The Saturday Six

SURPRISE! Guess what? We just got home from a much-longed for {and much needed} week away, and I am so excited to tell you all about it. But this week's Saturday Six is inspired by our travels...hope you enjoy!

One.

Source

In all my capsule-wardrobe-reading, I'd also been fascinated by the traveling capsules. As a girl who tends to pack 13 suitcases to be gone for a weekend, I was eager to see if I could apply some of what I'd learned to packing for a trip. Tricky, since we were traveling through several states, and through several potential temperature zones. But as I read along on different sites, I found this one, which is just a fun traveling site in and of itself, but it also gives good tips on knowing what to pack for different destinations, and even in different seasons!

Two. 

If, in your travels, you return to a place you have been before, it's fun to remake a picture from a previous trip. This was mine from this trip. I came to Virginia Beach five years ago, before I was married, to visit Mark and Lynnette. Lynnette took me to the oceanfront and I wanted my picture taken with this shell. AFTER we took it, we realized a guy sat down right before our picture and it looked like I smashed him with the shell. So we remade it this time with Ryan playing the part of the guy. Loved it. {SURPRISE sneak peek! Virginia Beach was on our travel route!}

Three.

This began as an accident, but it works so well, I think we may start making it purposeful. Our first hotel of our trip didn't have rooms available that contained just a single king bed, so we got two queens instead. We ended up using the second bed to place ALLLLL our bags {yes, we are packrats}, and it worked out well for pawing through them. They were up at easy-to-see height. We loved it so much that at the next hotel, when they gave us a choice between one king and two queens, we took two queens on purpose so we had a place for all the bags.

Four.

My biggest stress factor in packing used to be the toiletries bag. What if I forgot THE one thing I needed? {Well, Bekah, go to the store!!!} But a couple of years ago, when my toiletry bag broke on vacation, Ryan and I stopped and got this one, and when I got home, I filled it with one of everything I'd need {makeup excluded} and I just leave it packed. That way when I know I'm going on vacation, all I have to do is make sure everything in it is full {shampoo bottles, hairspray, etc} and I'm all set. I don't have to worry if I've forgotten bobby pins or a claw clip or hand sanitizer. It's all ready to go. Takes away stress and saves time. {And I have a nice backup of everything if my everyday supply fails at any point in time!}

Five.

This was another unplanned thing that has become a tradition. When we got engaged, I bought these chalkboards to use in our engagement pictures. And as you know, if you read this blog often, they show up everywhere. We've definitely gotten our money's worth. We've started using them on our vacations to mark the spots where we visit. {On our cruise, the chalkboard pic with the date and location was the first picture taken every morning so we could easily know which pictures went with which day.} One time this week, after a family saw us using our chalkboards for our picture, they asked if they could borrow them for THEIR family picture. I won't lie: that made my day more than it should have. So it's just fun to use these not only for cool pictures, but also for keeping track of what was when. 

Six.

We went old school this time: atlas usage!! I used to have unlimited data on my phone, when I had a work phone, so I could keep track of our progress on that. But now that I have to  limit my data usage, I went the old school route: an atlas! It was actually fun to find roads on a paper map and remind myself of how to follow a map and all its little signs. Skills we've lost, right? If you haven't kept track of a trip on a paper map lately, give it a try!! :)