Whirlwind Waco Weekend!

I can't even begin to put into words the amount of fun I had this weekend!!! On Friday after work I drove home really quick [as quick as 5 o'clock traffic allows], threw a bunch of clothes in a bag, and hit the road for Houston. A couple of weeks back, Catherine and I had decided that I would meet her in Houston and then she and I would take her car the rest of the way to Waco (for those of you who don't know who Cat is, she is one of my amazing roomies from college and will be one of the house party ladies in my wedding!). I was already delirious at this point due to an extremely long week at work, but I made it to Houston in 3.5 hours thanks to Taco Cabana, Celine Dion, and way too much coffee. Cat greeted me at her cute little house with another skinny vanilla latte for me, and we were off to Waco!

{Of course, we had to take a picture at Cat's favorite gas station on the way to Waco. This was at about 11:30 p.m. Goodness, our hair...}

We arrived in Waco at our old college house, now my little sister's college house, at 12:30 a.m. and crashed. I hardly remember walking up the stairs to bed and I don't know if I've ever slept so hard in my life. Pitiful, I know!

{We've all lived at "ten-oh-six" at one point or another. We love this house!}

We woke up Saturday morning and headed straight to Panera to meet up with Kristin and James. Panera was our favorite place to study when we were in college. Aww memories! While eating breakfast, we ran into my Tri Delta little and future bridesmaid, Kelsey! It was so fun to see her and her momma pre-graduation. Kelsey graduated this weekend from Baylor with her masters in accounting. I'm SO incredibly proud of her and excited she'll be working in Houston now! 

{Love Panera Hazelnut coffee!}

After breakfast, we stopped by Rack Room Shoes in the Central Texas Market Place because I needed a pair of black dress sandals. This was my favorite place to get a good deal on shoes of all kinds in college! I grabbed not only one, but two pair of dress sandals in black and teal. They were buy one, get one 1/2 off so I couldn't resist! After shoe shopping, Cat, Kristin, James, and myself picked up Claire and we all headed over to Bloom and Bee Swanky, an adorably vintage gift shop in downtown Waco. How had I never been to this gorgeous place?!

 {Artsy chandelier at Bloom and Bee}

This little shop is the kind of place that carries old photographs, picture frames, glass figurines, house decor, luggage, linens, etc. I bought a couple of vintage pieces to use as decor for the wedding and I'm super proud of myself for picking them out on my own. I'm not naturally very good at the whole artsy/vintage thing, but I'd like to think that I'm getting better due to the many artistic friends in my life. :)

After our adventure to Bloom and Bee, we decided to go for a little ride through campus. I had only been on the Baylor campus once since my graduation a year ago and was really excited to re-live student life, even if only for a few minutes. I made a special request and we stopped by my old stomping grounds, Castellaw Communications Center. I took all of my major courses in this building and it really felt like a second home while I was in college. Many late nights were spent studying in this building, which smelled like freshly printed newspaper all the time (since the school paper is printed in Castellaw). I walked in for just a couple of minutes while we were on campus and it smelt so wonderful, so familiar. 

{"The house that built me."}

After our trip around campus, poor James had had enough girl time. So we dropped him back off at his car and went to grab lunch. We decided to eat at Food For Thought, a local Baylor college student favorite. This hole-in-the-wall health food restaurant serves salads, nachos, burritos, smoothies, etc. Cat and I split the chicken nachos and they were so good! I had forgotten how much I love Food For Thought. After lunch we made a quick stop by the bookstore to pick up an alumni sticker for my new car.

{Food For Thought's chicken nachos}

{Alumni sticker on the new car--taken after I had already gotten back to CC}

You would think that at this point we had to be too stuffed to eat anything else all day. Nope, it gets worse. I don't know what our deal was, but apparently we had all missed our favorite college foods so much that we decided to subconsciously eat as much as possible in 36 hours. It's sickening, really, the amount of food we ate this weekend! Well, after FFT, we went on a little shopping spree to Ann Taylor Loft. I'm guessing the "30% your entire purchase all weekend" sale had something to do with motivating four very full women to try on clothes. We all walked away with something too! Got to love those ATL sales!! After shopping, we took Claire to 3 Spoons Yogurt, a new fro yo place in Waco that she had been wanting us to visit. We really had no room for fro yo (obviously!!), but we did it anyway and again, so good!

{I didn't get too much, but what I did get was gone in about 14 seconds!}

We FINALLY went back to Claire's house and all I wanted to do was take a nap. However, my sweet friends (Lord knows I wanted to hurt them...) did not let my napping last long. About 30 minutes later I was woken up and told that we were going to Common Grounds. Ohmygoodness. I had been wanting nothing but a cowboy coffee for weeks and now I was too full to even look at coffee! But we went and had a glorious time. I ended up ordering an Arnold Palmer (Luke's favorite) and buying a bag of coffee beans to take home.

{Our drinks}

{What a lovely place full of coffee-stained memories}

{CG to-go!}

Alright, so this blog post covers about the first 24 hours of my whirlwind weekend in Waco! But it's midnight and I'm falling asleep at my computer. I'll tell you about the rest of my weekend tomorrow. I also have so many wedding updates to share! But again, these must wait until tomorrow when I've gotten enough sleep to remember it all. 

Sweet dreams,

Sara