Today’s post might be boring to some, but I personally love reading these types of posts on other people’s blogs, so why not? I got the suggestion to do a day in the life blog post from my reader survey, and I quickly decided to do a weekend in the life post instead. During the week, my day in the life would look like, “woke up at 5am. Went to go be a lawyer for a long time. Came home, cuddled dogs, ate and slept.” Haha! Not so interesting. But thankfully last weekend was pretty much work-free, and I got to document the whole thing to share here.
For those who haven’t seen day in the life posts on others’ blogs, it’s basically a style of blog post where you go through each little step in your day. It’s less of a recap and more of a step-by-step: what did you do when you woke up? What did you eat throughout the day? Etc. I personally love reading them because I love honing my routines and getting ideas from other people on how they do their day-to-day lives. I hope you enjoy reading!
One thing I wanted to be sure to include here was all of the steps that go into taking care of the dogs (depending on your perspective, it might seem like a lot or not a lot). The reason for including these tiny details is to give a snapshot of life to someone who might be wondering what kind of time commitment it is to have a dog (or two). I get this question a lot, so I hope this is helpful.
One last caveat before the recap: we normally eat a little bit healthier, and we also have friends I promise. The weekend before this for us was just super social (hosting Tina’s surprise party and getting a table at the Abbey for our friend Amir the next day) so we wanted some r&r at home. But hey, this is just a snapshot of one weekend. At this stage of life, every weekend is kind of different, so maybe I’ll do another one of these later.
Friday: I came home from work around 5:30 and started taking care of the dogs’ evening routine. Grace was out getting a tattoo (she has quite the collection now), so she wasn’t there when I got home. I walked Willie, fed Willie dinner, took Bean outside to go to the bathroom, and played with him a little bit in our yard. Then I brought him inside where he could reunite with his greatest love, his antler.
Then Grace got home and I told her about this “weekend in the life” idea and made her take the selfie at the top of this post with me. She is really sweet about my blogging (or “blerging” as she calls it, haha).
It was about 7:30 or 8pm at this point so we decided to make it a lazy night and order takeout and watch a movie! We ordered from The Counter, which is a great comfort food/burgers/fries/shakes type place with lots of vegan and vegetarian options.
We watched Love Song, which a friend had recommended. It was good!
We ended up pretty much falling asleep on the couch though (which had nothing to do with the movie). Bean snuggled up with us and got pretty sleepy too.
Saturday: The next morning we woke up and Willie was being SO snuggly!
Willie doesn’t usually sleep in our bed from the beginning of the night, but we often wake up to find he has jumped in and made himself comfy at some point while we were sleeping. This was a motivating factor in getting a king size bed for our new house. He’s the sweetest when he just wants cuddle time with his mamas.
I got up first to let Bean outside to go to the bathroom. He did his business in the yard, and then I let him roam around and hang out with me while I washed my face and brushed my teeth and got ready for the day.
I snapped this pic when I first walked outside from our bedroom into the living room. I think I'll forever have heart eyes for the light in our house in the mornings.
I gave Bean his breakfast and then Grace and I went on a stroll with Willie.
Willie gets SO excited during his first walk of the day and it's adorable! Makes it feel like we have two puppies in the house.
I love our neighborhood so much :) I think a lot of people envision LA to be super urban, and it's definitely more densely packed than where I grew up in North Carolina. But that said I'm always trying to explain to people how "neighborhoody" it is, which I love. We live super centrally, and still I love that our neighborhood is like this. We're lucky.
When Willie gets back from his morning walk he knows it’s time for his breakfast and he gets super excited. He’s the most food-motivated dog we’ve had out of the three.
Then it was time to go to puppy playtime! Puppy playtime is held at our vet every Saturday morning from 9-11am. It’s one of my favorite times of the whole week! Any patient of the vet that’s under 1 year old and up to date on shots can come for a big play group. It’s so nice because you get to socialize your puppy but know that there is professional supervision and everyone is up to date on shots. This week, it was some of the puppies’ birthday, so there were special treats for all the dogs.
Just one of the reasons we LOVE our vet!
Bean did great at puppy playtime. He loves to run around to his favorite dog friends, and also all of the humans. Side note, our friend Lydia is pictured (to the far right in scrubs facing away from the camera) in the photo below—she has the best blog!! You can find it here. Lydia is one of my first blog friends :) She’s awesome. She also works at our vet and is super sweet to our pups.
Bean loves getting up on the platforms so he can see what's going on. He's usually the smallest one at puppy playtime, but he's fearless.
Also at this puppy playtime, Bean met and befriended a dog named Casper! (The white dog in the pic below). That warmed our hearts.
At one point I had 4 puppies in my lap at the same time. Puppy playtime is basically free therapy, haha!
After puppy playtime we headed out to get breakfast. We’ve started a tradition in the past few weeks where we go out to eat at a sidewalk café after puppy playtime so that Bean can get used to being polite and sitting at a restaurant with us. He’s doing pretty well, but of course he still has puppy energy that makes it hard for him to sit still!
On this day, we decided to go to Joey’s Cafe on Santa Monica. It was pretty good. Grace got an acai bowl and I got avocado toast.
Then we went to Tailwaggers to pick up some essentials. We were out of poop bags (#dogmomprobs) and also wanted to get some more Himalayan chews for Willie and Bean—they LOVE them. It seems like we end up going to Tailwaggers every single Saturday these days for something or other. Such is life.
We love Tailwaggers! I love that it's a local business and it's also where we first met Bean, at an adoption event they were holding.
I snapped this cute picture of Grace and Beanie outside the store as we were about to put Bean into the car. He's too small to hop in by himself so we have to pick him up!
Pretty much the rest of the afternoon we spent working on wedding stuff. We had a phone consultation with a potential florist and I spent some time working on addressing our save the dates! The dogs mostly just rested during this time.
Pictures of some floral inspiration I've been collecting.
When we started getting hungry we decided to order out again. I can’t remember the last time we got delivery two nights in a row, but it is what it is! We’re kind of in that season of life where I’ve made peace with not cooking as much, just because we have so much else going on. We got pizza from Big Mama’s & Papa’s.
We kind of just watched random bad TV at this point—caught up on the Bachelor, etc. Our minds needed a break!
Sunday: The next morning we woke up bright and early for our Sunday morning tradition: Canter’s Deli for breakfast followed by church in Malibu. We go to the cutest little Episcopal chapel by the sea; we love it so much and it has become really important to us over the past year or so. Because many people have asked, our officiant at our wedding will be one of the pastors there who we’ve gotten to know well.
Whenever we get to Canters, I immediately order a plate of pickles that I eat while we wait for our food. Canters makes their own pickles and they're SO good. If you're in LA and a pickle fan, you need to try these.
And yes, I order from the normal menu (including fries) at 7:30am for breakfast. I'm weird but I love it.
I love our drive to and from Malibu every week. It's the sweetest.
We stayed after the service this time because we had a general meeting where Grace got elected to the vestry!
We then drove home and just rested around the house for a while. The best way to spend a Sunday.
I love being homebodies with Grace.
In this picture, I think Willie is thinking, "Lamby, we look good together, don't we"
I got a little bit of work done with Bean as my work buddy.
I posted one of the pictures below on stories too, but I just thought it was so funny. Bean LOVES pillows. He has recently started figuring out how to flip them on top of his back like a little turtle shell. It’s so cute and funny and weird, I love it.
Grace and Bean got some cuddle time too.
Then Grace wanted to go over some songs for her show in London coming up and brainstorm about her set list. We did that for a little bit. I love listening to Grace play music more than almost anything. When we first started hanging with the same group of friends in college, we would always convince her to play songs when it got late at parties. I pretty much fell in love right then.
Afterward I went to the grocery (we live two blocks from Whole Foods so I have been going there lately) and got basics for the week and some ingredients for dinner that night. When I got home I tended to the dogs (Willie got his second walk of the day, and they both got dinner) and started working on our dinner. After two days of takeout, I wanted something relatively healthy. I roasted some Brussels sprouts and made us open-faced egg sandwiches on whole wheat English muffins.
Notice the cornichons in the picture? I always eat those as a snack while I cook! If you can't tell, I love picked things.
While the sprouts were roasting I decided to multitask by jumping in the shower. Willie stayed right beside the shower the whole time! Both of our dogs love to be clingy when I’m taking a shower. They will stick right by me and poke their heads around the shower curtain every now and then. I think they’re checking on me because they hate baths—like, “you okay mom? I know it's scary in there”
Then Grace and I ate and went to bed pretty early to get ready for the week! I felt really rested from this weekend, especially in comparison to other weekends recently where I either worked the whole time or we were kind of overbooked socially. We might have been a little overly homebodies this particular weekend, but it was so nice to hit the reset button and relax.
I hope you enjoyed this very long weekend in the life recap! Thanks to the suggestion of whoever anonymously thought of that idea :)