Birthdays & A Little Bit of Art

Hello Monday - the start of a new week! Last week was absolutely crazy so I am glad to be here at home, back to the grind.

I drove to DFW on Thursday morning and came back Friday afternoon, braving the dreary rainy weather. That was all made better though with margaritas and Mexican food for Carolyn's birthday Friday night. Never underestimate the power of a good margarita! Speaking of good {stiff} drinks, Saturday night was an absolute BLAST. Blake, Allison, Troy and I did something completely new and right up my alley - ARTOPIA. Artopia is an event thrown by the Houston Press celebrating "culture, fashion, food, art, and music". We wound in and out of curvy warehouse hallways looking at art, sipping our drinks, listening to good music, and catching glimpses of a fashion show, band, or bellydancing/flamenco performance. We sampled good food, got some great freebies, and I snapped as many photos as I could:

Blake's brother Brian painted the main mural for the event!

At Blake's casa - Allison with Boomer

Sunday was a great end to the weekend. We went to the Woodlands to celebrate Troy's gma's birthday with family and as always, we ate good food, had good conversation, and even got a Wii game or two in. I got to snap some more pics (of course!), mostly of the birthday girl with Mr. Jackson:

We are looking forward to this weekend - visiting Cliff & Rachel and Brandon & Tiffani! We have a full weekend in store, going to the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, cooking out, maybe a concert or two, and of course Joe Ts! Can't Wait! Here's to a speedy week...

New Look!

So, what I have I been up to lately? LEARNING, CREATING, DESIGNING - a lot! It has been such a wonderful experience to get to do what interests me, and I am just overflowing with joy. I cannot tell you (unless you have done it) how truly satisfying and oh-so-rewarding it as been for me to spend hours and hours and hours doing the things that I love to do (all of the thanks going to my wonderfully supportive husband, of course). I am studying, learning, and testing the heck out of Photoshop CS4 to enhance my photos and my designs (I am humbly working on THREE wedding invitations!), learning [gradually] CSS and HTML so that I can make our blog uber cute :) and begin to tackle my very first real website, and dabbling in digital scrapbooking. I'm tellin' ya - this gal isn't sleeping in until noon and shopping all day, oh no, I am working my tail off and loving it all the way...

So I hope you noticed some of my new tricks turned into reality via our new blog look. I love how much more personal it is and am very excited about it. I am sure it will change a bit more as I learn more cool features to add. If you want a new blog look, let me know! I am still in the eager stages of this endeavor and hope to maybe get into the biz, making cute headings, backgrounds, etc. for small change - so hit me up soon! I will offer my services temporarily as I learn :)

I am also getting to really explore another one of my passions, and perhaps the greatest of all my passions - Photography! I got a new lens (as you can see in the previous post) and LOVE it. Really, truly LOVE it! Problem - I have been researching other photo-takers' sites and seeing what equipment they use for their beautiful shots and it is making me yearn for bigger, better [more expensive] lenses. But, there is time for that...eventually...hopefully. Start saving my nickels!

My next endeavor is jazzing up my Chelsea Davis Designs blog and working on a new one for all that girlie stuff [recipes, fab finds, and more] that I am sure Troy doesn't exactly want his name tagged to :) I will let you guys know when they are complete!

Let's Park It!

I usually try not to post too frequently, mostly because I dont have too much going on to blog about, but we went to the park today with Troy's sister and her friend Maranda so that I could test out my new lens. It probably wasn't the best time of day for snapping photographs since the sun was bright and often in Jackson's eyes, but I think that I got some good test runs in with the new lens, if I do say so myself, and I just had to post them (since I promised Linds and Maranda that I would). These boys are just too freaking cute!

I just had to sneak one in here of my guy. He can kid around with the best of 'em!

Texas Coast Getaway

We had a very fun MLK weekend, to say the least! We spent the weekend in Port Aransas at Troy's dad and Carolyn's new condo; my parents flew down on Friday and Troy and I went to pick them up. My sister was also in town with her friend and we all had a blast.


The drive in wasn't bad but it rained a bit and the wind - oh boy! It was crazy windy on Friday. But, the weird weather made for some interesting snapshots (I will indulge you in only one - the rays of sunshine piercing through the clouds onto the mirky waters):

Saturday was still pretty cold - the 40s and 50s - but my dad and Troy still decided to fish a bit after they watched the Saints game (woo hoo - go Saints!). I just took pictures from the condo as we bid them farewell...

We had a seafood feast that night though (thanks to the fish market!) and had a great time hanging out with everyone. My dad cooked stuffed crab with an etoufee (?) sauce, boiled shrimp, and crab legs, I made a yummy salad, and Troy did his traditional 'Davis potatoes'. We finished with my homemade cherry cheesecake and were absolutely stuffed. Thank God it was too cold for swimsuits because that definitely would have been bad....real bad.

I should have known that Sunday was going to be a fantastic day (even after our Cowboys got completely destroyed by the Vikings...dang Brett Favre). Troy woke me up at 6-something to watch the sunrise and it was beautiful! The entire coastline was ablaze. I pulled out my camera to snap these vivid shots:

Later that day, we all went out for a boat ride to see if the fishies were biting. On our way out, the dolphins seemed to be very interested in us! Check out how close they got to our boat! It was the craziest thing I have ever seen. They followed us for miles, lead our boat, did tricks off in the distance, splashed around... my mom was going nuts (and so was Tess)!

We ventured out to some flats to see if my dad and Troy could catch some fish, but they weren't biting, so we decided to go check out some of the fancy coastal houses and maybe find a beach to dock on for a bit. After I snagged a few pics and Tess got to experience water for the first time (she LOVED it by the way!), we started to head back to the condo for dinner. It was a really nice day and we all had a great [chilly] time.

Unfortunately (as you can tell) this was really the only day I took a lot of pictures, and me, my sis, and Garret didn't make a single one :( but I did seem to get way too many pictures of our cute pup (of course) so here are some of my faves:

On the boat, wind in her, um, ears?

Checking out the beach (she had a shell in her mouth every time I saw her!)

Waiting for Troy to stop fishing and pet her!

I hope everyone had a great MLK weekend, and that you all got to enjoy a long weekend like we did!