New Year

Via

So this year I'll be having a two part New Year's Eve.

We've been making pizza dough and dessert all afternoon with the fam for an at home night.

(Pictures coming up later on in the week)

The second part of my day will be spent with friends on the beach.

I have a really close nit group of couple friends that the boy and I see regularly.

It's never a dull moment with those guys.

I'm sure somewhere in there there'll be fireworks. Sparklers!! I know.. I'm five. Meh. They're fun!

In the next couple of days I need to sit down and jot down all those pesky resolutions that I haven't even thought about yet.

I mean.. everyone has the usual. Eat healthier. Lose weight.

Those don't have much substance though.

I want something that will be soul-fulfilling? If that makes any sense.

Y'all have fun and be safe if there's going to be one or two drinks involved.

I'll see you in the new year!

Here's to 2013!

With all my love, 

Pati

Austin Adventures Murals

Hiya! Hope you enjoyed the brewery adventure I took you on.

I sure did enjoy being there.

Today I wanted to show you some neat-o murals I found around Austin.

This first one isn't mind-blowing or anything. Just..UVAS (grapes in Spanish for anyone wondering). I just

like the clean lines and that every letter has two different shades of the same color.

This one is one of my favorites for sure. All the geometric shapes that made this face are A-mazing.

The quote on the side "La soledad solo existe cuando abandonas tu ser" is really powerful. It roughly translates to, " You can ever truly be alone when you abandon yourself". 

I stood and stared at this piece for quite some time. 

This one wasn't a mural but rather one of those poster transfer things. Still thought it was cool. 

This mural was pretty weird when I first saw it but after I read about it I like it a lot more now.

I believe it says "Bienvenidos" at the top. It means welcome in Spanish.

There's an awesome Mexican calendar girl and then some type of Greek/Roman philosopher type. 

The philosopher is trying to empower the woman to stand up and have her voice heard through the use of the microphone and the spray paint cans.

The two children at the bottom are actually dreaming all of this up and want it to be their reality.

I LOVE the concept of this whole piece.

This was my favorite one. Visually anyway. I'm obsessed with skulls! 

Something I really haven't shown on this blog yet. I dedicated a whole wall in my house to skeletons/skulls. The element of death is just fascinating to me. Plus skulls are rad and you can't tell me any different.

I'm also a die hard hopeless romantic. I'm a super sappy love story kind of girl. This is just the perfect mural for me all around.

Studebaker! I love those cars. Nothing fancy here. 

Not a mural..but these are all over down town. Art everywhere.

Last mural was this Virgen de Guadalupe one. Really traditional looking Mexican mural. 

It was actually outside of an awesome store called Tesoros. The store had all types of hand made goods from tons of different Latin American countries.

Hope you enjoyed all those. Gotta get these resolutions written up!

With all my love,

Pati

Austin Adventures (512) Brewing Co.

Hi Guys! Eep.. it's been too long since I had a chance to sit down and blog. Hope you had a wonderful holiday! With tons of family and food.

I miss you all! Between going out of town and Christmas festivities it's been insane over here.

Don't fret. I'm back. With so many stories to tell.

Austttiinnnnnnn, Texas how I love thee. I will live in thee soon. Now to
retell (part of) the adventures that we went on this weekend.

The one and only thing we had planned for the whole weekend was a brewery tour at (512) brewing co.

Not going to lie.. this was all for that amazing man of mine.

It's cool. We give, We get.

Plus, I ended up having the best time ever.

These taps were rad. rad. rad.
What came out of them.. even better.
I'm not a fancy beer drinker like Bob but I have been sampling his beers for quite a while.
This past weekend I got pints of my own.. and GASP, waddaya know? I kinda liked it.
I can't lie. He might be reading this.

That's what I was drinking all afternoon. Tripel. Delicious. 

Unfortunately this brewery rarely bottles. The owner kind of likes the environment and doesn't want waste. Yeah, what a concept, right? 

Another reason to love them! Also a reason to come to Austin and sample some of their stuff out.

Some of the random people waiting around for the tour. Being inside a brewery is always a treat.

This is just his casual face. NO biggie.

Warning: There's no pictures of me. Boo! I need to get better at being in front of the camera on these adventures as well.

Will totally do better next time. Promise.

These next couple of pictures show the fermentation tanks which is where the beer, which is called wort while undergoing fermentation, is kept. 

The giant metal things.. for anyone who is lost.

This is where they mix the grain, hops, and whatever else will be going into the beer.

Above you can see some of the many, many kegs laying around the place.

Before they can get into those kegs though, the beer needs to be made.. and needs to ferment.

They attach hoses to the tanks so that some of the gases from the fermenting process have ample room to escape the tanks. If they weren't there..it would be a HUGE mess.

Buckets of water are filled so they can see how aggressively it is fermenting at a certain period of time.

These two buckets were bubbling like crazy!

Barrels where some of the beer goes for secondary fermentation. Most of these, if not all, are whiskey barrels. Pretty cool stuff.

After the tour we got to just hang out and enjoy some good brews and make some new friends.

Two dudes from the brewery. Facing us (Hugh) Back to us (Phil).

They were super cool, chill dudes who just love beer.

My hand made an appearance!

When everyone leaves.. boys sit and laugh about beer..

Phil giving, and trying, a shot of barrel aged whiskey. Can't remember what it's called but this is the whiskey remnants that are extracted from the barrels they receive. They apparently have loads..

Hope you enjoyed the brewery tour. We sure did!

Murals coming tomorrow!

With all my love,

Pati

So Long.. I'm gone..

So I've been counting down the minutes until this weekend! The boy

and I are headed to Austin for the weekend. We have absolutely nothing planned except for a brewery

tour on Saturday. This is the way I wish all my trips were.

I love walking around and enjoying the scenery!

Plus if you've never been, the Texas hill country is amazing.

I cannot wait to move back to that area!

Can Blue Bonnets be any more beautiful? Of course it's not spring right now. Bummer.

Either way the rolling hills and the beautiful land that you encounter is gorgeous.

Makes me euphoric just thinking about it!

Via

Pedernales Falls State Park is so amazing.

I"m hoping the boy will let me whisk him away and hike for a bit sometime this weekend. He's not one  for much adventuring onto uneven ground. Don't worry.. nothing a smile and a pout won't fix. haha. 

If I could live forever in the wilderness I would take that life in a heart beat. 

I am however as much a city girl as I am a country/wilderness girl. So this wilderness would need to be close to a city.. reason 39349483 why Austin is awesome!

As if the city wasn't amazing enough.. there's art and music everywhere. So inspiring.

I'm hoping to come across tons of little murals while I"m there and photograph them for you guys!

The one above is probably one of the best known ones around the city but there's so many, many more.

Eep! Friday can't come soon enough.

With all my love,

Pati

Meow

Hey guys! 

I wanted to dedicate this blog to my first animal loves.. my cats. 

As much as I love my dog now I cannot fathom having a life without cats. It really is two different kinds of love. They cannot be pitted against each other.

My cats are so awesome. 

My VERY first pet ever was Willow!

She will forever be my shhh.. secret favorite. She's only super friendly to me. Probably why she's so special to me. She tolerates everyone else in the household and I'm 

pretty sure it's just because she gets under the chin rubs.

She's not super active but would rather lay around and scope out everything happening in the house.

I'm pretty sure she thinks that Abigail, the dog, is completely insane. They pick on 

each other all the time but nothing more than playful (that's what I think) fighting. 

I always wanted her to have another cat to play with and of course was hooked on cats after her.

So I got her Ali, a year later.

Willow HATED Ali at first.. I thought it would never work out. I gave it a couple of days with them being separated before I introduced more than just the scent. I left to work and thought the door was closed correctly. To my horror it wasn't. It was however the best thing that could've 

happened. They were playing together when I got home!

I was one happy mommy for sure.

Miss Ali cannot be anymore different than Willow if she tried.

She's totally playful and wants to be on top of you at all times. She's sitting on my lap while i'm typing up this post actually..

Ali loves people and wants to be around to see what we're all doing at any point through the day.

She loves to chase flies that come into the house and pounce on them until they cease to fly. 

Morbid.. I know.. but hey! she's entertained. Plus who wants flies in their house anyway?!

She's also the constant climber. I bring something into the house and she's the first one on top of it. I really should buy her one of those fancy cat climbing towers. They're just oh so expensive.. boo.

These two have seriously brought endless joys and cuddles into my life. Not the last of them you'll see around these parts. 

With all my love, 

Pati

Disney-rama

Hello again! Been here and there and everywhere the last couple of days. Finally sitting down for another post.

So..you know how I told you about my love for Disney? Well we just went there for Thanksgiving weekend and I wanted to show you 

some awesome pictures I snapped of the minions.

So first of all let me tell you they had absolutely NO idea that they were headed to Disneyland! These first couple of pictures were from when we finally got to the hotel. It was
too hard to keep from them at this point.

Noah is so excited that he started to run circles around where we were. I was so happy for them!

So these are just some random shots from the whole trip. We had toooooo much fun.

Cannot wait until the next time we're there.

California Adventure. Right after this picture they rode on their first roller coaster.

Bummed I didn't snap a picture of them next to it.

A family pic. That belt looked so awkward. Oh well. I loved my little hat!

A Bugs's Life land. Everything in here was A-mazing.

The whole family. Can you tell I"m completely the opposite of everyone else? haha.

Learned something new about my little man. He's obsessed with Woody. He carried his little friend around everywhere.

Probably my favorite shot of the whole trip.

Watching a parade. Our favorite

One of my favorite rides was their favorite. I have such nerds for children.

As an adult.. this ride is not MY cup of tea.

Leaving the hotel. Had to have a pic with Santa himself.

I seriously will be saving up for another trip soon. Wish we lived closer to the HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH.

Hope you enjoyed some snipets of our trip.

With all my love, 

Pati