ourlilpeanut: November 2013

if you don't know about hornytoad... well... you should. please take a second & go look at their website. amazing clothes. amazing company. i mean, i know i am now very biased, but i loved them after deciding their chakra skirt is something i wanted to live in always. it now has three holes in it but i still wear it!

i won their pinterest competition. they asked that you make a board 'hornytoad, what's in your bag?'
it was anything to do with travel: clothes, destinations, etc.

here's my board, if you wanna gander. it was so much fun. i stayed up until 4 or 5am, just pinning away. i'd forgotten about it until i got this super exciting email from safia! "you've won our sweepstakes, so you & a companion are coming to santa barbara for three nights! (& as if that wasn't enough) you won 5 pieces of clothing!!" i mean, i was jumping up & down, shrieking. pretty sure i woke maya up from her nap. how cool is that?
that stuff is real & happens?

well it did. & these three ladies made it happen. so cool!

we headed to their headquarters as soon as we got our rental car. only appropriate our first stop was to thank these amazing people! they had no idea how much we needed a weekend away together! we've never taken a trip, just us. it's always been to visit friends or family.

then we headed to this incredible hotel next door for a beer and to toast our good fortune.

the view.

the botanical gardens was right around the corner, so we headed there next. it was gorgeous.

and then we headed on to 'the cold spring tavern'. which is a really old cool place that several people recommended we go by. it was pretty cool.

and we ended our first night doing a wine tasting. we're not huge wine people, but how do you go to california without doing that?!!!

and then we took the long way back along highway one. it was breathtaking.

we were hanging out on the train track, taking that self portrait above &
i'm like 'is that a train?' oh sh*t! we ran up the lil hill just in time. eek! people.
train tracks are dangerous!

i mean, okay one more shot.

the next morning we hit up the farmers market & got a crate of strawberries.

we ate them all within maybe 3 minutes. so good!

bryan was wearing his cardinals hat & some guy with awesome dreads said 'ya'll from louisville?' he'd moved out here 7 years ago & was loving it.

then we hit up tupelo junction cafe. yummy breakfast.

we called nana & the kids to check in. finn was adorable telling us how much fun they were having.

our awesome hotel, hotel indigo, had bikes you could take out.

so we decided to go for a ride along butterfly beach. it was beautiful!

bryan's photo below :)

this made us miss the kids, but we quickly got over it, once we agreed to bring them one day.

i believe this is why they call it butterfly beach, there were dozens of butterflies in these bushes.

then we hit up the seafood festival. bryan was so excited. i don't like seafood-

so he was going to have at it.

my favorite boat.

we had decided to support local food & shops the whole weekend and we stumbled on mcconnell's. oh my goodness. run, don't walk. it's SO good.

the next morning we went kayaking with channel island outfitters.
hornytoad set us up with them & they were great!
(i didn't have my camera, so these are from matt)