My Quick Trip To Utah

I snuck out for a spontaneous little adventure over the weekend. I wasn’t even planning on it until two weeks ago.

I called up my cousin Jo. She’s actually Nate’s cousin, but we call each other cousins, and after this trip it feels more like sisters. Before this trip I had only met Jo once at their Grandfather’s 90th birthday in Utah. I instantly hit it off with Jo and her sister Stephanie. It was definitely one of those moments of instant connection and wishing we lived much closer.

Let me back up a year and a half ago…

I was going through a rough time in my life, feeling extremely low. I noticed Jo was starting to become more active on Facebook. She started sharing cute photos of her family and became self-employed as a Rodan & Fields consultant.

I have horrible skin, especially when I’m feeling low, so I instant messaged her. Pretty soon we started chatting over the phone. My blog became part of the conversation and I was in need of an editor for my posts. Long story short, there were a small handful of people who lifted me up during my darkest hours and Jo was one of them. Without hesitation, she has been a big help. As you know, writing is not my strength and my grammar is atrocious. She edits the majority of my posts. In addition, she’s always sharing my blog with others through social media. Between my hubby, Nate, and Jo they clean up my writing and make me sound good!

We work together long distance. We text a couple times a week, occasionally FaceTime and always end our texts with hearts, XO’s and love you’s. It’s these sweet little expressions that have helped me know I have a great circle of love and support.

So, two weeks ago I thought to myself, I need to visit Jo and finally hang out in person rather than through FaceTime or texting. So I called her up and said, let’s get together. “Do you want to plan a mini vacation and meet somewhere?” She was all over it! Because she’s got two little super handsome ginger snaps, it was easiest to fly to Utah and crash at her place.

We didn’t get very much sleep. We had so much to chat about, plus we decided to redesign her living room. So, I have a DIY to show you very soon.

This is the raspberry roll… YUM!

Between the banana cream pie, raspberry roll, pumpkin bars, Swedish fish, ice cream, thrift shopping, DIYs, fine art painting and watching comedies at night, it was the ideal girly weekend for me!

Photos I took on our little thrift store trip to Logan Utah. They were also great reference’s for a painting I was going to make for Jo.

One of my favorite highlights was painting a large 3.5’x4.5’ abstract painting of mountains for Jo’s living room while listening to 50’s music outside with burgers, homemade root beer, and painting in front of mountains. It was AMAZING! It’s all about the little things, right?

Painting half way finished.

I haven’t painted for a couple years, so it was a treat for me. I was a little nervous I wouldn’t have enough time to finish, but I did it in 3.5 hours and still had time to finish the other DIYs. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Here’s the painting!

Thank you Jo for your willingness to jump in, and consistently help! You have been such a support, more than you know! Love you girl!

XOXO,

Melessa