Life Lately // Spring Vibes

Wow guys, its been a while! I think it is time to update you all on what's been happening with me lately. If you follow me on Instagram, this won't be that surprising, but let me just say this: I am 100% completely loving spring right now. It has been amaaazing so far and I can only hope things will be even better as summer approaches. If spring is any indication as to how summer will be, its going to be crazy awesome.

First of all, I just had spring break last week and it was pretty epic! One of my best friends, Nayeli, and I took a road trip down to San Diego. We started planning this back in February after I had the brilliant idea that a girls trip to San Diego would be the perfect spring break get away because it is a) cheap since we can stay with my family b) it's beautiful! No complaints here that the best, closest, cheapest place for me to travel to for all my school breaks is a sunny wonderland! We had the best time on our trip and it was so fun traveling with one of my best girl friends.

We spent time with my family, went to the beach, went for a couple hikes, tried out new restaurants, talked nonstop, and giggled over shows we watched together like Jane the Virgin and Teen Mom. We also explored different areas of San Diego and went wine tasting very close to my dad's house. Wine tasting was definitely a huge highlight of our trip! We got Groupons, which made it super, super cheap and the weather and scenery was beautiful. It was lovely trying out different wines together and laughing while wandering around the wineries after maybe a bit too much tasting ;)

Another awesome thing we did while we were there was meet up with Morgan and a couple of her friends at Coin-Op Game Room, a bar with really cool retro arcade games. It was really nice seeing Morgan again and having my blog world and non-blog worlds collide :) Dai was able to come down for a couple days, which was also nice! He works very hard and deserves to have a little fun too!

Oh, we also went to this awesome place that truly deserves a blog post of its own: The Succulent Cafe. It is exactly what it sounds like an outdoor cafe with succulents everywhere (insert heart eyes emoji). As you can imagine, it basically had all of the things I love--coffee, succulents, and my dog since it was outdoors! I definitely felt right at home :) I think next time I am down there I will stop by again (duh) and take some photos so I can share them here for your enjoyment!

Aside from my trip to San Diego, things have been pretty good. School is stressful, but there are only six weeks left of the semester, so I am telling myself I can/will survive! This semester I have been making more friends, which has really helped my sanity. It is nice to know that other people in my program are going through the same things and we can help each other out!

I'm currently just trying to focus on the rest of the semester and do my best to produce quality work and finish strong. I am starting to think about summer a bit too and search for internship opportunities. I need to work on my resume as well so I can start sending that out! I'm hoping I can find something that will help me gain some real world experience in the design/photography field. Time to start preparing for the real world, but it's scary haha.

So that's pretty much what's been up with me lately! I've missed blogging and have so many ideas for things I'd like to do with this space. I'm hoping that it won't be so long before I blog again! I'm always working to find balance and maybe this time I finally will figure out the secret to it all ;)

How has your spring been? Do you have anything special planned? I hope the flowers are blooming and the sun has come out in your city!

Adventure // Weekend in Wine Country

We spent this past weekend adventuring in Wine Country! My sweet cousin and his wife gave us a certificate for a stay at a bed and breakfast in Calistoga for Christmas/my birthday! Since it was my 21st birthday, this was the perfect gift :) We just got around to using it now though since I was doing an official Whole30 in Jan/Feb and everything about this weekend was basically the opposite of Whole30 compliant haha. Anyway, we had the most wonderful time and here is a massive photo dump from our trip!

We stayed at the Wine Way Inn in Calistoga and it was just the cutest! I've never had the pleasure of staying at a B&B before, so I didn't really know what to expect, but we loved it! From my Gilmore Girls watching, though, I figured it would be a cross between the inns Lorelai ran and the B&B they stayed in that one episode ;)
I loved how the entire inn was decorated! It was very pretty & fit the character of the building well.

We have learned that there are certain expectations to socialize with other guests when you stay at a B&B (again, that one episode of GG taught me well lol) and we actually really liked this aspect of it! We had great conversations with people over breakfast, while enjoying a glass of wine in the lounge during the evenings, and even while running into people in town. One couple was especially kind to us and even bought us a bottle of wine when we saw them at a tasting room! It was very sweet!
The breakfast was delicious. Above is the breakfast from the first morning, which included homemade granola, homemade yogurt, fruit, baked pears, blueberry muffins, chicken apple sausage, and bread & butter pudding (definitely the highlight of the meal!). Breakfast was also served with juice and French pressed coffee, which I loved even though I don't typically care for simple hot coffee. I may need to purchase my own French press someday soon!


After breakfast our first morning, we got ready and headed out to adventure for the day! Calistoga is a pretty small town and has one main street. Our inn was in a great location, so we were able to just walk all through the downtown area and only drive when we were heading outside of the little town. We checked out a farmer's market, wandered into some shops, and visited a tasting room. What was nice about our travel package is that it came with several vouchers for free or buy one, get one tastings at 7 different tasting rooms and wineries. That definitely saved us a lot of money and allowed us to try more things than we would have been able to without it!

After wandering around downtown Calistoga, we decided to drive to further places. We visited a winery that had a bocce ball court, so we had fun playing a little bit of that after our tasting! We also went to another vineyard before heading back to the inn.
The backyard of the inn was also beautiful and on Saturday evening we decided to just get some good cheeses, crackers, salami, and fruit to have for dinner on the patio while we drank wine and watched Pretty Little Liars on Netflix (confession: we are obsessed) on my laptop. The weather was perfect for this! We later walked around the downtown area of Calistoga to get some ice cream for dessert!
The next day, we enjoyed another homemade breakfast and got ready to check out of the inn. Luckily, we still had a couple of free wine tasting passes, so we decided to stop by those places!

The first one was just directly across the street from the inn and was built to look like an old gas station/mechanic garage. It had a lot of character and a cool vibe. We really liked the wine here and the gal who explained everything to us was super nice!
We then just walked a block or so down the road to another tasting room that was so cutely decorated. I just loved this white barn! The whole place had such a nice rustic feel. I thought my orange skirt and I fit in pretty nicely!
I think we may have enjoyed the wines here the most and decided to buy a bottle to take home! I'm excited to have two special bottles waiting for us! Now we just need an excuse to break them out :)
Something I learned about wine tasting: even though you are technically just "tasting" wines, after you visit two wineries or tasting rooms and have had 4 or 5 tastings at each, that adds up to be about 2-3 glasses of wine, pretty quickly too! So, after the second tasting in about an hour and a half, you could say we were feeling pretty good HAHA I would say that this photo of Dai sums things up fairly accurately!

Don't worry, after this we decided to call it quits for the day and walked downtown to have some lunch to soak up the wine before heading home! This weekend was such a great little getaway and we have been so lucky to have had frequent weekend trips lately. I don't want the fun to end! Thankfully we have one more trip on the horizon :)

Our weekend in Wine Country was a great way to continue celebrating my 21st birthday and all the new fun that comes with it! We had yummy food, lovely wine, great weather, and each other! What more could we ask for?

We will definitely be visiting Wine Country again soon!

Have you ever been wine tasting? How was your experience?

P.S. In case you are interested....

Where we stayed:

Calistoga Wine Way Inn

1019 Foothill Blvd, Calistoga, CA

Where we visited:

August Briggs

1307 Lincoln Ave, Calistoga, CA

Tank Garage Winery

1020 Foothill Blvd, Calistoga, CA

T-Vine Cellars

810 Foothill Blvd, Calistoga, CA

Domaine Chandon

1 California Dr, Yountville, CA

Summers Winery

1171 Tubbs Lane, Calistoga, CA