Our 8th Wedding Anniversary Trip, Day One

For our 8th wedding anniversary this year Justin planned a two day trip to Mystic Ct. 

Mystic is an old coastal town brimming with museums, antique shops and beautiful sights. One of the best aquariums in New England is in Mystic. 

Justin found an adorable inn for us to stay at during our trip.

I always wanted to sleep on a canopy bed! The decorations in the room were definitely 90s but it was very cozy and reminded me of my grandma's house. The bathroom had a hot tub too! That was very nice after a long day of walking. 

After settling in to the Inn we went on our excursion.

 We stopped at a cute little bakery first. Justin got us a delicious giant cookie to share throughout the day .We both love chocolate chip cookies with nuts, caramel, and dried fruits. 

The view from inside the bakery. The bakery is near the historic Mystic River Drawbridge, and there are a lot of little shops along the road to the bridge. 

Our first stop was in a little glass decor shop. It was absolutely gorgeous. 

More glass decorations. This is a glass horseshoe crab with a coral reef scene. A lot of these pieces were $100 and up.

I loved this glass blown bee display

Look at how cute they are!!

Because we were by the river we got some nice breezes

Some photos from a Steampunk themed shop. 

I thought this diver's helmet Octopus was pretty cute

By the river

The Mystic Drawbridge Ice Cream Cafe, that is indeed slanting up on the right side of the picture.

 It is built right on the shore of the river. 

The drawbridge itself. Built in 1922 and quite impressive. Those are indeed giant concrete counterweights and are kinda scary to walk under. 

The bridge regularly lifts several times a day. Its really neat to watch. 

From inside the Ice Cream cafe

A video of the bridge lifting so boats could pass

Justin walking ahead of me. 

The beautiful Mystic River.

Inside a Spice and Sugar shop.

I had no idea flavored sugars were a thing. 

Boats by the drawbridge.

You can see the Mystic Pizza building way in the back. We didn't go this trip but I've been there several times. The pizza lives up to the hype and the movie!

We stopped at a place for dinner and then headed back to the Inn. Justin got a good laugh out of me struggling to get my 5'3" self onto the bed even with the step stool!

Sunset view from the porch of our room.

I took this photo after a thunderstorm had passed through.

Day Two coming soon! 

Love Rebecca 💗

Pin It Now!

Hey it's August!

Hello Everybody! I know I haven't posted since May, but I didn't forget about you!

Recently I was cleaning out my desk and found old art supplies and my childhood drawings. It put me in the mood to make some artwork. I'm not great at drawing but its still fun. I have developed a slight tremble in both of my hands as I've gotten older which makes drawing with a pencil or pen very difficult, so I decided to try other mediums.

 I don't know how to fold Origami but since I have beautiful Origami paper from Japan I wanted to make something. I made a fox out of Origami paper and Mulberry paper

 My childhood friend Lina suggested a landscape! 

Made from torn mulberry paper

 This one was more ambitious. I used a kid's water color to paint a background, then used different cut out pieces of card stock paper to make the fish shape.

Figuring out fin shapes and positions 

 Body base, fin cutouts glued to mulberry paper and my background drying. 

I glued torn mulberry paper to each card stock piece and gradually built this Koi fish.

 Fin details were drawn on with marker. 

I also added a coat of mod podge just to seal everything together.

 I got an acrylic set to mess around with but I think I like water colors more. I used a mix of water colors and acrylics for this parakeet

 I then way over estimated my abilities and painted a wood duck. Do you know how many colors and details are in a wood duck?! I was crazy and almost gave up 3 different times. 

Basic sketch and colors 

Failing at keeping the white stripes even on the head. I almost quit here. I later used white acrylics to sorta fix the stripes.

This nightmare is a mix of watercolors, acrylics, marker, charcoal pencil and my tears.  You can see how shaky the white stripes on the head are,

I decided to simplify and draw my rabbit. 

 Percy was lounging near me while I tried to draw him

 The body isn't correct proportions but at least it LOOKS like a rabbit? 

I went with a caramel color so I could practice shading.

Percy is more of an earthy brown and bright white though.

Last doodle just to show how difficult it is for me to draw steady.  I can draw somewhat steady if I use something to rest my hand on. I painted with water colors and went over with a marker

 I may or may not have a sticker problem....

 Scrap booking fun

I'm having fun playing with paints again. I wish the trembling wasn't an issue but what can ya do?

Love, Rebecca

Pin It Now!

Organizing 30 Years of Printed Photos

I finally decided to tackle a huge project this spring and organize all of my mom's 

family photos from the past 30 years. I brought home about 6 photo buckets full to the brim with printed photos. It was quite the task trying to sort through a little over 1,000 physical prints that span 3 decades of my parent's lives.

I set up a little folding table to work on and started the process by separating into three large categories- before I was born, after I was born and after my sister who is 10 years younger than me was born. Any photos that were blurry or redundant were discarded. I also put aside duplicates to give to my adult siblings of our childhoods.

After that separation I further divided piles into years which was painstakingly difficult and tedious. It was a lot of comparing haircuts, clothing, events, and trying to judge how old my siblings were. I have poured hours upon hours into sorting. 

Justin came up with the idea of sorting into sandwich baggies with labels. It made the process much easier as I was previously using existing paper photo envelopes. This bucket in the photo above contained everything from 1999 to 2006. After 2006 the physical prints are pretty sparse due to my family getting a digital camera that fall. Since I actually have a good chunk of the family photos after switching to digital on thumb drives, I plan to get those printed out for my mom.

I originally started filling some cheap thrift store albums before deciding to buy larger albums online. I left the prints in these small albums that were already organized as I was not in the mood to remove and redo the 400 prints that I put in them.

 I found these nice 300 photo pocket albums online and ordered 4 of them. They were about $15 a piece which for their size and quality is nice. 

The albums fits 4x6, 3x4s and 3x5s nicely,

 There is also room to write notes next to each photo pocket. I'm glad I decided to get these albums.

I also bought an 8x10 portfolio album for my mom. She had a decent amount of these professional prints made when I was quite young. The prints used to be framed but now had been stored in an old envelope for years. The portfolio is a nice way to protect and show these beautiful professional portraits.

I am almost at the end of this process and I have enjoyed looking at all the pictures from my childhood and I am so glad to have them organized in albums and no longer sitting in buckets all mixed up. So far between the small albums and the large ones I have filled about 14 separate albums. I can't even begin to explain how many hours have been spent doing this but I did start around Mother's day to give you an idea.

What are your thoughts on my project? Do you think I'm crazy for doing this? 😂

Love, Rebecca

Pin It Now!

She Lives!!

Hey everyone! Just wanted to let it be known that I'm still alive 👌

Spring time is always busy and refreshing for me. We have so many birthdays to celebrate between our families, a couple anniversaries, Easter, Mother's Day... well you get the idea!

We got our garden going in mid April. Because we rent we don't have space for a veggie garden so we are trying bucket planter pots

Justin wanted to attempt strawberries this year. So far they are still alive...

I got a couple Ranunculus plants this year. I love the big, dramatic blooms this plant sports

Oliver and Justin are doing well. Oliver is busy being a cat. Justin has been trying to perfect his baking and cooking recipes. He is always trying new ideas ❤

Percy turned 6 years old in April! He is enjoying life and food 😂 We got him a new water bottle and a new litter bin for his special day!

I hope he has many more birthdays to come. Percy has no idea how happy he makes me!

I have been doing well. I had to have a root canal done a few days ago. Thankfully I have had very little pain because my tooth was not infected yet. It took a lot of courage to not just flat out ignore the tooth and avoid it until I was going to have pain. I had anxiety but I'm learning its better to just get it over and done with.

Love, Rebecca

Pin It Now!

I'm 30?!

 On this day 30 years ago a little red potato of a baby came into the world with a fabulous hairdo!

30 years later- still a potato! 😂 And I still have that fabulous hair!

All jokes aside, I can hardly believe I am 30 years old now. I don't "feel" 30. What is 30 supposed to feel like? I still think I'm 26 sometimes. 

Love, Rebecca

Pin It Now!