The blank wall update and weekend report

  On Friday morning I woke up with a mission to fill the blank space behind my dining room table. I'm pretty sure I dreamed that night of exactly how it would turn out and so I was literally knocking on the door at World Market at 10:01am.

 

 

I was collecting all of my frames when this big, iron beauty caught my attention. I love  it's size, and the more I thought about, I felt like it was the way to go. 

It would be a lot easier to hang on the wall and would require less work (from Joel) and less money than the gallery wall, so after a legitimate 45 minute conversation with myself...I bit the bullet and up it went.

I also snagged this dress on Friday from that ever famous TJ.Maxx that I talked about here. This is a BCBG silk dress (which retails for $398) that I found for $30 bucks - which as I told Joel means that it was basically free. 

Overall, the shopping Gods delivered on Friday. 

Saturday morning Joel and I, and our friends, went on a 3 hour hike in Topanga County. It was the hardest hike I've done to date, but it turned out to be actually enjoyable that I almost forgot that we were actually working out. 

Joel is trying to convince me to do Mount Whitney in the fall, which would be a 22 mile hike, and with the wedding around the corner....he might actually be able to succeed.

I'm the one sitting...because I'm smart and didn't want to die.

And in our typical fashion, we never really stopped moving from there.

Joel's middle brother is getting married this upcoming weekend so his parents and older brother's family all arrived in California yesterday morning around 11. They are spending a few days at Disneyland before we all meet in San Diego, but we were able to meet them in Marina Del Rey for a long lunch before they headed off. 

We ended up dining at The Cheesecake Factory - which I have to say really impressed me. The food was good and the ambiance was even better. I'm an adamant anti-chain kinda person, but I can actually say that I would go back there in a heartbeat.

 

And then the real Sunday Funday started. My girlfriend Dawn had us over for a BBQ where I drank waaaaay too much Rose. I won't even tell you how many bottles we went through, but I'm pretty sure I made a fool of myself as we danced in her living room as our men cleaned the dishes.....