My Cradle List

This post is going to jump all over the place. It’s three stories put together, so just bear with me here. It’ll all make sense in the end, I promise.

How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorite shows. It’s ridiculously funny, witty, and sometimes as hard as it may seem - relatable. For some reason, my hubby and me only discovered our love for the show this year, and after watching a few episodes we immediately went out and found all 6 seasons...and proceeded to watch every single episode. There were many nights and weekends spent on the couch watching a How I Met Your Mother marathon. It was, and kind of still is, a rather unhealthy obsession.

Such a great show

Recently they had an episode where the two married characters, Marshall and Lily, are having problems getting pregnant. After getting really upset about it, they come up with a concept that makes them feel better. They decide to create a list of things they want to do before they have kids and dub it “The Cradle List.”

After watching that episode I couldn’t stop thinking of a similar list for Jordan and me. We’ve been married for a year, and the most common, and honestly most annoying question we get is “When are you going to have kids?” The answer to that, which some people don’t quite like, is we’re still young and as of now nowhere near ready to become parents. We have so many things we want to do before that major step in our lives. So (drum roll please...)

After thinking about it a lot, I developed my “cradle list” of things I want to attempt to do before having kids.
(Some things we’ve already accomplished and some things are still in the works.)

1) Travel as much as possible and visit friends that live out of town.
In the past year we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon, West Palm Beach to visit our friends Lindsay and Harley, I went to Nashville to visit Victoria, and we just got back from a trip to San Francisco and Napa Valley. We’re going on a trip with my parents to the Bahamas this summer too. I’m oh so excited about that one!

Our vacations this year

Even though we’ve done a lot of traveling this year, there are still so many places I would love to go. My hypothetical travel list includes: New York to visit Allison, DC to visit Amelia and Will, Vegas, Chicago to see the Cubs (Jordan’s favorite team), North Carolina (I’m randomly obsessed with the Carolinas - I want to retire there some day), and somewhere to go skiing (not my idea of a relaxing vacation, but I guess I’ll give it a try for Jordan’s sake). Oh and of course Italy and Greece...but I’ll keep wishing on that one.

Maybe one day...

2) Buy a house.
We bought our first house at the end of October. There’s definitely a lot of work that still needs to be done, but it’s a roof over our heads so I’ll take that as a check off the list!

The day we closed on our house

3) Do something crazy and spontaneous.
We’re neither crazy nor spontaneous people by nature. This one might need a little work. Hopefully it can involve a trip to knock a few more things off of number one? Wishful thinking.

HAHA Yeah right!

4) PUPPY!
I’m so ready to get a puppy. Hopefully I can check that one off the list over the summer! All we know is that we’re going to the SPCA. I know I can’t go looking until we’re actually ready (probably after the Bahamas) because I will totally come home with a new friend. 

OMG I want one!!!

5) Sit courtside at a basketball game.
SO this is actually what this post was about. Jordan and me absolutely love going to New Orleans Hornets games. We go as often as we can and usually have seats way up at the top of the arena. Yesterday my dad called and said that his company had two extra tickets for the Hornets game. Little did we know that we would be in the club level, row 12, with cup holders on the seats in front of us, and a waiter. We even got to ride up an escalator protected by a bouncer with a black light, checking to make sure you had an invisible stamp on your wrist. There was also a lounge with a bar and couches. Pretty freaking awesome, and probably even better than courtside seats if you ask me. Since I could actually see how gigantic the players are AND see them sweat, I’ll take this as a definite check off of my list!

My camera died when we got there. My phone seriously didn't do it justice!

Cork Project Advice

So as I mentioned in my post about our trip to Napa, we decided it would be a good idea to collect corks from every winery we visited. Apparently this is not a very common request because almost every winery looked at us funny and then gave us TONS of corks...so many that I had to leave a whole bag behind. (It was either that extra bag of corks or a bottle of wine. Easy decision.)

Anyway, I've been researching some ideas on what to do with them. There are so many great ideas, and I'm pretty sure I have enough corks to make more than one thing out of them. I definitely need some help sorting through all of these ideas. Let me know what you think...

Cork Lamp

Cork Clock

Cork Mirror

Corks in a vase - a la Pottery Barn

Cork Board - and another cork in a vase idea

Cork Serving Tray

And just for fun, a cork bowling ball

As you can see, there are so many great ideas out there. I really need some help choosing a project or two. I have one bag of corks I want to make into something really special (something that includes one of every cork from our trip since not all of the winerys gave us bags full - and some are champagne corks which might limit some of these ideas).

Let me know which ones you like best!

Our Trip to San Francisco and Napa

Sorry this has taken me so long to write! I had so much fun on this trip, and I figured that if I didn't wait a little bit I would end up rambling on and on about it. No matter what I do I won't be able to stop myself from making this long, so I apologize in advance!

For our one-year wedding anniversary, me and my hubby decided we wanted to take a trip. Being that our anniversary is in January, it was hard to come up with a place to go that wouldn't be ridiculously cold. After a lot of thinking, we finally settled on San Francisco for two days and Napa Valley for three. Neither one of us had ever been to California, so that in itself was exciting. We had a GREAT TIME!

Union Square and our beautiful hotel!

In San Francisco we got to see pretty much everything on our list. Our first day was foggy and rainy, but the second day was ABSOLUTELY beautiful. On day one we went to the Fisherman's Wharf and Pier 39. I absolutely love being near water, so I loved both of those stops. They are both must-sees in San Francisco! I was glad we walked by the Fisherman's Wharf around lunchtime, because I couldn't have passed up on eating one of those crabs! We had the famous clam chowder and a dungeness crab for lunch that day - one of the best meals I've had in a long time!

Pier 39 was pretty cool as well. We ended up on a non-so-famous pier across the harbor, which had a lot of great views and less people. Although we did have to make it to Pier 39 to see what those seals were all about (they were much cuter over there because they weren't so far away). PS: The seagulls in San Fran are HUGE! I was fascinated by them.

Our less famous pier, the seals at pier 39, a huge sea gull, and Alcatraz

We decided to buy a Muni pass which let us use every form of public transportation, including those famous cable cars. There was a lot of walking involved (and a lot of "hills" - being from flat country the hills were similar to mountains in my eyes). I was very excited to see the Painted Ladies from the opening credits of Full House! It was also a ton of fun to ride the cable car.

Pretty San Fran houses by our hotel, the Painted Ladies, riding the cable car, and one of the "hills" we hiked up

On our pretty day, we were able to take a bus to walk on the Golden Gate Bridge. My hubby is a civil engineer, so this was something he just had to see in person. Such a great experience!

We loved San Francisco a lot, but after two days of hiking up and down "hills," I was very ready for a trip to wine country! We rented a car to get there, which was definitely a good plan. We were able to visit 12 wineries in 3 days (don't judge - there's seriously nothing else to do there haha).

Our absolute favorite places were:
Paraduxx Winery - They had a very laid back atmosphere, passionate workers, and great wine. PLUS their wine has ducks on it which made me smile.
Domaine Chandon - They had beautiful grounds and good champagne. We went there in the morning of our anniversary day - great way to start the day!
Cakebread Cellars - My favorite wine hands down! They had AMAZING wine and very fun tour. They even have a room with corks installed in the ceiling...great idea.

Paraduxx, Domaine Chandon, and Cakebread

Beaulieu Vineyards - We stumbled on this one and they had some of our favorite wine. Very good!
Beringer Vineyards - I love their affordable wine, but I had no idea they had really great and expensive reserve wine (we tasted a bottle that was $115)! We did our tasting in a building that looked like a castle, and they gave us a skeleton key to go for a free tasting at another winery. Great experience!
Frog's Leap Winery - I loved this one because they used to be a frog farm and still have a farm atmosphere. The wine was good, but the tour was definitely what made this experience!

Beringer Vineyards, huge pine cones in a fireplace, our key to the next vineyard, and Frog's Leap

I was also very obsessed with the mustard that was growing in the vineyards. At this time of year all of the vines are dormant (meaning they look like sticks without leaves), BUT there are pretty yellow mustard flowers that grow throughout them. So pretty!

There is so much more I could say about this trip. I've always loved wine, but it was very interesting to get to learn so much about the process involved in making it. I now know so many random facts about winemaking that I know I will never forget. I won't be able to look at a bottle of wine the same way again! ALSO, I forgot to mention that we took corks from every winery we visited. Hopefully I'll be able to post a picture of my cork project in the near future!

It was a great time and I look forward to going back one day!