How to Save Your Wedding Cake Top Tier for Your First Anniversary

One of my favorite things about our first wedding anniversary last month (in addition to our incredible Ojai trip) was eating the top tier of our wedding cake! If you haven’t heard of this tradition, it’s considered good luck to freeze the top tier of your wedding cake (only serving the lower, larger tiers to your guests) and then eat it—or at least some of it—on your first wedding anniversary.

I personally really dislike the taste of freezer-burned food, so I was pretty unsure how this would turn out. Would it even be edible after a whole 365 days in the back of our freezer? Somewhat unexpectedly, it turned out DELICIOUS! I was so happy with it that I wanted to quickly share how it worked in case it helps anyone else who wants to try this tradition.

The way I froze it: I placed the top tier (which our caterers wrapped up for us the night of our wedding, and Grace’s brother (and best man) carried back to his hotel refrigerator) into a large straight-sided bowl, and then fitted a large ziplock bag around the whole thing. Then I put rubber bands around the opening of the bag so that no air could get through. It was sort of a random way of packaging it, but it was the only way I could think of to cover the entire cake! The food storage containers I have just aren’t big enough, and I needed something solid and airtight. You could also purchase a large airtight container, I just didn’t think of this in advance.

The way I defrosted it: I think the method of defrosting is probably just as important as the method of freezing. I consulted my best friend on this, who happens to have gone to culinary school :) As Grace and I headed out the door to our anniversary weekend trip, I took the cake from the freezer (still in the container I mentioned above) and put it in the refrigerator. Then it had about 48 hours to slowly come to a cold, but not frozen, temperature. I think this gentle defrosting really helped preserve texture and flavor. When we got home from our trip on the afternoon of our actual anniversary, I took the cake from the refrigerator, removed the packaging around it, and placed it on a cake stand on the counter. Then it had a couple more hours to come to room temperature.

It turned out better than I ever would have expected! I honestly couldn’t tell it had been frozen for a whole year. I went into it thinking we’d just eat a couple of bites for good luck. As it turns out, we ate the entire thing over the next few days! Our top tier was a coconut-pineapple flavor, which reminded us both of our wedding and our honeymoon in Hawaii. I kept the cake in the fridge, covered, when I didn’t have it out to cut slices.

The way I styled it: Just to make it extra special, I decided to buy some small pink tulips and arrange them around the cake. I love small things like that :) Definitely not necessary, but it also was reminiscent of our wedding since our florist had styled our cake with our wedding flowers. Here’s how it looked that night:

Hard to believe that top tier is the very same one we ate last month. I also served it on a cake stand we received as a wedding gift from a family friend, so that made it extra special too!

I hope this post gives you some tips if you want to try out this tradition! If you didn’t or don’t want to save your top tier, I also think a nice tradition would be to get cupcakes in your wedding cake flavor from your baker! Grace and I plan on doing that in anniversaries to come! Our other flavors were red velvet (bottom tier) and carrot cake (middle tier). YUM!

First Wedding Anniversary Trip to Ojai

Ojai is our favorite little town in California. It seems like whenever I tell people that, they either TOTALLY get it and are in agreement, or are kind of confused. It’s a very small Southern California town, without the world fame of Palm Springs or the recreational activities of Big Bear/Lake Arrowhead, but it’s so very special. We plan to live there one day.

For now, we love spending our special weekends, birthdays, anniversaries, etc. We’ve stayed in pretty much all of the main hotels/resorts in town over the years, and this year for our anniversary we tried somewhere new - the Lavender Inn! It was adorable and we’d definitely stay again.

Today I want to recap our sweet first wedding anniversary getaway weekend in Ojai, and I hope show a little bit about why we love this town so much.

We left town on Friday afternoon with Willie in tow (Bean stayed at his favorite doggie “summer camp”) and made the quick two-hour drive up to Ojai. We checked into the Lavender Inn, where I’d booked the Provence Cottage. The Cottage is a separate building from the rest of the Inn, so we had our own little garden and yard for Willie, which was a huge selling point. The Inn is tiny—only about seven rooms total—and it’s a bed and breakfast, so we had a full breakfast every morning and wine, cheese, and board game night in the evenings. We loved it!

The steps up to our cute cottage

We had a cute little kitchenette too, which was nice for keeping champagne chilled and preparing Willie’s food. We loved that the Inn was dog friendly (not all the rooms are - so check if you are thinking of booking), and having our own cottage was so nice! It had the space and privacy of an Airbnb, but with the amenities of a bed and breakfast. A dream! Our little garden was so cute:

I think Willie really loved how lush the Inn was, and they were so sweet to him there. A dog named June Carter lives at the Inn, so of course Willie Nelson and June Carter had to meet!

Musical dog legends

Our first night in Ojai we decided to walk down the street from the Inn to a cute place called Hip Vegan. They had an outdoor patio so we could bring Willie, and the food was SO GOOD! Looking back at the photos of the food we got is making me hungry.

The people there were so friendly to us and to Willie too. Spoiler for the rest of this post, it’s a lot of relaxing, trying out local restaurants (the Inn was walking distance to everywhere in town), resting and reading in our garden, and just enjoying small town life. There’s no major secret to what’s fun to do in Ojai, we just really enjoy the pace of life, how friendly and welcoming everyone is, the mountain views, and the amazing restaurants.

This book was incredibly good in my opinion, by the way.

The next day we enjoyed the breakfast at the Inn, followed by strolling around town and checking out cute shops.

We absolutely loved Bart’s Books, an all-outdoor book store (yep!) that welcomed Willie in to browse with us.

Bart’s had a whole section just on Antarctica travel (somewhere I’ve always wanted to go), so I loved perusing and picked out a book about the white continent. Grace got a true crime book.

We had lunch at The Nest, a restaurant we’ve been to and loved before.

Probably some of the best fries I’ve ever had! And again we ate outside so Willie could be with us.

After spending some of the afternoon napping, relaxing, and doing more walking around town, we enjoyed the Inn’s happy hour with wine, cheese, and board games you can borrow. We played scrabble at a cute little “secret garden” corner of the Inn and it was so lovely.

After happy hour, we went back to our garden before going out to dinner and popped some anniversary champagne (served in the flutes we toasted with at our wedding), looked at our wedding album, and read our wedding vows.

The dress I’m wearing here is the dress I wore to my bridesmaids’ luncheon the day before our wedding! I love incorporating sentimental things like that on special dates.

For dinner, we walked to a place we’d never been called Ojai Rotie, which I had seen described as “upscale picnic food”. That piqued our interest, plus they had a dog-friendly patio for Willie. It was another incredible meal! Ojai restaurants really do not disappoint, in my experience.

We got a bunch of little bites like a cheese and bread board, deviled eggs, cucumber salad, labneh, and more. It was the perfect “snacky” meal after we’d already had two heavy meals that day.

The next day we headed home to LA! We ended our anniversary weekend with takeout from Tatsu Ramen (our favorite local ramen shop) and the defrosted top tier of our wedding cake, which ended up being perfectly preserved. Just writing this post is making me miss this incredible weekend. The whole weekend felt like what we love about Ojai - slow, sweet, familiar yet fresh, and delicious :)

I can’t wait to plan our next trip!

Our Paris Vacation Photos

I’m so excited to share our Paris vacation photos today! If you know me, you know I LOVE pictures. I have made it a goal to get professional photos taken of Grace and me every year of marriage (not necessarily to celebrate each year - just at some point during the year), and although that takes work, planning, and $, it’s so worth it to me! Last year on our honeymoon we had some photos taken on the beach in Kauai using a company called Flytographer (it’s like Airbnb for booking vacation photographers), and it worked out so well that I booked them again for our Europe vacation this year.

I am SO thrilled with how these photos turned out, but it’s funny because a lot about this shoot did not go as planned. For starters, I actually booked the shoot in Brussels, but sadly our photographer was injured and had to cancel the shoot the day before. I was bummed (and hoping she was okay), but Grace had the idea of trying to re-book during our time in Paris and Flytographer graciously gave me a credit (in addition to refunding me for the original shoot cost) that made it very inexpensive to do so. I also had originally planned a totally different outfit for the shoot, but I think my little striped dress turned out looking so Parisian! Everything ended up seeming so meant-to-be.

While I’m sure a shoot in Brussels would have been so much fun (and meaningful, since Grace is from Belgium), we LOVED our Paris photographer and clicked with him right away. I’m so happy it ended up working out like this, even though it was a bit stressful initially having to re-book our photoshoot in the middle of vacation. All in all, Flytographer was awesome about everything and I would continue using them in the future!

If anyone wants to try it, I have a $25 off Flytographer referral code for you! Use this: CODE9385

Now for some favorite shots from the gallery we received:

We took these photos in the Jardin du Luxembourg right around sunset, where we arranged to meet our photographer. We were staying at a cute hotel just a short walk away, so we strolled over and our photographer made us feel at ease right away. Neither of us are the best at just posing naturally for photos, but our photographer gave us a ton of direction and we were all laughing and having fun. An hour of taking photos FLEW by.

One of the great things about doing our pictures at the Jardin du Luxembourg is that there are so many different areas and backdrops. Our photographer also did an amazing job at making it look like we had the park virtually to ourselves, even though it was pretty crowded!

I love that we got a mix of more classic shots and also some cool, almost experimental images:

LOVE this one :)

Believe it or not, when we first arrived at the park it looked kind of overcast, but the prettiest evening sunshine came out once we started walking around. The sun sets so late in Paris!

Our photographer also snapped a couple of individual shots of us, which are nice to have. I used one as the photo for my updated About page!

At one point, a bunch of horses ran right behind us in the best photobomb ever, haha!

I just can’t get over how much I love these photos, and it makes me really inspired to keep making sure we get nice photos done every year. It can feel awkward and it’s something we have to budget for, but it makes me so happy and having special photos is really an heirloom.

There are even a few I’m leaving out here solely for space - I love every single image so much! Next up I absolutely have to get some of these in frames!

Naming the Good Stuff No. 10

I haven’t done a Naming the Good Stuff post in so long (almost two months)! They make me so happy though, and I’d love nothing more to start doing these regularly on Fridays again. This one is going to be short, just a way of popping in and sharing what’s been good in the past week.

First up, my dogs have been so lovey with each other! I guess they missed each other while we were in Europe (they were boarding at different facilities - they have very different needs), because they’ve been more tuned into each other than I’ve ever seen them. To be honest, Willie and Jellybean have never been best best friends, but they’ve been constantly looking for each other, sniffing, kissing, nuzzling, and it warms my heart so much to see it. They have a brotherly relationship that is only getting better with time, and I’m so grateful for that.

Second, I’m so happy that I’ve gotten a chance to blog more regularly in the past week! It feels great to get back into that routine. This past week I blogged my September goals (better late than never huh?) and my simple Fall house decorations, plus this post! I already have a really fun post written and pre-scheduled to go up Sunday, so keep an eye out!

Third, I just wanted to share a snap of these lovely little buds I spotted on a hike the other day! They reminded me of spring, even though it’s almost Fall.

Fourth and last, the pumpkin pancakes in the photo above are SO GOOD! I made them using the Trader Joe’s boxed pumpkin pancake and waffle mix, and Grace requested them two days in a row they are so yummy. They do have actual pumpkin in them, plus all the spices that make us think of pumpkin pie, but they aren’t overly sweet on their own. They go great with maple syrup!

Overall, my “good stuff” lately is just how nice it is to be home. I had some post-vacation blues last week when we were first back, but it really does feel so cozy and nice to be home now. How lucky am I to have a real life that feels sweeter than vacation!

Hope you had a great week!

Fall House Decorations For About $20

I have been surprising myself lately with how much I’ve been excited for Fall! I love Spring and Summer, and for a long time I seriously dreaded Fall. But in the past couple of years it’s become such a sweet season for me. A big part of that is making my seasonal bucket lists and making a big effort to savor the season.

Even though it technically isn’t even Fall yet (the equinox is in a few more days), I have been getting in the Fall spirit already. I recently spent about $20 at Trader Joe’s to make our house feel more festive, and I’m so happy with how it turned out!

Grace LOVES Halloween, so she has a bunch of Halloween decorations she likes to put up toward the end of October. In contrast, I think these simple decorations are perfect for September and into October, and hopefully the pumpkins and gourds will last into Thanksgiving season.

I love a little row of mini white pumpkins. Trader Joe’s was selling these for about 60 cents each.

I also bought the mini gourds (for the same price) that are in the letterboard photo above and also the tablescape below.

Even just a couple of mini white pumpkins adds such a cozy feel to surfaces in our house.

Lastly, I bought a couple of potted mums in a pretty color for our front patio. I can’t remember exactly how much they cost, but I think they were $5 or $6 each.

And that’s it! I realize this is not the most original Fall decoration post in the world, but these small (and inexpensive) seasonal touches are making me so happy! Trader Joe’s is the best :)

Do you decorate seasonally?

September 2019 Goals

Happy September! … 16th! This is by far the latest in a month that I have ever posted my monthly goals. But it’s also the first time since starting my blog in 2017 that I have started the first chunk of a month in Europe, so I think it’s all good :)

Grace and I have been back a little less than a week from our dream-come-true and much needed vacation, and I’m finally getting over jetlag and returning to my favorite things like blogging. It’s a short month for us as a result, and my goals reflect that. It’s so nice to return to my routines, see my dogs, and get our house cozy for Fall. Those are the biggest overall goals of the month - just to return to normal and soak in the new season that’s just around the corner.

My progress on August goals was a mixed bag, but it was a great month. Here’s how I did:

• Make a 5-year plan for this blog (hopes, dreams, what I want to get out of it, etc.)—no, but I’d still love to do this.

• Prep for our big summer vacation (buy travel essentials, print travel documents, pack, get organized)—yes! Such a great trip!!

• Update my voter registration—the very last thing that still has my maiden name on it—nope, rolling that over to September.

• Become a morning person again! I’ve started doing a lot better at this during the first week of August and I am loving it so far—yes, I was definitely more of a morning person in August, although my progress is kind of shot now due to jet lag! But I’m sure I’ll get back on it.

• Organize and clear out my phone and DSLR camera photos ahead of our trip—yes to phone, no to DSLR, but I decided not to bring my DSLR on our trip so I could travel lighter.

• Finish the last few pages in my current journal and start a fresh one—yes!

And here are my goals for what’s left of September:

• Make my Fall bucket list (checked this one off this morning!)

• Get Halloween costumes for Bean and myself. So excited for our matching costume!

• Install updates on my computer

• Update my voter registration

• Get back into blogging and my usual routines

• Enjoy a much-anticipated trip to San Francisco

• Local hikes and/or yoga at home a few times a week

I hope you all have a beautiful start to Fall!

Photo above is from our Paris vacation photos shoot, which I will share more about soon!

One Year of Marriage

The best way I know how to describe the feeling of being newly married is how I would imagine a fish would feel being dropped from a fishbowl into the wide ocean. Wonderment, excitement, fear, and unlimited possibility come to mind. But most importantly, like an aquatic creature finally able to access the depths it was born to, I feel free.

In this first year of marriage we’ve often been asked how it feels being married now. “Do you feel any different? Not really, huh?” is a common phrasing we’ve gotten. It’s hard to put in words—part of why this post is coming a few weeks after our anniversary, rather than right at the one-year mark like I’d planned—but I do feel fundamentally different. I feel at peace, like I’ve emotionally come home to rest, and like a new adventure is starting all at once. I feel the weight of promises we made each other in front of all of our loved ones hemming me in like the most delicious weighted blanket. At the same time, I think the reason I have found marriage so incredibly freeing is because it has allowed me to see the truly endless possibilities for my future. Not freedom as in a lack of a specific path in front of me—but because I can start to see that path and know the person I will walk it with. All the dreams I’ve vaguely held my whole life have started to crystallize in this first year of marriage. The homes we’ll live in, the (many) dogs we’ll have along the way, children if we’re lucky enough, a slowly-materializing list of places in the world we want to see. Financial goals we’re working toward. Friends’ and family members’ milestones we can’t wait to celebrate with them. I know there are a lot of surprises coming our way in this lifetime, and I also know each day is a gift we are not promised. For those reasons I try to hold my future with open hands as much as possible in my heart. But if our days together are an empty journal of lined pages, stretching out and waiting to be written in, it feels beautifully freeing to at least know what the cover of that journal looks like, and carry it with me wherever I go. I’m so grateful.

You might be asking yourself: how do these words and metaphors and Big Feelings correlate with standing up with an officiant in front of our friends and family and having a big party to celebrate? What’s actually special about marriage? As a starting point, I don’t mean to suggest that people in relationships with no desire or intention to get married are somehow less-than. I have no experience with that and am not speaking to it. What I am saying is that in the context of my understanding of romantic love, promising a lifetime to Grace and her promising me the same changed everything. Even though I knew that Grace and I were ready to commit to each other and had spent ten months being engaged and preparing for marriage, there was undeniable power in our vows that day. “I give myself to you,” “all the days of my life,” “I promise,” “I bind my life to yours,” and “I honor you in the name of God” are a few snippets from our vows that represent things we had never said to one another before August 4, 2018. They are once-in-a-lifetime and life-altering, and in this first year of marriage Grace has shown me every day that she intends to live them out. My biggest goal in life is to do the same. We are imperfect people who have committed to something much bigger than ourselves, and I’m still wrapping my head around that. I think I always will be.

 One lesson about marriage that has stuck with me from the past year is the realization that marriage is not about fulfilling all my needs or making my life easier. Grace and I both strongly dislike biking so this is a funny analogy, but when you’re married it’s as if you already know how to ride a bike perfectly well and are suddenly required to ride a tandem everywhere you go. A tandem bike isn’t going to go as fast at first when you’re re-learning how to ride it. If one person tips, it can take you both down. You have to work together to get where you’re going. But the kind of marriage I want to cultivate over the rest of my life with Grace isn’t about speed or dexterity or success or even flexibility. I want to take the slower path together and get frustrated and solve problems. I am confident that we will continue to find true joy, fulfillment, and contentment by learning to ride the tandem bike of life, even when it’s not smooth sailing. And I feel so lucky to have a spouse who shares in this sentiment and will be the team captain of our little family for the rest of our days.

I can’t believe we’re going into year two of marriage. My greatest hope right now is for more of the same, since this last year has been so beautiful. But I’m so excited that things will undoubtedly change, too. I know that parts of what I’ve written here will seem funny, later, kind of an “and I thought I loved you then” hindsight that I know married couples get with age. And I think just like how a little kid feels that a school year stretches f o r e v e r because it’s fractionally a larger part of their life, this first year of marriage has been sweet and slow. Other years might flip by for us like the pages of a journal left open in the breeze. I hope that I’m always able to stop at the end of another year of marriage and take stock of what I’ve learned and where I want us to go. But if I’m not, my prayer is that I just enjoy the ride when I get a chance to stop and catch my breath and remember the promises I made on August 4, 2018.

August 2019 Goals

I’m a bit late, but I’m finally here with my August goals! I’m coming off the busiest two weeks I’ve probably had all year—with a little anniversary vacation thrown right in the middle of them—but there’s still a lot of August left and I’m excited to make good goals happen.

I’m hoping to pop in a few more times this month with blog posts (including a really special one on my thoughts on 1 year of marriage), so I’ll keep this one short!

August Goals

• Make a 5-year plan for this blog (hopes, dreams, what I want to get out of it, etc.)

• Prep for our big summer vacation (buy travel essentials, print travel documents, pack, get organized)

• Update my voter registration—the very last thing that still has my maiden name on it

• Become a morning person again! I’ve started doing a lot better at this during the first week of August and I am loving it so far

• Organize and clear out my phone and DSLR camera photos ahead of our trip

• Finish the last few pages in my current journal and start a fresh one

Cheers to the last full month of summer!

Christmas in July

This past weekend we celebrated Christmas in July, and it was so simple and sweet! For those who have no idea what Christmas in July is, it’s a southern tradition that apparently started in North Carolina (where I’m from). But, I actually haven’t celebrated it before this! I didn’t grow up with the tradition but would love for my kids to grow up looking forward to it. To me, Christmas in July just feels so imaginative, whimsical, and fun. Even the sound of it is like saying “pish posh!” or “when pigs fly!”

The idea behind Christmas in July is that for one day, you just do Christmassy things, eat Christmas food, listen to Christmas music, etc. We didn’t do gifts and I like it that way. It’s far away from actual Christmas, so it’s just a pop of fun in the calendar and by no means comes close to how much I go all out in December :)

This year, for our first Christmas in July, we just kept it very simple and listened to Christmas music, ate a vegetarian Christmas “plate” of food for dinner, watched a Christmas Prince on Netflix, and drank hot chocolate. I also diffused some cinnamon and pine essential oils to make the house smell like the holidays.

One of my fav Christmas albums! The Charlie Brown Christmas album is also so perfect and timeless.

My “vegetarian Christmas plate” consisted of mac n cheese, garlicky green beans, roasted brussel sprouts, and sweet potato (fries, haha).

I made the hot chocolate from scratch and it was the best!! Equal parts cocoa powder and sugar, a pinch of salt, whisked into simmering almond milk on the stove. I dashed in some vanilla extract at the end.

So cozy!

All in all, this was such a sweet beginning of a tradition and I think we’ll definitely continue to celebrate it. There are a lot of fun possibilities for Christmas in July with kids. Also, in case anyone is concerned that this is somehow sacrilegious (probably not but who knows), December 25 is just an arbitrary day chosen to be when we celebrate Christmas :) Astrologers have actually suggested (based on star patterns at the time) that the first Christmas occurred on June 17—my birthday! The point is, no one really knows when the first Christmas was, so I think it’s fine to give a nod to it in summer as well as celebrating in full-force in December.

I can’t wait for Christmas this year!!

Have you ever celebrated Christmas in July?

Naming the Good Stuff No. 9

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Naming the Good Stuff post and I miss it! I started this “tradition” as a type of blog post to do on Fridays, but the overall sentiment behind it (just reflecting on what’s been good lately) also feels fitting for the start of a new week, and I’m writing this on Sunday night while I wait for some veggies to roast in the oven :)

1. Number one on my Naming the Good Stuff list is summer veggies! Getting home from the grocery store and breathing in the scent of fresh basil as I unpack grocery bags, and stocking the kitchen with avocados, squash, corn, tomatoes, and green beans is just the best.

2. Next is how cute and snuggly Willie has been lately! He sometimes wants alone time, so when he “chooses” you to cuddle with, it’s sooo cute and special.

In case anyone was missing some Bean content in this post (lol), here’s a mini collage I made of how cute his stubby little legs/paws are.

3. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve probably seen that I’ve been super into bread making lately! I’m planning on doing a whole post about it, because it’s been so fun. Here are some loafs I recently made:

4. A couple of weeks ago we got some flower arrangements as a gift (actually Grace did), and most of the flowers used ended up drying really beautifully! It’s been the gift that keeps on giving, I’ve just been changing the water out every few days but they’re still going strong.

5. I’m really proud that we FINALLY put together an earthquake kit. I’ve been meaning to do this for literally years, and recent quakes in LA were the motivation I needed to actually get it done.

6. Grace got me a make-your-own neon sign kit, and I used it to make this “cozy” sign for our guest room! I actually rearranged the whole guest room layout, which has been really helpful since it is my office too. I think this corner feels so homey, and I hope our guests do too!

7. I know for some people this one might be a “naming the BAD stuff” item, haha, but I’ve been loving the hot summer weather we’ve had lately! Grace and I have been getting outside a lot, enjoying the dry heat, and drinking iced drinks.

8. We’ve been checking a LOT of things off our Summer Bucket List lately. One of the things on the list was wine nights in our yard, and even though I’m the only one who really drinks wine, I have been loving it!

9. Lastly, one of the things making me happiest right now is that we have three vacations coming up next month!! Neither of us has taken a real vacation all year, and now we have a bunch coming up at once which is so exciting.

Hope you’ve had lots of the Good Stuff in your life lately, too!