It’s official: we have booked our tickets to France!! After discussing this trip for two and a half years, and dreaming of it for even longer, I almost can’t believe it’s actually happening. But it is, and plans are moving fast!

Well, plans are moving fast now. I promised myself I wouldn’t get excited until we had actually booked our plane tickets, so in January, John began searching. Depending on the day, he found fares from Raleigh to Charles de Gaulle that ranged from $2,800-$3,400 for two. Did your eyes just bug out? Yeah, mine, too. Having never bought international plane tickets before, we thought that seemed expensive, but weren’t really sure what was reasonable, so we hesitated over pulling the trigger. While we waffled, I ended up reaching out to a friend who had recently flown to Europe to ask what they paid, and once I heard $2,900 from her, I felt better. Side note: financial transparency among friends is so valuable!! John headed back to the travel sites (Hipmunk is his favorite), and lo and behold, we somehow ended up paying $2,300!

Once our flights were settled, we quickly booked our accommodations in Paris (an Airbnb in the 15th arrondisement) and in Provence. But there’s still so much to do! We’ve been poring over travel sites and magazines and soaking everything in. I love the photos on the Haven in Paris blog:

I can’t stand it!! So good. We’ll be there for 8 days and 8 nights in June, traveling between Paris, Provence, and the Cote d’Azur. I’d love to hear your recommendations!

Despite being on a pretty tight budget, John and I have gone on some amazing trips together. From the first major vacation we took, a road trip to Cumberland Island in Georgia six years ago, to our most recent adventure, a week-long venture to California, we’ve never spent better money than on seeing new parts of the world together. However, we spend a lot of time making sure we’re putting that money to good use, and we’ve picked up some tips for travel planning along the way that I’d love to share!

Budget your vacation days
In 2013, 169 million vacation days were forfeited by American workers! Travesty! We are big (big, BIG!) believers in taking all of your allotted vacation days, but make sure you use them wisely! We’ve found that if we aren’t intentional about planning to take vacation days, and then planning what we’re going to do with those vacation days, vacation doesn’t happen… and we get grumpy.

At the beginning of the year, we parcel out any days we know need to be spent on non-discretionary vaca, like family holidays. Then, we brainstorm where we want to go, how many days each trip will be, and what month would be best for each with what’s left (we use Accuweather to check average temps and rainfall!). For us, it works to take one big week-long trip per year (we hope to alternate domestic and international) and then several weekend trips. Finally, we pull out our calendars and choose dates for each.

Budget your money
Know what’s important to you, and spend your money accordingly! Do you prioritize accommodations? Food? The remoteness of the location? You can go to Charleston and spend $500 or $5,000. You can camp or you can stay in a 5-star hotel. You can eat from a taco stand or from a fine dining establishment. You can charter a day sail or you can hike to the top of a beautiful hill. Some vacations we go all out, and sometimes we stay at Hampton Inns. We usually have an equally great time at both.

Within our vacation budget for the year we set a budget for our big trip, and then parcel out the rest to the weekend or day trips as needed.

Prioritize physical beauty
Even though we reminisce about delicious meals we’ve eaten and sumptuous hotel rooms we’ve stayed in, our most vivid memories are from the beautiful places we’ve visited. There are very few things as soul-expanding as breathtaking vistas, coves, trails, forests, and horizons, and the best part is, they’re usually free!

Do your research
We pound the pavement before we spend one dollar! A few of our favorite resources:

— If a blogger you admire lives in the area you’re visiting, search their blog to see if they’ve written about it, or email them if not! Some of my favorite folks who take lots of trips include Meredith, Joanna, Jamie, Jamie, and Jordan.
— We like national magazines, particularly Travel + Leisure, and also like to ferret out great regional magazines, like Sunset in the West, Our State in North Carolina, Garden & Gun, and Southern Living. The NY Times 36 Hours series and Design*Sponge’s City Guides are also great resources.
— While a lot of pins of beautiful places lead nowhere, searching the location you’re interested in on Pinterest can turn up great blog posts, articles, and sites to see. Same with Flickr.
— Look up the city you’re traveling to on Wikipedia. The climate section can be helpful, and you never know where the listing, photos, or tourism section will lead.
— Plug in your destination on Google Maps – you can see parks and attractions, and click through to find photos and more info.
— Our North Carolina hiking trails book is invaluable for local trips, and we look for similar sources when traveling farther afield.
— John uses TripAdvisor for hotel and activity recommendations and I prefer Yelp for restaurant reviews. It’s easy to get bogged down in crowd-sourced review sites, but we look for themes in the reviews, and then ask ourselves, is that something that would bother us? There will always be negative feedback, but it often isn’t that meaningful. Jetsetter is also a great place to find hotels, and we love Airbnb, too!

Even if we don’t have a trip on the books, I’m constantly adding potential travel ideas to various locations to one of my iPhone notes!

Use Google Docs
For big trips, we like to collect all of the information and ideas we’re gathering in a Google Doc, which we can access anywhere, easily share back and forth, and both add to. I go into a little more detail in my post on planning a point-to-point trip!

Even with all of these tips, I still maintain that some people just have a knack for turning up the most picturesque locations, the most delicious meals, and the most fun activities. Luckily for me, my husband is one of them – I think travel planning is truly his calling! He actually does custom planning for a few lucky clients each year, so if you’d like some help with your own trip or honeymoon, feel free to email me and I will put you in touch!

In case you’re looking for some inspiration, here are a few of our past trips:
Charleston (also here, here, here, and here)
Camping in NC
Northern Michigan
Nevis (here and here)
Asheville (also here, here, and here)
Beaufort, SC (also here)
Hiking in Boone, NC
Beaufort, NC
Highlands, NC
California

Friends, I’d love to hear where you’re traveling this year, or any of your favorite travel resources!

Friends! I hope you had a truly marvelous Christmas. Ours is 2/3 of the way over – my whole family still hasn’t been able to get together to celebrate, so we’re reconvening over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend! :)

John and I are looking forward to a special date night on Friday, where we’ll do our own look back at 2014 and dream a bit about what we want our 2015 to look like. I can’t wait! In the meantime, here are a few of the highlights of the year on EFM and in our lives!

2014 dawned with SNOW! More snow than we had ever seen down here – about six inches in one storm! It was fun to see our house dusted in white. We also snagged last-minute tickets to a Duke game at Cameron, and in February trotted out to Asheville for a tour of the Biltmore (amazing!). I posted two of my most popular posts ever, about my homesickness and paying off our debt. In February, I shared our love story and my 60 Before 30 goals!

March was so fun! We took a weekend trip to Charleston that we both remember as being just about perfect. We also welcomed best friends to North Carolina and checked off goal 49, canoeing down the Haw River!

In April we started our garden! As the weather warmed up we enjoyed more warm weather activities, like Bulls games and sitting on our own front porch. I wrote two posts about what we eat.

We did a few things in May (including strawberry picking at the farm across from our neighborhood!), but by far the most notable was our week-long trip up the California coast and out to Yosemite! I covered it in seven posts: Malibu, Ojai, Montecito / Santa Barbara, Montana de Oro, Cayucos / Cambria, San Simeon, Big Sur / Monterey and Carmel / Yosemite / San Francisco.

It was an AMAZING trip and we would recommend it to anyone!! Our roses also burst into bloom at home.

Whew! In looking back at past years-in-review, it seems June always kicks my tail, and this year was no exception! I can’t complain, though, because it was all such good stuff – I traveled to Charleston and Nashville for work (which included Jeni’s for the first time – bliss!!), to New York City for a baby shower for Marget/bridal shower for Natalie, and to Boone to camp with friends!

In July we headed back to New England for Natalie and Joe’s wedding! We also harvested loads of tomatoes from our backyard.

August! Always one of my favorite months, because it’s usually when we spend a week at my favorite place in the world, the island in Maine where we have our cottage. This year we got to go sailing with friends while up North, and it was definitely a highlight! (I posted a short video.) We also invited friends over for a porch party and I shared a home tour in two parts.

We kicked off September with a Labor Day visit to Asheville (two in one year – lucky us!!), this time with my Dad in tow. We bought him a white water rafting trip for his birthday, and it was a hoot to do it together! September also marked our first trip to Monuts, after which I shall never be the same again. I wrote about six years of blogging, our marriage advice, and our friends’ wedding.

In October, we really stepped it up fitness-wise – I hope to write about that a bit in 2015. We combined a trip to Connecticut for a wedding with a trip to NYC to meet our new nephew (!!), I took a separate trip to New York for work, we went to the State Fair with my parents, and we hosted our second annual pumpkin carving night!

Ya heard what I was saying about those donuts, right? :) We balanced them out with short runs and long bike rides, and a few walks in the woods just because. I loved traveling to Grand Cayman for work and being featured in Emily Ley’s Simplicity series!

December was sweet and relatively slow. It was a joy to share our home with my family at Christmas for the first time!

It’s good to step back and be grateful, and grateful I am. It was a great year. Friends, it has truly been a delight to be a small part of y’all’s lives this year, and to have you as a part of mine. I’ll be back soon with more on my plans for 2015!!

Well, when I made posting a priority in September, I knew my frequency might drop back down this month – but I didn’t expect to write only my second post of the month on the 16th! It’s been a busy two weeks, between traveling to New England for a wedding and to meet our newish nephew, me traveling to New York for work for five days, and starting a new family group at our church. I thought I’d get back in the swing of things by sharing our porch party!

After 2012’s Julia & Julia dinner party and last year’s adventure dinner party, I knew I wanted to host another special event for some of our friends this year. We considered another adventurous location, but decided instead to celebrate our new home and its glorious porch. We used the same six-foot folding table that we bought for last year’s party, and splurged on two strings of lights from World Market. We moved our dining chairs outside for the evening. The simple white tablecloth was from Target, and I added some pale blue thin tapers at the last minute.

Our menu was Mediterranean: bruschetta, chicken souvlaki, quinoa Greek salad, and chocolate raspberry pavlova – all things we had made many times before. Friends brought rosé and pitas and hummus.

We started with a walk around our neighborhood, then came back to the house and finished prepping dinner. We completely lucked out with the weather – August in North Carolina can be HOT and muggy, but we got a mild, sunny day in the 70’s. Bliss! It made for a really relaxed evening, as we were able to stay outside in comfort, chatting and laughing. This year’s dinner party iteration wasn’t particularly elaborate, but it was lovely, and so good to get to give hospitality to the folks we love. Cheers to simple celebrations and good company!!

P.S. As you can see, the houses are pretty close together in our neighborhood, and I was a little nervous that I’d be self-conscious about our festivities. But I wasn’t! Once things got started, it was like we were in a cocoon of happiness :) Like with the adventure dinner party, don’t let what others might think hold you back!