Movin' on up: Living Room.

The boyfriend and I are getting a house soon, and I'm so (SO SO) excited! Last night I fell asleep with a fast heartbeat and a smile on my face, thinking about our dog sleeping inside and a craft room and a place to call our home. I've done a lot of growing in the last year and I'm so ready to finally project that into a space.

So I thought I'd put my Pinterest lurking to good use and get some inspiration. Since I'm not sure we'll be able to paint, I'd like to keep it homey but with pops of color and retro and modern accents. I've always loved the kitschy look, especially in the kitchen, but I feel like my taste is changing all the time, so I'd like to stick with something a little simpler, that I can easily redecorate and switch things around.

Couch via Biscuit Home // Chevron Rug // Apple Pillow via Klippan // Coffee Table via Zinc Door 

Wall Clock via Target // Lumineers Print via Livy Love Designs

Music Monday #10: Glasvegas.

Over the weekend, I had a little disagreement with a friend over the talent of Mumford and Sons. When I first heard them, I really wasn't into it. Their songs seemed to rhyme just for the sake of being catchy (Sigh No More). They eventually grew on me. Anyway, he posted this song and some others on another friend's Facebook and I can't stop listening now. I do love me some Scottish bands. (Belle and Sebastian, Frightened Rabbit, Mogwai, Camera Obscura)

I hope you enjoy as much as I do!

Life lately, in picture form.

Last weekend was pretty lovely. I worked for a little while on Saturday to catch some more hours, and then went over to a friend's for a bonfire. The next day, I went for lunch and mimosas, then thrifting with two of my friends. The first place we went I found two Pyrex bowls. I have been looking for a LONG time for some Pyrex, so I was really excited and probably paid a little more than I should have. Oops! Even though more than half of the places we went were closed, I was still excited to have people to go thrifting with. Just gotta go on a Saturday next time.

Not to get too off topic, but I realized I don't post too many pictures from things that I've been up to. A couple weeks ago, some of my family from Oklahoma came down to visit, and my mom had been organizing a reunion for my grandfather's bomb group from World War II. We had a really nice dinner, and the next day we attended the Veteran's Day Parade downtown. My grandfather and some of the other veterans got to ride in the parade in classic cars, which was awesome!

Salmon at the banquet dinner.

 My niece and I at the parade.

Some things we collected from the ground.

Classic cars. My grandfather is in the second one!

Kelly and I trying to find fun in Columbia; Her Christmas present.

A letter to the boyfriend.

Thrifting finds.

 

 Outside.

Lastly, a festive cup of tea at a friend's house.

Have a good weekend!

Wardrobe Wednesday: Polka Power.

Oh, Wednesdays.... I think I learned my lesson this week on taking outfit pictures before Wednesday rolls around, and everything is last minute. I got this dress about a year ago from a thrift store, and I love love love it. It's so comfortable and hangs just right. It's not too tight on the waist, either. But I think the sleeves are my favorite part. It finally got a little bit colder today, and I could have worn tights with this, but almost all of my tights have runs. :(

 

Outfit Details:

Bow: handmade

Dress: vintage

Belt: from another dress

Shoes: Kohl's

I really like the simplicity of this outfit. I'll probably get some new tights and wear a festive bow then wear this on Christmas day!

Music Monday #9: The Raveonettes.

I first listened to The Raveonettes when I was in 10th grade, mostly I played the song "Uncertain Times" on repeat, around anyone who would listen or when I laid in the grass smoking cigarettes outside in the cold. (Oh, to be sixteen...) They put out their newest album in September, which I just listened to today after feeling the nostalgic need to hear my old song. Anyway, I heard this song which I quite like. Hope you enjoy, too!

Wardrobe Wednesday: Seventy Degrees.

In South Carolina, we have pretty mild winters. It might snow once or twice, but never enough to have too much fun in. That's why I'm so excited to go to the mountains for new years, I absolutely love cold weather. :) Today it was 70 degrees outside, which is fine I guess, but it's always hard for me to get in the holiday spirit when I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and everyone's driving with their windows down!

Whenever I look at these pictures before posting, I'm always like, "GAH I LOOK SO AWKWARD." Maybe it's like how you notice every facial imperfection you have, but in reality it's not noticeable. Or maybe I DO look extremely awkward! Oh well.

 

I love this scarf 'cause when it gets real cold outside, I can wrap it up a bunch of times and then fold it over my head and face. It looks silly, but so comfortable and warm. :)

 

 

Oh, and this is my little system for taking pictures every Wednesday. I drag my full-length mirror downstairs, position it against a window ledge, then set my camera on top of it and balance it with a piece of string. Kinda ridiculous and annoying, but it works for now!

Outfit Details:

Scarf: gifted

Shirt: vintage

Shorts: Forever 21

Tights: Target

Shoes: Kohl's

Hope you all had a great day!

Tuxedo Nails

I've been wanting to try something different with my nails and I decided on the tuxedo nail. I think Zooey Deschanel started it, or at least that's when I started to see it around. Not to talk about her two days in a row or anything... BUT whether she or Nancy Grace were the first to do it, I wanted to give it a try! Usually I just do a two tone with a strip of tape.

I kinda followed THIS tutorial from Nail Tart, except I cut my tape in v-shapes because I don't have that steady of a hand. For the bows, I started with a dot on the inside then used a bobby pin to drag it out on either side. I don't have one of the fancy nail art pens so this definitely didn't turn out as well as it could have.

 

I am so frustrated with the quality of my pictures. I know that soon enough I'll be able to finally afford a DSLR, but it gets discouraging when you have to take 30 pictures just to get a blurry close up. :( Next week I'll be posting a tutorial for Christmas light nails. I've seen one on Pinterest, of course, but I might change it up a little bit!

  

Music Monday #8: Sleigh Ride.

December... When Black Friday commercials are finally off the radio, and Christmas music replaces it. I don't like or support the materialistic craziness of Black Friday, and I never used to like Christmas music. Or listening to the radio. But a lot has changed in this past year of my life, and I have to listen to the radio at work now. (Which, I'm not complaining, because I have a job and get to listen to music while working.) And my co-worker LOVES Christmas music. I won't deny that when I was leaving work one day last week, I caught myself humming holiday songs.

I think I've been converted... Therefore I'd like to dedicate all Music Mondays this month to Christmas music. I'll start with She and Him. I'm a huge Zooey Deschanel fan, and an M. Ward fan. So when the two got together it was a dream! Her voice is so, so amazing.

Wardrobe Wednesday: Polyester + Braided Leather.

I felt like wearing something real bright today, probably because I'm going to see Fun. tomorrow and because today I booked our cabin in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee for New Years! I don't even know which I'm more excited about. Fun. didn't come out of my CD player for, like, six months. But I've needed to get away from this town for a while. I try to get away for a weekend as often as I can, but I think the last time I got anywhere far was when Corey and I took our road trip to New York City almost a year ago. So it's about time.

Moving on...

Outfit Details:

Shirt - vintage

Skirt - Target

Belt - Target

Bracelet - don't know, hah.

Shoes - Journey's

Ughhh, so I'm a newb and use Photobucket to edit my dumb camera's poor picture taking skills, but whenever I post them on here, they don't show up as edited! It's like certain times of day that it doesn't work or something. So. Annoying. I don't get it. Wednesday's are definitely very frustrating for me when it comes to editing pictures. Hopefully I'll find a good substitute sometime soon.
   

Music Monday #7: Lust for Life

A friend showed me this video a couple years ago, and I was smitten. I've been listening to Girls ever since. They're weird and sad and poppy and catchy.
It's sorta like the best kind of nostalgia.

Holiday Crafts: Pet Christmas Stocking Tutorial

I'm going to be posting some holiday craft tutorials over the next few weeks that I'm really excited about! Today I'm sharing with you guys some stockings my mom and I made for the pets in my family. We have eight total (four dogs and four cats) so it was quite a lot of work. The supplies are inexpensive and this is a project for any skill level.

You will need:

Freezer paper (or some paper to trace on)

Red material of your choice

White felt

Christmas pattern fabric

Glitter glue

Hot glue gun

Silver stretchy cord

First, you're going to make a 12x6 rectangle on your tracing paper. Draw your stocking shape within the rectangle. I let my foot come out a little further than the 6 inches.

Next, you're going to use your tracing paper to cut out whatever shapes you want to go on your stocking. I chose a bone, mice, and fish.

Now you're going to take the stocking shape you have cut out and pin it to your red fabric. I doubled up the fabric before cutting, since the stocking is obviously going to need two sides, and we had eight to make and didn't feel like pinning the design 16 times.

Take your white felt and cut a rectangle that's 6 inches by about 3 or 4 inches. (Or however big you want the white top of the stocking to be.)

Now take your shapes you previously made and pin them to your patterned fabric to cut out.

Yay! We're, like, halfway there now. Take two pieces of your stocking fabric and put the white strip at the top, in between. Then sew around the edges, leaving the top of the stocking open and unsewn.

Now turn your stocking inside out. You'll be left with the white strip looking like this:

Hopefully your hot glue is heated up, because you'll need to glue that thing down. Try to only glue around the edges so you can't see it through the top of the fabric. 

Now you'll place your little shapes where ever you feel like and glue those down, too. I kinda failed at taking pictures until the end, but it's pretty self-explanatory so I think you get the idea.

Once gluing everything down, take some stretchy cord, or ribbon or whatev, and glue it around the border. Cut another separate piece to make a loop for the inside.

Now use your glitter glue to glue around the edges of your shapes. I think it makes it stand out more and also prevents fraying around the edges. Then write in your beloved pet's name.

Be sure to let your stockings dry overnight, or longer, before poking around at the glitter glue. That stuff really doesn't dry quickly enough. Now you can show your pets how crafty you are, and they will love and appreciate your efforts even more!

If you decide to make these stockings, I'd love to see how they turn out!

Music Monday #6: I am still filled with feeling.

I first saw this video years ago in a skateboarding video. Immediately I was Google-ing the lyrics to find out more about this band. I never found much, and still to this day I've only heard about 5 songs. The main dude is Brendan Fowler, an LA based musician and visual artist. Here's his WEBSITE that links to some of his work. I'm not really a fan. Anyway, this song rules. Hope you enjoy!

Wardrobe Wednesday: Clothing origin.

I know, not really a happy topic... but I wanted to talk about something important. Child labor is a serious problem, and not only child labor but poor working conditions and treatment of employees. I watch a lot of documentaries, and most recently I've not been able to stop thinking about The Corporation. Working in embroidery, we work with a lot of different name brand clothing such as Under Armour, Champion, Real Tree, Nike, and so on. Champion clothing was the last produced in the USA until 2002, but has since moved factories down to Mexico.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE

YOUR CLOTHES COME FROM?

I don't really want to throw around the term "sweatshop" so I will make it my point that IT MATTERS where your clothes come from. As little as 2% of clothing sold in America is made in America. There are very few companies that fully manufacture all of their garments. I'm not saying to quit buying anything you haven't done your research on, I'm just asking you to educate yourselves. To know where it's all coming from. As a consumer, all we can do is spread the knowledge and make the choice of buying handmade, fair trade, and eco-friendly products. Or you can take the easy way, and buy vintage clothing!

Outfit Details:

Ring - Flower ring by Mata Traders

Brooch - Fleet Fox by Dear Winsome on Etsy

Scarf - Tye-dyed scarf by Mata Traders

Top - Ripple Tide Top by ModCloth

Jeans - Spring in Every Season by ModCloth

Leather Boots - GINA by Johansen

Sadly, this outfit took me FOREVER to combine considering everything came from a reputable source. We can make a difference by making simple or dramatic changes by what you purchase. I hope you all take something from this and feel free to comment or ask me any questions you might have!

Music Monday #5: I've been down, I've been out.

I mentioned before that my hours at work got cut, and now I'm officially off on Mondays. This is pretty cool because now I have one full day a week to focus on everything. I just now signed up on StoreEnvy and I've got a lot of work to get done in the next two weeks!

My music tastes ranges from one end to the other, but I really do love me some alt-country. I've been listen to a lot of Chuck Ragan and Joe Pug lately. It seems like a lot of the singers from bands I like have solo stuff, and they apparently collaborate together and I didn't even know it! Ben Nichols of Lucero, Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Tom Gabel of Against Me!, Matt Skiba of Alkaline Trio, and lastly Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem. This isn't all of them, but their solo stuff is so. good. Brian Fallon is my latest discovery so today I'm posting a Gaslight Anthem cover he did.

Happy Monday!

   

Maw-Maw and Pa-Paw.

For a Halloween party, I got Corey to dress up as an old person with me. I was surprised at how little convincing it took, but the night of the party it seemed like the more beer he drank, the more work it took to convince him. So I made a special hat that he couldn't deny! :)

I have no idea why my granny face was a no-tooth smile and half closed eyes. I guess I felt old while making that face, but in pictures it looks pretty silly.

Some costumes included a flapper, sheriff, day of the dead skeleton, (lazy!) bunny, pink lady from Greece, Mexican, surgeon, redneck, and of course Pa-Paw.

I've been friends with the two girls in the pictures above for a very long time. It's really an awesome thing to make it through hell and back, from elementary school to college, and still be able to call yourselves friends. The other day I was sorting through a lot of old junk and I had kept two notes, one from each of them, that meant a lot to me. We all ended up hanging out later that night and it was funny to let them read what they wrote so many years ago!

Here's the full elder attire:

As you can probably tell by my constant "granny face", I stayed in character most of the night. Everyone looved our outfits and everywhere we went people/strangers were saying, "Grandma, take a picture with me!" These pictures make me laugh so hard, Corey just looks so funny and creepy as a grandpa!

My hours got cut today at work, which isn't really a good thing but I am excited to focus a little more on building and launching! There are a lot of things to be excited about, sometimes the hard part is actually remembering how lucky I am. I'm so grateful for everything in my life. But it's a little too soon for sappy Thanksgiving related posts, so we'll save that for some other day!