Outfit Of The Yesterday (Denver Home & Garden Show)

 ♫: Sprawl II - Arcade Fire x Soulwax



The Great Remodel of 2011 was put on hiatus over the winter for a few different reasons, mainly being the snowy weather, travel, the holidays, and blah-bah-blah-busy crap. But now that the weather is warming up, we have been itching to get back into it.

Well. I've been itching to get back into it.  Husband just wants a functioning bathroom or two, he says. Whatever. It's hard being married to someone so high maintenance.

So! Our official remodel schedule for this year is still pretty big. We need to:

1. Finish two of our three bathrooms (one being our on-suite, which is getting a total gut and revamp)
2. Figure out what the heck to do with those ugly, unfinished stairs
3. Draw up some ideas for our broken main floor fireplace to make it both functional and pretty
4. And get some furniture and furnishings.
5. I mean any furniture and furnishings.
6. 'Cuz we have none.

(I should probably explain to my newer readers, hello by the way: most of the furniture to this point in our lives had been a cast of confused, well-used characters; disjointed and displaced enough to make any empty college sorority house, or frat house, or..or...Daniel Steel novel jealous. As we installed new flooring in our entire house last year, Husband and I donated & discarded most of the old stuff as we went figuring it would be easier to dispose of it sooner rather than later! Right? So smart! Yes!)  (Noooo.)

So right, furniture. Furnishings. Uhhh. I still have no idea what I want, guys. I am drawing a total blank.

But while it is very exciting sleeping on only a mattress + wheelie bed frame and digging my clothes and various valuables out of Rubbermaid Storage Containers sprinkled throughout our house, I keep losing shit because I don't know where it is. We have almost lost a few chihuahuas down the back of our bed as well, as it slowly shifts away from the wall now as there is no longer any carpet to keep it from rolling, but that is what those two fuzzy jerk-blobs get for hogging all the pillows on our glamorous pillows-turned-makeshift-headboard anyway.

(Pinterest DIY on this totally (not) coming soon.)

So to get our creativity cranking again we decided to hit the Denver Home & Garden show on Saturday to see what we could see. Which....truthfully wasn't much, as it seems we paid an $11-per-person entrance fee only to get screamed and yelled at by vendors shouting all sorts of irrational things as we walked along. Free! Win $1500! Not free! Windows! Floors! 5 Hour Energy!  Pens! Free! Slap Chop! Shticky's! Furnaces!  Free not free not free not free, but free, not free free free free not free not free not free but free but kinda free but not free free not free but free!

There appeared to be a lot of people there willingly enjoying the badgering however, as the place was pretty packed, and as I had never been to a home show before I will admit I found it...odd. 

Hadn't these people ever heard of the comment sections on websites like Youtube? ESPN? Jezebel? Any local news station? You can imbibe in all the irrational abuse that your little masochistic heart desires at those websites, for free, and you don't even have to leave the comfort of your furniture-less, kinda broken home. 

(And if you feel extra reckless and randy, you can even turn off your pop-up blocker and be the 1,000th-person-winner of a totally legit iPad, too!)

I guess my main point is this: who wants to do business with a company that feels that shouting at you (as you desperately pretend that you are a deaf-mute from Funafuti, Tuvalu, while your husband alwaaaays forgets to play along) to win something is the best way to procure your loyal patronage (and money) forever and ever?

'Cuz it isn't. I've worked customer service long enough to know all the dangerously dirty tricks: be nice, be informative, be honest, don't be pushy, and the most important, shocking thing of all: sell something I actually want to buy. It's a brilliant concept. Thanks.

So I digress. The Don-Draper-Asking-A-Very-Polite-Lady-Of-The-Night-To-Slap-Him-In-The-Face-on-Thanksgiving type of weird torture that that whole experience was (Sunday yay!) aside, we did actually find a few things of interest at the show.

Mainly a map that did nothing to tell us where the buried treasure was even though we looked really hard:

And some total (cute) weirdo in a yellow shirt warmin' his backside on the fire pit. Jackpot!

This is what I wore:

Blazer: Zara (similar here) (similar here) (similar at Forever 21)
Tank: American Eagle Outfitters (similar at Forever 21 in "olive")
Belt: The Limited (similar here) (similar here for $11)
Pants: GAP, old (similar by All Saints) (similar for under $30) 
Necklace: Forever 21, old (similar here) (love this, too)
Ring: Yves Saint Laurent Arty in Aqua (buy it here) (similar here for under $100) (another option under $100)
Watch: Michael Kors Oversized Rosegold Watch (buy it here) (similar by Fossil)
Shoes: J Crew Savina Studded Sandals (buy them here) (similar by Nine West) (similar under $100)
Bag: Marc Jacobs Cooper in Nude (buy it here) (similar by Fossil) (similar by Rebecca Minkoff) (similar at F21)

Remodel Update + Currently Loving (November 2011)

Are you getting sick of coming to this blog only to see me stand in an empty room? Me too! So good news! We've moved the furniture back!  Yay!

But we're not quite done.  Okay, we're not even close to being done. While all of the flooring is now installed (save for the stairs, which will cost as much as our entire floor install to cover with matching wood) (so it looks like we really will do a slide + ball pit!) (or we'll pebble it, as I've been watching way too much I Hate My Bath and pebbling is so fun!  And so cheap!  And so easy!  And I so really want to do it!) (And I'm not entirely sure, but I think Husband would get mad if I pebbled over the new bamboo in our bedroom so I should probably do it on something else!), we still have quite a ways to go here.

Still on our list:

1. A complete master bathroom overhaul, complete main floor bathroom overhaul. We have only one bathroom (out of three!) that is fully functional at the moment, and let me tell you--it totally puts the fun into "functional". HA HA HAHAHA not really.
2. New furniture.  We threw/donated a lot of our old furniture away at the beginning of this, mostly because it was mismatching sets that we had each independently acquired early on in our adult lives. And while mismatching furniture can have a certain je ne sais quoi about it (and it was reeeally hard for me to part with that fake potted tree that I had adorned with white christmas lights when I was 21 in an odd attempt to be classy, as I apparently thought classy was replicating something found all across America in cheap Italian eateries?) (ha ha ha, and ya'll read this blog for style advice!) it is time for Husband and me to be adults and have good furniture that kind-of-sort-of matches without being covered in five different slip covers.  Mom, I know you're reading this, stop crying.
3. Painting more walls.
4. Buying some lights to hang, because sometimes being able to see shit is fun.
5. Buying more Bath and Body Wallflowers, 'cuz I'm horribly horribly horribly sickly addicted.
6. Doing a cool textured/printed wall paper on the two windowed walls framing the fireplace. Yes?  Those sluts are almost begging for it!
7. Doing something with that fireplace. As you will see in the pictures below, we decided to tear out the tiled hearth that jutted out in front as we were installing the floors. We then haphazardly patched it up since we had no master plan for the fireplace at that time. Um. We still have no master plan. That mirror needs to go.  Halp. 
8. A cool closet overhaul. This will be last, since Husband and I are the only ones that see the closet.  Bummer. 

But with both winter and the holidays looming on the horizon (and Husband starting his competitive youth basketball coaching again), it is definitely time for a break. In spite of the construction hiatus I will still be working on acquiring some pretty furniture over the next few months, once I figure out what it is that I actually want, because I am tired of using old throw pillows & wiggly chihuahuas as make-shift coffee tables. They never sit still, the little brown one shakes uncontrollably because she's weird, and it's stressful.

So here we go!  Time for some pictures. The main floor living room looks sparse right now (I am still working on finding a rug, a different coffee table since the zebra thing is going in our bedroom, a funky chaise or set of chairs, end tables, curtains, wall paper, funky knick-knacks, more wall decor, curtains, and lamps--whew!) but I am still thrilled with the results so far. Husband has worked so hard on this, and it has been a great bonding experience to work together towards finally having a space that reflects our style:

Before!

After!

Before!

After!

And a pretty vase + flowers from Z Gallerie that I picked up last week:

In that same vein, I am long overdue for a "currently loving" post. Here's what I am currently lusting after this November...and you just might see a few of the pretty things below pop up in my home soon, too! Enjoy:

What are YOU currently loving this month? Spill it in the comments! ♥

Outfit Of The Day (Kendra Scott Daphiney Earrings)

As I mentioned in my last post, I am finally getting a chance to reacquaint myself with my home. But unfortunately, while the big project is nearly finished (the new floors are almost all in!), there is still quite a long, hefty list of little things that need to be done too.  

So oh, it is far from being over.

While it has been extremely fun (and entertaining) to see our house being transformed, we still have shit everywhere. And I mean everywhere. It is everywhere it is not supposed to be, which means it's also a little chaotic--kitchen appliances are in one of the guest bedrooms, office stuff is in the kitchen, the pool table is piled in all of our clothes, and puppies are constantly wiggling around and getting their tails into the wet trim paint.  Aye chihuahua.

To make things even more fun, we have guests arriving tomorrow to stay with us! I just hope they know that they will be greeted with a big, dirty hug from me, but only so I can sneakily pass off a broom to them as I'm doing it. Maybe we'll even have a little party and play some games this weekend, including hide-and-go-seek--but only so we can figure out where the heckity-heck everything is.  First person to find my sanity (and my favorite bra, and my watch, and most of my jewelry, and the three mini Twix bars I picked up to eat this afternoon, but didn't, and now I don't know where they are but the last time this happened they were in the plants) wins! The win this nice gift from Jonathan Adler.  GET TO WORK.

On to the outfit. Thankfully, I have acquired a lil' bit of new jewelry during this remodel (since my usual stash is MIA) and today I am wearing the beautiful Daphiney Earrings sent from the very lovely people over at Kendra Scott. I often forget about earrings, as I am much more of a bracelet/ring/necklace fiend, but I think these earrings are a perfectly-pretty change of pace.

It is also hard to see from these pictures, but my earrings, bag, and nails all match!  It's the simple things that make me happy, shhhh:

 Top: Urban Outfitters (similar style here) (and here at J Crew) (and here + take 40% off)

Skirt: ASOS Double Layer skirt in "arabian spice" (buy it here, on sale!) (similar style here) (& here at Topshop)  (& a pretty pleated version here + take 20% off with code "HAPPYLFW")

Belt: J Crew (buy it here) (similar style at ASOS for $11!)

Shoes: Christian Louboutin Atalanta Sandals (similar style here by Nine West) (and here at Topshop)

Handbag: Chloe Paraty in Rosewood (similar style here) (and here) (and love this for under $100)

Ring: Forever 21 (buy it here - $5!)

Nail Polish: Essie Mamba (buy it here)

Earrings: Kendra Scott-Daphiney Earrings in Amythest (buy them here)

(Currently enjoying)

(Outfit Of The Day) A Beautiful September Wedding

So! I am still here, I promise.  

Life has been nothing short of crazy over the past two months, hence the lack of regular posting.  I am finally back at home, however, and most importantly back home without the looming threat of spending more time standing in the long lines of security at the airport (and then wondering, if the wobbly underground train that speeds back and forth between the three concourses derailed and ran into a wall and I survived, would I forever get free frozen yogurt from the World's Last TCBY That Is Randomly Located In DIA? Is that the rule?), or more driving on a long roadtrip (listening to Dr. Laura Schlessinger on Stars XM along the way for some bizarre form of masochistic torture to stay awake), or more living out of a suitcase and bathing my clothes and/or a random chihuahua in The Magical Downy Wrinkle Release on a daily basis.  You know--all the usual stuff that happens when traveling.

I've been everywhere, man, I have been everywhere.  My most recent trip was to Minneapolis to take part in a good friend's wedding and while It was a quick trip up there, it was jammed full of good fun.  So let's take a look at it, yes?

The bride herself is extremely artsy and crafty (and has cute freckles too, darn her!) and therefore wanted a DIY wedding.

So we folded lots and lots (and lots!) of pom-poms:

And we fulfilled our bridesmaid-y duties by bravely volunteering our husbands to test-try the Wilton's icing colors for juuust the right shade of pink:

{i'm hiding!}

Oh yeah. That's pink.

(and it didn't come off until several days later, cha cha cha)

After the Freaky Icing Color Debacle of 2011, we had to make a quick trip to the wedding decor aisle in WalMart, too:

{I'll just go ahead and say it--the wedding decor aisle in WalMart is kind of weird.}

I am wearing my moving-heavy-picnic-tables-early-on-a-Saturday-morning-while-Husband-watches-me outfit:

{it didn't even budge}

Pretty, pretty pom-poms:

Pretty, pretty bouquets arranged by the bride's mom!

My twin seester and me:

Outside shot of the Riehl farmstead:

The pretty, pretty bride & groom:

In love with her peacock hair clip, no?

Being silly:

{my mom used to tell stories about how, when we were itty-bitty-toddlers, she'd turn my sister and I loose in a gigaaaantic park and it'd never fail, we'd take off running and then run smack straight into each other.} {I sometimes feel like this explains a lot.}

More being silly:

Getting ready to head down the aisle:

{I was preparing to Souljaboy-Suparman-Dat-Oh down the aisle}

Husband!

After the wedding!

{the girls}

Cupcakes & cheesecake made by the bride--sooooo good!

Up to no-good with the pom poms:

{ripples mcgee}

Husband pretending to be me:

{hardy-har}

The wedding party:

Down by the Mississippi River, the end:

{and if our house ever catches on fire, I'm totally making sure to grab these and shove them into my Chanel flap as I flee.}

So!  That is that.  Now on to an outfit--our house is still in shambles, which means it is super exciting trying to find things to wear! And I'm talking about anything, really. I have no idea where anything is right now, and while I am not entirely sure if I liked my Dior Lolita booties with the outfit below...it was between those and a pair of  fuzzy bunny slippers.  It's all I can find.

(And the bunny slippers probably lost only because they were covered in sawdust and were a clashing shade of pink, soooo.)

I wore this outfit on Wednesday night while meeting up with one of Husband's old college roommates at The Atomic Cowboy for drinks, pizza, trivia, and fun. Simple, bold gold collars and chokers have been popping up all over the place, and I really love how they look with a silky blouse.  It adds a little bit of somethin' without detracting away from the prettiness of the blouse, I think, and are a welcome change from the beaded, blingy-and-heavy statement necklaces of seasons past.

And can I also say how much I love this blouse? I seriously, seriously love this blouse. It is gorgeous in person, feels great on, is machine washable (although I have not washed mine yet, so I cannot attest to the durability there) AND it's on sale right now at GAP. I'm wearing an XS and I think it fits well (it's supposed to be a teensy bit loose), so keep that in mind in case you want to grab it for yourself, too:

Blouse: GAP (buy it here, on sale) (similar style here by DVF) (and here) (and here for $13.50)

Skirt: Old J Crew (similar style here) (and here at ASOS) (and here for $19.80)

Necklace: Forever 21 (similar style here) (and here for $10) (and here for $15) (and here at Ann Taylor)

Bracelet: Forever21 (buy it here)

Shoes: Dior Lolita Booties (similar style here at Bluefly) (and here, on sale) (and here)

Bag: Lanvin Metallic Python Bag (buy it here) (similar style here at Macy's) (and here at GAP) (love this, too!)

(Currently bumping to...)

Outfit Of The Day (Playing Catch Up)

Oh, it has been another crazy week. The big remodeling project is officially going full bore, and while it might not be progressing quite as quickly as the magic worked on all of those remodeling shows on HGTV (they never show the wifey sitting on the ground in terry shorts and a ripped, stained tee pulling out 234328472807111asdfa17.03 staples from the sub-floor for five hours straight, do they?), it has still been moving along pretty darn fast.

In the meanwhile I have been busy picking out and organizing items for our next stage of the project.  You know--everything that a good house needs in order to properly function, like sinks! And counter tops! And bed frames, chairs, coffee tables, lights, gold metallic wallpaper for the main floor bath, paint to do big, bad, bold  black and taupe rugby stripes on the two walls next to the fire place, a happy little Jonathan Adler fox and peacock lollipop holder, and a baby kitten/goldfish/hedge hog/pet rock named "Moose". 

It has been fun so far and it is beginning to really come together--look for a pictorial update on this blog sometime this weekend. :)

Moving on to the fashion--here are a few old outfit snaps from over this past month that I never got around to posting.  Enjoy!

Camisole: Modcloth (buy it here) (similar style here) (and here)
Skirt: ASOS (buy it here) (similar style here for $49) (and a midi-style skirt here)
Belt: J Crew Skinny Patent Belt in Dark Amber (buy it here) (similar style here)
Necklace: Forever 21 (similar style here) (and here)
Bracelets: Forever 21 (similar style here)  (and here)
Shoes: J Crew Valentina Pumps in Bright coral (buy them here) (similar style here)
Bag: Chloe Marcie Satchel (similar style here) (similar style here, on sale)
Nail Polish: Chanel Miami Peach (similar color here)

My eyebrow definitely arched when I found this top at Ann Taylor a few weeks ago.  It is an oddly edgy, wicked little top for the retailer; full of snaps and straps that can be fastened in a multitude of different directions to make it kind of...well, kind of look like a straight jacket?

I am a sucker for both army green and epaulettes, though, and loved the way that the top fit once I tried it on.  It is a bit unusual but still really wearable; the fabric is nice and thick with just a hint of stretch and runs a little big (I sized down one size). 

Top: Ann Taylor (buy it here + take 25% off with code "WELCOME7") (similar style here) (and here in a cowlneck)
Shorts: Urban Outfitters (similar style here) (and here) (and here, on sale!)
Shoes: Lanvin for H&M (similar style here) (and here for under $50) (and here) (and a fun splurge at Endless!)
Bag: Diane Von Furstenberg (similar style here) (and here) (and here, on sale!)

If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you likely know that I love a good blouse.  But let me say it again: good-tatted-sweet-golly-David-Beckham-holding-a-Frenchie-puppy, I love a good blouse.  Don't you?

ASOS is a goldmine for pretty tops, and when this one popped up  I had to grab it. We have been seeing a lot of pleats on skirts this year, but a pleated blouse?  Divine!  It's light, floaty, and works well both tucked in and out.  It also runs big, so keep that in mind in case you want to grab it for yourself!

I also think that one would be hard pressed to find a fashion blogger out there that doesn't own an Arty (or Arty dupe).  I grabbed the Yves Saint Laurent Arty ring earlier this year during a big sale at Saks Fifth Avenue and it's made for an excellent splurge.  I have never been one to spend a lot of money on jewelry (most items in my arsenal probably average $50 or less), but this ring has been so worth it.  It's fun, gives a happy pop of color to any outfit, and even looks cool when kind of worn upside down (oops).

Top: ASOS (buy it here) (similar style here) (and here)
Pants: BDG at Urban Outfitters (buy them here) (similar style here)
Belt: J Crew (similar style here) (and here for $11)
Ring: Yves Saint Laurent Arty in Green/Aqua (buy it here) (similar style here)
Bracelet: Forever 21 (similar style here)
Watch: Michael Michael Kors (buy it here) (similar style here)
Shoes: Miu Miu Lace-up Oxfords (buy them here) (similar style here) (and here)
Bag: Kooba Josie Clutch (similar style here for $50) (and here, on sale)



(Currently bopping to...)