Welcome to Love and Specs! In case we don’t know each other, we’re Maryal and Chris Carter, the couple behind the love, the specs… and the blog. We’re so excited to share our journey in life, love, style, food, DIY, travel, our beloved city of Phoenix and so much more with all of you, in hopes to inspire and encourage everyone to love a little more, live a little more, and soak it all in along the way. 

And just in case you’re meeting us for the very first time (leave us a comment here and introduce yourself – we’re so excited to meet you!), we thought we’d share a little bit about how we met and fell in love, and what inspired us to start Love and Specs. Appropriately, we essentially met because of our mutual love of food… but in the most surprising way. Here’s how it all went down…

What We Fell in Love Listening To

The Night We Met (and Mar’s inquisitive friend)

FROM MARYAL:

Chris is the General Manager at a restaurant in Arcadia, the amazing and oh-so-charming Phoenix neighborhood we live in. My favorite restaurant in the neighborhood just so happens to be this very same restaurant.  And on one serendipitous night in September 2014, my best friend was visiting from Denver and of course, I had to take her to said restaurant for dinner on a Friday night, expecting a fun girls night of drinking wine and catching up, sans boys. There was something so right about that night from the start – I had my best friend by my side, the weather in Phoenix was perfectly warm, and the air buzzed with happy energy.

On that particular night the restaurant was so busy, it was nearly bursting at the seams, overflowing with people from dining room to patio. After we were seated, we waited and waited for someone to come take our drink order, but no one came. As soon as us girls found ourselves lost in conversation, losing track of time by talking life, work and everything in between, a chambray-clad, bespectacled and totally handsome Chris walked over to the table, charmingly introduced himself, and asked if he could get us drinks from the bar. After we ordered and Chris walked away, my friend immediately turned to me and said, “Mar, this guy is absolutely perfect for you” and I smiled and simply replied, “Yep, that’s the one.” 

When Chris came back to the table, we all chatted, laughed, introduced ourselves in more detail, and my friend asked Chris every totally forward and to-the-point question under the sun aside from his blood type and social security number, in an attempt to extract as much information for me as possible. Then, just when I thought Chris would walk away and that would be it, Chris looked at me and said, “Well, it’s not really professional for me to ask for your number but…” and before he could finish that sentence, I nervously blurted out, “Just give me your number. I’ll take charge here.”  Chris laughed, gave me his number, and I suddenly got this feeling deep down in my gut that this person would be a really important part of my life, for the rest of my life. There was something familiar about him, like I’d known him before and was just seeing him again after years of being apart. 

So against my better judgment and out of fear of never seeing him again, I reached out that night, and it’s a darn good thing I did! Chris and his friends met up with me and my friend that night, we had so much fun together talking and dancing awkwardly, Chris asked me to dinner that Monday night, and we talked for so long over dinner that we they basically shut the place down. Before meeting Chris, love was never a priority for me, emotional investment in a boy wasn’t really my thing and I questioned whether the idea of spending the rest of your life tied to someone else was a realistic notion. But from the very first night I met Chris, I’ve said one thing over and over again: count me in. 

Our First Picture Together

Our First Hike in Sedona

FROM CHRIS:

Well, Maryal really tells that story best. She really caught my attention as soon as she walked in, and a flaw in service right out of the gates was basically the stars aligning for me. Her red lipstick smile and wild cheetah shirt had me captivated. She was taking my breath away before we even made eye contact. I can still close my eyes and see her sitting there – she was then and will always be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. 

I was entertaining some of my closest friends from home, all of whom were sitting at the bar, watching the whole thing just fall into place. The coolest thing about that night and ever since, is that our friends are  still such a huge part of our journey. 

I love the way that we laugh and take pictures. It has truly become our favorite thing to do. We have the most fun on a sunny Saturday afternoon, biking around our neighborhood, exploring food, telling stories and talking about the things that make us happy.  We’re both dreamers and we’re always drifting off, thinking of all the different places we want to go, people we want to meet along the way, and we just keep falling more and more in love every day.

Our First New Year’s Eve Smooch

We say in our bio that it’s our love of chambray and mutual blurred vision that unites us, but really, it’s so much more than that, and so more much than we could have ever expected. As a couple, such a huge part of our relationship is creating, exploring, and documenting along the way, so when the idea of starting a blog came up, we couldn’t think of a better way to not only indulge our passions, but to remember all of those moments as they happen, and share them with anyone in search of a little inspiration.

So we’ll say it again… we’re just so glad you’ve joined our journey and what’s more, we can’t wait to share the moments to come and all the things we love with you!

Thanks for being here!

All our love,

Maryal & Chris