Category Archives: Holidays

Tennessee Valley Beach on Thanksgiving

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OUr family at Thanksgiving

We got the chance to get away for Thanksgiving this year and visit my best friend and his family out in the bay area. It was perfect; no stress, easygoing, and a gorgeous Thanksgiving afternoon hike where Harper saw the ocean for the first time at Tennessee Valley Beach.

Getting there was tricky because it’s a few miles in from where you park. At first it’s a paved path so it’s no problem. Here’s Kevin with 2 of his three adorable kids in the Bob (a jogging stroller that would’ve come in really handy for us), and Mike pushing little Harper.

Then the paved road quickly turns into wet gravel which is what it was for the majority of time time. We would’ve brought the Bjorn had we known, but we made it just fine. As you can imagine, Harper found it hard to nap with the extreme stroller turbulence so she was wide awake the whole time. We all chatted, threw the football around to Parker, and I caught up with Kevin’s parents who and I miss terribly since their move from Colorado years ago- that’s me walking with them and Kevin.

After a while on our windy path, our view became untangled and you could see the water. The day was beautiful and the area was packed. It seemed the everyone wanted to go for a pre-dinner hike to the beach.

Picture time! As usual we took turns kissing sweet Harper’s round cheeks. We certainly don’t need a camera for this, we pretty much do it all day long.

Dad’s turn! I love this face she’s making- it’s like a ‘WTF’ meets ‘I’m cold.’

She was getting a little chilly but was still up for a few more shots. When we got back and saw this picture I laughed because it’s like she was posing and smiling right along with us. She’s just so fun.

When we lived in the bay area (Walnut Creek) 9 years ago, we weren’t there long enough to explore little places like this so we were happy to see it. We had such a great time, we might have a new Thanksgiving tradition!

Our Christmas Tree Inspired by Houzz

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Christmas Tree

Houzz is still my most used app especially now that we’re in full on Christmas decorating mode over here. I can’t get enough of Christmas (I have 4 trees!) and since it’s Harper’s first one I want it to be extra special. For our big tree in the living room, I wanted to do something different this year so I browsed pics on Houzz to get inspired. This was our inspiration below:

And ours which took us like 5 hours last night.


Click to enlarge

It still isn’t finished, we need to fill in a few gaps and make the edges tighter so you can see sharper contrasts, but I really like it. We did a row of traditional ornaments in the center that you can’t see very well in this mediocre IPhone photo, but I like the idea of incorporating these old family ornaments I have into a more modern backdrop.

Downlad the Houzz app which isn’t just for home decorating. They also have some great articles about entertaining, how to set up a room to create a better flow for a party, and table centerpiece ideas that are easy and gorgeous.

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving!

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I wanted to show you our little turkey on her first Thanksgiving. We flew to San Francisco to spend the holiday with our good friends and their family. It was the most perfect Thanksgiving and hopefully a new tradition for us. Thank you also to those of you who gave me ideas on how to travel with a baby on HOB’s facebook page. Harper did great, no tears or discomfort. I’m relieved now that we’ve gotten our first flight out of the way.

Anyway, what would Thanksgiving be without a turkey tutu?


How’d we get her shirt over those cheeks?!


Glad we got these pictures because about 10 minutes after she spit up and we found out that there is no spot treating spit up on tulle.

More pictures from the trip to come!

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and nice long weekend!