Dressy Flip Flops

Flip flops...they are a delicate subject.  Everyone has their favorite kind and don't want to switch.  My favorite kind has always been rainbows. 

They go with everything...brown.  I mean really, what more would I need?  I'm on my second pair right now because of an unfortunate accident.  For MR.P's birthday one year I surprised him and had our good friends come in town for a visit...then surprised him even more by taking him to the mountains!  We went kayaking and I forgot my chacos :(  So I had to wear my rainbows.  It was soo sad.  They were ruined.  Now I am forever made fun of for wearing raibows while kayaking ;)  This was also the same trip my own husband threw a fish on me, but that is another story for another day!

Anyway, back to the point.  I noticed the other day that I really didn't have any dress flip flops.  I have dressy sandals, but not flip flops.  So I was in J.Crew with my mom the other day and tried on these.

I had seen these many times, but never really wanted to get them because I had my brown rainbows that match everything ;)  Well, I never should have tried them on!  I fell in love with them.  They do happen to be on sale right now for $39, but still seems a bit much.  So I was parusing oldnavy.com and came across these! 

 

They are quite similar!  So, if you are in the market for some dress flip flops try out Old Navy.  These are on sale for $8.97.  I do know that the J.Crew ones are VERY good quality.  My friend Abby has a pair and said they lasted forever!  The old navy pair might last you one season.  So it's up to you! 

Things I'm Itching to Do Around Our House!

First of all, I am sorry I haven't been blogging like my usual self.  I haven't done many projects around our house because life has been so busy, and let's face it...projects take money!  (We've been saving for vacation!)  I keep having to tell myself I would rather have a fun a relaxing vacation than have new accesories for the house or clothes :)

Anyway, here are a few things I have been itching to do around our house.  I figure blogging about it will make me feel better.  Plus, it can organize my thoughts and maybe, just maybe one of you will know an inexpensive way for me to get some of these checked off my list! 

1.)  Rug for Dining Room - Our dining room has needed a little something to pull everything together.  I saw this project over at Little Green Notebook via Miss Miggy stayed Home. 

Miggy took this basic rug from Ikea...

and did this...

and turned it into this!!

What a smart way to make something work for you!  On a budget!  She only spent $36 :) 

This is definitely something I am putting on the list to try!

2.) Sillouettes OR Initials above our Mud Room - I have this blank space above our mudroom mirror.  I can't decide between making some sillouettes of Matt and I and framing them OR getting a "M" and a "B" and spraypainting them.  Hobby Lobby always has them half off and they are the perfect size.  So it would be a total of $10 for either choice. 

3.)  Moss Covered Initials - I would Love to put these initials... (in "M" and "B" of course!)

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 over this mirror! 

This room needs a few things to pull it together.  If I do initials here, I probably won't do anything over the mudroom.  I don't like TOO much on the walls. I think these initials are priced very well at $16 each and could definitely be what this room needs!  (P.S. I got this idea from a friend!)

4.) Fabric lining Kitchen Cabinets - MR.P and I have been contemplating taking off 2 cabinet doors in our kitchen.  We have the perfect place.  If we end up doing that, I would LOVE to back the cabinets in a really fun printed fabric. 

I found this tutorial on Little Green Notebook.  Can you tell I love this blog?? :)  Doesn't seem too hard and wouldn't be very expensive. 

Here are some fabrics I love and would consider using. 

5.) Bottles hanging from Kitchen Window - ok, how cute would this be??

(via my friend's blog!)

This would be soo cheap and easy to do!  Just save any bottles that you have around your house.  Twine is usually about $1 at any home improvement store. And bam!  You've got yourself a little outdoor garden :)

Those are just a few projects I'd love to get done, but life is busy and too many other things to do!  Hope everyone has a happy Tuesday!

Yard Work

The Mr. and I had quite a busy weekend.  One day was 19 hours straight!  It was a long day, but it sure was fun!  We did have a little while to work on our front yard.  We are slowly making headway.  The backyard is having to wait though.  Oh well.  I can still dream though, right?  I am LOVING this backyard picture.

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I am loving the lanterns.  They add such a pop of color.

I love the cushions on the wire chairs.  Such details.

I also love the mismatched chairs.  Always wanted to try that!

We actually have the perfect set up to try this.  And MR.P wanted to build one of these overhangs!  We'll see though what the future holds :)

I feel like once our backyard is in good shape I will want to hang out back there all the time.  Just got to get the time to do it!

 

Happy Monday :)

Happy Weekend :)

While Reading Lonny Magazine, I came across this picture of Kate Spade Co-President and Creative Director, Deborah Lloyd's front yard.  It made me happy :) 

                                                                 Have a HAPPY Weekend :)

If I were going to buy a new outfit this is what it'd be!

If I were going shopping today, this is what I would buy.  I love wearing jeans with cute flats and a t-shirt.  It's one of my favorite looks!  Even during the summer.

Seven for All Mankind Dojo Jeans - these jeans are flattering on most body types.  I like to have a long pair to wear with wedges and a short pair to wear with flats.  I currently only have a short pair to wear with flats, and they are from Gap ;)  They are actually a great fit and I wear them often.  You can also find them at special T.J. Maxx stores and Off 5th Avenue.

Pale Yellow Flats from J.Crew - I don't usually buy expensive shoes, but I do love to find a good deal on quality shoes.  If these were on sale for $20 I probably wouldn't blink an eye ;)

AWESOME earrings - These are currently sold out, but they are amazing!!  I'd probably use these from Stella & Dot that I already have! They pretty much go with everything!

Striped t-shirt - I found this one in crew cuts onsale for $23.  But I found one at Target a few weeks ago for $8.99!  So I guess I wouldn't have to buy the whole outfit ;)

This outfit looks happy and fun to me!  You could dress it up with some cute wedges too!

Thrifting

Ok y'all.  I went thrifting last night.  I was so excited about going that I even wrote down everything I was interested in getting.  My plan was to get a few things for our home office.  Here was my list:

1.) Desk - I wanted to find one at Queen of Antiques that I didn't have to redo OR could be redone quite easily.  I found the perfect one.  It is actually a small kitchen table and is black.  We can put it in our office to give us space for 2 to work!  The price was just right for us! MR.P made us sleep on the decision until Saturday.  I'll let you know what the decision is!

2.) Lamp - I wanted to get a lamp for a few $'s to just spraypaint.  Well, once we decided to wait on the table, I couldn't purchase the lamp because I didn't know what style or size I would need.  It was kind of a bummer, but I agreed with MR.P on waiting it out. 

3.)  Pen holders - I saw in this photo how she had cute little pen holders.  I DID find these!  They were .99 cents each.  They are just little glass vases that give holding pens a bright new look!

(photo from a reader on young house love)

4.) Chairs - I wanted 2 chairs for our desk bc we both like hanging out together.  Even if we aren't talking we like being in the same room together.  The desk we found yesterday actually had 4 chairs to go with the table.  SOO, we are hoping they'll let us just buy 2 of the chairs.  Because they were PERFECT!!  That will heavily make our decision for us!

Ok, onto the rest of our thrifting trip.  I am not perfect and my price tag at the thrift store shows it ($28)...oh and so did the left over stuff on my kitchen table :(

I was so bummed once I got home and realized that everything I bought was not usable.  You know me and I HATE clutter.  MR.P kept making fun of me for making things cluttered :) I just really thought I had a place for everything I bought.  Oh well.  I am going to put all the extra's in my handy plastic box of extra decor stuff.  That way MR.P can't make fun of me anymore.

Oh and you know what else?  This just really urked me.  I found the PERFECT basket for our bathroom to place toilet paper in.  I was so excited.  It was even black so I didn't have to spraypaint it.  So we got up to the register and they wouldn't let me buy it because it didn't have a price tag on it!  So beware of pricetagless things.  Don't fall in love with them or you'll get your heart broken!  I should have taken Abby from Tales and Trials with me.  She would have known the drill.  Oh well.  You live and you learn! 

Anyway, I really did enjoy my time thrifting.  I think it's totally worth it to check out your local thrift store.  they have tons of things you can transform.  You just have to be willing to put a little work into it. I am looking forward to showing you the things I bought and I am going to change them!

The Romper

Ok, so I finally convinced myself to tell a story about a romper I was had.  When I first saw the romper was coming back into style, memories of my past came flashing back to me.  It was not a pretty sight. 

When you see these rombers you think, "Oh so cute!" or "oh so flattering!" 

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But what you don't think is, "what if this suit thing has a ton of buttons and is really difficult to get off quickly?"

When I was about 8 years old (quite embarrassing to tell this story) I was wearing this cute light denim romper.  It had a pink and white striped shirt underneith and the romper attached to the top of the shirt with 2 buttons on each side.  To make matters worse, it also had 4 buttons as a fly.  This was one TOUGH outfit to wear.  But oh SOO CUTE!  I couldn't help but wear it quite often.  One sad day I was wearing it and had to go to the bathroom SOOOOO bad.  This story did not end well.  I ended up wetting my pants.  To make matters worse my sister Laura was there and so was my friend Bonnie.  I'm pretty sure they were NOT sweet about it.  To this day I have been a little afraid to buy a romper.  Ok, so that's my most embarrassing moment.  What about your's??

Hydrangeas!

This is our second Summer in our house.  We moved in last April and one day I was doing dishes and was very pleasantly surprised to see a HUGE Hydrangea bush outside my kitchen window!  Needless to say I was very excited this year to enjoy the Hydrangeas again :)  I usually just put them here...

on the kitchen window.

But after reading this new blog, It's Great to be Home,  I decided I could get a little more creative and copy her! Liz used a cute strainer for some added color.

(photo from Liz's blog)
Well, my strainer isn't colorful, but it is cute!  I pulled out my prettiest cook books and put my cute strainer on top.  Then for a bonus I added some hydrangeas!

I was pleased with this transformation.  In order to keep the flowers alive, I added a bowl of water in the strainer and a paper towel underneith to make sure water didn't get on my cook books.  In the future I'll use this look for fruit and such!

We also have a great sugar mold we use for candles.  For the summer I emptied out the candles and put some hydrangeas in them!

It really pulls our living room together and makes it feel like summer!  This was an easy and free way to update our house!

Vacation!!

Matt and I have finally found a vacation for our 3 year anniversary!  We haven't had a trip together since our honeymoon.  We have been itching to go somewhere together that was affordable. Since I am pretty much a travel agent on the side (for Matt and I), I was able to keep a close watch on deals and such ;)  I am always searching for somewhere fun to go, but we rarely pull the trigger.  Well, as I was searching for vacation spots I remembered using Bookit.com.  Y'all, this site is amzing.  We found a great resort in the Disney Resort area for 70% off the original price!!  We are sooo excited to go to Disney together!  Funny to think that we are celebrating our 3 year anniversary at a kids place.  Oh well!  This will probably be our last trip to Disney alone!

We are staying for 4 days and couldn't be more excited.  We plan on doing a little bit of relaxing, but mostly playing :)  MGM one day and maybe Universal Studios another day.  Then hanging out at the pool and visiting with our great friends, the Allens! 

Our hotel is right next to down town Disney, so we'll get to have some fun meals over there.  It will be fun to be right in the middle of things!  Can't wait to celebrate 3 years of learning, growing, being stretched, and fun!

Adoption Update again...

Matt and I had our first home study interview last Monday. It was definitely different than I thought. It was very low key and no stress. We sat and talked with our social worker for about an hour about how we met, asked a few questions, then scheduled our next interviews.  Easy as that! 

A few friends and family have asked if I am still excited. The answer is YES! It's just a different kind of excited. The reality of everything is really starting to settle in and I am trying to handle it all...paper work, emotions, life, and the excitement and fear of becoming a mother!  It's a lot to handle. So I am trying to get through our paper work and enjoy every day as well. I found that I was rushing through all the paper work and anxious about it all. Thankfully it's a little easier now to just do the paper work as we can.  We've started scheduling nights that we can devote to our adoption work.  It's made it fun to look forward to getting things checked off the list!

This Friday and Saturday Matt and I have our individual interviews with our social worker. I'm not nervous surprisingly. I think our social worker really made me feel comfortable to just by myself.  She even said it will be a painless process :) 

What's next you ask?  Well, we'll have another interview together. Then during each interview we'll give her our completed forms and such. We both have our Dr.'s appts scheduled to make sure we're healthy.

Here's my checklist for the moment:

* Waiting for copies of our Birth Certificates - I had to have them expedited bc I found out it takes around 12 weeks!

* Get record of our 911 calls from the local county police dept.

* Waiting on our reference letters from both my mom and Matt's mom.

* Print picture of the front of our house.

* Complete 10 hours of adoption classes.

At the moment this list is doable...not overwhelming or anything.  I know it will only grow, so I am learning how to stay calm now and to just get things done!  As of right now, there is nothing else to update. 

Please continue to pray for us.  Pray the Lord would continue showing us what to do.  If adoption is the road he wants for us then for him to show us confirmation everyday!  If not, that the Lord would close the door quickly.  Thanks everyone!

Memorial Day Weekend!

Memorial Day - a time to remember those who served and died for our country.  In honor of that MR.P and I went camping with some friends and family!  Camping is not one of our normal activities, but we really enjoyed our time together.  MR.P had been out of town with work so it was nice to have him back in my arms :)

Once we arrived we started setting up camp.  We didn't realize it was red neck city...but it totally was!

MR.P and I have never been camping together. It was fun to set up our little home for the weekend!  To make our camp site a little classier we put christmas lights around our food tents.  It actually looked quite glamorous!

(my sister and brother-in-law in the back ground)

This was our rather large air mattress that took up the entire tent.  And boy was it worth it!  I was so glad to have a nice mattress for a good nights rest. 

Once our tent was set up it was time to just relax and have a good time.  I am so glad we went with friends.  They were such pros.  The Peeles not so much.  I learned a lot about camping for the future.  Or maybe we'll just take them with us again ;)

Having a long weekend off was so nice.  I feel refreshed and ready for the summer!