bits & pieces

Today has been a very busy, very productive day. I cleaned and organized some things in my office, did dishes, got some pretty tape in the mail, took shop photos, rearranged our bedroom, hung new artwork and new curtains too. 

And now it's time for editing photos, making some lists and maybe even some sewing too.

Whew! What a busy day! Are your days off of work this busy too?

a blur

This is what November looked like. Just a blur.

Can you really believe that today is December 1st?

In November I...

turned 22

worked a lot

hit 230+ sales in the shop

spent too much time with Netflix

That's really how fast it went, those were the only things I had time to do! hah. But really, I just hope things slow down a little and we all have some time to enjoy the holidays.

Celebrations

Pieces of my birthday celebrations.

 We had a bunch of fun! It was our first party at the apartment and it seems like it went pretty well, I haven't heard any complaints from the neighbors. We played some drinking games, did a whole lot of giggling and everyone loved our cat. Later on we decided to go out for some dancing. It was a fun night.

last friday

 Just in the time it took me to get ready to go out Friday night quickly went from date night to double date night to a night filled with friends. A group of us went to a busy Mexican place for dinner, stopped at the apartment to decide our next move and then headed out to meet some other friends at The Handle Bar.

01. shots from mugs / this camera hates low light

02. Bridget drawing me/Rickey/Michael Jackson

03. tequila, pbr, can rings and popcorn crumbs

04. more bad camera

05. giggling at mentioned drawing  

06. a look into the dining room

Monday.

I saw this image over on Kaelah's blog a couple weeks back and thought it was too perfect not to share. Fall is awesome and perfect for all of the things pictured above. But the weird thing is that Fall hasn't really been happening. Over the weekend it was in the high 80's! It's nice that we're having good weather, but a little lame that it's not Fall weather.

Life has been so crazy and busy lately, it's been insane! Luckily we made a bunch of progress at home this weekend -- including a very adorable addition that I'll be sharing soon! As things are really starting to come together around here I'll soon have more time to give to this blog and my shop and my piles and boxes of vintage just waiting around to be listed! SO MUCH TO DO!

Today is the Day!

Today! After I get off work at 4:30 (or maybe even earlier) we will be picking up the keys to our new home! And that up there is a silly photo booth picture of how excited I am for all of this business! I have already packed up the van with the first load of stuff and can't wait!

 I'm sure I'll still be tweeting during this whole process, but I'm not sure what our internet situation will be yet. I really hope to be back to blogging by late next week, if not sooner! I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Also, I have closed the shop and all orders have been sent out. See you soon!

Lately.

A peek into what has been keeping me so busy this past week. I've been such a bad blogger, (sorry for boring you all with some of these lame posts) and just let some of my blog plans for last week just slip away. But I guess that's necessary sometimes.

Saturday was a day to be dedicated to finally finding some furniture. As we were heading from one garage sale to another my car started making an weird noise and suddenly died. Worst timing ever! It was towed and hopefully I will find out what the deal is today. I am just hoping so badly that it isn't anything too serious. After a long walk and a stop for lunch we were still able to head out to some thrift stores. I guess after what had happened earlier we deserved some good luck, at the first place we found a couch and a chair and at the second a coffee table. Living room complete! All of this was followed by dinner and Our Idiot Brother, which I highly recommend!

This week will be filled with work, more gathering stuff for the new place and hopefully I'll find some time to add some items to the shop! I can't wait to get settled into our new home and get everything back in order!

mending mountain

I'm sure most of you Etsy shop owners have a 'to mend' pile. I had one. Then I started another and another. Now when they're all combined (and waiting to be washed) I have a 'to mend' mountain. I think I need to set a goal of working on these items before going thrifting for a little while! 

Also, sorry for the blurry picture. My camera let me get 3 not so great shots before it died.

movin' on

So, we're FINALLY doing it. We're finally working on moving out once again. Around this time last year Rickey got hit by a car while riding his bike to work then not even two weeks later he broke his foot. With all of his injuries he was out of work (without pay) for over a month, after a little bit we couldn't afford to stay in our apartment so we had to move back in with our families. In this past year we've been saving up money and figuring out what our next move is. We've decided renting a house is what we want to do for now, and the hunt is on!

This is my favorite thing we saw on Sunday! We still have some more looking to do, but I really fell in love with those columns and built-ins. Plus, do you see those shelves in the next room?! This was the second place we saw and we both really liked it. The first place on the other hand turned out to look more like someone's shed than a house! It was pretty bad. 

So, I'm back to online house hunting, emailing and making phone calls. Finding a house for rent has already proven to be much more difficult than finding an apartment. And the fact that I've emailed several different people about homes and haven't heard back from a single one of them is also realllllllly aggravating (seriously, 6 different people). Why would anyone list a property and just ignore all inquires? 

I am just getting so anxious and antsy to finally do this again, it's been way too long!

Forest Park

 The other day after we got off work Rickey and I met up at Forest Park with plans to take outfit photos. When we showed up it was pretty cloudy and thought all of the pictures were turning out too dark, so we decided against taking outfit pictures. Now that I've gone through the couple pictures I snapped while we were sitting around that really wasn't the case. And it's kind of a bummer that we didn't just go for it. 

 Rickey showed me this little area of the park that I had never seen before. There were some nice little ponds, some huge bugs, these crazy formations and a funny bird that just stood on top of the water for a good 15 minutes. It was a pretty neat place. After the park we rode our bikes to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and rented a movie, but I couldn't manage to stay awake for too long. Whoops!


P.S. I just noticed that this is my 70th post this year, which already beats last year's count of 69! And we're only halfway into the year. I think that's a pretty good sign!

Shopper's Guilt

I've always been a pretty thrifty person, always aware of what I can and cannot afford. I don't think I have ever bought anything full priced at Urban Outfitters, or other places like it, why pay $60 for one item when I can get 2 or 3 pieces for the same amount somewhere else? But not until the last few years since I've gotten more into thrifting have I just felt kind of guilty shopping for new clothes. I always think, "I could find something just like that in a thrift store" or "I could totally make that myself!" even if I never actually get around to making it or actually find something similar. I think I could actually list all of the new clothing I have gotten in the last year (the last was a dress for Valentine's Day). Shoes are pretty much the only exception. It is sometimes hard to find shoes in a certain size in thrift stores, you can't really fake it or alter shoes like you can any other garment. 

I sometimes feel like my wardrobe does kind of suffer from this and that's probably why I've felt pretty "blah" about getting dressed for the last couple of months. But I know that I just need to man up, continue to not go spending crazy and try to become a little bit more creative with my thrifting and altering. End of ramble.

 Do any of you guys feel the same way? Or am I just a weirdo?


image

Busy Bee

 Last week was such a busy one! Not only was there a two day celebration of Mary Kate's birthday, but then again for our friend, Andrew's birthday on Thursday and Friday! Then some friend's are also in town so that called for going out as well! Needless to say, I'm worn out! So, today I'm finally getting around to some shop stuff -- altering a few pieces, adding a bunch of things and a post office run. Plus trying to set up a float trip, but I don't really know where to start, yikes!

Is anyone else shocked that tomorrow is June 1st? May flew by so fast! 

Just a little teaser of some of the goodies I've found thrifting this week! There are so many bright, Springy colors and I'm excited to get to work on them! Which I really hope to do soon. It is insane how quickly this year is already moving along. I just realized today that I only have 5 weeks of classes left, but about a million projects/assignments to be completed. So, hopefully I am able to find a way to get everything done while still blogging and keeping the shop stocked. Wish me luck, I'll need it! 

St. Patrick's Day!

Better late than never, right? Well, I finally got my pictures back today (took a WEEK to be developed!) and there are definitely some funny ones in here! Up until 3 or 4 years ago I had never really celebrated St. Patrick's Day. My family never did anything for the holiday, so I really never thought it was a big deal. Until I met Rickey. Then I found out that St. Patrick's Day is some insane day where you wake up early and start drinking, hang out, go to a parade and usually (for me at least) fall asleep by 4 p.m. It's a pretty cool holiday!

We started out at a friend's house. We had a big pot luck style breakfast--I made the green cinnamon rolls. And hung out around their house until it was time to walk down to the parade.

There were about a billion people there so meeting up with other friends turned out to be pretty tough. But after several phone calls, a 30 minute bathroom wait and a few blocks later we finally tracked everyone down and continued with the celebration.

 We finally ended the festivities in another friend's back yard (where I totally zonked out!) It was a good day.

Do you guys celebrate St. Patrick's Day? 

And is it a crazy, big deal where you're from?

Hell Week.

I think it would be safe to say that this is the week from hell. Midterms and floorset (working overnights) at work are really throwing me off! Even though I'm only working a few nights it's messing up my sleep schedule and keeping me up super late the night before big tests! On top of that I of corse am a fantastic procrastinator and put off most of my assignments for my online classes until this week AND just found out that I am supposed to write a paper! So, there are my excuses for being a bad blogger this week. Sorry guys. 

I'm also really hoping to do all of my photo editing for my new shop stuff early next week and load the shop with some new goodies!

I can't wait for spring break (so that I can be lame) to catch up on sleep, update my shop, catch up on the 30 days of lists (I haven't gotten past list 4!) and work on some new projects.

Diana Fail.

I just picked up my first pictures taken with my new Diana Mini the other day. Unfortunately these are the only ones that turned out (very poorly, might I add) from 3 rolls of film! I guess it's a fail on my part though, they were all in dim lighting and probably on the wrong setting. I'll have to do more research on my camera and try again, but for now here's my first attempt.

 

I'm off to take some new shop photos now, so expect to see some new stuff in the next day or so! As well as my quickly fading strawberry blonde hair!