Week in Review (+Some)

1. We went to one of our favs - Kobe Steakhouse to celebrate J's big 1 "monthaversary" of no smoking. It was delish! Then we met Jenna and Whit at Champps for a drink and to watch the first half of the Mavs game...


2. That weekend we headed out to The Taste of Addison. Despite stepping on a nail (& needing a tetanus shot the following Monday) we had a great time with Heather and Branden


3. After The Taste, the boys watched the Mavs game and I joined the ladies in a little dance sesh at Blackfinn for a few hours.

4. This past weekend came along and we headed out to the Byron. Jack Ingram played on Friday night. Amber, Jordan and I decided to be groupies and migrate our way to the stage. After about 10 minutes, Jack himself came off the stage and let us into the little gated area by the stage :)

And a few songs into it, he then brought us up on stage for a little "Barefoot and Crazy"

Jarrett took pictures of us on the jumbo-tron (2 years in a row baby! haha)

Group shot! Cabreras, Dunaways, Masseys & Soon-to-Be Dunaways - so fun! 5. While I was out at Amber's foodie photoshoot for Chocolate Broccoli, my parents came by and helped J put in a dimmer in the dining room for our new light that Mom & Dad Dunaway put up the weekend before.. and as I have told you all before, 1 project is NEVER enough for Scotty - so up went the new track lighting in the kitchen! Yaaaay! Getting updated all over the place!

6. Sunday Funday/Pretty Ricky's Birthday! We headed out to Sneaky Petes for some sunshine, volleyball, & beers with great friends.

My parents frequent Sneaky's during the summer, and were more than happy to put Ricky into the hamster wheel after he had plenty of beers in him. Pretty Sure we all found it very comical...

Even Ricky.... after he stopped looking like he was going to vomit - hahah!

Bestest :)

All in all a pretty good 2 weeks! We may be heading down to Houston to visit Zaky this weekend :)

Happy Tuesday - GO MAVS! (Lebron... I still love you)

Snail Mail!

I have a serious love for snail mail. A random, for no reason card or note or a random surprise gift is one of my favorite things to do for other people. This was even one of my New Years resolutions bringing in 2011 to do more often.

Today we got this sweet picture & note "just because" from Mama & Papa Strout! It was such a great surprise and start to our weekend!

So thanks for the Pick Me Up Joyce & for reminding me what a small gesture can do for another person! Love yall!

A Year Ago Today..

We got engaged! Hard to believe its already been a year and we're all done & married!

(Although I am VERY happy that its all said & done and our lives are back to normal)

Let's go ahead and re-live the moment just for fun...



Then just 2 days later we headed off for a week vacation in San Fran/Napa.... I will say I do wish we were re-doing this trip. By far 2 of my favorite places with my favorite man! :)

Fun, fun times.. Off to the Byron Nelson next weekened - J says we will now have to go every year FORever! And hopefully we'll be able to do the West Coast trip again soon!

We've Been Blogged About!

We have been blogged about! Check it out!!!!!!!!!

This Week's Obsessions

This week's randomness that I'm in <3 with:

5. Name Nacklace – J&I are no where near having babies, or really even thinking about babies, well except the Sweet Tapella Baby, Landon, that is making his appearance to the world in just a mere 2 weeks! But that’s completely different than our own babies. A&J = awesome babysitters. A&J do not = ready to be parents With all of that said, I told Jarrett the other day when we do have kiddos, I want one of these necklaces, or one like it. And if it makes him feel better, he can slap his name on one too

• Celebrations at Home




• EAT DRINK PRETTY




• Hostess with the Mostess




• P is for Party
  
  

4. Party Blogs - this probably isn't just this weeks obsession, it's a forever obsession. But here are some of my favs that I have been following.. and taking notes!!

3. The NBA – with the NFL having issues, the NBA has really turned on their A-Game. Every game we've watched, and every single game has been exciting. The Mavs are on a serious roll, and seem to not be stopping any time soon. It's re-DIRK-ulous!

As for the East, Chicago and Miami… so hard to choose! My hometown team, or one of my many athlete husbands? So difficult! J says we should go for Chicago because it’ll be easier for the Mavs, but Rose is just not showing any sign of stopping to me… It’ll be a toughy, but before we get ahead of ourselves we need to beat OKC – GO MAVS!

2. Chelsea Handler – She is by far my girl crush. She is hilarious – if you like her humor, that is. I know she isn’t for everybody, and I get that, but she is so funny! You just have to take it with a grain of salt. I have read all of her books – My Horizontal Life, Are you there Vodka? Its me Chelsea, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.

As you know last Tuesday I headed off to Denver, but with a little extra pep in my step. At 6:01 am my beautiful little kindle received a gift, Chelsea’s new book, Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me. The girl next to me on the plane probably thought I was a crazy, laughing the whole way to Denver. Needless to say I finished the book well before heading back to Dallas 4 days later. And now I am craving more Chelsea! If only she could publish a book once a month – it might help my withdrawals.

1. Justin & Jordan’s wedding – again, probably not a just this week obsession, more like for the next 5 and half months obsession! Everything I see that reminds me of her, I am sending to her, or storing away for ideas for her. She’ll be sick of me, but then we’ll be family, so she will have no choice but to love me.

We received their Save The Date today (By the way is SO original and adorable!), which is just another sign that its coming so soon! I cannot wait to see everything come together for their vintage-inspired day!

Thats about all I got for today... Happy Wednesday!

Lend Me a Hand..

Lend me a hand...

In congratulating Jarrett for being 1 month SMOKE FREE! I am so so proud of him, and we wanted to share the good news with everyone!

I thought it would also be appropriate to share some facts with you all about smoking... along with slight comment

Facts about smoking:

**There are 1.1 billion smokers in the world today, and Jarrett Daniel Dunaway is no longer one of them!
**Smoking is an addiction. Tobacco smoke contains nicotine, a drug that is addictive and can make it very hard, but not impossible, to quit.
**Ambergris, otherwise known as whale vomit is one of the hundreds of possible additives used in manufactured cigarettes. Yummy, huh?
**Hydrogen cyanide, one of the toxic byproducts present in cigarette smoke, was used as a genocidal chemical agent during World War II. Sounds safe!
**Every eight seconds, a human life is lost to tobacco use somewhere in the world. That translates to approximately 5 million deaths annually.
**More than 400,000 of those deaths are in the U.S. each year.

Hurting Others:
**Smoking harms not just the smoker, but also family members, coworkers, and others who breathe the smoker's cigarette smoke, called secondhand smoke. J is no longer killing his brand new wife
**Dogs do get asthma and congestive heart failure and other lung/heart conditions which may be worsened by the inhalation of smoke. Nor is he contributing to Layla Boog’s death

Why quit?
**A promise to a mother and a future wife must be fulfilled!
**Quitting smoking makes a difference right away-you can taste and smell food better. Your breath smells better. Better breath is always good!
**Quitting smoking saves money. A pack-a-day smoker, who pays $6 per pack, can expect to save more than $2136 per year. It appears that the price of cigarettes will continue to rise in coming years, as will the financial rewards of quitting. Sounds like a vacation to me!

Staying Quit
**Sorry to all the baseball players out there, Jarrett may eat Addison and the northern Dallas area out of Sunflower Seeds, but it’s the one thing that truly helps him not smoke!
**Let others know that you have quit smoking-most people will support you. Many of your smoking friends may want to know how you quit. It's good to talk to others about your quitting. And that my friends, is what we are doing here!

For all of our friends who still are smoking… take a lesson from J – if he can do it, you can too! It wont be easy, but in the end its worth it – we promise!! And I'll be happy to buy you sunflower seeds to help :)

We are going out to dinner tonight to celebrate J's BIG accomplishment! Pics to come...

Mish Mosh Update

Now that my Wedding blogs are done, I've been a bad blogger. So here's a mish mosh update for yall!

Last Friday J&I went down the street to Frisco for a Rough Riders game. Its a perfect cheap date night, and not far from the house! Perfection, especially while the weather is still cool.

Me & the Hubs enjoying the game

We also got new bedroom furniture... this inspired my brainchild.... Mirror pre-make over:

And Post Make over :):):)

I was in Denver this past week for my first program as Ashley Dunaway... although it was more confusing than I had ever imagined. The hotel knew me as Ashley Lally. The transportation company knew me as Ashley Dunaway. My client knew me as both. When I identified myself as Ashley Lally, I should have used Dunaway. When I used Dunaway, I should have used Lally. It was quite the cluster.

I made reservations for my staff to have dinner under Ashley Dunaway... we got there, and they were under Ashley Lally. Although I had a huge identity crisis on my hands, the choice of restaurant was anything but a crisis!

Those who dont know me well, I'll give you a little background. When I first met Jarrett, the boys' refrigerator had barely anything in it (like most boys) but it also had absolutely ZERO condiments. And I like, no LOVE, condiments, and so does JoJo. When we were in New Orleans we had even found her a shirt that said "I like ketchup on my ketchup" & that about sums it up. By the time Justin and Jordan moved out, JoJo and I had successfully turned the whole door of the refrigerator into condiment heaven.

I ask for extra sauce on my pizza, I make extra sauce for my pasta, I need multiple flavor dipping sauces when we get fast food, etc.

So the idea of a restaurant being based around sauces sounded amazing, and it definitely lived up to the hype and then some. Vesta Dipping Grille. Music to my ears. They have 35+ dipping sauces. Each of the entrees comes with 3 sauces, as do the apps AND dessert. Everything I put in my mouth was pure amazingness.

So if you ever find yourself in Denver... check THIS place out!

Last but not least for my randomness...

I am sure that most of you have seen this on the internet, but its far too good not to share in case you havent seen it.

Something big to celebrate this week!!!!! Stay tuned :)

Fishy Paradise

For Mothers Day we had my parents, J's parents, Justin, JoJo & my grandparents over for a BBQ. It was absolutely perfect, minus the fact that I didnt take any pictures... FAIL! I am really good at that.

As you all know we have our pond, and our fishies who have grown from 19 cent itty bits to thinking they were koi, survived two freezes, and J would probably claim them as children if he were able.

And for those of you who know my Dad, good ole Scotty Potty, he's real OCD and once he has something in his mind. It.IS.Happening.

Well on this beautiful Mother's Day, Scotty decided our pond needed a cleaning out. In Scotty's defense, the pond had not been cleaned out properly since, well... it was created. However, Jarrett was confused on what Mothers' Day meant. It wasnt Jarrett relaxes, and as he claimed "wanted to drink beer & do nothing", it was lets get this done today, while the ladies watch.. well except for me, I helped :)

So the fishys went from this water hell:


To this beautiful fishy paradise


J may have not wanted to do it on Sunday, but I think he's glad he did now. Especially when he feeds them he can see their pretty little faces.

Wedding Days: The Honeymoon

It was an EARLY morning wake up call for us - But 8 hours later - WE.HAVE.ARRIVED.

On the door to our room: HONEYMOONERS!!!!!
Still dont get the swan thing, but J claims to now want to take "towel oragami" classes
View from our balcony

My super cute shirt (that scored us first class <3)

First Night (And get used to this self portrait, you'll be seeing it A LOT)
"Arrrrr!" J lookin like a pirate

Our 8 day diets

My Parrot friends

Another night before dinner

The lame-must-do-sand-thing

And of course the Corona commercial

Jarrett in all his glory: His fedora, cigar & chamagne

Our little oasis by the pool. J would claim it at 7 am every day... so worth it!

Dinner on the beach

Me with the "Circus" performers

Pool day!

J was afraid of the Parrots, but we were able to snap a shot while they were sleeping

Dancin on the beach waiting for food

Best dinner EVER: Lobster & Filet

Our favorite waiter took our picture for us - clearly having a fun night

Time to go :(

Best trip ever! <3