Our Wedding: Ceremony

I am so thrilled to begin my wedding blog series today. When planning this series, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to begin with a post about our ceremony: it’s the reason all of the other details exist. Our ceremony was the most important part of our wedding day, and I will always treasure the memory of promising my life to Grace with all of our family and friends as witnesses.

We chose to have a traditional Episcopalian wedding ceremony, and our Priest and dear friend Rev. Ed Milkovich married us. It was important to us that our wedding officiant was someone who knew us both, encouraged us in our faith and in our relationship, and would be in our lives after our wedding. We love Rev. Ed and are so happy he officiated. The morning of our wedding, he gifted each of us with beautiful rosaries that he made by hand, selecting special stones for them and writing out a prayer for us to read before walking down the aisle.

During our ceremony we exchanged vows and rings, Rev. Ed said beautiful prayers over us, and our guests were invited to affirm and witness our marriage.

We had a very large wedding party (we had 26 people to get down the aisle, between our 20 total bridesmaids, our 4 parents, and ourselves), which was so wonderful. Being surrounded by a 20-strong SQUAD up there as we said our vows was one of my favorite parts of the wedding. Grace’s bridesmaids (and men) processed first, followed by Grace walking down the aisle with both her parents, followed by my bridesmaids, with my sister (and maid of honor) going last, and then my brother escorted my mom to her seat, and then my dad and I walked down the aisle together last of all. As I’ll share more about in a future post, Grace and I chose not to see each other all day before I walked down the aisle to her (we did not do a “first look” before the ceremony), so the emotions were running high as we finally saw each other. It was a precious moment and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Our vows were a mix of the classic lines, “to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love, and to cherish, all the days of my life,” as well as some additional lines we promised each other. We both started our vows with, “[Grace/Elizabeth], today I give myself to you,” which was one of my favorite parts. I told Grace, “I will care for you, stand beside you, and share with you all of life’s adversities and all of its joys, and I believe in you from this day forward.” She promised me the same with a little bit of variation: “I will protect you, encourage you, and share with you all of life’s adversities and all of its joys, and I believe in you from this day forward.” We both ended our vows the same way: “With these words, and with all my heart, I marry you, and bind my life to yours.”

When exchanging our rings, we both said in turn, “I give you this ring as a symbol of my vow. With all that I am, and all that I have, I honor you in the name of God.”

Another meaningful part of the ceremony was when Rev. Ed joined our hands together and wrapped them in his Priests’s stole while he pronounced that we were now married. If you watched Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s royal wedding, you might have noticed that Bishop Michael Curry did the same thing with their hands. It’s a special Episcopal tradition that I am so glad we included.

We also had some of our close friends do readings and lead our guests in a prayer for our marriage. I’m so glad we were able to incorporate even more of our loved ones in this way, and we cried as each of our sweet friends came up for their readings. We had a reading from Romans that we both have always loved, a reading from the Willie Nelson song “Hands on the Wheel” (yes, our dog is also named Willie Nelson), and a traditional Episcopal prayers of the people reading.

It was a hot summer day the day of our wedding, so we had handheld fans on each seat and parasols available at the beginning of the aisle for guests to grab. We also had little packs of flower petals on each seat for our guests to toss as we walked back down the aisle together as Grace and Elizabeth Baldridge. Hearing Rev. Ed say “you are now married and bound to each other as long as you both shall live” and walking out through a flurry of rose petals were two of the sweetest moments of the whole day. We headed back into the house to sign our marriage license and then take sunset portraits with our amazing photographers!

All photos are by Jesse Marble and Jimmy Marble for Our Labor of Love

My Autumn Bucket List

Today I am sharing all about my Autumn Bucket List, which has brought me so much joy this season! I got the cute template for the list through A Beautiful Mess, one of my favorite blogs that I have been reading for years. They send out these templates each season to their newsletter subscribers.

A little backstory: I am NOT a Fall-loving gal at heart. I love spring and summer. I had wanted to move to California since I was a little girl specifically because it’s warm almost all the time (later, I realized it has other amazing qualities, but the biggest draw for me was always the weather). I have a distinct memory in 5th grade of trudging through dead leaves in our driveway thinking, Fall is so depressing. I think this was the first time I ever thought of anything as being “depressing.” My whole life I have struggled with major blues when it starts getting darker and colder. I don’t love Fall colors, I have only recently started enjoying Fall foods, and I typically look forward to absolutely nothing about Fall. I guess these are all probably signs of seasonal affective disorder, but as I have never been diagnosed with anything like that, I hesitate to use any official terms.

Although I cannot change how Fall affects me, I can change my approach to it! Last Fall knocked me off my feet with feeling sad from the change in seasons. I was so busy I didn’t have any time to counteract it. But this year, for my first married Fall, I wanted it to be a happy time. Making a fun Autumn Bucket List and intentionally checking off the activities has made the BIGGEST difference in my attitude toward Fall this year. This has been the happiest Fall of my whole life!

Also, I am married to a Fall-obsessed Scorpio, so it’s been a lot of fun to do the bucket list together since she already enjoys the season so much.

If you can’t read my handwriting above, here are the items on my Fall bucket list:

• Haunted Hayride

• Try a new WeHo (West Hollywood) restaurant

• Light our fireplace candelabra

• Refresh guest room

• Bake something festive

• Add some indoor plants

• Make a home office

• Send lots of happy mail

• Make pancakes

• Semler album release (Grace’s musical project is called Semler)

• Take dogs on a day trip

• Plan our New Orleans trip

• Spooky movie night with our popcorn machine

• Have friends over for brunch

• Put flannel sheets on our bed

• Homemade soup

• Donate extra kitchen stuff

• Trip to DC

• Make our wedding album

• Read a cozy book

• Order our first ever Christmas cards

• Slow cooker meals

• Buy candy corn

• Journal more often

• Hot chocolate in our “B” mugs (B for Baldridge)

• Underwood Family Farms

• Autumn stove simmers

• Open the windows in nice weather

• Host a dinner party

• Decorate seasonally

The ones I’ve highlighted on the list are ones we’ve already completed (but some we’ll do again for sure - like homemade soups and sending mail to friends).

Not all of them are strictly seasonal—like going to DC or making pancakes—but all are designed to help me savor the season.

Here are some photos from us doing the things on my bucket list

Adding more indoor plants:

Semler album release (we had a fun release show at the studio where Grace recorded the album). These are the guys she recorded it with. And yes, Grace dressed as a skeleton:

Going to Underwood Family Farms (our favorite pumpkin patch—and so much more. It’s about 45 mins out of LA and SO FUN. They have tractor rides, tons of cute goats, all kinds of produce to pick, pumpkins, seasonal food booths, and more):

Going on the Haunted Hayride (we went with a few of our close friends and although I shut my eyes the whole time, it was really fun):

Hosting a spooky movie night with our popcorn machine:

I was super proud of my orange-and-black Halloween snackboard I made for the movie night.

Making pancakes (using a pancake mix our friends brought us back from Hawaii recently!):

Decorating seasonally:

Making my home office (still not totally done, and far from done in this photo):

Baking something festive (these are pumpkin-granola muffins, and I also made pumpkin bread this Fall):

And although not on the bucket list, everyone in the family dressed up for Halloween!

Bean and I dressed as Toto and Dorothy

And for a friend’s party, Grace and I went as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein (perfect newlywed costume, I think!)

Bean went as a hot dog for our spooky movie night

And Willie was the cutest pumpkin

Another really fun thing was that we got our first trick or treaters this year!! Even though we were living in our same house last Halloween, we didn’t get them for whatever reason. Our house is in a neighborhood without that many kids, so I’m actually surprised we had any, but it was so fun and sweet! I think having our Jack o Lanterns lit up on our front steps helped :)

It’s only the beginning of November, so I’m excited to keep checking off more of our bucket list items all month long. We are actually trying out a new West Hollywood restaurant tonight, so I can check that one off tomorrow!

We keep our bucket list taped to our fridge and I really do think it helps me focus on enjoying the good stuff this season. I’ll be making a winter one too—I’ve already been collecting ideas for it!

Hope you are enjoying Fall too, and if you normally don’t, try making a bucket list to see if it helps!

November Goals + October Recap

Sweet November, you are full of good food, time to reflect and be grateful, and a chance to prepare for the Advent and Christmas season ahead (my favorite). I am savoring my first married Autumn (Autumn Bucket List blog post coming in the next few days!) and am excited to settle deeper into this season over the next month.

I’m happy to say I pretty much checked off all of my October goals! Here’s my recap:

• Start my new job well—yes, I can truly say I LOVE my job and it’s the best feeling

• Set up my home office—yes, although I am looking forward to clearing the clutter and making that space work better for me

• Finish my honeymoon blogging and start blogging our wedding!—completed all my honeymoon recaps and although I haven’t started my wedding posts yet, you’ll find one here very soon!

• Enjoy things on my Fall bucket list and savor the season—yes and yes :)

• Make progress on my name change—yep! Made major progress and am officially using my new name almost everywhere

• Finish sorting all of our wedding gifts and writing thank-yous—yes, except we have a small handful of gifts that came with no information and we don’t know who they are from. This has been stressful to me, as I worry the gift-givers don’t know they were anonymous. As weird as it might seem, if you are reading this and sent us a wedding gift and HAVEN’T gotten a thank-you note from us, PLEASE let me know! I would love to thank you!

• Take a trip to DC to introduce Grace to my grandmother for the first time!—yes, so sweet! It was an incredibly short but special trip

• Order our first ever Christmas cards—yes. So so happy and cannot wait to send them out in December!

And here are my goals for November:

• Spend Thanksgiving in North Carolina with my family

• Celebrate Grace turning 28!

• Send lots of fun happy mail to friends

• Design our wedding album

• Host a dinner or brunch at our house with friends

• Take better care of my body

• Rest, be present, and be thankful

• Do all my Christmas shopping (and take advantage of Black Friday sales) so I can spend December resting during Advent

Wishing you a happy, safe, and warm November!

Savory Cocktail Series: "Roman Holiday"

I’m back with the second installment of my savory cocktail series! If you missed the first one, check out the “Bullshy” here. This series is all about inventing and highlighting savory, umami drinks, which are majorly underrated and underutilized in my opinion.

Today’s drink is named Roman Holiday because of the Italian flavors that make it up, but the foreign (English) spirit—gin—involved, evoking an Englander on holiday in Rome. The ingredients are simple. All that’s in it is included in the next picture below, except the ice, salt for the rim, and club soda.

And making it is pretty simple too. All I did for mine was muddle some basil and cherry tomatoes with some lemon juice in a cocktail shaker, then add 1.5 oz of gin and a couple of generous dashes of balsalmic vinegar. The vinegar is really what gives the drink its signature flavor. After shaking everything up, I strained it into a coup glass, added some cubed ice, and topped with club soda. I used a salted rim on my glass and I think it was the perfect finishing touch.

And that’s it! This kind of tasted like a caprese salad was born in a gin distillery, and I loved it. I think it’s simple and pretty in a coup glass, but it could work in a low ball glass too.

Enjoy!

Our Experience with Flytographer on our Honeymoon

As I mentioned in my last honeymoon recap, we decided to get some professional photos taken while we were in Kauai staying at the St. Regis! And when I say “we” decided, I mean me. Grace took some convincing. But I’m so glad we ended up doing it, because I really love how the pictures turned out. I think there are at least a few compelling reasons to get professional honeymoon photos taken:

• You spend a lot on wedding pictures—and your wedding is 1000% more important than your honeymoon—but wouldn’t you want at least SOME nice quality photos of arguably the most special vacation ever? I definitely did!

• Knowing we were getting professional photos taken later on the trip kept me from stressing about not having many pictures of the two of us earlier in the trip.

• Our honeymoon is something I will hold near to my heart for the rest of my life. Photos are a love language for me, and a way I crystallize memories and tangibly cherish them. So having nice pictures from this time in my life was a no-brainer for me.

• I love the idea of our kids looking back at honeymoon pictures of their parents! Maybe they won’t care at all, but I know I’d love to have beautiful pictures like this of my parents on their honeymoon.

Also, the cost wasn’t too bad! To be candid, we spent about $350 on our honeymoon photos. That’s a lot of money for some things, but for anyone who’s paid for professional pics, you know that’s very reasonable. We used a company called Flytographer, which matches you with a professional photographer in the area where you’re going on vacation. I looked through a few galleries of Kauai photographers and selected Brigitte, who had great pics and had taken portraits of some gay couples before (my fellow LGBT travelers, you can probably relate that it gives peace of mind to know someone you’ll be working with is a friend to the community). Here’s a link to Brigitte’s profile if you’re interested in booking her. She was so great!

I’m not sure if there are other services out there like Flytographer, but we were really happy with the experience and I would totally recommend them. Of course, every photographer would be different, but our experience was great.

By the way, if anyone wants to use Flytographer, I have a $25 off referral code for you! Use this: CODE9385 :)

Anyway, our pics! We met up with Brigitte at our hotel and headed out to the beach. She lives nearby and has experience shooting at the St. Regis, and she actually showed us to a beautiful hidden cove we hadn’t seen yet! No one else was around and we got some great photos.

Next, we walked around the Hanalei Bay cove and got pictures in some more locations. One of Grace’s hesitations in doing these photos was that she didn’t want everyone to be staring at us if we were getting pics taken in a busy location. So I was thankful that Brigitte knew exactly where to go—even on the grounds of a popular resort like the St. Regis, she managed to find gorgeous hideaway spots that served as amazing backdrops for our pictures.

I also appreciated how much direction we got—Brigitte took plenty of more traditional portraits (like the one above), but she also did a good job getting action shots and would give us ideas of what to do since I definitely tend to get kind of stiff in front of the camera.

And of course, some classic prom shot pics :)

All in all, Brigitte took photos of us for about an hour, and we got 60 pictures back. Not bad if you think about it as a picture a minute! And those are 60 pictures that she culled and edited down—in reality she took many more than 60. Another one of the best things about the service was that it only took 1 week to get our pictures back, and they even sent us a couple of “teaser” shots after a day or two.

If you are considering getting professional pictures taken on your honeymoon or any special vacation, I say GO for it!! I didn’t realize how easy it would be, but I’m so glad we did it. Thanks for reading!

Honeymoon Recap #4: Princeville (Kauai)

Today I am bringing you my fourth and FINAL honeymoon recap! I think I am going to do a couple of additional Hawaii/honeymoon-related posts, but this will be my last recap post, and after this one I will have covered the whole two weeks of our vacation. This last recap covers the last few days of our honeymoon, which we spent in the northern part of Kauai in Princeville.

But before I get there, I have to cover the rest of our drive from Waimea, where I last left off. After checking out the gorgeous Waimea canyon, we circled around the island, stopping in the town of Kilauea. Kilauea had been recommended to me by a couple of people as a fun place to get lunch, and it was SUCH a good rec! We did some shopping, including at an adorable store called Hunter Gatherer.

The drive from Waimea to Princeville was easy and beautiful.

We also shopped at a vintage pop-up called Lolo’s and each got some fun things—I got the rainbow sweater and Grace got the seersucker overalls that we’re both wearing in the first picture in this post :) It was awesome hearing the shop owner tell us the stories of these vintage finds!

While we were in Kilaueau we also got some lunch. And although I hadn’t heard of this place prior, by sheer luck and blessings we got THE BEST poke bowls we have ever had. I still dream of these. They were served out of a tiny little shop (kind of like a tiny house had a baby with a food truck) called Sushi Girl.

The crisp pieces of sea asparagus might have been what made it over-the-top perfection, and of course the fish was out of this world. YUM! If you love poke like we do, you have to try it in Hawaii.

We also stopped by a beautiful lighthouse that was so captivating to me—I hadn’t seen any other lighthouses in Hawaii. It strikes me as more of an East Coast thing, I don’t know why.

After the lighthouse, we drove on to Princeville. Princeville has a planned-community feel to it, and basically the entire thing is made up of hotels and condos. Once we turned into the Princeville area in our Jeep, we drove to the veerryyyy end of the two-mile main road to get to the beautiful St. Regis Princeville Resort, our final stop of the trip. We checked in and beautiful kikui nut leis were placed around our heads as soon as they took our car. The hotel was palatial. Very different from anywhere else we’d stayed—the St. Regis almost felt like a college campus with how big it was and how much there was to do.

These are kikui nut leis—little hollow nut shells made into a traditional necklace/garland.

As gorgeous as the hotel was overall, I think the moment my jaw really dropped was when we got to our room. I knew we’d booked an oceanfront room but the view still took my breath away! Although Grace and I probably preferred the vibes of some of our other hotels better than the St. Regis, it indisputably had the best location/views of anywhere we stayed.

Bathroom selfie :)

And it didn’t hurt that a bottle of rosé and chocolate truffles were delivered to our room with a “happy honeymoon” note a few minutes after we got there :)

We just soaked it all in and rested until dinner! We had a 7:30pm reservation on the Makana Terrace, which we both agreed was good but not our favorite meal of the whole trip. We shared the beet and goat cheese salad, soy-cured salmon, a Kauai crab cake with a seared scallop on top, and the mac n cheese. The mac n cheese was honestly my favorite part! We also tried their drinks—a macadamia martini, a Thai basil mojito, and a Hawaiian old fashioned. We do not drink often (in our real life—our honeymoon is a different story) and were not even buzzed from three drinks. But they were yummy. We later learned about a tucked-away bar elsewhere in the hotel, which is THE place to go. . . but I’m glad we tried Makana Terrace (it ended up being incredible for brunch, which I will write about below).

Unlike the exploring we did in other portions of the trip, as the next couple of days rolled by, we really just did nothing but enjoy each other and the beautiful hotel. We spent a whole 6 hours in the St. Regis’s pristine section of beach in Hanalei Bay, which was divine. We started the day by going to the little hotel store and grabbing pre-made pb&js, extra sunscreen, and coffee, and we claimed some front-row chairs (they are first come, first served for hotel guests). We just hung out and read our books and splashed in the water and periodically ordered food. It was perfect.

Our little piece of sand.

Continuing the weak drink trend, this coco-jito freeze (like a coconut mojito, but frozen and blended like a daiquiri) was literally a smoothie and probably would be safe for a child to drink, haha. Yummy though.

At lunch I switched to wine, which is the way to go here if you want to get your vacation buzz on :)

After a perfect day of reapplying sunscreen every hour and taking in the view, which truly cannot be beat, we went back up to our room. We had to get changed and ready because we were getting some professional photos taken. A few months prior, I had booked a photographer in Kauai to get some lifestyle/honeymoon pictures. Given as much as we focus on wedding pictures, I find it weird that no one seems to have good photos of BOTH newlyweds on their honeymoon, so I wanted some professional pics! I have a post coming out soon about that experience and sharing the pics—they turned out great. Here’s one of my favorites:

After our photos, we sat down at the bar that we ended up falling in love with. Tucked around the corner from the lobby, near where they do the nightly champagne saberings, there is an awesome little bar that was one of my favorite things about the St. Regis. They serve a to-die-for sushi menu and REAL drinks (as opposed to watered-down resort drinks). The people working there are so nice, and we just loved it. We ended up going back the next night for dinner, as I’ll get to.

Now, I need to back up for a sec. One of the reasons I wanted to stop at this bar was to try this St. Regis location’s bloody mary. If you’ve read this post, then you know that’s my favorite drink. The St. Regis claims to have invented the bloody mary at its New York location (a claim which I understand is disputed, but that aside). And because the bloody mary is such a celebrated St. Regis tradition, each and every St. Regis location has its own spin on the drink. The Princeville St. Regis’s drink is called the Aloha Mary. And one of the things I LOVED about this little bar is that it has on the menu several of the OTHER locations’ bloodies—they had the Mexico City one, the Bora Bora one, and so on. HOW FUN!

The Aloha Mary was pretty similar to a classic bloody, but the vodka was Ocean Vodka (a Hawaiian vodka made with deep ocean mineral water—they have it at our local Whole Foods in West Hollywood, so you might be able to find it), with guava smoked sea salt around the rim. It was also supposed to be garnished with sea asparagus (an ingredient in that best-ever poke bowl from Kilauea), but they had run out.

Our room also had a copy of the St. Regis’s bloody mary book, which of course I pored over.

After our drinks, we headed back to the room and got room service dinner. Even with great restaurants in Hawaii, room service is something we consistently got on this trip because we just always love it and it feels like such a luxury to us. We also wanted to watch Bachelor in Paradise with our dinner, if we’re being honest.

We also got treated to the most amazing sunset view right from our room!

Purple Hour—that fleeting dusk time that follows Golden Hour—has always been my favorite. This night felt so special.

The next day we woke up and decided to try out the Makana Terrace’s brunch. Although our dinner there from a couple of nights before had been just-okay, I am happy to say that the brunch was a highlight of the whole trip! I have never in my life seen a brunch buffet like that. There were Hawaiian BBQ pork eggs benedicts, taro waffles, stir fries, every type of meat you could want (none of which I wanted, but I was still impressed), eggs, several different “stations”: hot cereals, cold cereals, a charcuterie spread, omletts, a whole station of different hot sauces, spreads, and salsas, breakfast pastries, a juice and fruit bar (rows and rows of cute little jars of every type of freshly made juice you could want, green smoothies, and fruit smoothies), and even a drinking vinegar station (for digestion). Just SO good. We sat at a gorgeous table and enjoyed the feast.

Just a small selection from ONE of my many trips to the buffet. This one was from the charcuterie station.

Our view.

After brunch we decided to drive into Hanalei town. I’m so glad we did because it was adorable—I would have loved to have spent more time there had we known how cool it was. Out of everywhere in town, our absolute favorite was the Spinning Dolphin. It’s a t-shirt store but also so much more than that. The owners are true animal lovers, and what we noticed first was the signs on the door:

The store will make custom Kauai t-shirts screenprinted for you, and they also sell handmade jewelry and promote pet adoptions (they had several cats in the store, but mostly they link to other humane organizations). They will even help you bring a pet back to the continental US. Our favorite part was that they sold dog leis! They are not made of real flowers, so they last, and all the proceeds go to help homeless dogs. Of course we had to get one for each of our boys. They look precious in them.

Before we left we also had to test out the St. Regis’s spa. It was amazing, and such a relaxing thing to do before facing the real world again. We spent a whole afternoon getting a hot stone couple’s massage followed by ocean facials (using seaweed extracts). They were SO good—we were both glowing! After our treatments we lounged in the spa for a while and the staff brought us champagne because it was our honeymoon. It was bliss.

As I mentioned earlier, we ended up going back to our favorite little bar, and we decided to eat dinner there too from their sushi menu.

Headed to dinner on our last night of the honeymoon!

Of course I had to try one more bloody mary variation, so I got the Mexico City one. It was made with tequila and had an avocado garnish. I think it was my fav over the Aloha Mary.

We decided to start out dinner with a cheeseboard and then got some sushi, and it was all amazing. Such a good last dinner of the trip!

After dinner, we went back to the room and ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Also, Grace caught up on her Korean soap opera which she had become obsessed with at this point and is only available in Korea and Hawaii, as far as we can tell. I realize how ridiculous this sentence is, hahaha.

The next day it was time to fly home, but we had a later flight so we decided to go for a morning dip in the pool! We woke up to a foggy, beautiful day and did not want to leave.

It was hard to believe our perfect honeymoon had come to a close . . . but it also felt like we were gone a LONG time, and we were so excited to get home to the doggies. These faces made leaving paradise more than worth it:

Willie was sooooo relieved and happy when we got home. He doesn’t normally sleep at the foot of the bed like this (if anything, he only jumps up in the morning), but he was just so exhausted with happiness, he couldn’t even move!

And then the next day we picked up Bean from boarding.

That’s it for honeymoon recaps! Thanks for following along! Next up—our professional honeymoon pictures, some overall thoughts and recommendations on honeymooning in Hawaii, and WEDDING blog posts! If you have any requests or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Honeymoon Recap #3: Waimea (Kauai) and the Na Pali Coast

Today I’m recapping the first part of our incredible time in KAUAI! When I left off with my last recap, we were getting ready to island hop from Maui to Kauai. We had a quick 45-minute flight west and got our rental car (another Jeep—you just have to have a Jeep in Hawaii!) and drove to the darling Waimea Plantation Cottages for our first stop on Kauai. Out of everywhere we stayed, the cottages might be the most “home-away-from-home” feeling place. We loved it and felt so restful there. Here’s some photos of where we stayed:

The way Waimea Plantation Cottages works is that it’s a hotel, with a traditional front desk and all the amenities, but each “room” is its own cottage. They are all historic plantation cottages from the sugar plantations on the island, and they were relocated to the resort. We stayed in Cottage #69, which is one of the two-bedroom oceanfront cottages. We had a beautiful sweeping front porch with rocking chairs, a sweet little living room, full kitchen, two bedrooms and bathrooms (not that we needed two bedrooms to ourselves obviously, but the location was prime), and it was just so relaxing and homey. All the reviews ahead of time said that the Waimea Plantation Cottages is real “old Hawaii”, and at least from an outsider’s perspective, it really felt that way. The pace of life is slow and the emphasis is just on enjoying the company and the views of the ocean. The whole resort was so peaceful and the setting was idyllic.

At check in, we noticed that they have a huge selection of complementary DVD rentals (and tvs with DVD players in the cottages… we don’t even have one of those at home anymore!) and board game rentals. We picked up some scrabble, chess, and a couple of movies and watched one of them the first night. We were exhausted from the travel and passed out.

The next morning, we woke up to our beautiful view and feasted on our leftover pineapple-banana bread that I mentioned in my last recap and we brought all the way from Maui.

At this point, to give a real recap of our time, I have to switch gears and tell you about a certain someone who played a big part in our time in Waimea. Her name is Lila. She’s a cat, and Grace fell in love.

On our first night in Waimea, we were eating dinner on the porch of the hotel restaurant, and we had this little tabby cat come up to our table. We fed her a little bit of our scraps (best idea? no, but she was so sweet and clearly a stray and hungry) and Grace was instantly enamored. We started to walk back to our cottage from the restaurant and Lila followed us part of the way, and then we didn’t see her again. Flash forward to the next morning. She’s waiting for us on the porch our cottage, and Grace is IN LOVE at this point. She’s petting her, asking me if we have any food for her, etc. We did not. I’m not really a cat person, but Grace asked what we should call her and I said Lila. From that point, she was our cat for the rest of the vacation. She was pretty beat up-missing some teeth and really skinny-but even I have to admit she was a sweetheart.

That night we got her some cat food from the grocery store in town and fed her a couple more meals before we switched sides of the island. She was like having a pet on our vacation. Grace was really blue when we had to leave her. But we found some information from a local cat rescue that told us she probably belongs to a colony and has been spayed, so we were happy to learn that. Anyway, I couldn't write this post without sharing a little bit about Lila. She was adorable. And if you’re ever in Hawaii and meet a stray pet you love, you can actually take them home-the Hawaii humane society will help with getting it on the plane and all that! Thank goodness we didn’t know this until AFTER we had to leave Lila!! (sorry Grace).

Getting back to our time in Waimea, we took our first morning slow, ate breakfast outside, played some chess on our porch, and walked on the beach just outside our cottage.

We had a 1pm reservation to go on a boat tour of the Na Pali coast, so our day centered around that, and we decided to drive into town early to get lunch. Waimea town is tiny and so cute-it’s colorful, easy to walk, and has amazing food options. We chose the Shrimp Station for lunch and it was the tastiest island-fast-food imaginable. Everything is shrimp-based (imagine that?) and we ordered the shrimp burger and the coconut shrimp.

We walked off our lunch with a little bit of shopping and then we had room for dessert-SHAVE ICE! I’d been wanting to get shave ice the whole trip but we just hadn't made it happen yet. I’m glad we waited because JoJo’s shave ice is the best I’ve ever had. For the uninitiated, shave ice is a Hawaiian delicacy. And there’s no typo-it’s SHAVE ice, not shaved ice. I had to keep reminding Grace. It’s similar to a snow cone, but a zillion times better. The ice is carefully shaved, not crushed, and often nestled on a bed of ice cream. Then syrups are drizzled over top based on whatever flavor you order. It’s seriously so good.

I ordered a #1 (rainbow) and Grace ordered a #15 (pineapple, coconut, and macadamia cream). Both were incredible but I think Grace ordered best. JoJ’s does their shave ice on top of macadamia nut ice cream, and it’s so fresh and simple. Just delicious. If you’re in Kauai, GO. They have a location in Princeville too.

After shave ice, it was time to drive to the marina to hop on our boat!

The Na Pali Coast is something I’d been wanting to see for years. You have probably seen images of it as it’s in a lot of movies, most famously Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean. It looks very Jurassic Park to me (the originals), and those are some of my favorite movies. So it was really fun seeing the iconic coastline in person.

We used the tour company Na Pali Experience. I would highly recommend it. Our captain was Captain T, and he was AWESOME! I want to go back just to take his tour again.

It was about a 5-hour trip, which sounds kind of long, but it flew by. We toured the coast by boat, explored sea caves, snorkeled right off the boat, and jumped in a couple of other times just to cool off and swim. We saw dolphins, sea turtles, and tons of fish. It was one of my favorite days of the honeymoon.

Here are some of my favorite pics of the day:

Some of my favorite parts of the day were going in the sea caves and snorkeling. We were on a tiny boat (highly recommended-more expensive but you can go in narrower spaces) and would zoom into these crevices in the rock. Grace was TERRIFIED at first but once we realized what a pro our guide was, we relaxed and had so much fun.

Snorkeling was awesome. We probably saw at least 10 sea turtles, and tons of coral and fish. Grace was a little uncertain snorkeling since she hadn’t been since she was a kid. So we held hands the whole time and although she was kind of an anchor dragging me backwards against the current, it was one of the sweetest memories from the honeymoon :)

After the boat tour we stopped by the local grocery store on our way back to our cottage and got some frozen pizza and microwave popcorn (and the aforementioned cat food). Not the most glamorous meal on our honeymoon, but actually one of my favorites, because we got to have it at “home” and watch a movie we checked out from the hotel lobby. It was just cozy and perfect after a long day in the sun.

The next morning it was time to switch sides of the island and go to Princeville! On our way out of Waimea, we got some awesome smoothies and Hawaiian snacks and decided to drive up and see Waimea Canyon.

Waimea Canyon is known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”. It’s a beautiful canyon in the inland part of the island, but it doesn’t take long to drive up from the beach in Waimea. The drive was super pretty.

And that’s it for Waimea! Princeville, our last stop of the honeymoon, was gorgeous and I can’t wait to share that recap. Thanks for following along-it’s so much fun revising all these places!

October Goals + September Recap

Hello, October! I don’t think I have ever felt so at peace and ready for Fall to start. I’ll probably share more soon in a personal essay-style post, but Fall, shorter days, and colder temperatures have always been really hard for me. This year feels different for many reasons and I finally feel ready to embrace Fall. I’m so excited!

A lot happened in September. Biggest of all, I decided to switch jobs. I will probably not share more here because I tend to keep my professional life very separate from my blog. But I’m SO excited about the change and think it’s going to be great on so many levels. Because of that major and unexpected change, some of my September goals didn’t get checked off, so I’m rolling a couple of them over. But I did make good progress on others. To recap:

• Finish blogging our honeymoon (read the first recap here)—I’m about halfway done, so continuing this into October!

• Open all of our wedding gifts and incorporate them into our house—not fully. I made a lot of progress but want to totally finish this in October.

• Write all wedding thank-yous—same. I made good progress but just didn’t quite get them all done.

• Host two back-to-back weekends of houseguests towards the end of the month—yes! So fun. Some of our best friends visited us this month and although both were very short visits, they filled us up.

• Pray impossible prayers (hoping to blog more on this soon. Believing in the “impossible” is really good for the soul, I think!)—yes. See new job, above :)

• Celebrate the anniversary of our engagement (which is also the anniversary of the day we “officially” started dating when we were babies, haha)—yes! We had a really sweet dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Mozza.

• Start changing over my IDs and legal documents to my new last name—yes, but a bit of a slower start than I would have liked. Wanting to check more off in October.

• Go to the beach to celebrate the end of summer—yep! It was a sweet, simple beach day.

And now, my October goals!

• Start my new job well

• Set up my home office

• Finish my honeymoon blogging and start blogging our wedding!

• Enjoy things on my Fall bucket list and savor the season

• Make progress on my name change

• Finish sorting all of our wedding gifts and writing thank-yous

• Take a trip to DC to introduce Grace to my grandmother for the first time!

• Order our first ever Christmas cards

I posted my Fall bucket list on IG stories (I got the download from abeautifulmess.com) and a lot of people asked about it. So I might share more here soon! I think it’s such a fun concept and it’s really helping me cherish the season I’m in, even though summer will always be my favorite.

Hope you all have a beautiful start to the month!

Savory Cocktail Series: the "Bullshy"

Welcome to a new series on Have Dog, Will Drive! Honestly, this is pretty random and I have no idea whether people will be interested in reading this, but I've decided to do a series on savory cocktails (that I'm inventing and/or adapting). A Bloody Mary is my favorite drink--I used to drink Bloody Mary mix out of a can (without vodka!) during class in law school. Something about a savory, umami drink is just so much more appealing to me than a sugary sweet cocktail. A snack in your drink, a drink in your snack. YUM.

But, there are a zillion sweet cocktail recipes out there, while savory ones are SO rare. There's the Bloody Mary (and many variations thereof), a dirty martini, and . . . that's about it. Recently I was musing about this and decided to make up some of my own! I think the Bloody Mary will always be queen above all others, but I'm pretty excited about some of the ideas I have for different savory/salty cocktails.

Today's drink is heavily inspired by what used to be a very common cocktail in the 1950s and 1960s. The original was known as a Bullshot, and although I've never seen it on a cocktail menu in my life, it was apparently very popular for a time. There are some interesting articles about it here and here. The Bullshot gets its name because it's traditionally made with beef broth. The basic recipe is just beef broth, vodka, and a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce. 

For my first attempt at bringing to life a savory cocktail, I decided to try to make a vegetarian twist on the Bullshot, which I’m calling the Bullshy as a play on the original (actually, Grace came up with the name). It’s extremely simple to make.

I put three parts organic vegetable broth and one part vodka in a cocktail shaker, along with a few dashes of worcestershire sauce, a splash of shoyu sauce, and a squeeze of lime.

Next, just shake, pour into a rocks glass over cubed ice, and garnish with a green onion. I cracked some fresh ground pepper on top and am happy to say it was delish!

I think what I love about this drink are its endless possibilities. Some variations you could try:

• Use homemade broth-I’m sure it would be 100x yummier

• Use different garnishes (a leek? a carrot? a shishito pepper? a skewer of all of the above?!)

• Add hot sauce for a spicy soup

• Make a green onion or pepper-infused vodka for the base

• Try a salted rim with some flaky Maldon salt

As we’re moving into fall, I’m excited to make this drink again around Thanksgiving for a tasty, savory accompaniment to mashed potatoes and green bean casserole (two of my favs).

Let me know if you are a savory drink lover! I’m excited to come up with new recipes in the coming weeks and share them here :)

Honeymoon Recap #2: The Road to Hana (Maui)

I'm back with my second recap of our honeymoon! If you missed the first one, find it here. I am giddy to start writing this post because it means I get to relive such a fun leg of our trip! After leaving Wailea, we set out to drive the Road to Hana.

If you haven't driven it or heard of it, the Road to Hana is known as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. It is a 52-mile road connecting the main populated area of Maui with a remote town called Hana. It has about 500 hairpin turns and 59 bridges, the majority of which are one-way. If you make no stops, the drive takes about 2.5 hours, but it's almost impossible not to stop along the way to get a better view of some of the sights or to get some delicious food from the roadside stands. 

A lot of people do the Road to Hana and turn around at the end and drive back. But we decided that to really enjoy it, we wanted to stay a couple of nights in Hana. It's the tiniest town, but there is one amazing resort there, called the Travaasa Hana. More on that later--first, a little bit about our experience driving the Road to Hana.

We used the app I screenshotted above, the Road to Hana Gypsy Guide. I definitely recommend it. It uses GPS to talk to you as you drive past certain landmarks, and in between, it tells you about Hawaiian history. The history parts were REALLY interesting--it was so cool hearing about all the different kings and queens of Hawaii in the past. With the jungle all around us and the little voiceover telling us what was coming up ahead, it seriously felt like we were on an Indiana Jones theme park ride. It was so fun and otherworldly beautiful.

But it was also rainy. While we were honeymooning, Hurricane Hector brushed by the islands, and the day we drove the Road to Hana was definitely the worst of it. To us, it was cozy and romantic and beautiful (thankfully, the rain and weather was not dangerous at all), but it also meant that a lot of the roadside stands were closed, and it was honestly just too wet to really enjoy stopping to see the sights. After a few stops that left us drenched, we eventually decided that we would press on to Hana without any more stops, and then see more stuff when we drove the same route back a couple of days later.

Here are a few highlights from our rainy day on the Road to Hana:

A glimpse of the jungle in the rain.

We bought ponchos at a roadside stand.

We stopped at the Garden of Eden, a garden and arboretum on the Road to Hana. We made some bird friends and took in the views.

We also stopped at an area with a collection of roadside food stands and got THE BEST coconut shrimp ever. It was made with fresh grated coconut and no other breading--you'll see in the pic, but it just puts any other coconut shrimp to shame. I also got a yummy smoothie.

Once we decided it was too rainy to make any more stops, we got to the Travaasa Hana pretty quickly. We pulled up to our gorgeous resort and were greeted in the lobby with cool lemongrass towels to wash our hands and a delicious passionfruit nectar to sip on while we checked in. One thing that's really nice about Travaasa is that everything is truly complementary, including the valet parking, and the whole resort has a no tipping policy. While I definitely do not mind tipping at hotels or anywhere else, it definitely contributes to the relaxed vibe of the resort that you know gratuities for the staff are already built into what you're paying. 

Once we checked in, one of the staff members took us on a golf cart down to our ocean bungalow. It was a long drive because the lobby is at street level, and then our bungalow was allllll the way down right by the shore. We were pinching ourselves in disbelief at the view and the cozy, idyllic setting in the rain. The loaf of banana bread and welcome card waiting for us didn't hurt, either!

The resort was incredibly dreamy and romantic in the rain.

And this was our little bungalow!

I didn't get the best photos of the inside (kind of a running theme for whatever reason), but here are a couple of pics that give you an idea:

And our amazing lanai:

That night, we were pretty exhausted from the drive, so we ordered in food from one of the two restaurants at the resort. I got a sea vegetables salad and Mac and cheese, and Grace got a caprese salad and arancini (fried risotto balls). We also tried two desserts: lilikoi cheesecake and a buttery tropical bread with ice cream. We were also happy that the restaurant delivered bottles of wine :) 

The next day we woke up and it was our one full day in Hana. It was such a good one! We had a slow morning drinking coffee and tea on our lanai and enjoying the banana bread the resort left for us.

They had their own brand of Maui coffee in the room for us.

Just a non-sponsored plug for my favorite brand of PJs... get thyself a pair of Lake Pajamas. I lived in mine during our honeymoon when I wanted to be covered up but comfy during mornings on our lanais.

Next we went to the hotel's Wellness pool to hang out before we had spa treatments later in the day. It was so stunning--our favorite pool of the trip by far.

My "I miss my dogs" hat was very accurate at this point in the trip--I REALLY started missing them right around this point!

And at one point we had to wait out a passing shower, which was quite funny.

For the rest of the day, I don't have any photos because we left our phones in the room while we went to lunch and the spa. But it was one of the best days of the whole trip. We went to The Preserve for lunch, which is one of the hotels on the grounds, and OMG! One of the best meals we had in Hawaii for sure. We shared the bread pudding and each got a "Da Fish Moco" bowl. This was like a combo between a rice bowl and an Eggs Benedict. My mouth is watering typing this. It was a bed of jasmine rice, topped with grilled local fish with a poached egg on top. Everything was covered in Hollandaise sauce and surrounded by a halo of perfectly crispy tater tots. SO GOOD! It was a very Hawaiian meal, as Hawaii is all about fusion. 

Next we went to the spa, where we had booked the Hana Couples Escape. It was a 90-minute couple's massage followed by a honey foot treatment and a essential oil scalp treatment. The massage included dry brushing, which is where the masseuses take a bristle brush and brush your skin all over your body, brushing up toward the heart throughout. It was a little uncomfortable at moments because the bristles are coarse, but my skin has NEVER felt softer afterward. They sent us home with two of the brushes and I want to keep doing dry brushing because of how good it is for your skin and circulation! 

The whole spa experience was exceptional. It was 2 hours of bliss. Afterward, we did a hot/cold regimen for thyroid and general health, which the spa recommends.  The way it works is you do 5 minutes in the steam room, followed by a 1 minute cold plunge (in a freezing but beautiful black lava plunge pool with flowers floating on the surface), 2 minutes of resting and drinking water, 5 minutes more of steam, 1 minute cold plunge, 5 minutes steam, finished off by a cold shower in the beautiful outdoor shower. It was so invigorating and yet restful and restorative at the same time. After we did the hot/cold regimen, we hung out in the spa jacuzzi overlooking the ocean. We were the only other guests we saw during all of this--it was so special and felt like we had the whole spa to ourselves (which I guess we did!). 

After our spa time, we went to the Wellness pool again and got mai tais and mojitos from the pool bar. Then we went back to our room and rested (from our clearly difficult day... haha), read our novels, and drank wine. Heaven on earth!!

We finished off the day with dinner at the Hana Ranch Restaurant. We sat outside on the patio overlooking the ocean, with twinkle lights overhead, and I just remember feeling so incredibly lucky. The restaurant was sooo yummy--we shared poke to start, and then Grace tried some Hawaiian BBQ and fries, and I got a Caesar salad with furiake fish on top. There was also great live Hawaiian music that night. The restaurant was walking distance from our bungalow, so we walked everywhere and just soaked in our relaxing day.

The next day it was time to fly to Kauai! The airport on Maui is back near where we started our road trip, so we drove the whole Road to Hana again going in the opposite direction. We stopped a few more times than we did on the rainy drive up, but I have a word of caution here: if you are driving the Road to Hana with someone else, make sure to discuss with them in advance what your goals are for stopping versus just doing the drive. One of the only tense moments of the honeymoon was when I wanted to pull over at turnouts to see pretty views and Grace didn't think it was safe. I think Grace was right, but at the time I definitely voiced my disagreement with her choice :) 

But we did do a few fun stops. One of our first stops of the day was at a roadside stand called Hana Farms. We got delicious coffee and iced ginger tea, and THE BEST pineapple banana bread! It had slices of candied pineapple on top. We ate 1/3 of it there and then took the rest all the way to Kauai and had it for breakfast the next day!

Grace also indulged me and pulled over at beautiful turnout to see these views:

Later, once we were back closer to where the airport is, we stopped at a gorgeous surfing beach called Ho'okipa Beach and watched the surfers for a while. We also got the yummiest coconut water--the guy at the roadside stand chopped the tops off for us and stuck straws right in them! Best coconut water I have ever had.

Our last stop on Maui before the airport was Paia town. It's a super hippie town, apparently a favorite spot of Willie Nelson's (which of course we loved), and has kind of an artists' community feel. We did a little shopping and then got traditional Hawaiian lunch plates for lunch: poke, rice, and mac salad at Tobi's shave ice and poke. YUM!!

Looking at this picture makes me crave this meal again--so so good! To me, this is such a classic Hawaiian taste.

And then we had to say goodbye to Maui :( We went to the airport, returned our rental car, and boarded our plane to Kauai.

More next time! Thanks for following along.