Family Pictures

With Christmas coming up, it's that time again we take Christmas photos. Since my brother has just gotten married and moved out of state, it wasn't possible to have a professional photographer take our entire family pictures again like last year. Instead we set up a tri-pod (aka a ladder) and took our own photos in my parents backyards when we were all together for Thanksgiving.

and here are my cute parents, they were my test subjects to make sure the remote control worked, and that the camera was set up in the correct spot. They're going to be celebrating their 42nd wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks! Congrats to them!

You saw a few of our pictures that we took this year in this post but here are a few more of my favorite pictures from our session by the amazing Brittany Keene.

 

Now that we've done this two years in a row, I'm thinking is this something that we should do every year? What are we going to do with all of those photos? Kids change so much every year and we rarely take pictures together, so I'm leaning towards the - take family pictures every year while they're still growing like weeds. What are your thoughts? What do you and your family do?

This weekend we're meeting up with a friend and her daughter from my the Mommy board I joined back in 2010 for the first time and doing Thanksgiving part 2 this weekend with some friends. Should be a fun filled weekend, what are you doing?  Have a great weekend!

Resale Boutiques

When we were in Santa Barbara last week we went to Down Town State Street and I walked into my very first Resale Boutique called The Closet. I've always wanted to go to one, but never knew of a good one to go to. I think I hit the jackpot on my first try.

I scored this awesome fake leather jacket for $36! Make me feel like no one is going to mess with me and better get out of my way when you see my walking down the street.

This jacket didn't get to see outside of the hotel, but I still wanted to wear it as soon as we got back to the hotel. I'm just glad that I happen to have things in my suitcase that would work with this jacket. Score for me!

Dress- Old Navy, Boots - DSW, Tights - Loehmann's, Jacket - The Closet (can't remember the brand, it wasn't something that I had heard of before), Jewelry - Forever 21

Randomly there was also a receipt in the jacket pocket dated to summer of 2010, it was the jacket owners birthday and she went to a bar. Always makes you wonder, who owned what you're wearing, what has it been through, and what are those people doing now? In any case, I love my new jacket and can't wait to find other outfits to pair this jacket with.

So what's your favorite resale boutique? I might just be hooked.

That Time We Were Fancy

I know you guys have been dying to see what the Bacara Resort and Spa was like, so here's a recap of our few days there. If you're ever in the area, I would highly recommend this place. It's something different and if you didn't want to leave you really don't have to, there are several restaurant choices, but if you did want to leave, downtown Santa Barbara is just 15 minutes away.

When you arrive this is what you're greeted with

This is the view looking out from the lobby

This is the lobby:

Standing just by the lobby desk, for some reason I forgot to take a picture of that...strange.

This is looking in the opposite direction, the far side is the lobby front desk

  

This is still in the lobby area off to the side

Once we got settled in we decided to explore a little before we lost the sun. But discovered they had free hot cider,

 so we did this for a bit.

When we finally decided we should probably walk around before the sun went down we found this view

and then it got better and we saw this:

and this (that's the hill we had to climb up to get the view above)

we tried to get the background, but just got us

The pool area was pretty cool too, they had these little "cabana" rooms that you could rent for the day. We didn't do it, but if it was laying out weather we would definitely consider it:

Looking from the cabana area. Note: the cabana area had it's own pool, cause they're fancy like that

Now onto the room

Walking into the room, this little room was in the right

Bathroom was on the left

 Walking just past the bathroom and little side luggage area was the bed

Looking back toward the bathroom and front door

Our fireplace. It was so nice to have the fire going all night, cozy.

Opposite of the bed was the balcony door

If you look really close, and lean over the railing a bit, there was an ocean view, yep we get ocean view rooms, cause we like to roll like that.

And of course what hotel room wouldn't be compelete without a scale. That was totally random, I didn't have the guts to step on it after all we ate!

We went to a really nice steak dinner, but Mr. took the picture on his phone and hasn't sent it to me yet...

The next morning we went to breakfast at Miro

They had cute things like this jam jar

 I wanted to take it home, but then ate it, so I had nothing left to take...haha. We got a view like this this first morning

Another self portrait

That night we stayed at the hotel so we could do this:

Curtis had chips, salsa and guacamole and I had grilled artichoke, but I forgot to take a picture of it

You know another self portrait was coming right? (we need to make some more friends)

and we ate this:

Goat Cheese and Chicken Quesadilla

 

Hamburger and fries, with bread I brought from home.

 and three hours later it looked like this

and a view like this the second morning

another self portrait

then we found a photographer person walking by and got her to take a picture

Then we headed home, but there was a sign to see a butterfly habitat, so we took an hour detour and saw these little guys before heading back to see Baby Fox and the rest of my family.

And that was our trip in a whole lot of pictures. If you're still around, congrats for making it through all the pictures! I love pictures.

Happy Hump Day!

Still Shorts Weather..What?!

Yep that's right, it's almost the end of November and it's still in the low 70's. Perfect weather to break out the sweater and scarf with shorts and flip flops, only in California right?

I couldn't pass up taking pictures by the ocean after breakfast last week. Yep, I took these pictures just in front of where we ate breakfast, there were people staring. I tried to pretend I do this all the time.

 

Shorts - Old Navy, Shirt - Ann Taylor Loft, Scarf - Old Navy

If it makes you feel any better, at night it was cold and I forgot to pack any sweaters that matched what I brought with me. Which made me have to go out and buy a sweater so I wouldn't freeze at night...darn, shopping again. I would also like to note that I was going to just wear a jacket I brought that looked just awful and Mr. said he wouldn't let me go out looking like that, and that he would have to take away my blog if I wore it out in public. He's a funny guy.