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!

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.

My Three-Month Spending Challenge

As I shared in my 2019 goals, I decided to start off the year by challenging myself to make ZERO purchases other than food and essentials for three months. I considered essentials to be just replacing everyday items if they ran out. For example, I wasn’t going to stop washing my hair because I ran out of shampoo and was doing a spending challenge. Same with household products. But I wanted to add nothing new to any shopping carts. So even though I usually wear makeup, purchasing new makeup beyond just replacing my staple items if they ran out would be against the rules of the spending challenge. It’s a little bit flexible in terms of the rules and definitions, but it made sense to me.

Let me tell you one thing that surprised me: the three month spending challenge (January 1-March 31) FLEW by! I thought I would be painstakingly counting the days until I could go to the Target home section, but it was such a good discipline for my heart because I realized how much I really didn’t miss buying stuff. That was even true for clothing. I have officially not purchased any clothes since 2018, and I even perused the spring clothing collection at Target with Grace the other day and had very little desire to buy anything.

The other thing that surprised me: how much this spending challenge and consciousness regarding buying things changed my overall financial perspective. These first three months of 2019 have radically changed Grace and me in terms of finances. I will be honest and tell you that we did not keep a budget whatsoever for the first 5 months of marriage. Thankfully it was fine, but as we dream and talk about our lives as a married couple we realized how much we are going to need to intentionally save to be able to do the things we want! There were definitely tears shed in the early discussions about budgeting, and we’ve had to sacrifice and make tough decisions. But we’ve also been able to joyfully say YES to a big trip this summer because we know how we’re going to afford it, and we’re so excited about the dreams we’re building towards by being disciplined in this area.

The spending challenge has helped me turn my perspective around from focusing on the sacrifice of saying “no” to something I want, to focusing on the joy of saying “yes” to things I want WAY more in the big picture.

So it’s now April and my spending challenge is technically done! So far in the first couple weeks, I’ve only bought a new mascara and some small home improvement items for our house. I’m happy to say that doing this challenge has really reduced my desire to online shop or just want a quick fix of retail therapy. I initially thought about what it would look like if I kept the challenge going the whole year, but I think I’m going to ease up for the spring/summer and then maybe end the year with another three months of it.

A couple tips if you are interested in doing this (I highly recommend it)!

• When you get a desire to buy something specific (like “oh I NEED a new houseplant for that windowsill” or whatever), write it in a note on your phone. I kept a note of things I wanted but was saying “no” to for now, so I wouldn’t forget to grab them if I really still wanted them at the end of the challenge. On my note are a grout pen to touch up our grout on the tile floors (exciting stuff huh!), this book so many people have recommended, this beauty product a blogger I like recommended, and these monogrammed PJs. I might pull the trigger on the grout pen because it’s only like $11 but everything else can wait or maybe go on my birthday wish list!

• On that note, I think easing back into buying stuff after your spending challenge is done is really helpful. I personally would feel kind of bummed if I just went out and bought tons of stuff to make up for lost time. So far I’ve just bought things that I know are useful and I’d been consciously waiting to purchase, and I feel good about it!

• But before your spending challenge, I say go all out and have one last spending hurrah if you feel like it. Leading up to the start of my spending challenge was the holiday season followed by our decadent trip to New Orleans, and so by January 1 I actually felt pretty ready to take a breather from buying stuff. I think it helps to know that you can grab that one thing you “need” right before starting the challenge.

If anyone has done a challenge like this or wants to try it, I would love to hear from you and connect!

Why I Changed My Last Name

In the seven months since I became a Baldridge, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about that decision! Not about my decision to marry Grace—I think most people who know me know that’s been my dream since I met her—but to take her last name in place of mine. I think this is an interesting, layered question, as is my answer to it. So today I want to share a little bit more about my heart on this topic.

I’ll start by saying that growing up, I always imagined I would change my last name. I grew up in a place where it was extremely common for women to change their last name after getting married, and that’s what my mom and grandmothers had all done. That said, I also grew up with friends, family, and role models who got married but did not change their names, so I’ve always seen that as a valid, great decision too. But I was predisposed to changing my last name from the start.

To me, a person taking their spouse’s last name in place of theirs is all about two families becoming one, a brand new start of “who you are” as your identity takes on the component of being 1/2 of a married couple, and honoring tradition. That’s why I’ve always been surprised at how often I get questions about why I still changed my last name even though I married a woman. Don’t the reasons why most people change their names still apply just the same in my situation?

I know there is (understandably) some backlash to the idea of changing one’s last name at all. But I would like to challenge that—to me, if it is an intentional, thought-through decision, I believe it can be beautiful, an act of selflessness, and even feminist to change your last name after getting married. And of course, anyone can make this kind of intentional choice to change their last name, not just ladies.

I LOVE having the same last name as Grace. Absolutely love it. I’m so proud of the fact that our little family is the Baldridges. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Another question I get a lot is - “Why didn’t Grace change her last name to yours? Or why didn’t you hyphenate?” The truth is, we didn’t really talk about those options, which I think just means neither of them felt like a natural choice to us. I think focusing on this kind of misses the point. Of course hyphenating is awesome for those who choose it. But I never felt like I needed to know that Grace would change her name for me, too, because now that we’re married that just isn’t something we keep score over. Grace serves me and sacrifices for me in a million ways. This “sacrifice” of changing my last name (which I was actually very excited to do) doesn’t really have an equal (unless you hyphenate and both change your name), and that’s okay. That’s what (I’m learning) being married is all about!

Want to know what the way harder decision was? What to do with my middle name! I knew I didn’t want to have 4 names (I like odd numbers and just didn’t want to have that many names), so it was either drop my maiden name entirely, or drop my middle name and take my maiden name as a new middle. I ultimately decided to drop my maiden name entirely and keep my middle name (Holland). My middle is my grandmother’s maiden name, and it’s very special to me (as is my relationship with her). I also love that Grace and I both have our maternal grandmothers’ maiden names as our middle names (Grace’s middle name is Semler). I felt like if I dropped Holland, it would vanish, never to be spoken again. Why would it? No one ever asks what your middle name before you got married was, if you took your maiden as a new middle. Whereas my maiden name will always be my maiden name, and basically everyone I’ve known in my life up until that point knows me with that last name. And of course, my whole immediate family still has that last name. But I’m the only one in my immediate family (or in my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, etc.) who has my particular middle name. I also liked the sound of Elizabeth Holland Baldridge better than Elizabeth Capel Baldridge.

At the end of the day, these choices are so very personal and as long as you are making the decision intentionally, with respect for your new spouse and your parents/other family, I don’t think you can go wrong. I just wanted to share a little bit of my “why” in making the decision I did. Also, if the complication of changing your name is a mental hindrance, don’t let it be! As of 6 months out, I had changed everything from my driver’s license to social security card to credit cards to passport to business cards. And with very little headaches along the way. It’s surprisingly easy. Now that it’s done, booking hotels or making dinner reservations under my new name feels like a dream come true.

If you are wrestling with the decision, I encourage you to go with your gut. Getting advice from others is helpful to a point, but it’s hard when you get conflicting opinions (I know I did). It’s your NAME, so make sure you can own it with pride :)

Did you change your name after getting married? What about your middle?