Confession

I may just go to the gym tonight so I can keep up with my friend Kelly who worked out twice today already. I dont want to look bad at pool time next to her skinny butt!

If not for her, I had fully planned on ditching all healthy living today for sangria at Glorias. Damn you Kelly!

Shopping Retail is for the Birds

I recently competed my first grown up house project and really loved it. I was inspired by this project to try to complete the look in the rest of our bedroom. Mr. A and I plan to buy a new bed at some point so we refuse to buy new bedding. Still the miss-matched look we had going on before was a bit, well, ugly and not complete.

In comes my coworker, Devon, who is decorating her whole home and knows quite a bit about where to get good deals on home goods. I knew I wanted something to bring in a pop of color on the bed without clashing with the rest of the bedroom. She suggested we check out the Dillard's in Highland mall. I was all, gee thanks but I don't shop there. She then informed me that this was no ordinary Dillard's, no no. Everything in that bitch is 70% off! What!?

We headed over there on our lunch break to see what we could find. Well I think we did pretty freaking awesome!!!

The whole look I got for about $60

This pillow was about $40 and I got it for $10

This one was about $40 and I got it for about $6

This one was like $70 and I got it for $12

This one was $50 and I got it for $9

This one was ridiculous! This one was $135 and I got it for $25!

You much check this place out. Word on the street is it is closing and these deals are not going to last forever!

We are bad at being funny....

There was a photo booth at the wedding this weekend. Mr. A and I are just not good at being "bad" in the photo booth. We took our pictures and thought ohhh ok these are great! We put them in her guest book all proud like.

Well then I just saw everyone else pictures (check out Kelly's blog here) and I feel like we were kind of LAME! Oh well photo booths are so mcuh fun if you know how to work them.  We will learn one day!

Here is me with the rest of the bridesmaids, I love these!

Kelly and Amelia did some great posting about the wedding this weekend. Check them out to hear more about the great party the Mr. and Mrs. M threw!  They used this company for the pictures and I think they were one of the best we have seen!

One perfect day... and the winner!

I had the pleasure of being a member of Janet's wedding party this weekend and I had a blast!!! It was the first time I was in a wedding since ours and it just gave me a whole new perspective on the event! I relived so many emotions. It was so special to walk down the isle and see my husband standing there smiling back. Janet has impeccable taste and everything about the whole day just said casual and sophisticated elegance.


I was super emotional about their wedding. I think even more so than I was about ours. Not because hers was more emotional to me than my own wedding but because I actually had time to let all those feelings rush in. I remembered what it was like to slip on that dress (and stuff my bra with chicken cutlets). I knew what those vows meant to Mr. A and I. It was such a special experience to be a part of Janet's day and see her run though it all.


I am sure others with post more pictures from the wedding. Since both the hubs and I were in it we could not take any pictures of the ceremony. Since I began to dance and eat and drink at the reception my camera did not come out much then either. So sorry for that.

Let me just tell you my favorite part of the whole day was the groom, Ben, filling up as he saw Janet turn the corner and head towards him! It was one of those moments that reminds you of all of the emotion behind that day. It was amazing to see between them. 

I will do my best to link to other posts with pictures and details from the day because words can't begin to describe how beautiful the wedding was!

Now, getting away from the mushy stuff and on to the fashion. I know that is what you all care about anyway! I chose the retro dress with the strait neck. Its the one Mr. A liked me in and let's face it that is the guy I care most about liking what I wear! Janet gave us all matching pearl necklaces (so freaking cute btw) and I wore some black low heals. Hair up in a low messy bun. Smokey eyes. I worked it. :-) Here is the dress as a reminder, better pictures will come soon.

The Bridesmaid Dress Game!

Alright y'all, here is the deal. I am in one of my best friends weddings this weekend. Janet has asked us all to wear whatever black dress we wanted to wear. So me being thrifty and such decided to barrow a dress. My good friend Amelia had wore a totally fab dress our wedding so I of course stole that dress asap for this wedding.
Last night by chance I tried the dress on again for the first time in a month. Well it just did not look right. Turns our it is just too big. Well in a panic I ran to White House Black Market and found two totally perfect options as well.
So what's the game you ask? Well I want to know if you think it is worth it for me to buy the correct size dress or just stuff my bra a lot and wear the borrowed one. Here are the dresses, you decide! Dress one will be the sweetheart neck, dress two the stripes and dress three strait across neck a-line. Go!

For Japan, With Love

Donate Here

Home decor is hard. That's all.

And now for the update I know you all have been waiting for... my shelving unit project! I will start with this, I have discovered I am in no way creative. I have no skill for home decorating and I think I will have to work for years to get to a level where I can actually blog about my house and how pretty it is. For now let's pretend I am Young House Love and I totally know what I am doing.

I first started by clearing my unit completely. I then laid it all out next to the unit and started to take inventory of what I actually wanted to have out and what I just had out because I had to stick things on shelves. As you can see there was no theme whatsoever, and there was no rhyme or reason to what I had on there.

Next I knew I wanted to make the shelves more practical, and I needed to be able to cover up some of the ugly old albums and such I have collected over the years. I found the PERFECT solution! These brown and cream canvas bins from Target! They are the absolute perfect fit! I like the simplicity of them. I Love Love Love these less than $10 bins!!!!

Here is the brand and packaging. They apparently are part of a big shelving system for your closets and can be found at most Targets in lots of colors and patterns!

 Next, I read that organizing books by color can really give an organized look. I totally was not sure about using all the colors I had but I thought I would give it a try. I thought they came out cute! I moved them around from cube to cube until I found a good balance.

 I then stored all of my old miss matched albums in the bins, and then hid them away forever!

 Here is the whole thing mid way through, I changed out all my picture frames to be the same family and look. I think that finally brought everything together. I moved things from other parts of the house to bring in more color and "casual elegance" that I am so desperate to have! I still don't know what I am doing at this point.

 SIX HOURS LATER.... This was the final result. I am really happy with the way things turned out. I am sure I will keep moving things around. I for sure did not want to go out and buy more stuff to go in these shelves so for working with what I have in the house. So with that I don't think I did too bad for only spending $40 on the bins and nothing else!

Fadhion update!

How cute is this?



Sorry for the sideways picture, I am blogging from my new phone and I am not sure how to make this work right! Anyway, denim blazer from Ann Taylor Loft like 8 years ago. Tank from Old Navy. Skirt from, you guessed it, Ann Taylor Loft on sale this weekend! Shoes, brown flats from DSW. I love this outfit. It is perfect for spring!

Too bad it is gross here in Austin.

Inspiration Needed!

Source 

What do you think of this? Is it too much? I don't think I want all that clutter. So let me try for something else! 

Source

I like the feel of this one even though this is a little different set up than my unit. I like that it is still practical. 

I am taking advice from Young House Love on how to decorate shelves. Today I am heading out to look for bins and storage for my unit. I will let you know what I find! 

Bedroom Bookshelf Project

Mr. A and I are going to be signing another year lease on our apartment. I say this with a heavy heart because I so desperately want a home of our own. In the end this was all my choice, I want to be able to buy the right house not just a house because it is works for right now. So we are waiting for now.

So in order to satiate some of my nesting appetite I am going to try and begin re-organizing and decorating things in our apartment. I guess if I live here for another year I have to love it. So my first project is our bedroom shelving unit.

It is a huge wall unit from Ikea. In case you can't tell in the pictures it is a dark brown unit not black. Mr. A and I want to keep some of these items on display but I hate dust collectors, just hate them! So I am researching ideas and inspiration this week. I need some storage and I want to have an organize theme in the unit. Now that I see pictures of this thing I can see how bad I need to work on this.

*UPDATE: My pictures did not load correctly so for now a generic image will have to do. Let me know what you would do here!  The second image is as close as I could get to what we have right now!

(Source)

Right now we have a small TV on top of it and two small black and white framed photos on either side. I would like to keep the general feel of this area, but I just think it can "flow" more. 

Let me know your thoughts and ideas, I will post inspiration photos later this week and I will complete this project this weekend (I hope)! 

Friday Love Fest

Can we all just take a moment to look at how cute my dog Harry is?

 Every night as we go to bed we tell him to grab a friend to snuggle with, he proceeds to walk out into the living room and grab a toy. Then he brings it back and snuggles in his bed. Redick.

 Here he is all cute and in his bed. Loving on his toy.

 Here he is in the morning waking Mr. A up. I mean come on.

Here he is on the way home from a friends house, being all cute again. He likes car rides, but he likes naps on car rides even more. 

I thought these pictures might make you all smile just a little bit. Here is to the weekend!

Confession - I'm Like a Bird

I need to nest.

Lately I have been fighting off the uncontrollable urge to nest. It first started with a project of organizing our photo albums. I really wanted to pair them down and get them organized more. My mom recently sent me a bunch for stuff and I wanted to make room for some of it and then get rid of some of it. I don't need all of my report cards from my childhood that remind me of how horrible of a speller I am, I have this blog.

Anyway, from there it blossomed into me reading new decorating blogs my favorite is Young House Love, I want their whole house, no joke. I have now thinking about making some changes to the house. I desperatly want to do our porch and buy some outdoor furniture maybe even do some plants and stuff. But then I realize I live in an apartment and it might not be wise to buy all that stuff if this is a teporary location.

I then decided I wanted a new bed and bedroom fruiniture. I looked into the prices of new matress sets and thought I would take advantage of the recent Presitdent's Day sales. Well turns out a lot of those are a crock of you know what and I decided against this. Although I am stilly dying for a new bed.

So we wind up at this conclusion, I want to nest. I desperately want to buy a house to nest in. I am in love with a house and it is perfect in every way. I want to buy it and nest in it and do all of the above projects mentioned in it. So without further waiting I give you the house I secretly (not so secretly) love but know I will never be able to buy right now due to many reasons.

 

Can you believe this baby's room? I am dying.

 This house even has a  totally adorable "project" room. COME ON! If you want to see the full thing go here. Mr. A and I drove by it this weekend. I was hoping the neighborhood would be bad and I would hate it, but NOOOO it was cute and up and coming. Dammit.

So you ask why can't we buy this house? Well that can of worms is for another day. I am hoping putting this out there in the universe will help me process it and let it go. I. WANT. THIS. HOUSE. I will one day have a house just like this one. Right? NBD and I should just let it go. Right? No need to go get pre-qualified for a mortgage Right? No need to call a REALTOR . Right?