Ryan Ray – Snapshots & My Thoughts by Ailee Petrovic

Personal March 8, 2015

The Best of Snapshots & My Thoughts

Snapshots & My Thoughts has been my creative outlet for almost three years now, and I’ve loved coming up with new content on an almost-daily basis. I started the blog in 2012 while working as a management consultant (which is still my job – I’m just on a leave of absence!), as I felt I wasn’t being challenged creatively. My husband, Sasha, and I got engaged, and instead of pinning a bunch of wedding photos on Pinterest, I created posts with ideas for guestbooks, escort cards, bar menus, etc. The blog morphed into a platform for me to share personal anecdotes, healthy recipes, style and design inspiration, gorgeous stationery, and city travel guides. Ever since our daughter, Isla, was born in June 2014, there has also been quite a bit of baby loving on the blog!

My goal for Snapshots & My Thoughts is to help inspire my friends (which you are, if you’re reading) with designing their home, picking outfits for events, styling parties, choosing stationery, making delicious vegan desserts, or even planning a vacation. I want to motivate people to be active and enjoy the small things in life, whether that mean going out and adventuring in your own city or trying a baby product that I rave about.

In case you’re new around here, I wanted to share with you some of the highest viewed posts on Snapshots & My Thoughts. There’s quite a bit of food involved, as well as weddings and babies, and of course – travel (my favorite!). Five of my top 20 posts were various city guides, so I decided to bulk them all together. Click on each of the photos below if you want to read more!

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ASP Wedding July 19, 2014

One Year Anniversary

Today is our one year wedding anniversary, and what a year it has been! Since getting married last July 19 at The Carneros Inn in Napa, California, we have gone to Durango twice (still here), went to the Justin Timberlake/Jay Z concert in Miami, visited friends in Minneapolis, went to Bali and Japan (briefly!) for our honeymoon, celebrated two of our best friend’s engagements and two of our closest friend’s weddings, welcomed multiple sweet babies into the world, and last, but definitely not least, had a baby girl of our own! We are very excited about what year two has in store for us.

For more about our wedding, click here.

Photos by Ryan Ray

Personal May 5, 2014

A Weekend Well-Spent

Sasha and I headed to Austin at the crack of dawn on Saturday, after spending Friday with one of my best friends, Kirby, who flew in town from Oklahoma City for her baby shower (she’s due exactly 4 weeks after me!). We had plans to meet my childhood best-friend – Alisdair, (we met before we were one years old in Scotland), who came to live with us in Texas for his senior year of high school, then ended up going to The University of Texas at Austin with me and married an Austinite! They moved back to Scotland last year, much to my dismay, and I only get to see him once a year, so I was anxious to hug him and Erica. We stayed with another best friend, Sophee, at her gorgeous house (where we spent my bachelorette weekend!). She recently got engaged to Johnny (who took many of these wedding preview pics) – they are the sweetest, most attractive couple ever (see pictures of them at our rehearsal here). I am over-the-moon excited to be one of her bridesmaids next March. Her invitation was perfect (see picture below!).

In the late afternoon, we went to one of my good friend’s wedding – Eric and I have been close since fourth grade! Him and Alisdair also became best friends during our senior year, so we’re one big happy family. Stephanie, his bride, looked radiant. I love weddings! The reception was held at Thurman’s Mansion, just south of Austin. The venue couldn’t have been prettier, neither could the weather.

We had a big family breakfast at Kerbey Lane on Sunday morning, then headed back to Houston. I had a bit of a scare in the car, as I suddenly felt nauseous and then fainted while Sasha was driving. I am a big fainter (errh, fainted at the altar), and have passed out during every pre-natal appointment that involved needles, but this was the first unprovoked fainting, which is a bit concerning. I have my 36 week appointment today and plan on checking with my doctor. Fingers crossed!

I hope you had a good weekend! Happy Cinco de Mayo and first year wedding anniversary to my sister and Carl (pictures here and here).

the back view of thurman mansion in austin // sasha and kenneth getting rather competitive with bean bag toss (‘cornhole’)

sophee’s amazing bridesmaid invitation – obsessed and so excited // mother-son dances always make me cry

shameless selfie with my new ray-bans (after mine got stolen) and haircut (long overdue) // most amazing photo album from ryan ray

32 days from my due date (feeling ever-so-swollen) // dad and sasha being competitive per usual

post-breakfast at kerbey lane with dad // wedding selfie in the hot-hot texas sun (think 90+ degrees already)

outside kerbey lane with my childhood bestfriend/brother and his wife (vising from scotland) // belle is petrified of our stroller… so we’re practicing

ASP Wedding December 31, 2013

Shapshots of 2013

For the past four years, I’ve made an annual Shutterfly book that covered all travel and adventures for the year. I just finished my 2013 book yesterday, and it was extremely tough to keep it at 111 pages! I literally had to delete 6 pages in order to complete it. What an amazing year! We went to SF/Napa three times (more pictures here), Durango, Dunton Hot Springs, Boston, New York City, Miami, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Minneapolis, and Bali. We remodeled a house that became our home, got married and are now expecting a baby girl in 2014. I’m almost sure that fits the definition for ‘whirlwind.’

How was your 2013? What are you most looking forward to next year?

Click here to view our 2013 in snapshots (pictures below by Ryan Ray).

Click here to view my 2012 book. Click here to view my 2011 book.

ASP Wedding September 16, 2013

Our Wedding Stationery: Papellerie

As I’ve mentioned many times before, we worked with Papellerie on our entire stationery suite (save the dates, invitations, programs, custom napkins, etc.). I loved working with Riley and Amy so much – they were incredibly good at understanding exactly what we (probably more I) wanted. Every single piece of our stationery was better than I could have ever imagined. The only missing photos were all of the goodies they made for our guest boxes! I’m upset that I didn’t think to have Ryan to take any pictures of the final product (my very unprofessional iPhone pictures below). The only faux-pas we had was that our seating assignment board – a corkboard with pins and personalized wine tags for guest’s glass with their name and table number – was setup vertically instead of horizontally (as planned), which made the tags fall kind of… off? You’ll see below. It’s definitely not a big deal though. As an FYI, the calligrapher that Papellerie uses is Meant To Be Calligraphy and the map artist was Katie Gastley. Everyone was amazing.

Our Save-the-Dates

Our Invitation Set

Our Programs

Our Placemats and Menus

Our Table Numbers

Our Reserved Signs

Our Table Assignments – a slight deviation from plan, as it was set up vertically instead of horizontally so the personalized wine tags don’t hang quite right! You win some, you lose some!