lodge in the mountains. On our second day there, we decided to take an excursion to the top of Mt. Pilatus, which was one of the scariest (I’m afraid of heights) and most breathtaking experiences of my life.

In Madrid, we stayed in a really cool hostel in a super hip part of the city. It was just down the street from the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art. My husband and I spent most of our time in the city at this museum admiring installments by Picasso and various other artists. It was so weird, but we absolutely loved it.

All in all, our tour was an amazing experience. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable and well traveled. We had a fun time meeting new people, but we were the only couple on the trip, so we became the surrogate parents of the group. It was kind of weird being the only people in a committed relationship, and it isolated us from the rest of them, but we didn’t care because we were there to have a romantic trip together!

I would recommend EF College Break to any of my friends. We had a once in a lifetime experience, so everyone should visit the website http://www.efcollegebreak.com/home-page.aspx to see what trips could work for you.

Have you ever travel abroad? What was your favorite place to visit and why? 

Embroidery Stitch Tutorials

Embroidery is one of my favorite things to do. I've been embroidering for years now and still I am no where near knowing everything there is to know about embroidery. There is a website I found that sells awesome embroidery transfers and also blogs about embroidery, it is called Sublime Stitching. They have tutorials to embroiderer's of all skill levels.

Since I still consider myself to be a beginner I thought I've pass on the link to their stitch tutorials that have helped me. I have found them very useful. I hope you will too! All images/tutorials are courtesy of Sublime Stitching.

how-to-split-stitch

how-to-back-stitch

how-to-stem-stitch

how-to-satin-stitch

how-to-french-knot

how-to-chain-stitch

Have you ever tried embroidery? If so, what have you made (share it with me)? If not, why?

So This is...

I love love. I have always loved love. Love songs more often than not told me, "All you need is love," and that "love will keep us together." The great thing about love is that you can love just about anything. I love my husband, I love Netflix, I love the milk glass I found at the DI last week.  Because love is such a big part of my life, I decided to make a blog and devote it to all the things I love.

First of all, I want to write about my experience with my first exposure to romantic love. Growing up, the cartoons and stories I loved told me that no matter who I was or how bad my life might be, all I needed to do was find "Prince Charming," marry him, and then I would live "happily ever after." Obviously these expectations don't match up to reality, and I want to talk about how a lot of our societal expectations aren't realistic. 

The expectations for what we want our lives and love lives to be compared to what they actually are can get kind of heavy sometimes, so I will break it up from time to time by talking about other things that I love. Sometimes it will be a hobby that I am loving, and other times a movie or an artist. The point is: I'm going to be talking about LOVE.

-So This is Lovely