Back to School Fashion

Fashion is not - and will never be my middle name. And with back to school displays all around us I'm kinda jealous of all those who can get into the spirit and score some wonderful new items. Besides buying textbooks this week, the only other back to school shopping I've done was for 4 notebooks at $0.15 a pop at Walmart and some new purple pens. Ha ha, I know I'm such a dork!

For the last month or so I've been thinking about all the things I want to get before heading back to campus but I just haven't found the time (or any money growing on trees).  If it weren't for my mom, I would have started my final semester at ISU a complete fashion failure with nothing new. Thankfully she found me this totally cute purse from The Limited! And I love that it is big enough to handle a notebook or two so I don't have to take multiple bags to class. Thanks Mom!

 

I'm back!

I'm back to my blog and back to school! A lot of fun has happened over the last few weeks and I think we'll start back at my birthday -- August 9th.

Matt's been super busy this month with instructing courses for the recent new hires and unfortunately he was outta town for my bday. I can't really complain too much though because I've missed a few of his birthdays because of vacations (his bday is usually over spring break). So with Matt out of town, it gave me the opportunity to have a super fun "girls night out" on my birthday. With my birthday landing on a Monday this year, I wasn't sure what kind of turnout to expect and I was more than flattered to have so many wonderful girlfriends meet me out. I feel so blessed to have such a great network of fabulous, strong and beautiful women in my life! Thank you girls for making me feel so loved on my birthday. You each mean so much to me.

Thanks for taking a pic Liz to document the memory for me!

Tori Got Hitched!

Last weekend we were in Decorah for Tori & Clint's wedding. It was a great wedding and a fun weekend overall which is why I'd love to blog about it. Unfortunately, I completely failed to take any pictures. oops. And after reading Liz's blog about our tubing adventure on Sunday I know I won't be able to write anything more entertaining about that part of our weekend. It was so funny! So I'm going to "borrow" a few pics to post below and refer you to her blog instead. :)

But there were a couple details I wanted to add...

Tori & Clint first hit it off because of their mutual love of movies. They brought this passion into their wedding in the most creative way. All the songs during the ceremony were from various movies. This really made their ceremony personal and brought a fun atmosphere to the day. Also instead of traditional vows, they worte each other promises. It was very sweet and romantic, especially to see both of them show so much emotion.

They also added a lot of personal touches to the reception to make it their own. As neither of them are big fans of cake, they decided to go with pie and cookies for dessert instead. And they also fed one another sushi since they didn't have cake and pie might have been a little messy. Plus I hear sushi is one of their favorite meals. One thing that was really exciting about the pies and cookies is that my friend Jessica made them. I'm not really a big fan of fruit pie but the cherry she made was worthy of a second bite. And the frosted cookies is the shape of cakes were super cute and delish. Plus it was fun to taste some of her "professional" work. Here's a link to her facebook website! Good job Jess!

Isn't she beautiful!?!?

One of Jess's delicious cookies!

Matt and I at the wedding

Book Club goes to the Zoo

Our book club just had our 2nd annual outing to the zoo! Zoo Brew is a weekly event at the Blank Park Zoo during June and July. They have themes for each week and feature different "brews" to try while roaming around checking out the animals. The last Zoo Brew featured local wineries which is why we picked that night to attend. And apparently half of the young adults in the DM mentro area did too. It was totally packed! The wine tasting lines were waaaay too long but we still had fun! Here's a pic of the book club girls who could make it and our favorite men!   

 

 

While the boys don't ever attend our book discussions (gossip sessions), I bet they could name many of our favorites from hearing us gab about them before and after we meet up with the ladies. I think this may because we rarely talk more than 20 minutes about the book when we get together since we're spending too much time just catching up and having fun! At our June get-together we took the time to write down all the books we've read since we started this club almost 2 years ago. Some of our choices have been outstanding, some interesting but not worth rereading, and some I didn't even get to due to being busy at school. Here's our reading list from the beginning:

October 2008 – The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

November 2008 – Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
December 2008 – We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
January 2009 – Three Cups of Tee by Greg Mortenson
February 2009 – Forget About It by Caprice Crane
March 2009 – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
April 2009 – The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
May 2009 – My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Piccoult
June 2009 – The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
July 2009 – Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
August 2009 – Oxygen by Carol Cassella
Sept / Oct 2009 – Always Looking Up by Michael J Fox
November 2009 – Some Kind of Different as Me by Denver Moore
December 2009 – Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
January 2010 – Push by Sapphire
February 2010 – A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog by Dean Koontz
March 2010 – Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
April 2010 – Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
May 2010 – The Help by Kathryn Stockett
June 2010 – Little Bee by Chris Cleave
July 2010 – The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
August 2010 – The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

 

Decorating my Desk

I only have 2 and a half weeks left at my internship but I finally found something worthy to use to personalize my desk. Better late than never, right?!? :) I've actually never been good at "decorating" my work desk. I had the same desk at UP for 2 years and never brought in any trinkets or pictures. I think I had one picture of Matt and I on my desk at DAS but that was after a coworker made fun of me for not having anything. It's weird because in my previous apartments and at our house now, I looooove to decorate with photographs. I'm not really sure what that says about me as a person to have a de-personalized desk at work but I'm sure there are articles out there on it.  What do you have on your desk to make it your own?

As I mentioned in this post, Matt and I attended TC & Laura's wedding last month. We had a fantastic time! Laura recently got her professional pics back and she emailed me this photo this morning. This is a classic dance move for Matt but I've never been able to catch it without him noticing the camera. Even though it's wasn't taken at our wedding, it definitely reminds me of ours because he was being the same fun-loving guy there. It reminds me of our fun and crazy times without being too crazy. :) I can't help but smile each time I look at it. 

Organizing my Closet

Did you know that people only wear 20% of the clothes in their closet? That means 80% of my closet is being wasted, in regards to both space and moolah! How terrible is that! Unfortunately, I know it's true for me. I'm terrible at going through and purging. I always think "i just haven't found the right occassion for this yet" or "maybe i'll like it better if I lose 10 pounds". With 2 moves last year, I had plenty of opportunity to let go of some clothes, and while I did let go of some things, I know I should have let go of much more. I've had some clothes since high-school but I just can't give them away.

I recently attended a workshop called "Image and Influence - Polishing your Professional Look." I was there to "test it out" to see if it would be a good program to offer to our employees. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to go because it was definitely an eye-opener. Most of the things the presenter said seemed obvious. Of course I shouldn't buy a shirt (even though it's cute and on sale) if I have nothing else in my closet that I can wear with it. It's just going to sit there in the 80% and be wasted. I learned A LOT during the 3 hour workshop and one of the biggest take away's was about reorganizing my closet. So this past weekend, I decided I should try and implement some of the things I learned. It's not going to be an easy (or short) process but eventually I'm going to get there.

Hang up everything
It's ok to have bras and undies, as well as jeans and workout clothes in your drawers but everything else needs to be on a hanger. So that means during the winter, I need to hang my sweaters up instead of stacking them neatly in a drawer or on a shelf. The thought is, if you can't see it, you forget about it. And if it's slightly inconvient to get (you need a chair to step on, or it's a the bottom of a pile and you'll have to refold everything) then you won't take on the hassle to wear it.
It took awhile but I went through all the drawers and pulled out all my tops. I also hadn't made it through all the boxes yet so I took the time to do that this weekend too. My closet isn't big enough to allow me to hang up all my winter tops but when the seasons change, I'll need to rotate my clothes around. I also moved all my "party" dresses down to the basement bedroom closet. I obviously don't need those on a regular basis so it's better to use their space for clothes I could be wearing.

Organize by color
When you try and decide what to wear in the morning it's usually decided by the mood you're in. And that relates to color. I'm feeling fun and energized so I'll go to a pink top. Or I want to crawl back into bed so I'm going for a grey or black cardigan. Sorting by color makes it quicker and easier to find an outfit in the morning. The other important reason to organize by color is for buying new clothes. It's much easier to visualize what clothes you have when they're sorted by color. Then when you consider buying something new, you can think, "what do I have to wear with this?" and "do I really need another one of these because I have 5 like it already?" This way you don't purchase something that ends up in the 80% of unworn clothes.
Before my clothes were (loosley) organized by function - pants, skirts, sweaters, short-sleeve tops, etc. Sorting them by color was only slightly better than having to alphabetize files, because I discovered a few shirts that were hidden. Now that it's done though it's kinda neat to see how many and what shade of color I have. I realized that I have very few prints. (If you have lots of prints, she said to organize it by whatever color is most dominant.) And I don't have any yellows or oranges. Which I remember she said was ok. 80% of people look good in cool tones while only 20% look good in warm tones. I'm a cool tone girl.

Flip the hangers backward
This trick is for people, like me, who have a hard time letting go of clothes. Flip all the clothes around so that the hangers' open ends curl towards you. Then as you wear an article of clothing, flip the hanger back around normal (away from you). As you continue through the season you'll flip more hangers back around normal but most likely at the end of the season/year/whatever stopping point you want to use, you'll be able to easily see which clothes you didn't wear. If you didn't wear it this year, you're probably not going to wear it next year so it's ok to let it go.
This also took a while to do. I would suggest doing it before or at least at the same time as organizing by color. If you wait to do it last, you'll have to do each hanger individually otherwise if you do it as a group it might mess up your flow of colors. I'm really hoping this well help me purge at the end of each season. Even though I might really love a shirt, if I passed it by every morning for 6 months then it needs to find a new home where it can actually be worn. The Pioneer Woman just did this and gave out all her new or almost new clothes to her readers. I think she's gifted them all already but here's her first post about it.

Well, I think this about wraps up my longest post ever! :) Here's a snapshot of my still-chaotic-but-with-a-little-more-purpose closet. Organizing my shoes are next on my list.

Home grown!

Aren't they beautiful?!?! 
Matt got them for me. (It's ok to be jealous.)
He picked them from our yard. (It's ok to be even more jealous.)
Having a yard is so awesome. And thankfully the previous owners spent lots of time and effort on the landscaping. They did a great job of timing all the different plants to bloom at different times so that we've had flowers throughout the summer. Unfortunately, all the heavy rain and wind this past week took down some of our beautiful plants. Including our tomato plants. :( Cross your fingers that the flowers and veggies all bounce back! Here's a few more pics of the flowers we've had in our yard.