2011 End of Year Wrap-up

2011 was a pretty good year.  Here are some of the high points:

We bought our first house!  This is me on closing day, in my beautiful new kitchen.  A few weeks later, we celebrated our 4th anniversary. 

I traveled a fair amount.  In February, I went to Tempe, AZ to visit a friend.

 

In March, John and I went to Washington, DC and hit up all the tourist spots.  One of our good friends was living out there, so we had free lodging and an awesome tour guide!

 

In May, I went to see Wicked (for the second time, still awesome) with John's mom, sister, aunt and grandma.  It was a great night!  It's ok if you are jealous of my in-laws.  

In June, I went out to Colorado for my friend, Laura's wedding.  I also got to see her in August when I was back in Denver for a work trip! 

I also went to Indianapolis in June to visit the fam, Kansas City in April for a friend's bachelorette party, the middle of nowhere Kansas for my family reunion in August, Wichita in November for another friend's wedding, and then back to Indy for Christmas. 

I read 30 books in 2011.  Now, I know this isn't impressive compared to a lot of people, but I'm comfortable with it.  My favorites were The Hunger Games trilogy, Bossy Pants, and Freakonomics.

And last but not least, I started this blog!  After reading other fashion blogs for quite awhile, and a LOT of encouragement from friends and family, I finally jumped in and did it on November 18th.

Here's to 2012!!    

Hermès, Is that you??

This afternoon, I went to Goodwill with one of my work friends.  After striking out in the clothing section, I wandered over to the purses.  I was about to give up and call it a day, when I noticed this purse staring right at me:

I had to pull out my phone and google tips for spotting a knockoff Birkin.  I'm pretty sure this isn't a real one, but I couldn't pass it up. I mean, what are the odds of an authentic Hermès bag ending up at Goodwill for $8? 

I'll probably let myself pretend it is real.  Perhaps a wealthy older couple retired to travel the world, and donated all of their fancy things to Goodwill.  The Goodwill staff knew to put the Coach espadrilles in the glass case for $50, but hadn't ever heard of Hermès so they just slapped the $8 tag on it and called it a day.  Right?  That sounds believable, right??  Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and pretend it's a real one. 

   

Top:  I-N-C International Concepts
Cami:  Mossimo
Cardigan:  Calvin Klein Performance
Jeans:  Loft
Shoes: Loft

New Year's Day

Here's my outfit from the first day of 2012.  After sleeping not very many hours, we went to church and then over to my in-laws' house for Christmas with them.  We had some lunch, opened some presents, played some cards (I won!), and then had a girls' movie night while the guys watched football.  It was a good start to the year!  

I'll be honest, I thought this outfit would be much cuter than it ended up being.  In my head, it wasn't so cheerleadery.  I got this skirt over Christmas vacation, and I may have been under the influence of three seven year old girls.  One of whom has a very similar purple skirt and really wanted us to match.  I've never really bought into peer pressure, but my nieces and nephews can convince me to do all sorts of crazy things. 

I've been pinning some purple skirt inspiration this week, so I'll try again with this skirt.


Sweater:  American Eagle
Black Tank Top:  Gap
Skirt:  Gap
Boots:  Wanted via Piperlime

Think Pink

It seems like ever year, we have a really nice day or two in the middle of winter.  It even smells like springtime outside, but then we are slammed with snow and freezing temps for 2-3 more months.  It was 68 degrees today, sunny and wonderful.  I even had my window open at work to get some fresh air.  Some people complain about the spring tease, but I love it.  I wish every day of winter was like this!  Maybe I should move to Arizona from November to March...

This outfit was from the Monday before Christmas, I think.  These are the new trouser jeans I found at Loft for $20!  I was going to say I love them, but that's probably overstating it.  I mean, I like them, but it's probably not love.  I'll reserve clothing love for dresses and shoes.      

Cardigan:  Marisa Christina from Marshall's
Top:  Gap (It's on sale in stores for $5 right now!)
Trouser Jeans:  Loft
Shoes:  Gap

Throwback Thursday - The Purple Skirt

This picture is from my high school's National Honor Society induction ceremony.  I've never worn a whole lot of purple (wouldn't want to risk being mistaken as a Kansas State fan), but this skirt was a favorite of mine.  I actually had the same skirt in a dusty pink color.  My sister had it in black and olive green.  This is what happens when Old Navy has a skirt on sale for like $8.  Buy it in every color!  I wish I still had one or both of these skirts, but at some point, I decided pencil skirts were out and flowy skirts were in and I got rid of them both.  Wisdom has come with age, and I now understand that both pencil and flowy skirts are great!  In college, I bought an a-line purple skirt that I wore all the time.  At some point, I got rid of that too.  What is wrong with me!?  Anyway, I bought a new purple skirt over Christmas, and I will probably get rid of it in the future and regret it later.

When I got to college, I learned that NHS is kind of a joke at most schools.  I was pretty shocked to learn this.  Now, maybe my memory is fuzzy, but I remember NHS being pretty intense.  In addition to keeping a pretty high GPA, we had to do a bunch of community service, and we had super early meetings every few weeks.  They would literally lock the door and not let you in if you were one minute late.  Have we established that I am always late to everything?  Anyway, I was late to a couple meetings, locked out, and had to sit in the hallway wishing I had just slept in (and no cell phone to play games on!).  They finally threatened to kick me out, which made me cry quite a bit, so they let me have a second chance and I was able to be punctual for the rest of the year.  I don't know why I cared so much.  It would have been easier to drop out.   

Anyway, I liked this outfit then and still like it now.  I don't have any of these pieces, but maybe I'll try something similar with my new purple skirt sometime.  I'm still terribly un-punctual, too.  I also make up words.

Wedding Wednesday - Just last week

On Friday, one of my friends from college got married.  Two of my best friends and I decided to make it a Girls' Night.  I'm sure our dates were happy to stay home.         

I'm getting a lot of use out of this $7 dress.  I think I've worn it 4 times so far.  That's less than $2 for each time.  I won't do that math on my other dresses, it's probably pretty bad.   

Dress:  Ann Taylor

Pearls:  from China

Bracelets:  gift from a friend
Belt:  from another dress

Tights:  Target

Shoes: Seychelles from DSW (not that you can see them)

I'd like to thank the academy...

I was recently given a blog award by Third Grade Rock Star!  I've known this girl (in real life) as long as I can remember and it's fun to be bloggy friends now, too.  Her blog has a lot of cute ideas for teachers, and some great stuff for the rest of us, too.   Thanks for the award!!

The purpose of this award is to spotlight up-and-coming blogs with less than 200 followers.

The rules are:
{1} Copy and paste the award on your blog.
{2} Thank the giver and link back to them.
{3} Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are the 5 blogs I'm passing the award on to:

• Wear Something Bold Today
• Show Me Chic
• Jess Cause 
• Boyish Chic
• Modern Midwestern Home