an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.
I am safe in Winnipeg and soaking up life with Kal.
The house is rad, the kids are adorable (example a : storytime / example b : at least one of these two are coming home in my suitcase), Dan is funny and the whole situation is far from awkward. (Although the Canadian customs folks were more than a little concerned that we met on the internet.)
But the coolest part is the art and the talk. My mind is already buzzing and it's been less than a day.
Good stuff. Happy Wednesday.
I'm sneaking another post in this morning to share the side table my sister-in-law, Kristen, made for our apartment. How cute is that?! When I decided to redo our living room last spring, I wanted something different so we replaced a lot of our old box store stuff with handmade and antique. This table was the finishing touch and it's been in the apartment for a little over a month.
I love it. Totally adds character, matches the other wood without being too matchy-matchy and is just big enough for a wine glass to rest without being so big that it collects clutter.
Kristen just started a fun blog (with lots of decor ideas & recipes) and shared a DIY for this exact side table here.
ps : I wish I could reach into these photos and plump that pillow.
pps : marbled lamp tutorial here.
Yesterday's weather more than made up for Hurricane Irene.
We spent the day wandering the West Village, Chelsea Market (where I found – but didn't buy – my new favorite shoes) & Soho and stopped for teeny (and fantastic) cupcakes from Baked by Melissa. We had dinner at Little Owl which is the restaurant below apartment they always show as Monica's in Friends. It was amazing – probably my favorite meal of the trip. And last, we had drinks at a speakeasy called Death + Company which was a great experience. (If you go, try the Waterloo Sunset).
Seriously – this was such a good trip. We're planning the next girl's adventure now.
Today I am flying up to Winnipeg which is so crazy and exciting, I can hardly believe it. See you in a hot second, Kal!
love my girls so much. These weekends make me over the moon happy.
We crash landed in New York early Friday afternoon and had a great first day in the city. We wandered the High Line (which was amazing) and had a margarita happy hour then dinner at a tapas place before finding another fun bar. It was a perfect first night.
Then we woke up just in time to evacuate our Battery Park Marriott. Good times.
The hotel transferred us up to the Times Square Marriott and we spent most of the day hiding in the hotel, watching the news and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on TLC while waiting for the storm to hit. (Though we did get dressed up – that's the photo on the left.)
And then we woke up this morning to find the storm had passed with relatively little fanfare. (Thank goodness.) We wandered a very crowded Times Square and then through Central Park (photo on the right) and down by 30 Rock. Because all the stores and restaurants were anticipating a very heavy storm day today, almost everything is closed.
But we're continuing to make the best of it and are now safe at our friend Michelle's apartment in the West Village. We'll be adventuring out later today for some dinner and are hoping for a very sunny Monday.
ps : photos above were taken with the PictureShow app & I'm updating a lot on twitter and instagram (elisejoy) while the internet is sparse.
I have had an amazing time in Chicago. It's a killer city and the weather right now is perfect. Not to mention, Melanie is a charming host. We spent an awkward amount of time quoting Friends, got manicures/pedicures (Essie's Fiji polish is out of hand good), ate great food (including fantastic cookies from here) and laughed a lot. We also kept up the "try new exercise classes" theme today and took a class at The Dailey Method.
I have been wanting to try this workout since I heard a friend from college was teaching it. She lives in Chicago and invited us to take her class this afternoon. It was intense. Similar to Bar in a lot of ways, but different enough that I know I'll be sore in the morning. Plus it was so fun to know the teacher. I'll be continuing with Bar Method once I am back in San Diego but I'm glad to have a new option up near Sacramento when I visit my parents.
So sweet! Early tomorrow morning we are flying to NYC, which at the moment, with Hurricane Irene crashing in, seems like a bad idea. We had lots of outdoor weekend plans that are going to be rained out, but we're excited regardless. As my friend Sara so eloquently emailed : "I don't care what we do!! I mean, one of the best times we've all had since college was the epic all day belaggio brunch, so whatevs."
True story.
I survived my first hot yoga class.
Background : I have done yoga on and off for about seven years (and am currently on like a three year off period) so I am familiar with the poses and flow.
But this was different. Hotter than I expected, for one. I walked in and panicked at the heat. Like really panicked, as in started planning my exit strategy. (We think it was about 104* in the room.)
Once the class got going though, I settled into it and I think my body temperature warmed up so the room didn't feel like it was on the sun. It was a sweat-fest though. I was dripping wet. It was like being in a shower only you couldn't turn the shower off.
Seriously.
This really isn't sounding like an endorsement, but it is! Really! I enjoyed the whole thing from beginning to end and it was a 75 minute class, so longer than I am used to. It was surprisingly relaxing and powerful. If you have done some yoga before and were considering a hot yoga class, I totally recommend it. Just bring lots of water.
My class was at Core Power Yoga. If you are a new student you get a week of unlimited classes for free, which was awesome.
Oh hey, pretty town. We had a great dinner last night at Rise & this morning we're going to hot yoga. My first hot yoga class ever and I'm more than a little nervous.
Today is the beginning of my big vacation. I'll be in Chicago visiting Melanie, a friend from college, for a few days then we're both flying to New York to meet up with four of our other college girlfriends. After a busy weekend, I'll be heading up to Winnipeg to finally meet Kal and her adorable family in real life. Yep, after this, I get to say I crashed with a friend I met online. (And I expect she'll be more awesome than I thought.)
I don't have any blog posts scheduled. And I'm kind of excited about it because that means I'll be inspired to post travel photos and random good stuff over the next week and a half. Keep an eye out for posts at random times every day. I'll keep an eye out for adventures.
And to my sweet friends that were totally down for my "Paul's deployed, please clear your schedule for a vacation" email, I LOVE YOU & I'll see you soon! And to Paul, who now reads this blog, I LOVE YOU, MAN & please home soon.
p.s. For those of you that were having trouble with all CAPS showing up in the blog posts, I think I have that straightened out. If you are using Internet Explorer and the text still looks strange, try upgrading to the newest version the newest version (IE9) and that should fix it. If you can't do that, I recommend downloading Firefox, which is a great web browser. I am so sorry for the confusion yesterday – readability is the most important thing for a blog and I would never go all caps on purpose. Thanks for your patience!
Welcome to the "new" blog!
If you click through you'll see it's changed – but really it's not too different! It was important to me to keep things simple and very easy to navigate. And the sidebars & banner were always pretty photo focused and I enjoyed that aspect so they remained, just became more current.
But I did make some upgrades – for example, if you hover your mouse over the navigation bar up top or on the left sidebar links, you'll see the image change. (I was over the top excited to get this small adjustment working correctly.) And I created a new about page, updated my FAQs and perhaps most exciting : I created a tutorials shortcut page. That's right – all the tutorials I shared here are now easy to find and can be accessed through the navigation bar.
I hope you like the upgrade. I do. It still feels like me, just a bit fancier. Thank you, as always, for reading.
EDIT : Thanks so much for the encourangement so far. If things are looking wonky – I'm sorry. Please try a hard refresh (COMMAND + SHIFT + R) on a mac (Ctrl + F5) on PC. If you are seeing oddly spaced letters in the body of the posts, it's a problem with Internet Explorer and should not be happening. I have a call out to typepad to get it fixed but you can also upgrade to the newest version (IE9) and it will look normal. Thank you!!
And I still have big plans for my website (including a self-hosted web store) but those changes will be happening in September.
enJOY it 