European Adventure!

   
I meant to be so much better at blogging this summer, what with all my free time and all!  Not so much!  The first half of my summer vacay was full of extra summer work days, and the every other second was dedicated to planning our trip to Europe!  It paid off, of course!  We had an absolute BLAST!  We visited France, Germany and Italy. 

We've had a lot of people ask us, "Who planned your tip?  What travel agent did you use?"  Well, the answer to that is, ME!  Travel agent?  Yeah right, I can totally do this!  How, you ask?  I'll tell you!  I relied very heavily on certain resources for our trip.  The first step was to buy plane tickets, if I could get cheap plane tickets at one point in the summer over another, that would clarify the dates of our trip.  I searched a LOT of sites, every day, for about 3 months!  I used Priceline, Skyscanner, Kayak, Expedia, and even the main websites of airlines like Lufthansa, United, and Air France.  Not only did I research so many different dates for our trip, but I researched departing and arriving and dozens of different airports.  Again, this helped define what our trip would be like.  We knew for sure we wanted to visit France and Italy, so I tried every major airport in those countries.  All place tickets were coming up about $1300 - $1600 a ticket!  Travel in the summer is pricey, but there is no way around it for me.  I only have certain times of the year I can travel, since I work in a school!  So we were gearing up our finances to take a $3000+ hit, just for air travel!  Then, by miracle, one day I searched the combo of flying out of Newark, NJ (about 2 hours from us) and flying into Dusseldorf, Germany, about a 2 hour train ride from Paris.  The price came up as $1380 total.  TOTAL!  I thought I was dreaming!  I entered the itinerary in a few different sites and sure enough, the tickets were coming up at around $600 a ticket.  CHEAPY CHEAPY!  I immediately called Dave and he said, BOOK THEM!  So, we were officially going to Europe in July!  So fun!

As for lodging, I had already decided to use Home Away, so that we could stay in actual apartments in the cities we were visiting.  Home Away is site that lists safe, legit apartments that people own all over the world, that we are able to rent.  I love it!  I don't know if I ever want to stay in a hotel again (except for Disney of course!)  I found our Paris apartment (click here for the link to see it!) and our Lucca, Italy apartment on this site.  They were absolutely perfect for us, great locations, GREAT prices, great all around!  I am homesick for both places already, even though we only spend 4 nights in each.  This allowed us to stay in really nice places, for not a whole lot of money.  I think I paid just around $100/night for each apartment.  Do you know what $100/night gets you in Paris or Tuscany during the summer?  Nothing nearly as nice as these two lovely apartments!  Here are a few pics I snapped...

 

This was the view from our apartment in Paris.  The Eiffel Tower looks far away here from some reason, it is actually closer that that!  What a view!  It's a million dollar view!

Here is Dave in our sitting area, looking into the bedroom.

This is our bedroom in Lucca.  This apartment was really huge!  I only snapped a few pics of the interior, but I have a video too - to be posted later!

 Looking into the bedroom from the main hallway.  So beautiful!

Seriously, we couldn't have made better choices, we were absolutely in love with our apartments, and the owners were so sweet and nice and very helpful!

So, with the plane tickets and the lodging taken care of, we just need to plan how to get to each place, and what to do while we were there.  We mostly used the train in Europe, it's insanely easy to use.  For tickets, I made a lot of my reservations through the country websites, instead of Rail Europe, because their prices were ALWAYS way way WAY more expensive.  So if you are planning a trip, I highly suggest using the website of the country you are traveling in, they always have a language choice so you don't have to navigate in a language you don't know.  I used the German site (the BEST for all timetables around Europe, but you can only book online if Germany is on your itinerary.  I used this site constantly before and during our trip, to look up local train times,) the Italian rail site and the French site (to buy, you have to tell them you live in an obscure European country like Slovakia or something so you get their prices, not Rail Europe.)  It's a lot easier than you think once you get over there too, there are timetables everywhere and lots of helpful people, and hey...if you get on the wrong train it only takes one stop to realize it and you can just hop off and get on another.  We didn't end up getting a Eurail pass because I priced that out versus point to point tickets and for us, point to point was hundreds of dollars cheaper - but you'll need to do that research too, to see if it's the best choice!  We did use one cheap Europe flight to get from Paris to Italy, and that was Easy Jet.  It was $150 cheaper to fly to Pisa then get a train there, and it was much faster too.  Saving money and timing = priceless in Europe!

Each stop was like a launching pad for us.  We explored the cities we stayed in, and eat most of our meals in those places, but almost every day we took a day-trip somewhere!  Here was our complete itinerary, if you are interested!

Day 1: Fly to Europe
Day 2: Arrive, get train from Dusseldorf to Paris.  Enjoy Paris for the evening.
Day 3: Normany - train to Bayeux and D day sites
Day 4: Disneyland Paris
Day 5:  Paris sites
Day 6: Fly from Paris to Pisa, train to Lucca, enjoy Lucca for the evening
Day 7: Lucca all day!
Day 8: Cinque Terre, Italian Riviera
Day 9: Wine tasting in Tuscany
Day 10: Train to Florence, Florence all day, board night train to Dusseldorf
Day 11:  Arrive in Dusseldorf, explore Old Town
Day 12: Fly home!

It was a whirlwind trip for sure, but we saw so much and enjoyed everything we experienced, it was a trip of a life time!  As for what to see and where to stay and sites to visit, I used my favorite travel writer, Rick Steves, for advice.  He tells you the must see stuff in each place, and likes to elaborate on the cool, not-so-toursity-stuff that really makes a big impact.  Like Lucca, the little town we stayed in, it's an off-the-beaten-path that not a lot of tourists know about and O.M.G - I can't believe it's not more popular that it is!  Oh and the Cinque Terre?  You don't know what you are missing!  Most people do miss it too, it's not a hugely popular spot but it's one of the most perfect places I have ever been!  So yes, buy Rick Steves books, you won't regret where he will take you and what he will teach you.  It's like having your own tour guide right there with you!

That is how I planned our trip!  Please ask if you have any questions - I have tons of answers!  For now, I'll just leave you with some pics:

 Paris

 Bayeux

 Omaha Beach

 American Cemetery - D Day

 Disneyland Paris

 Louvre

 Piazza Anfiteatro - Lucca

 Eiffel tower

 Piazza St. Michele - Lucca

 View from Guigini Tower - Lucca

 Vernazza - Cinque Terra

 Cinque Terre

 Cinque Terre

 Ligurian Sea

 Riomaggiore - Cinque Terre

 Riomaggiore

 Florence - Dave posing with replica David

 Florence

 Ponte Vecchio - I bought 2 Pandora charms on this bridge, idk why that is cool, but it is;)

 View from Ponte Vecchio

 Dusseldorf - German bar

 Dave's favorite meal from ALLLLLL that we ate, German meat & potatoes (shaking head)

 Disneyland Paris

 Tuscan Vineyard

 Dusseldorf, last day of our trip!

Hope you enjoyed learning about our travels!  We missed home terribly by the end, but now that we are home we are wondering why we ever came home?!?  LOL!!

Weekly Top Ten

I have so many favorites in the world.  I thought it would be fun to do a Weekly Top 10.  Who knows what sort of crazy top ten lists I can get into?!?  I will start easy on everyone, with movies.  I'm not classifying these as 10 is the least fave and 1 is the all time fave...these are just 10 of my can't-live-without-watching-a-bazillion-times-a-year favorites:

            

1.  Pride and Prejudice (Both versions count.  I love them both)
2.  You've Got Mail
3.  Phantom of the Opera

     
4.  Harry Potter (all 8 movies count - it's one story to me!)
5.  The Princess Bride  (I don't own this on DVD.  I'm headed over to amazon.com as I type to order...shame!)
6.  Tangled (I LOVE THIS MOVIE)

           
7.  RENT
8.  Lord of the Rings (again all of them, it's one story to me)
9.  Breakfast at Tiffanys (anything Audrey really, it's a tough choice!)


10.  Titanic

It's so hard to whittle this list to 10!!  There are so many other movies I just adore, and I feel like I am forgetting some important ones, but these are ultimately my favorites.  I really wanted to fit Julie & Julia on there because I luuuurve that movie, but I just couldn't bump anything else.  Yes, yes, yes, I do love Star Wars and The Little Mermaid and Twister and Mama Mia and Gone with the Wind (etc) but when I compare each to my 10, they do not make me want to change any of them.  It's just me and what I like though, everyone's top 10s are different which is why they are so fun!  Let's get some other movie ideas!  Tell me what you think I am missing, either here or on FB!!

Oh, and yes I do love the Twilight movies, but not nearly enough to be on my top 10.  My top 10 books, however...we'll go to that.  The movies are way to cheese ball for me...but I do enjoy seeing my beloved characters come to life, no matter how intense or weird;)

Freakin Fun Friday!!

Step to it - Part 1

It did not really take me a long time to get used to being a step parent.  Maybe because I've known Ashley since she was 2, or maybe because mine and Dave's relationship was so S-L-O-W moving (in a good way) or maybe because we spent a lot of time together before the whole marriage thing, or maybe just because?


The point is, I am a step parent.  A stepmother.  Which means everyday of my life I ask myself, "OMG am I an evil stepmother?!?"  Sometimes maybe I am.  The majority of the time I hope I am not.  Usually I think of myself as her same age, because I totes act like it (Carly Rae anyone?  Dancing crazy to One Direction?  No?  Adults don't do that?!)  Sorry Ash, I probs embarrass you to heck and back!  Honestly, though, it could be worse.  See?  I even talk like a teen, how weird.  Most stepmothers have a reeeeeally bad reputation, like Cinderella's...yikes.

Here she is now with Dave.  She's 13.

Here she is with me, many moons ago.  I think she is 7 here!

Here she is at 5...where did the time go??

I've never been a mother before.  Well, except to Frodo, but he is a cat.  I have no base to compare being a mom to being a step mom.  It's amusing to me that I will have raised a teenager before I have raised a toddler, but, like most parents of newborns, I have no clue what I am doing.  Only it's with a 13 year old.  I do find that I am leaning on how my parents raised me a lot.  I find myself saying things like, "1 or 2 C's is acceptable, but no more than that..." and I hear my father.  Or, "Did you really clean that bathroom floor?  Because I still see dirt..." and my mothers face and all-knowing look comes to mind.  It's sort of hilarious!  It's definitely a fun job, and it is rewarding.  I can only imagine what more kids will do to me, and her too, but hopefully we will all adjust nicely!

Ashley is at that age though where we are constantly wondering what is going on in that head of hers.  Is she happy, does she hate us yet, does she ever have questions and just not ask us, does she fight with friends?  Recently I've thought about what got me through my teen years and to be honest, I think it was my friends and tv/movies and books and really just living life and figuring it all out one crazy day at a time.  Ashley's situation is so different than mine.  She has two homes, two rooms, two sets of parents, two sets of families on both sides...she's split in so many ways.  She is luckier than most kids I think though, because she has so many adults in her life that love and care about her.

As she travels through what can be described as the most stormy-but-fun-wild-and-crazy time of her life, I wanted to get her a few books to help her through.  She doesn't ask a lot of questions (really, you could though!) or talk about a lot of her friendship situations (again, you could!) so Dave & I don't know if she has questions or needs advice or wants to talk or whatever.  Although, I remember being that way too.  As a teen, you don't realize that your parents/step parents have been through most situations before, and probably have a good bit of advice for you.  As a teen, you also don't want your parents advice, lol, because parents are lame and embarassing, and really don't know a thing (it's not true though!!  We are totally awesome!)  Anyways, one book my mom got me as a teenager was this one:





Yes it is super cool and so 80's or 90's!  But I loved this book, I read every juicy morsel about growing up and being a girl!  So I guess my mom know a thing or two about a thing or two, because I think that book helped me a ton, when someone at school that was more "worldly" than I was and said something I really didn't know about or understand, I'd make a mental note to see if it was talked about in this book.  It was.  I never sat and read it cover to cover, I flipped through it as I needed to know more about boobs or fights with friends or periods or whatever.  I never knew really how much it taught me until now though...



...because I bought the same book for Ashley!  It's new and improved and has been updated a few times.  I actually read it almost cover to cover tonight and laughed out loud at how much of it I had memorized, or I got to parts of the book where I'd say, "Oh that is where I read about that or that is why I say that!"  It was a fun trip to the past.  I think it's a great book for girls, and it's written for 11 to 18 year old girls so it covers a really great array of topics.

I hope she enjoys it as much as I did.  I've been looking for books for her to read over the summer, we sort of have a routine down for her to read and do some school work over these few months to keep her brain active.  Because if we don't, it'll turn to mush with TV and cell phones.  When I was her age, I was still out playing with friends, running around the neighborhood or splashing around in the creek in our woodsy area.  Being active, being creative, choosing to read for fun, etc. Teens today don't do that stuff anymore, FYI.  They are home bodies and techy savvy.  If we didn't make her look up from the tv/laptop/cell phone screen, I am not sure she would!  So hopefully this book will entice her to read;)

This whole thing just makes me feel like a parent.  I've always known that I AM a step parent, but knowing I am and feeling like one are a little different.  Ashley has 2 perfectly great parents, her dad and her mom.  I sorta fit in the background, not replacing either one ever, but not just another adult in her life either.  It's a comfortable position, for all of us I think.  When I read through this book though, I kept thinking...this is so "parenty" of me!  LOL!  With her being a teenager now, and the woman in our household, I know my role is important.  Teens...they watch everything, they learn, they base their decisions and their actions off our lives.  That is really scary to me!  I'm such a nut case!!  So, at least when I am not the best role model, or can't answer a question, or she doesn't want to ask (let's face it, most of the stuff teens what to know and ask they would never ask us because it's 100% embarassing) she has a place to go to that can give her a straight answer and be good enough to get her through.

My only issue with this book?  The author isn't a Christian.  So, some of our very important views on very important and serious topics are not the same.  I went through and added some scripture and notes in those parts, just because I think it's important for Ashley to know where we stand and where we hope she stands too one day.  Overall I think it was a good choice for her summer reading plan.

Look at me?  Being all parenty!  I guess it's good for me, since we are thinking about having more, soon.  But that is a whole other topic...

See?  We are all so goofy, it's hard to tell who the teenager is?  ;)

A few updates!

 

It's been over 2 months since I did all that hard work in my kitchen!  I still love my color choices and the cabinets and everything is looking great still.  I do have to wipe down the cabinets every few weeks to keep them from looking gross, but honestly everyone should be doing that because if you don't have white cabinets, the grossness is there but you can see it!  Lesson learned from cleaning these cabinets before I painted them, they were covered...COVERED...in grime that we never wipe off.  Yuck!

When last I posted about the kitchen, it looked like this....

You can see that I hadn't installed the two small cabs above the fridge yet, and you can see the really awful, hideous florescent lamp situation that begged to be changed.

Fast forward 2 months and I really hadn't gotten to any of that yet.  The last weeks of school were so hectic, with all the activities and planning/hosting a Career Day and all that jazz.  Home stuff, including DIY, blogging and heck, even cleaning, was put on the back burner.  Come to think of it, I've been "out" of school for 2 weeks and all that stuff was still on that burner, I've been so busy!

See?  Still nothing up there.  So I decided I needed to just bite the bullet and do it!  The cabinets were already painted, I just needed to install them.  The light fixture...well I was scared of that part.  I had never uninstalled a florescent light before, so it was an unknown anomaly.  It wasn't so bad.  Honestly, I forgot to take pictures of Dave & I taking it down and putting the new one up!  Here it is all installed, and the ceiling is halfway painted around i (there was a ugly light shaped piece of ceiling, ew)

The fixture is from Lowes, I paid about $60 for it.  It's ORB around the rim and on the nip.  Oh right...Dave & I lovingly call fixtures like this "boob lamps" because really...they look like big boob, right?  Anyways, it was the best choice for our small kitchen.  We have the chandelier hanging in the dining room about 7 feet away so another dangling option would've been way too much.  We loved this one!

The fire lit under my butt to get stuff done took about a week, with buying the light, installing it, and putting up the cabinets.  Now, however, it's all done.  Here are the small cab doors installed...don't mind the messy kitchen.  I still have to clean this house from top to bottom.  It's so dirty.  I've had no time!!  Well, I have had some time but I chose to use it elsewhere;)  Can someone say "Tinas-brother-has-a-pool?"

Here is the kitchen from afar with the light fixture and the cab doors installed.  Sorry about the dark pic, I'm still learning the best way to take pictures of bright light with my camera...

The pics with the light on tend to look like this:

Glare-a-riffic!!  I'll acquaint myself with the ways of a fancy came;)

We've had fun taking some great pics though, see??

 Ash & Dave on a walk...

 Ash took this at my parents, pretty flower!

 Our sweet little townhouse at Not So Bland...

 Our "why-are-you-doing-this-to-me" Frodo-kitty...

A teenager-like pic taken in the bathroom of me and my new appendage.  Seriously, I have the camera in my hands about 88% of the time now!

So that is what's happening around our home lately.  I have tons of projects planned for the summer, which I'll post up in a day or so.  Who knows if those projects will get done though, we have our Europe trip coming up in 2 weeks and that is taking up a lot of my time prepping and planning and packing:)

Happy Summer!