Snapshots of the Southwest // Spring Break // March 2013

This year for Spring Break we decided to explore more of our beautiful country. 

Neither of us had been to Arizona before, and my grandma and Bob were "snow birding" there, so we decided to take it farther west than we'd ever been.

It ended up being a wonderful trip filled with gorgeous views, family time, last minute event ticket buying and LOTS of coffee.

Here is an overview of our trip!

I will post about the individual locations soon!

We stopped in:

Amarillo

Santa Fe

Albuquerque

The Painted Desert & Petrified Forest National Park

Sedona, AZ

Snow Bird Country

Phoenix

Garland, Texas

The full location posts are linked into these picture titles! 

What has been your most memorable road trip?

All for now,

Alexandra

Snapshots of MUSE

If you read this blog you probably know that I love music. Luckily, so does Kyle. We also love to travel. So as often as we can we like to combine those two loves.

For Christmas this past year, Kyle was mentioning how much "stuff" he has and how few things he wanted when everyone began asking. So I decided to make the majority of his present concert tickets. Oftentimes when I look for tickets during a specific time-frame, there isn't anyone great playing. This time though, I got very lucky and found MUSE tickets in St. Louis for the day after his birthday! How perfect is that?!?

Anyhow, we had to wait for a while, but it was well worth it. We drove down after lunch and checked into our hotel. We drove straight to the SLU Campus to the Chaifetz Arena where the show was taking place. It was a really nice, new facility with a lot of concession options. Normally we would find a restaurant, but we were too hungry to wait! 

We found our seats and for once were seated next to nice normal people who didn't take off their clothes, throw things or spill on us! On one side we had two teenagers who were brother and sister. They were actually there for the music and were really nice and were enjoying the show. On the other side was a group of guys in their late 30s who had driven from Nashville for the show. Which turns out to be the same amount of time as it took us to get there from Lawrence. They were nice and friendly. They were really into the music as well, so it was great!

The show was fantastic! I had always heard that they were great live, but to actually experience it is something else! :) They played a bunch of my favorites {from 2004! haha} as well as some new stuff. The visuals of the show were amazing and the sound was incredible! They sounded just like they do on the album, but you know it was live. 

Many of their songs are really dramatic and political and they displayed the lyrics in lights so people were singing along and it was really cool. I felt very connected to the rest of the crowd, which isn't something that always happens. Kyle enjoyed his present both in the spirit of Christmas and his birthday. Plus we got him a cool shirt for his collection. :)

We had a great time and went to sleep with our ears ringing.

The worst part of the trip was that a bunch of young guys came into their room {right next to us} at 3 am and were EXTREMELY loud. I can't even put into words how loud they were. I called the front desk and apparently a bunch of other people on the floor were too. Luckily the guy at the front desk took care of it. I want people to be happy and have a good time, but it's just not ok to do that! 

The next day we drove back, deciding not to explore anymore. We wanted to spend some time relaxing at home. Plus we had Spring Break coming up a week later {post coming soon!}.

 It was probably the shortest "trip" I've written about, but it was really nice.

I highly recommend both MUSE and the Chaifetz Arena!

What is the best concert you've ever been to?

All for now,

Alexandra

Life Recently & New Favorites

Hello Blog World.

I have been taking some time for myself and to get a new semesters' schedule under control recently so blogging has been put on the back burner. I'm happy to say that I'm ready to get back to it with some new things that I am really excited to blog about. 

Here is some of my favorite things from February and March so far, and a peek at a few things I will be blogging about (hopefully) soon.

Essie Polish

I have major nail polish obsession, but it seems to be getting worse. Or better I suppose, depending on how you look at it.

 Essie's "Chinchilly". A really pretty grey with a purple tint to it. It is actually pretty much a neutral! I really love this color it goes with everything. Thanks to the Consolvers for this stocking stuffer. :)

Essie's "In stitches". I loved this color immediately because it was a more muted pink, but not in a pale hue. This color pops enough to brighten your outfit, but not so much that you have to change your polish frequently so you don't clash.

February / March Magazines 

If you know me, my magazine obsession isn't much of a secret. But these 2 issues have been unusually great!

I loved the February Lucky quite a bit, and this magazine is usually hit-or-miss for me. I especially enjoyed the date night outfits and _ + _ = Outfits. For once I was able to use this type of magazine to put together an outfit on my own! So, hopefully you will get some fashion posts coming from me kind of soon!

The British Glamour is superior to the US Glamour most of the time, but this issue was extra great. I LOVE Diane Kruger on the cover, and I also LOVE Rose Byrne, who is featured in a shoot inside. The recipes look amazing and the makeup special with Katie Holmes and Bobbi Brown is great too. I love that the British Glamour (& Cosmo) are just a little bit more girly and romantic than the US ones which are a lot more into edgy trends. It is just more accessible to me. Plus they talk about Kate Middleton's style a lot! If you haven't picked one up before, this is a good one to try!

Gilmore Girls

Gilmore Girls is my favorite show. By far. When Kyle and I were first dating he bought me the full series on DVD for Christmas and I was simultaneously spoiled and overjoyed. Now that we are married we have gone through the series once and are on our second time around. 

We are currently on season 4 which is my personal favorite. After a Gilmore break we started up again recently, which was much-needed. The show is so funny and witty, it cheers me up and makes me laugh. If you love Gilmore too check my Pinterest (where I often pin Gilmore clips and quotes) and my Twitter (where I live-tweet quotes from every episode as we watch them). If you are looking for a show to watch, consider this one. It is wonderful!

New Music

Thanks to various itunes money for Christmas, I have been expanding my itunes library again. Our travel playlist is up to 25 hours of music and I am discovering lots of fun new music. I love this song (above) by A Fine Frenzy. The lyrics are adorable and it just makes me smile. Listen to it here.

Snow Days

Here in the Midwest, we have had a slew of winter weather this year. In particular we had two big winter storms back to back that accumulated around 10 inches of snow. Needless to say, we didn't have school or work. So I read. Above are the 4 books I read in 4 days. The first one was pretty explicit and full of awful characters. I wouldn't have finished it had I not been so desperate to figure out the mystery. I wouldn't recommend it. The other three were really good. I am now a big fan of Sarah Addison Allen. My favorite was Garden Spells. I have one more of her books left to read, I am sure it will be good as well. Check out her website, here. 

Stuff I did

I started my job at my preschool where I am now a substitute teacher! The job started out pretty tough because one of the teachers was sick for two weeks and I stepped in at that school where the class is especially difficult. Then another teacher was sick! So now, I am where I am supposed to be as a 3rd person in the classroom at a school that I really love and it is working out well. I am sure there will be occasional days where I will be a subbing again, and that is just fine with me! I am glad to be in a routine now!

Valentine's Day

This year we had a pretty laid back Valentine's Day, it was nice. Kyle surprised me with chocolates, itunes money, a new nail polish and some really cute homemade valentines with notes on the back. 

 Aren't they cute!? 

Since he had been student teaching, I surprised him with some more snazzy teachin' clothes. Shirt and tie on the left are Kenneth Cole Reaction and bow tie on the right is Penguin brand. They look really nice on!

The Arab Shrine Circus

Every February I go to the Arab Shrine Circus in Topeka. I have been every year of my life, even when my mom was pregnant with me. My grandparents were members of the Arab Shrine, and my grandmother still is, so it was a tradition to go every year. This year was Kyle's 7th circus! Some people think the idea of a circus is strange or creepy, but for us it is just a really fun tradition that we have kept our whole lives. Plus now we get to see Olivia enjoying it so much as she gets older. I'm really happy it is a tradition that we have continued to keep. Plus I love that so much of the proceeds from Shriner's events go to their hospitals for children.

Kyle's Birthday!

For Christmas I got Kyle tickets to see MUSE in St. Louis. This worked out really well because the show was actually the weekend of his birthday! We drove down and had a great time at the concert. See the full post, here. Aside from that, I got him some clothes, athletic socks, Starbucks snacks, a new phone case and Jack White's Blunderbuss album. We celebrated on his birthday with dinner at a local brewery with his family. I think it was a pretty nice birthday year for KC. 

Other than that we have been shopping (check out my new scarf at the top!) and getting ready for Spring Break next week! More on Spring Break soon! :)

What have you been up to recently? What are your favorite things of early 2013?

All for now,

Alexandra