Bear with me . . .

I am currently sorting through lots of pictures from San Diego and recapping our trip (including scoring some awesome vintage finds).  It was also my birthday yesterday!  We had fun celebrating, and I received some pretty great gifts I can't wait to share with you -- including this super fun Jonathan Adler chevron memo cube.  My office is cheerier already!

(photo: Paper Source)

Airline Ticket.

To the person who got our credit card number,

Thank you for fraudulently charging a $3,000 airline ticket on our American Express card.  While I would like to travel to Milan, I have no desire to travel from Milan to Ghana.  Hope you have a nice trip while we are busy here changing all of our automatic online bill pay accounts!

Best regards,
Emily

But so this post isn't all bad news, check out this pretty room (and the cute dog on the awesome pink chair):

(www.decorpad.com)

    

5 things . . .

5 things I am thankful for . . .

1.  Spending a wonderful long weekend in San Diego with Justin, my best friend, her husband, and my brother-in-law and his girlfriend.  Pictures of the trip to come! 

2.  Houston Restaurant Week begins this Sunday!  (Now may not be the best time to lose some weight.)

3.  Mario Badescu's Glycolic Eye Cream.  Nothing moisturizes my under eye area like this stuff.

4.  Mockingbird Bistro's new roasted chicken pizza.  (corn, roasted red peppers, fontina and goat cheese -- what's not to like?)

5.  HGTV's Design Star and Next Food Network Star. Now that The Hills is over, I am glad I have these shows to fill my TV void!

Neutral Living Rooms.

I am loving these neutral living room spaces:

(all photos: decorpad.com)

Lois.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science has a "corpse flower" named Lois that is about to bloom.  Well, they've been saying that for over a week now and still no bloom . . . but there's been big developments and it looks like Thursday is the day!

From what I have recently learned, the corpse flower (so named because it smells bad once it's bloomed) is one of the largest flowers in the world (Lois is almost 6 feet tall!).  It's also very rare -- there have only been 28 other blooms in the U.S.

(photo: chron.com)

I would be lying if I told you I didn't look at the corpse flower webcam at several times a times a day!  I am not a huge plant person (frankly, I have a black thumb), but the anticipation is exciting!

Great (work-related) News!

This week I received some wonderful news on a pro bono case I've been working on.  My client, a woman from Africa, was seeking asylum in the United States.  Over the last thirty years, she has suffered horrible persecution for opposing the unequal treatment of women in her home country.  After a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride, we found out that she was granted asylum!!  Now, rather than being forced to return to Africa, where she faced almost certain torture and death, she can remain in the US.      

The timing of the decision was amazing -- in addition to exigent circumstances, she happened to be at our office when we received the call from the asylum office.  I can't even begin to describe what a wonderful feeling it was to see our client's reaction and share that joy with her in person.  So that I could look back at that moment and remember how I felt, I went back to my office and wrote down the first things that popped in my head: overjoyed, elated, thrilled, relieved, jumping for joy, ecstatic, thankful, grateful. 

I wish I could share more details about my client and her story because she is truly an inspiration.  My life has been enriched having gotten to know and help her.  It was totally worth going to law school just to be able to help her. 

And my sweet mom brought me a super delicious red velvet cupcake from the newly-opened Sprinkles to congratulate me. (yum!)   

(photo: sprinkles)

Jackson Square.

In the New Orleans recap here, I mentioned that we had taken a picture together in Jackson Square a long time ago.  My mom was going through old pictures and ended up finding it!  The picture was taken when we were still in high school (Thanksgiving 1998).

(I promise Dr. Martens were cool and my right leg wasn't broken.)

And almost 12 years later . . .

Next time we will have to remember that I should be to Justin's right!  

Kitchen Lighting.

So I have been drooling over the Calais chandelier from Z Gallerie for quite some time now.  We were originally considering it for our sitting room off the master, but we were concerned it would hang too low.  Not one to be deterred, I convinced Justin to try it out in the kitchen.

It's not completely hung yet (we were just testing it out to see how it would look in the space).

The close up:

And what was there before:

What do you think?  The glass chandelier or the pendant?

5 things . . .

5 things that are awesome . . .

1.  Twenty-five cent martinis at Brennan's during lunch.  I heard about this and found it hard to believe.  Well, a group of us from the office went and checked it out for ourselves.  Everything was so delicious.  Shrimp and goat cheese grits = super delicious.

(How great are the glass chandeliers and the huge curved yellow chairs?)

2.  We are going to San Diego soon!  I can't wait for the amazing weather, Trader Joe's, In-N-Out, relaxing, seeing my brother-in-law and hanging out with my best friend.

3.  St. Germain.

(photo: here)

4. These rooms from decorpad:

5.  Going back to New Orleans in August with a group of people to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday.

Fourth of July Recap.

So I'm a few days behind recapping our fourth of July festivities, but that's nothing new for me!  I've been busy working on a pro bono case (I hope to have an update on Monday about it).

On Sunday, we went over to our friend Kevin's place to celebrate.  The festivities included traditional fourth food -- hot dogs, hamburgers (sliders), potato salad, baked beans, velveeta macaroni and cheese!, chocolate chip cookies, and strawberry shortcake. 

The party also included traditional fourth music -- Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA," "American Girls" by Counting Crows, and somehow some R. Kelly made it's way into the rotation towards the end of the night.  

Kevin's apartment has a great view of downtown, so it was the perfect place to watch the city's fireworks show.   

Justin also captured a pretty cool shot of downtown from the rooftop.

And here's the group (without Jeremy, Meagan, and Sawyer since it was past baby Sawyer's bedtime). 

Sometimes Justin is too good.

It's nice having a husband that can do just about anything around the house 99% of the time.  The remaining 1% of the time, it's annoying. 

Our dryer stopped working the other night, so we spent some of the night and the next morning researching new dryers (and washers too, because I am of the mindset that you can't buy one without the other) and talking about when and where we would go to check them out.  After some online looking, we decided on a silver, front-loading, LG washer and dryer.  How cool do those look?   

Somewhere between deciding on the new set and going to buy them, Justin gets the bight idea that he can fix the dryer himself.  He takes it apart and uses his trusty ohmmeter (seriously, is this a common tool to have around the house?) to determine that a thermal fuse was blown.  He picked up a replacement part for $35.00 and fixed it himself in less than 20 minutes.

The dryer is now back in business.  I guess I will just have to keep dreaming of a sleek, front-loading washer and a dryer with a steam setting.

Bathroom Before & After.

It feels so good to say that our bathroom renovation is finally complete!  As a reminder, here are some before pictures: 

Here are some shots documenting the progress:

(My contribution to the new drywall.)

And the afters!!

I am thrilled with how it turned out.  It is much more relaxing and spa-like.  Justin worked very hard and did a great job on everything.  In addition to the obvious work, he also re-grouted and re-caulked the shower.

You can't really tell from the above pictures, but I replaced all of the knobs with antique-style glass knobs.  After a lot of looking around, I came across D. Lawless Hardware.  They had awesome prices ($1.95 each) and the shipping was free and super fast! 

Of course I need to accessorize a bit, but I couldn't wait to share the pictures!

New Orleans: Windsor Court.

As I mentioned here, we recently went to New Orleans for our anniversary and stayed at the Windsor Court.  The hotel was great -- excellent customer service and our room was very nice and comfortable.  Since Justin booked our room, I actually had no idea it was going to be so spacious!

There was a little entryway when you first walked in that opened up into the living room area.  

   

The bedroom was divided from the living room by french doors. 

The only negative was the small television (but it really wasn't a big deal since we don't go on vacation to watch tv!). 

There were two different vanity areas (Justin was thankful he didn't have to navigate around all my stuff).  Because I didn't take a very good picture, you can't see it, but there was a cute little vanity stool in one of the areas.  Also, you can barely see a close-up of the pretty striped wallpaper on the right side of the top picture.

We had a little kitchen area too.

And, our room had a great balcony.  I'm in the bedroom portion of our room watching Justin take pictures off the balcony.

It was too hot to spend a lot of time out on the balcony, but we had some great views.  The hotel pool and fountain:

Views during the day:

 

Views during night:

And some random things that I enjoyed at the hotel:   

They put tasty chocolates in our room with a sweet happy anniversary card.

The elevators had gorgeous chandeliers in them!

The pretty hallway on the way to our room.

And, maybe my favorite thing -- our room had a doorbell!  I would ring it every time we went in or out because it was so cute (and I am immature!).