Friday Favorites-7.10.26

HAPPY FRIDAY! Whew! It’s been a while! This once a week posts + vacation have me feeling like I haven’t logged onto this space in a long time. Hope you guys had a great 4th of July weekend with your favorite people.

I tried to upload all the pics from our Maine vacation into one post and it was just too many pictures so I’m splitting it into two. We did a two-part trip where we started in Southern Maine and ended in Northern so it works perfectly. Instead of one giant recap, I’ll have two and sprinkle in some FAVORITES as well. As always, I’ve joined my girl, Andrea, to share!

A few things people are already asked…

1. Why Maine? Well our family LOVED our trip our west to visit Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Glacier National Parks so I was excited about having a different area to enjoy plus have that national park at our fingertips as well. While our family loves the beach, I wanted to try something different. Plus two family friends just randomly both brought this up as one of their FAVORITE family vacations so I took it as a sign. 😉
2. Why’d we visit this week {because it’s more crowded}? It’s the one week of the summer the football workouts take a break. Both of my boys are doing these now and it was their one big week off so we took advantage. When I was doing research I learned that Bar Harbor does it RIGHT on the 4th of July so it was a win-win to be visiting during that week.
3. Why’d we choose those two locations? Many, many people head from Boston straight to Bar Harbor and then back. We actually met two other Dallas families who were doing that exact itinerary. The Bar Harbor Inn {where we stayed and I’ll share more later} had a five night minimum for the week of July 4th so we knew the majority of our time would be spent there. We have friends that are in Nantucket most summers, you might have heard of them? 😉 We’ve visited the Shulls before and are certain we’ll do it again where we can easily add Boston to that trip. Plus, Tab and I have both been to Boston several times so it wasn’t high up on our priority list this visit. We were more interested in seeing parts of Maine.

Okay, let’s get right to the trip! We flew out on Sunday, June 28th, on a nonstop from Dallas to Portland, Maine.

We arrived starving and READY for some lobster. We immediately headed into Portland for dinner. Luke’s Lobster was on the menu and didn’t disappoint!

Gorgeous views for the next week!

I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of our food all week BUT our meal this evening might have been a family FAVORITE! We all had lobster and Luke’s was DELISH!

You know how your IG algorithm almost gets in your head? Sometimes I’ll be just THINKING of something and it seems like IG will feed that exact thing to me through my feed. Anyway, after I started doing some research I found this gorgeous resort about an hour from Portland, Cliff House Maine.

I took this picture directly from their website. It was hard to capture the uniqueness without a little help. This gorgeous resort was built right there on the cliffs and had the most stunning views.

Views from our balcony…

When I booked this resort had a two bedroom suite available which was AMAZING! We had three king sized beds, three bathrooms and so much space! GLORIOUS when you have a big family!

The room was stocked with binoculars for your viewing pleasure.

Like I said, it was built right on the cliffs so there wasn’t a beach path but we did make our way down to the water.

Bowen attended a football camp with a friend and arrived a day late so our first night we were sans Bowen.

The resort had a nicer restaurant and then a more casual spot as well as poolside options.

The next morning I attempted to keep up with Ebby Lee on a run. {Spoiler alert-I didn’t.}. But we checked out the grounds before heading to the pool and then popping into the casual dining spot, Nubb’s Lobster Shack, for more lobster.

The views from our table…

Tab drove back to Portland to grab Bowen before dinner. The drive to the closest town, Ogunquit, was less than ten minutes so we popped into Ogunquit for dinner.

Before mini-golf! Nothing brings our our competitive side more than this game!

Nixon won by ONE, Tab and Bowen TIED, and then the girls and I were a bit behind.

Tuesday morning we had an early fishing adventure booked. I took this picture because apparently it took Britt no time at all to adjust to life on the water. ha!

We were fishing for striped bass and well, they weren’t biting much on Tuesday.

We enjoyed the views tho!

We did catch a couple fish but we weren’t setting any records, that’s for sure.

It was a great way to see more though and the weather was GORGEOUS!

The PERFECT morning adventure with my crew. We were STARVING afterwards and popped into a little diner for brunch before heading back for some pool time/relaxation.

We went into Perkins Cove for dinner at Jackie’s Too. I did a terrible job at taking pictures of that. The food was okay but the views were GREAT!

Our plan was to walk around this area a bit but it started raining. We opted for dominoes and dessert back at the resort. PERFECT ending to our first stop in Maine!

Next Friday, I’ll be back with Part Two! Thanks for reading today!

XO