We are adults, and adults sleep in Airports!

Michael and I took our first trip together to visit family and friends in the Chicago area in February.

The trip started out with a heckuva lot of excitement!

We arrived in the Chicago, Midway Airport at 11:15 PM to find that the Enterprise car rental counter was closed, and had closed at 10pm. We had reserved our car through them, so we were slightly unnerved.

We checked with the 2 counters that were still opened. We had a back up reservation with Avis, but they had given our car away because as she stated "They couldn't pass up all the extra business from the Auto Show". Dang. So two reservations both proved to be unfruitful. The next counter-- Dollar Rental wanted $350.00. We weighed our options and decided in the end because it was already 1 am that we would just stay the next 5 hours in the airport and get a car when everyone re-opened at 6am.

After a few hours of cat napping and watching Castle, I waved down the Alamo shuttle driver at 5:30 and we had a car and were on the road less than an hour later. Finally getting to sleep at 8am!

Thursday, we took a tour of Notre Dame, viewed the Art Museum and had some mediocre Mexican fare for lunch.

Later Michael was able to meet my favorite friends, and the other little man in my life, Gavin.
We enjoyed an awesome dinner with friends, it was so nice to see everyone!

Friday was Bridal Shower day!
I really appreciated all the effort and love everyone put into making it a fantastic evening!! (Even though I had to make my own cupcakes!) It was so much fun and the decorations were beautiful!!




Saturday, we started our morning taking engagement pictures, with the fabulous Jason Jablonski! It was cold--- ok it was freaking freezing!! I'm a little afraid that I might have a red rudolph nose in all the pictures we get back! We started out on the beautiful (yet windy) dunes of Lake Michigan, then moved to downtown Michigan City where we found some awesome backgrounds! I only changed clothes in an alley way once-- hey its life experience ;)

After pictures, we met my parentals for lunch at a family favorite, Swing Belly's! We love their sandwiches and the awesome atmosphere!

We then continued our day by heading into the big city. Chicago. We had some debates about what to actually do once we got there. It was too late to head into a museum, only My dad was up for the crazieness of the auto show. We settled on Millenium Park for a starting point.

After watching the ice skaters and staring at the bean, we meandered around the city a bit more. We walked serveral miles and worked up an appetite :) We got our names on the list at an amazing chicago pizza place and then had about 2 hours to kill, so Hersheys, it was!

Green, be gone!!

Michael currently lives in a cute little town house. It's been the perfect home, plenty of room, HOA to take care of the little things, and not a lot of maintenance and decorating required-- well until I entered the picture.

We've decided to live here for the first few months of our marriage with goal of being in a new 'our' home by next year. Of course with the way the housing market here currently is, and the fact that there are several other town homes from his community also for sale we've decided to get a head start on the process.

The house is in great shape, and most of the rooms are painted a very neutral color. Except the kitchen!!

The kitchen was painted a sage green with and *attempted texture job. The idea behind it was great, it just didn't pan out the way it was planned. So without further ado....

I present the kitchen from start to finish:

Here is the original wall color, I call this 'Grandma Green' The green made the cabinets take on a slightly yellow tint-- and it was just not appealing!
We made a minor boo boo when we started painting, and did a red strip all the way down. Easily covered though!
Red is on! We used Gliden Duo Paint- it has the primer in with it, it's a thicker paint but goes on great and aside from a few bumpy spots only requires one coat!
Michael hard at work covering the bottom in cream
My lovely roller!


Ta Da!! IT's done and we love it!! the kitchen feels so cozy now and I love staring into from the living room!