Home decor I am currently drooling over

I can't remember if I talked about the fact that my husband and I made our first trip to IKEA the other week.

Holy amazeballs!

It was flipping huge (that's what she said). And we spent nowhere near enough time there. I honestly cannot wait to go back, which will hopefully be very soon.

Even though we didn't have enough time there, we did spend enough time for me to find many different things that I am dreaming of owning.

*Taps fingers together evilly*

I have nowhere to currently use this beauty, but it doesn't keep me from wanting it. Each little "flower" is made from a paper type material and the shadows it casts are amazing!

I want like 20 of these to hang all over the house. In areas like, but not limited to, the kitchen, office and bathroom.


We bought the desk/bookshelf combo from the EXPEDIT line for our craft room, but I would love this setup for a wall in our kitchen. It would give a lot more storage/decorating options for a small kitchen. Plus we could paint it to match whatever our current decor is.


I'm in love with this fabric and want drapes made out of it. Can anyone sew? Please?

Seeing as we don't currently have a chair for either the desk or the craft table, I think these would be great. They are comfortable and would easily blend in with whatever we had in the office/craft room/2nd guest bedroom.

So there are my current wants. Is there any home decor you have been drooling about? Have you been to an actual IKEA store? What did you think?

A fall nail color for my desire for it to be fall

What a full and very busy weekend! All I know is that fall better get here soon, because I am more than ready for it! It didn't help that this weekend we went to pick apples and the farm had pumpkins and decorative corn to tempt me (the temptation won if you were wondering). My desire for fall is so bad that I have even been wearing fall colors on my nails. I've been snatching up the new colors from both OPI's Swiss collection and Essie's Fall collection. Which means...lucky for you, I'll have a lot of nail polish swatches coming up!


For the past week I have been wearing OPI's "Diva of Geneva". It's a purple with a lot of red undertone, but at the same time the color changes a good amount depending on the light. I have on three coats in this picture, but that's only because I added a third coat after 5 days so I could take a picture without chipped nail color. Two coats worked for me, but the 3 coats did help hide any booboos I made. The color also dried quickly for me (I didn't use anything to help it dry). All and all I am smitten with this color. I love looking at my hands when I have this on. I can quickly see this becoming an all time favorite of mine.

Oh and how great is that apple!? Hand picked by me! I cannot tell you how fun it is to go pick apples...but it is and you should do it if you can. I plan on going again...and will have a different nail color for the occasion!

OOTD

I thought it might be fun to post my OOTD. I actually got out of my jeans (oh who are we kidding I mean mesh shorts) and tank tops today. Most because there was a spouses orientation for the incoming student's spouses. I'll just say that the best part of the day was getting to wear my new dress that Nate bought me. Other than that, the day made me feel sad (issues with not fitting in, yet again).

On to happier things...my outfit!

Reebok EasyTone flip flop review

Close to four months ago I told you all that my wonderful husband got me the Reebok EasyTone flip flops. I was excited about them.

Not so much anymore.

Don't get me wrong, they are a good flip flop, but for the price you could get a kick ass pair of heels.

They're touted as being able to tone and strengthen. And man do I wish I could say that happened for me, but it didn't. I wore these every day for a month and even past that month I was wearing them pretty much every time we did something. Even if I was home, I walked around the house in these. Heck, I wore these things throughout all of our moving process. They do warn that you might need to have a breaking in time for the shoes/flip flops because of the rolling/rocking motion that the sole causes. I never felt that I needed to break them in and I never really felt the rolling. Though I do have to say that I already have an unusual walk because of my knee/hip issues, so that may mean that these were never going to work for me.

Even after all of this time, my butt doesn't feel differently. Nor do my thighs. In fact they are still the same jiggly mess they were before.

In short, if you have the money to spend on them...don't bother. I was nowhere near impressed at all. Especially for how much the flip flops cost (and the shoes cost even more!). If you want firm thighs and a butt, do it the old fashioned way. Work out.

Making a storage area pretty

I keep promising to show you all ways that I have been decorating our new home, but really we are nowhere near close to the finished product. But I do finally have something to share with you...closets!

Yeah yeah, not that exciting for you, but it was for me.

We lucked out and ended up with a house that has a lot of closets. So much so that we were able to turn one into a pantry. Upstairs we have three linen closets and that's not including the bedroom closets (each bedroom has two).

For the linen closest I decided to use contact paper to cover the shelves. It gives me peace of mind knowing that my bedding is sitting on something that is clean (and easily cleanable). It also protects the wood shelves from any liquids that might spill. Plus, it just looks pretty when I open the door.

The closest closet to the guest bathroom will house all of our towels and extra soaps and such. The one near the bedrooms will be bedding and all of my candles.

Side note...yes I know I own a lot of candles. I just love them so much. Plus I just can't pass up a deal at TJ Maxx/Marshalls.

Then there is a third, very small closet that is in our master bathroom. That will hold all of our bath supplies and my make up.

Honestly, contact paper is such an easy way to spruce up a dull space. Plus it doesn't cost much. Two rolls ran me under $10 and you can get a variety of patterns to suit your decor (mine is a variegated green stripe).

Putting away sheets never looked this good!

What keeps me from unpacking

It's really hard to get all of this unpacking done when we have places like this to go to...


It's even harder when there are local farms close by that allow us to pick our own produce. So far we have picked raspberries, blackberries, tomatoes and okra.

That's right...this girl and her husband not only know how okra grows, but also got to pick it (and eat it). Plus this okra is red, how cool is that!?

The okra flowers are absolutely beautiful. It was wonderful getting to pick okra while looking at those amazing blooms. While we were at that farm we were also able to get tomatoes, purple bell peppers and pickling cucumbers. I'm planning on teaching Nate how to make pickles, but I haven't done it in probably close to 8 years. We'll have to see how it goes, but I'll definitely post about it!

I keep telling myself that it's all worth it. That I can unpack later. Soon Nate will be starting school and we won't be able to explore the way we have been.

That...and I hate unpacking.

A vintage comback

Two days ago my vintage dresses got unpacked and placed into a closet. It was really fun looking through them again. As I was doing so, I realized that I haven't shared all of my pieces with you.

Shocking, I know.

So for everyone who loves/loved looking at my vintage...here's some more for you!


This dress is made by Miss America. I've done some research on the line and it looks like they mostly made ball gowns. I have no idea if they were made for the actual pageant though. It's not an easy brand to research seeing as the name is the same as the very popular show. I love the color of the dress, it feels very Barbie to me. I also like the fact that there are two different pink shades in the beading. It's little things like that, which makes these dresses so fun. It doesn't hurt that the top looks like flames.

The dress does have some issues, like some ripped tulle and a dirty bottom. To me that just shows that it was loved. Plus it can be cleaned and the rip isn't that noticeable.


This is one of those dresses that I would love to be able to wear to a ball or something similar. I think it would be such a fun dress to wear out, because it has the classic lines but the fun look of sequins and an unusual top.


There are a few more vintage pieces that still need to be shared, so keep and eye out for them!

Something that make me happy...

...getting to plant flowers and not kill them! Also getting to wear my rain/garden boots while doing the planting.

Even better than that!? Owning daisies!


Yes that is right, The Thing About Daisies now owns her very own real life Shasta Daisies!

I may have done a little dance when I saw them. It's the simple things.


I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend full of things that make you happy!

Our new home

With all of this moving talk, I figured the least I could do was show you the house...well the empty house before we swooped down with all of our boxes and furniture. I won't horrify you with the current look, seeing as it's boxes and stuff waiting for a home strewn about everywhere. But don't you worry, soon the house will be put together enough to get pictures of.

For now, walk through the empty house with me. Picture what I want to do with each room, or come up with ideas of your own. Your choice.


A quick rundown on the house, it was built in the 50's and it has 3 bedrooms/2.5 bath. We have a tiny tiny back yard which is mostly a cement patio and what once may have been a grassy area.

We painted the dining room and the half bath. Actually I striped the dining room, which yes, I swore I would never do again. All I have left to do is some touch up painting from where paint peeled of with the tape. Honestly with as much paint as there probably is on these walls, there is 50 years of paint after all, I'm amazed that more paint didn't peel off.

Currently we have one room set up (minus some decor), which is the half bath. I would count the dining room, but it's full of glass items waiting for homes.

*Sigh*

It will get done, and it will look great.

Perhaps I can get the half bath totally done and posted this weekend...

Our road trip in pictures

While I get back into the blogging world, please enjoy these photos from our long road trip. As in we went through 11 states (the 11th being Ohio). We may have taken a long detour to visit a friend, which was well worth it because we love meeting her finally!


So there the last of our trip out to Ohio. Soon I should have some pictures of our home being set up and some other things. Once things get more unpacked here I will be able to get back to more frequent posts.

Hope your Monday was great!

The last round of reviews for pet friendly hotels

Since I promised to do reviews for the pet friendly hotels we stayed at, I wanted to get this blog post done before I moved onto the trip and actually living in Ohio.

It's hard to believe that we have been here for exactly a week. Time flies when you have boxes to unpack.

Anywho, the last two hotels we stayed at were Aloft in Birmingham, AL and Hotel Indigo in Athens, GA. Both were wonderful and places we'd stay at again in a heart beat.

Aloft is very much just that, a hip loft feel for bedrooms. When you walk into the lobby you notice a nice light scent that fills the air. Very refreshing after a day in the car. They also all loved Emmett, every time the people at the desk saw him, they came out to pet and play with him. They also offered to bring up a dog bed up to our room, but ended up being out of them. Though they still brought Emmett dog treats. For the humans they have Bliss products, which were amazing to use. Oh and there was no pet fee what-so-ever!



Hotel Indigo was also wonderful. They are eco minded and tried to use and many green products in their rooms as possible. They even had recycling bins in the bathroom. We actually ended up in a penthouse room for just $5 extra (pet fee was $75 and most costly) . The rooms are very open and bright, with great pops of color. HUGE bonus, if you stay there with a pet on Wednesday night (even if you don't stay there), they have a Canine Cocktail hour. Where they have drink specials for the humans (some drinks have dog names) and cookies for the dogs. They also gave Emmett a dog collar that had the hotel logo on it!



So there you have it...our dog friendly hotels.

Of course that means the next few blogs you'll see from me will be a road trip recap, our new home, projects that we have started and projects that we want to do. Heck I even have some beauty reviews (shampoo/conditioner and nail polishes). So keep following and thank you to everyone who stuck with me while we did this move! I can't wait to get back into blogging.