The Perfect Winter

I don't know about your hometown, but this LA weather has been super bizarre. One day it's freezing and all the clouds are black, then the next day it's beautiful outside, 80 degrees, and sunny. Can you say global warming? Anyway....

Chris and I are so excited about winter that we've already broken out the wool socks, beanies, fleece blankets, and candles. We've also already started to plan our trip to Park City with my sister and her boyfriend to visit my Aunt and Uncle for the Sundance Film Festival in January!

Due to my excitement, I'm going to ignore the perfectly sunny day outside, take advantage of my day off, pour another cup of tea, and show you a few things we love about winter!

Tea! A few of my favorites are PG Tips, English Breakfast, Green, and Peppermint! 

Dates by the fireplace! Chris is a picnic pro, inside or out of the house. I can always count on him to prepare a delicious snack for fireplace hang times.

Candles! You can never have too many candles. The best thing about winter candles are the amazing seasonal scents. My favorites: pumpkin, cinnamon, and spiced apple!

Cozy Socks! Well, all winter clothing will do.

As you may have read in other posts, this year has been filled with many firsts for us. This winter we'll be able to add so many more to the list!

- Chris's first Thanksgiving in the US

- Chris's first winter Christmas

- Our first Christmas together

- His first time seeing me perform in a ballet

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

YOUNG MGMT

Chris is officially on his last day of touring with Strange Talk, and I miss him terribly. Only 24 more hours until I get to tie him down and force him to pick napkin colors. Muahahaha

So, I've mentioned it through twitter, but have yet to brag fully about my amazing Fiancé starting his own management company, YOUNG MGMT. I knew this time would come at some point and I'm happy it's sooner rather than later. You know when you see someone totally in their element, like they're really in the zone and killing it? Well, that's what I see when I watch my man in management mode. He's so passionate about all things music and he's the kind of person who see's what he wants and does everything in his power to get it... Not to mention it's kinda hot watching him talk business. Love you baby!

Anyway, my love has recently added a new act to his roster, Vancouver Sleep Clinic, as well as a new website, courtesy of his loving future wifey ;)

Follow YOUNG MGMT on Twitter and Instagram to keep up to date on his adventures!

Now back to seating arrangements!

xx D

The do everything girl

I once had someone tell me "I've got to hand it to you, you've always got some sort of a job"

Thinking back on it now, it was a pretty back handed comment. However, at the time I was (and still am) very proud of my ability to find a job... whatever it may be. Of course I would rather be consistently booking dance/choreography jobs, but wouldn't we all? Any young artist knows that you can't always rely solely on your art to provide for you, sometimes you need to find an extra gig here and there. I've tried my hand at quite a few jobs over the years because I refuse to settle down and give up on my art to sit in an office 5 days a week with only 2 weeks vacation time. No way, not this girl!

D's extensive random job list:

Receptionist at a Pilates studio

Office assistant at a flameproofing shop

Cashier at a cafe

Mannequin model

Hostess

Dance stylist for a dance studio photographer

Home organizer (ok that was only a couple of times)

Waitress

Telemarketer for a travel company (that I'm starting to think may not have been legit)

Dog walker

Sales associate

Personal assisting.

Of course seeing this list inspires me to push even harder in promoting myself as an artist, but i'll be honest in saying, I still hold a lot of pride in my ability to swallow my pride to get the job done. Pointe shoes don't pay for themselves you know.

What random jobs have you taken to keep busy and support your art?

xx D

Our not so Drunch Brunch.

So, Chris arrived at LAX on thursday night and I've been pretty distracted  from anything els since he's gotten back. It's weird how being apart from him feels harder now than ever. I wasn't expecting all the butterflies in my stomach driving into LAX. 

Even though he was on tour for only about 2.5 weeks, it reminded me of the difficult times living in separate countries. All the work and changes we went through to live in the same country and here we were skyping again. Of course it's not the same, but I've clearly developed a love/hate relationship with skype. Nonetheless, it's amazing to have my best friend back in town and to get a little extra help on our final wedding plans. Only 26 days!!!

To celebrate his return and get started on some wedding projects, we decided that on Saturday we would get out of the house as soon as I had returned from teaching my regular summer dance classes. 

First stop, Bloody Mary's! 

We decided to head to Echo Park to a fairly new restaurant/bar, Mowhawk Bend.

Chris and I are both big fans of Bloody Mary's and who on earth doesn't love a good drunch? (drunk brunch). Unfortunately we were too late to enjoy a brunch so we went with appetizers instead. Sweet potato fries and wing style cauliflower.  

I'm just going to be completely honest here and say that we weren't very impressed. I really wanted to like this place for a few different reasons, i've heard amazing things about their beers and the fact that they have 72 on tap. The fact that they only serve locally sourced food and drinks was also pretty enticing, as the carbon footprint discussion was one often had, growing up in my family's home.  Either way, the food isn't good enough for me to even recommend. And i'm afraid to say my Bloody Mary was more like tomato juice and a bit of vodka. Looks pretty good though, don't you think?

I've decided to save the second half of this post until AFTER our wedding. It involves our personalized wedding favors and I don't want to give away too much yet ;)

xxD