Pull Up a (Fantastic) Chair

Over the summer, John and I made a push to get in the things we wouldn't be able to do for a while, since we'll be in Idaho for the next year and a half. And no East Coast blitz would be complete without a trip to New York City. While we were there, we visited the MOMA, where we saw all these fantastic chairs that I wish I had to seat people in at dinner parties.

Stake Conference-themed dinner party

Dinner party in the park

Dinner party where you don't lose your purse

Modernist dinner party

Europa!

The first time I ever celebrated John's birthday with him, back in 2008, he didn't want a party. So instead, we had a little dinner, and I tried to make up for a lack of decorations by going for broke on the cake. I hadn't known John very long at that point, but I knew that when people would ask his name, he would often reply, "John Paul, like the pope." So a pope theme it was. Unfortunately, in my attempt to recreate Bernini's Piazza San Pietro out of marshmellows, graham crackers, and army figures, things kind of just turned into a mess.

Don't judge me.

So this year for John's birthday, we decided to go see the real thing. And to help us celebrate, we took along some party lambs.

Our first stop was in Spain, where the party lambs were often lost, didn't always know what was going on around them, and sometimes worried that they had ended up in a bad part of town.

Next, we went to Rome...

and to the Vatican City, where everyone got to see the real version of the Piazza.

From there we went to Florence...

 and made a quick stop in Pisa, on our way to...

Venice!

Where the party lambs had a bad run in with some pigeons.

As did John. (That was so gross.)

We then took an all-night train to Germany, where even the utility vans are made by Mercedes-Benz.

We may or may not have gotten stuck in Germany for five days trying to get onto a military flight back to the U.S., during which time we decided we're never leaving the country again.

But it was all worth it because if we had never gone, we never would have stumbled across this amazing impromptu dinner party some Venetians were throwing with just a table, some chairs, and a string of lights between two lamp posts. Magic.

Catching Up

So here's the thing. I'm really sorry this blog has been in hibernation. We had kind of a busy summer between a trip to Europe, John finishing his commitment to the Navy, and us packing up and moving across the country to Idaho for John to go back to school. And since then, things have been a little crazy at work; the design editor for the magazine I work for left the company (for a fabulous new job as the editor-in-chief of Arlington magazine--more on that when the first issue comes out), so I've been filling in for her. While that's been great because I've been able to write fun design articles and see them in print (like this one and this one and this one and a few more), it has also meant lots of late nights to fill in plus do my regular job as the magazine's web editor, and that has meant no time for blogging. But we have a new design editor, John and I are settling into our new mountain home here, and it's time to wake this blog up again. So let's start with some catching up.