Just this week, I got back from a big adventure on the other side of the world in New Zealand and Australia! Well, it was as much of an adventure as you can have when all of your flights and sleeping accommodations are pre-booked. But at any rate, it was an amazing time and I just had to share a few of my favorite photos from the trip here.

Notables from the trip:
-I’d studied abroad in Sydney, Australia in college, so going back to visit that city was pretty unbeatable.
-In NZ we got to swim with dolphins in the wild and it was the best experience EVER…EVER, EVER EVER!!! (Although I may have had a panic attack when they dropped us in the 50º water and I couldn’t breath and thought I might drown. Brrrr! So cold!!!)
-Driving on the left is not always easy. If you’re in another country and you see another car coming at you in your lane, you should pretty much just assume that you’re wrong. Also, they may very well give you a speeding ticket for going 8 miles over the speed limit in NZ. Yes, I learned this one the hard way. On the positive side, people there are much more courteous when driving, so perhaps those two things are linked. :-)
-In the mountainous parts of NZ it rains…A LOT! It’s probably safe to assume that the mountains will be entirely covered in clouds if you’ll only be in the area for 2 days. Sigh. This was my biggest disappointment. No photos of soaring mountain landscapes.
-They really know how to do breakfast in NZ. Here I never eat breakfast, but there I got so sad if we missed it! Do you see that breakfast photo??? Art!
-So many restaurants that we went to had organic and/or locally grown/raised food. Also, there was recycling absolutely everywhere in both countries…in hotels, airports, on the street. I loved that!
-This one is going to sound super duper corny, so just bare with me. There were so many times on the trip that I just closed my eyes and took a deep breath and tried to commit the moment to memory, because I just felt so lucky to be experiencing all that and to be there.

That is all. I could of course go on and on, but I’ll spare you. If you ever do want to hear more, just ask me in person and I’ll feel free to go on and on. :-)

I know my winner selection was supposed to be yesterday. I am delinquent, it is true. My internet was out though, so I have a relatively decent excuse for my tardiness. You can find the winner at the bottom of this post. I genuinely wish I could have picked every single person who entered. Thank you all sooooo much for posting about me and saying such nice things in your comments. It really made launching the new site much less scary.

I’m going to start this post with some of my photos from Iceland. This past week I traveled to Reykjavik for an extended girls’ weekend away. I was incredibly excited for this trip, but I have to say that it completely exceeded my expectations. I loved every second of it and it reminded me what I love about traveling. The people of Iceland were so friendly and even though we were only there for 5 days, it felt like much longer. I know it’s not a place that people often think to go, and I can’t lie, it was FREEZING, but I would highly recommend that if you ever have a chance, you visit this country. I’d go back in a second. So here are just some of my favorites. I am certainly not a landscape photographer, but these photos just sort of took themselves. :-)

This is one of the Icelandic horses. They are extra hairy so that they can be outside in the winter and in my opinion, extra adorable too. We scheduled a ride while we were there and I just love them. I wish I could have taken one home.

Okay, and the winner is Heather! I selected using a handy online number selector website to be extra fair. Congrats Heather! Again, thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who entered!

I have had an iPhone for the last year and a half and I would have to say that my relationship with it is very much love/hate (hello obsessive email checking!). My relationship with the iPhone camera is no different. I HATE that so many great moments are only captured with my low resolution phone camera, but I love that I usually have it on me and can get these moments that I wouldn’t get at all otherwise.

I was particularly happy to have these photos when my cocker spaniel puppy (I say puppy but he’s really 8 years old) got sick a couple of weeks ago. Being the neurotic worrying parent that I am, I was of course convinced that he was never going to recover and spent two full days on the couch hugging him and crying on and off. I know…I’m ridiculous. Luckily, after a short stay at the vet, he has made a full recovery. YAY! But in those days when I was laying on the couch with him, I thought about how few photos I have of him and I was incredibly happy to have these crappy phone photos. And really…they’re not all that crappy afterall I think. I thought I’d share just a couple of my favorites. This is my family…Macaroni, Vi, Phoenix and Dewey…oh, and Jason too. ;-)