Life & Love Archives - Page 11 of 21 - Erika Dale Interior Design

Christmas 2012 Recap Part 1

Hello and happy new year! I hope you all had a happy, healthy, and safe holiday season! We just returned home from our Christmas vacation and thought I would post a few photos from our trip.

We left for Nebraska before dawn on Christmas Eve and landed around midday. We spent Christmas Eve celebrating with Walker’s immediate family and some of his extended family. It was so wonderful! We exchanged gifts and had a delicious dinner (artichoke stew and chili to warm us up… it was 9 degrees!). On Christmas morning, Walker’s extended family came over and we had an incredible breakfast (including homemade cinnamon rolls and a delicious smoked salmon hash!). We spent the day watching movies and enjoying each others’ company. We finished off the day with a turkey, gravy, and mashed potato feast. We were totally spoiled. :)

The day after Christmas we went to the movies (Django Unchained for those who are curious) and then had a family get-together to celebrate Walker’s 30th birthday a little early. Of course, he received scotch as a gift so the night turned into a lively party with his cousins! ;)

We spent the 27th relaxing with his immediate family before I had to depart for the airport that afternoon. I finally arrived in New York by 1am (and had to wait for an hour for my bags of course). Little did I know I would be walking into a house full of sickies! My parents, brother, and entire extended family all caught/spread bronchitis on Christmas. Yuck! :(

On the 28th, my family celebrated a belated Christmas and they were MORE than generous as always. I spent the afternoon drinking coffee, scratching lotto tickets, and exchanging gifts with my best friend. When I got home, I fed my family soup and/or toast for dinner because they were all so sick! :(

On the 29th, I was eager for some fresh air that was not contaminated with sick germs, so I tagged along with my best friend and her husband to West Mountain to go snowboarding! It was so much fun and it felt great to enjoy the winter weather. In fact, we got about 4 inches of snow while we were on the slopes and had a bit of a slippery drive home.

By the 30th, my family was starting to feel a bit better so we spent the day watching movies, playing games, and relaxing. It was so nice! :)

On New Year’s Eve, I left the house at 4am to get to the airport and flew back to LA. I arrived around midday, only 45 minutes or so from Walker in the same terminal. We gathered our bags and headed home. After a long nap, we decided we were too tired to go out for New Years Eve and instead opted to have a date night in (since we hadn’t seen each other in days!). We cooked an amazing meal of ahi tuna filets and garlic mashed potatoes, drank lots of wine, played Yahtzee (I got three Yahtzees on our last game… crazy right!?), and listened to great music! It was the perfect night! We began 2013 with a champagne toast and a solid night’s sleep in our own bed!

January 1st was the (2nd) anniversary of our first date so we always have a fun time celebrating New Years Day! We got up and watched Nebraska play in the bowl game while we drank coffee and got ready for the day. As tradition dictates, we then went to lunch at the restaurant where we had our first date! After lunch we walked around downtown Burbank and went into a few shops. Also in keeping with tradition, we found a photo booth to take a few anniversary pictures (we forgot a camera last year so this was our solution)! When we got home, we exchanged gifts and watched one of the movies we got for Christmas.

Then yesterday I had to get up and go back to real life… BOO! Oh, well. At least our vacation was amazing and relaxing! I will be back tomorrow to share some of the awesome home-related gifts we received for the holidays!

Now onto the good stuff… a few pictures from the trip. Enjoy and happy 2013!

One of the handmade ornaments on Walker’s family’s Christmas tree! :)

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.

Three sleepy boys!

Puppy love!

Baxter is ready for a nap after he and Bo played all morning!

…and Bo’s already passed out!

What a beautiful Christmas in a beautiful home! xoxo

This was our attempt at getting a Christmas picture right before bed. It’s not great but at least we actually got one this year!

New York had a bunch of snow the day after we went snowboarding so I took the pups out to play!

Bo LOVES the snow!

…Koda not so much. This is as far as she got before running inside! :)

Bo on a mission!

“Hey, Mom! Look at meeee!”

Snuggle pups! So cute!

Walker got me some pink anniversary roses!

So pretty!

An iPhone picture of us at the restaurant where we had our first date!

One of many cheesy photo-booth anniversary photos! :)

First Blogiversary Day 2: A Day in the Life

Welcome to Day 2 of Our Cozy Cubbyhole’s first blogiversary celebration. If you read yesterday’s post, you already know that tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of my very first post so we are partying it up!

I realized recently that very few people actually know what I do for a day job. So, in true blogger tradition, I decided to do a “Day in the Life” post so you can see what my typical day is like. Without further ado, here is a Monday in the life of Erika. (P.S. Sorry for the quality of some of the pics… I got lazy and used my iPhone for some!)

7:30am – Alarm goes off and signals the official beginning of the week. Booo Mondays. Walker gets up but I lounge in bed with Bo, snoozing at least 2-3 times until Walker gets out of the shower. This is Bo’s favorite time of day… he milks it and gets more than his fair share of belly rubs.

7:57am – Finally roll out of bed!

8:00am – Oh wait, THIS is Bo’s favorite time of day. Breakfast time! And time for his Thyroid pill, which he knows always comes with a little cheese treat!8:05am – Chat with Walker while he gets ready for work. Every ~~Monday~~ day I suggest we call out sick and stay home to watch movies (we never have… maybe someday he will say yes). We drink coffee that he so lovingly made us while I was snoozing. He’s a keeper.

8:15am – Walker leaves for work so I settle in with my coffee and my blog planner to edit some photos for the day’s blog post. The post is already written so I insert the edited photos, proof-read it, and hit publish. After posting it to both Twitter and Facebook, I do a little internet Christmas shopping. I also manage to slurp down some breakfast: a Naked Juice Berry Veggie Smoothie. A growing girl needs her fruit, veggies, protein, and vitamins!

9:20am – Christmas presents purchased, I catch up on some social media and blog comments.

9:30am – Time to get ready for work! While the shower heats up, I pick out my clothes for the day: jeans and a khaki blouse. Obviously I need a scarf so I pull out two of them that go with the shirt. Then a dilemma hits… which to choose?! I decide to shower and think about it.9:45am – I get out of the shower, pull my hair into a ponytail (I was going to actually do my hair so I looked nice in these photos but then I was too lazy and decided you should see the real me. I wear my hair like this all the time. Get over it.), put on some makeup, and get dressed. Realizing one of the scarves made an appearance on the blog a few weeks ago (#bloggerproblems), I decide to go with the green scarf. Plus it has trees on it so it makes me feel festive. Finishing it off with some jewelry and boots, I snap a quick picture (sorry- self portraits are hard with DSLRs) before running out the door.

A little after 10am – I leave for work and arrive 5 minutes later (everyone in LA hates me for my miniscule commute!)… a little late as usual. Don’t worry clock-watchers, I always stay late to make up for being late in the morning. This is my building! Oooohh! Aaaaahh! Don’t be too impressed… we only own a section of the first floor.

While most of my building is light, bright, and full of typical offices, I work in this room with all boys:It has no windows and never has any lights on (though I turned them on so you could behold the beauty). As soon as I walk in, I notice the giant pile of work and dive right in. This is going to be a long morning…In a typical day, I do everything from editing small projects to babysitting clients. Usually I am running tape to file jobs where we create digital video files for online streaming services or digital archiving. Either that or I am editing a file and sending it out to tape for a broadcaster to air. I spend my day playing with tape decks, Final Cut Pro, and other transcoding software. NERD ALERT.

I like to think I look like this at work all the time:But I usually look like this… seriously concentrating, in my own little world, and sitting way too close to a several computer monitors:Actually, I sadly think I look like this a lot too:I have a few needy clients that like to call and bug me all day. Just kidding… sort of.

The day is flying by and there is no time for lunch. Usually I go home and hang with Bo but I had an inkling that today was going to be crazy, so I was smart enough to bring lunch to work. So I go to the kitchen and sneak bites of it when I get the chance. If I forget lunch, I end up eating way too many of the fresh, warm cookies the company puts out for the clients. I can’t even go take a picture of them because it would be too tempting. So instead you get a picture of the frozen ones that we have stored by the ton in the kitchen.

3:00pm – Things finally calm down a bit so I sit down with my wonderful, beautiful coworker Jasmine to go over the status of a few jobs.

3:30pm – One of my coworkers was kind enough to offer to help me upgrade the hard drive in my iMac (which I dragged into work). It is horrifying seeing my precious little iMac baby wide open on the table.I am unbelievably relieved to see these two screens when he is done…

Success! I now have 2TB of space and an extra GB of RAM! Wooooo! NERD ALERT AGAIN. I spend the rest of the day finishing jobs and wrapping up loose ends.

A little after 6pm – Since I didn’t take a lunch, I get to leave an hour earlier than usual. Woooo! I get home a few minutes later to find these two handsome faces waiting for me:The craziness of my day melts away when I see those mugs. I love my boys. Bo is happy to see me because now it is his dinner time.

6:45pm – Call my parents and catch up before they go to bed (the 3 hour time difference is brutal!).

7:30pm – Missed Jeopardy while I was on the phone but manage to snuggle up on the couch with the boys just in time for Wheel and How I Met Your Mother. Walker pours me a glass of vino!

8:3opm – Dinner time (we eat late on Mondays because of HIMYM)! Monday is leftover day from all of our delicious Sunday cooking. Today it is Shrimp Parmigiana (we used this recipe and it was unbelievably delicious) with homemade marinara sauce. We make some cheesy garlic toast to go with it and even steal a few scoops of macaroni salad (I know that is a strange addition but we didn’t want it to go to waste!).8:45pm – After dinner, Walker and I are super happy. Full bellies, a glass of wine in hand, dog on our laps, and a Christmas tree lighting up the room… life is good. We watch a few cooking shows, which makes us want dessert.

9:30pm – We cave and make ourselves some toast with butter and strawberry jam for dessert. We have no willpower.

10:00pm – Call my brother to catch up for a bit while Walker watches Seinfeld reruns.

11:00pm – Get ready for bed and chat with Walker for a bit.

11:30pm – Bo has been sleeping in the bed since 9:30pm and barely notices us join him. We all cuddle in for the night, happy that we survived Monday.

So there you have it, a day in the life of Erika. I will be back tomorrow with a huge announcement so get excited! In the meantime, please go fill out my super short, awesome survey from yesterday if you haven’t already. It would mean a lot to me! Thanks all! :)

Friendship is a Hoot!

Are you lucky enough to have people in your life that you know will be lifetime friends?

Nicole & Erika circa 2008

I will be the first to admit, I am literally the worst person in the universe at keeping in touch with friends, which is unfortunate considering that I moved over 3,000 miles away from everyone I knew. However, there are certain people that, no matter how much time has passed since I last spoke with them, everything seems the same as the good old days when I am with them.

Nicole is one of those people to me. She was one of my closest friends in high school and every time that I talk to or see her, our relationship feels like it never skipped a beat. I love that and I am so grateful to her for that.

The other day, I found an envelope in my mailbox with her familiar handwriting and I got super excited. Guess what I found?!

“Good Luck Owl
Everyone knows that owls are wise…
So this owl gives guidance though small in size.
Good luck he brings and wisdom too
When you carry him close the whole day through!”

How adorable and thoughtful is that!? We all know I have a mild obsession with owls (which I believe is genetic in my defense!) so this was the best little gift to get in the mail… not to mention that the little guy brings good luck, wisdom, and love from a wonderful person I wish I could see more often. Also, there was a picture of a dog on the stamp! <3

So do me a favor and call, text, email, or even snail mail (my particular favorite) one of the people in your life about which you keep saying “I really should give {INSERT NAME HERE} a call! I’m the worst.”

As for the little owl, he has found his new permanent home on our living room shelf, resting on the easel that displays a picture of one of his relatives.