holiday time

We're in the USA at the moment roadtrippin' from Seattle to San Francisco. We fell in love with Seattle and imagined ourselves living there (as I do for every place we've visited). I got my shopping fix in Portland and the hubs marvelled at the redwood trees at the Avenue of the Giants.

We're in Mendocino tonight and we reckon it's like the Hamptons of California - so quaint and pretty with amazing cliff views. Tomorrow we head into San Francisco and we can't wait. As much as we've enjoyed the past week, San Francisco is definitely the highlight for us. We were there 2 years back during our honeymoon and didn't think we spent enough time there so this is our second round.

 

last days of summer

dress: manning cartell / thongs: nine west

This was taken a few months back one Saturday morning while we were out house hunting but hey, it could have been any of the last few weekends we have because our autumn has been unseasonably gorgeous and warm and I'm absolutely loving these prolonged summery temperatures. 

The hubs and I have been busy at work lately - it's definitely all work and no play. I'm spending more time with my work colleagues than at home so weekends are a welcome respite except the whole house hunting business has been taking up most of our weekend time. I can't say that I'm enjoying the process because there are days when you just want to find a place and be done with it but at the same time, I'm loving poking around other people's houses and seeing what they've done to their place. My mum used to drag us along to those display homes so maybe some of that has rubbed off on me! How funny! 

date night

top: urban outfitters / jacket: zara / jeans: bardot / flats: seed

The hubs managed to score cheap tix to empire last month so a date night it was. We had flying fish takeaway for dinner which was exxy but oh so yummy. Oh, what about the show? It was fantastic! We've been wanting to check out a Spiegeltent act for a few years now and I don't know why it's taken us this long. The highlight for us was the trapeze acts definitely and the second last act of balancing all those sticks. It took the guy ages to get there but the result was mindblowing! I checked out a couple of reviews of the show before the night and all of them talked about the last act. None of them gave it away so I'm not going to too just in case you're ever gonna go watch it. All I'm going to say was that it was icky but funny. Whatver rocks your boat, man! :)

peeking around

top: gap / jacket: topshop / jeans: bardot / shoes: sergio rossi

This year seems to be going by just too quickly. How can it be that we're almost at the end of March already? Work pretty much took over my life the past 3 months. That, and we've been property hunting - the market is crazy hot right now so between work and property hunting, we've been time poor for everything else.

My favourite bit of the whole process has been the ability to peek into other people's abodes. It's like going on desiretoinspire in real life. It's so easy to fall in love with a beautifully decorated home. You put yourselves in their home with their furnishings and decor and yeah, it becomes the home of your dreams. Until you get home and crunch the numbers and the real estate agent is telling you that there are 5 other interested parties who are doing their due diligence too. ~bada bam bada boom~ crash landing back to earth :)

We've been to so many open inspections over the past few months that we're at that point of just making any offer to just get any property so that we can move on with our lives. Yup, sounds like we've reached our limit now but I think we've found a property that we're happy with. Fingers crossed that we'll be done with properties soon. 

diggies, wollongong

I like diggies. I've been here once before with my folks and have been waiting to take Ryan there since and our daytrip down the Grand Pacific Drive was perfect timing. It was a lovely day to go out for a drive along the coast and have a nice meal by the beach. The place has been spruced up very nicely since the last time we were there. It looks like they've expanded too so business must be going well and seeing that they were busy for brunch on a weekday when we were there means that the food must still be yummy and it was!

Ryan and I had a delicious meal - burger and pasta and it was the perfect stop after an hour's drive down from the city. The view from where we were was beautiful. You get to see people walking the dog, going for a swim and you wonder what these people do for a living because you want to be in their shoes! A walk down the beach after brunch and then a slow drive home before work the next day. Well, at least we got to live their lives for a day.