Honeymoon Bliss, miss, and traveling tips.

Now, you must know that I love children, but when I picture a romantic honeymoon with my husband, I don't exactly picture crying babes, running children, kids meals, and whatever may end up in the hotel pool. Chris and I were very lucky that we were able to visit Maui after most kids had returned to school. So, although I'm sure anytime of year would be the perfect time of year to visit this beautiful island, I would definitely recommend trying to arrange your trip around school holidays.

No onto the recommendations! I have to warn you that I can't take credit for ALL of these suggestions, as a few were passed on to us by a wonderful friend, (who is also very thorough with her recommendations), Vivian! Thanks girl!

Happy Hour

Betty's Beach Cafe: Ok, this place is seriously a gem! The time of year we visited Maui may play a part in how empty it was, but there is no complaining here. Beautiful beach front view, $5 fresh civeche, $3 mai tai's, and $2 extra to make it a double! We were hooked... and back the next day obviously. If we had checked out Betty's earlier, we would have stopped by for the whole fresh lobster for $16.95 on Wednesdays. We'll have to save that for next time. 

Dessert

Ululanie's Shave Ice: I've been wanting to put a 'D' on the end of Shave so bad, but that's really what it's called in Hawaii! If you get the opportunity to stop by this amazing place, please get the Haleakala flavor.... and make it a large! 

Snorkeling

The Snorkel Store: This place had a really amazing deal to rent two sets of gear for the whole week. Vivian had recommended that we do this to safe time and money. What makes this so fantastic is you can leave the gear in your car so it's there whenever you want to explore. There are so many wonderful snorkeling spots to visit without a guide! My favorite part of the deal was paying about $30 extra to get a spare mask that had photo and video capabilities. Extra star for that one! We dropped off our gear the morning we headed off to the airport, and by the time we had checked our luggage, all our photos and videos were available in a personal folder online for us to save!

Lunch

Paia Fish Market: Chris and I had just finished an amazing hike through the Bamboo Forest and we weren't very excited about our peanut butter and banana sandwiches on the way home. Lucky for us our drive back to the hotel took us through a beautiful Hippie town in Paia. We decided to park and take a walk around when we found this awesome fish market restaurant, totally packed, affordable, and absolutely delicious. We both decided to go with the Mahi Burger. One word, amazing! We were talking about this burger for the rest of the day.

Fish Tacos

Ono Tacos: OnoMG! Seriously the most delicious fish and shrimp taco's i've ever had. Being from LA I was sure I had already had the best of the best street vendor tacos around. Boy was I wrong!

I'm already wanting to go back!

Yelp reviews up soon!

xx D

Groover - Bouncing back after a wedding

Maybe it's just me, but there's was something exciting about the idea of getting back to normal life after our wedding. For the past few months our lives had been completely consumed by this party of a lifetime that unfortunately, my work hustle suffered. Being primarily self employed and responsible for finding the bulk of my work on my own, meant some serious time management between wedding planning and work life. I would easily say now that that is my downfall. Sure, I'm the 'To Do' list girl, the filer, the organizer, but for some reason I just can't manage my time well. I made a few goals for myself while I was laying on the beaches of Maui and a nice long 'Back To Reality To Do' list on the flight home. Here's what i'm finding is helping me get back into the swing of things...

#1 Exercise: Leading up to the wedding, I was doing some serious cardio and over all fitness, but one month visiting with out of town guest.... and not any guests, Australians, meant a lot of drinks and good food was consumed. My first dance class back was pretty much hell but the good kind of hell where you know the deeper the burn, the more you're getting done. I've since scheduled in some sort of exercise every day. This brings me to my next tip.

#2 Scheduling: Since my mornings are slow and I don't start teaching or rehearsing until the afternoon or evening, this is prime time to schedule in anything personal I need to do. Additional dance classes, blog posts, filing paperwork, responding to e-mails, etc. Even if I've only loosely plan out each day, I'm bound to achieve more with having a bit of structure to my days.

#3 Setting Goals: I used to hate the idea of setting goals because when I was younger I was worried that I wouldn't be able to live my 'free as a bird', 'whatever happens, happens', 'just live life' lifestyle. Sadly it's taken me until now to learn that I can still have those mantras while using goals to get what I want. My goals for the rest of the year are to perform on stage again. Get back in to pointe shoe shape, get an additional job, and make a financial goal to allow us to start house hunting. 

#4 Read More: This is a hard one because if I have free time, I either am spending it online, Pinterest, or while doing something on my never ending To Do list. Lucky for me, I've just joined a book club with some wonderful girls I work with. There's nothing like a little pressure to get me to do something.

We'll that's my plan so far, so as I bid you adieu, I leave you with pictures from my honeymoon to make you jealous! Aloha!

xx D