If I had a Million Dollars: Fall Wish List

My mom reminded me the other day that she checks in on my blog regularly, and *ahem*, it's been a little sporadic lately. I can tell you about how I was sick for the last 2 weeks, about how the hubs and I are kicking around the idea of selling our house sometime soon-ish (I KNOW, crazy!!!), about how I'm designing a handful of last minute projects for 2 upcoming weddings, about how I'm working on a super secret project with the bestie that I can't share just yet, and about a million other things that I'm sure you don't really want to hear about... but all of that factors in to why this blog has unfortunately moved to the bottom of my priority list lately. Instead, I figured I'd try to make up for the lack of content with some pretty pictures, because regardless of how old I am, I (usually) still listen to my mother. So in an effort to get a little somethin' somethin' up on the blog... behold, a sampling of my fall wish list!

purse  |  watch  |  pillow cover

phone case  |  toms  |  carafe

candelabra  |  hamper 

I need another purse like I need a hole in my head, and the price on this makes me want to cry a little... but it's a wish list, and this purse is perfection, so deal with it. I made up for it with a super affordable must-have watch and a sort of matching phone case for my brand spanking new iPhone 5S (thanks to a gift card - let's not go thinking I suddenly have money or something). The hamper is so amazing I think I might require that it fit in the bathroom of my next home, and the candelabra is my favorite item in the latest round of Nate Berkus for Target goodies. So. Darned. Pretty. 

Happy Monday!

Two.

At this exact time two years ago, I was probably throwing up.

I did that a lot the morning of our wedding. I did it until Bridget finally said "Screw it, you're not eating today. Take another xanax and let's start on bouquets. You can try some more gatorade later." I love my bestie.

The hubs likes to tell people that I puked the morning of our wedding because my body was rejecting the idea of marrying him. I like to tell him how wrong he is - my body was so overly excited about marrying him that it didn't know what to do, and we all know that when my body gets thrown off in even the tiniest way possible, all hell breaks loose. Usually that results in throwing up, hence the need for xanax on my wedding day to calm myself the F down.

While that might sound like a recipe for disaster and not the best day ever, I'm happy to report to everyone that it was just that - the best day of my life, the beginning of my life really if you look at it in a good and sentimental way.

And here we are two years later. I could not be more blessed to have Dan as my better half (and believe me, he is definitely my better half). We have some high hopes for the coming year and I can't wait to see where it all leads us. It's gonna be a good one.

Happy two cakes. I love you more than I did yesterday.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

And if this crazy world spins itself down to dust, I want to be with you in the colors.

Happy Birthday FIL!

I've mentioned someone named FIL here on the blog before, and I realized that maybe not everyone is aware of who FIL is. Given that today is FIL's birthday, I thought it was as good a time as any to explain exactly who he is.

So, readers, meet FIL - my awesome, incredible Father In Law -

FIL's real name is Mike, but I've always been a little weird about calling adults by their first name, and when the hubs and I got married and I was officially a part of the family it started to be a little odd calling him Mr. Lawler like I used to. So I started calling him father in law, and he started calling me daughter in law, and we eventually shortened it to FIL (like Phil) and DIL (like the pickles, which I suppose is fitting given how much I love pickles). The little nickname has stuck enough that this weekend when I introduced him to my sister's boyfriend I said "and this is FIL... I mean, Mr. Lawler. But I guess you can call him FIL if you want." Adorbs.

The thing you might not know about FIL is that he is genuinely one of my favorite people in the whole entire world. To say that I was blessed when I scored this guy as my father in law would be the understatement of the century, and I would think that all of my friends, my sister, my dad and several others in my family would agree, given that they too have spent a ton of time with him and he tends to treat every single one of them like family as well. The fact that I feel 100% at home when we're at his house is kind of a given since Dan and I have been together so long, but knowing that I can bring my sister over there with me to hang out with our nieces and have dinner and she is just as comfortable is really awesome to me. When Dan, Manda, my cousin Allie and I were road tripping to Florida a few years ago and leaving on Christmas, we all went to South Bend to have Christmas dinner with FIL's extended family, and I know for a fact that even Allie (who had never met any of them besides FIL before) felt completely welcome. That's just how FIL and his entire family is, and I consider myself ridiculously lucky to have them in my life.

When FIL turned 50, his birthday bash was at the place that Dan and I eventually held our wedding reception. Although we had just started dating a few weeks earlier than the party, when I complimented the small blue Bolingbrook pin he was wearing that night he took it off, handed it to me, told me that it was a very special pin and not just anyone gets to have one, and then said I had to keep it forever. Well I did keep it, and my grandmother pinned it inside of my wedding dress for me as one of my "something blue" items on our big day. It was my little way of making sure FIL knew how special he is to me, and I was honored to wear that pin given that hanging out in Bolingbrook with him has been a huge part of mine and Dan's relationship over the years.

So, FIL, if you're reading this - I hope your birthday is extra special and spent with a good bottle of wine or a seasonal beer. I am so lucky to be a part of your family.

Love,

DIL

Wish List: Drink Service

Confession time: I go on craigslist at least twice a day just to do a search for "bar cart" and see what pops up. I've wanted a brass or gold bar cart for AGES, and I used to just search for one randomly online or if I was at a flea market, but then my dream cart popped up on craigslist and I missed out... hence the overly cautious several times a day checks now.

While I love the idea of a vintage cart, there's just not a whole lot out there in a price range I'm willing to go for. Often times, the carts people are selling on craigslist hit well over $300, and given that we aren't REALLY big drinkers at all and this is solely a pretty and stylish purchase and not a necessary one, I'm just not going to spend that kind of money on it.

And then I saw a new pin from my mecca, and I just might be over wanting a real vintage piece, because this baby is pretty well near perfect if you ask me.

Ooooh. Ahhhhh.

At $129, Target's version of the classic (brass!) bar cart is a steal compared to others. I'd probably swap the wood panels out for glass or mirror, and throw a few bright accessories on there to style it. But see those gold confetti decanters on the bottom shelf that are totally reminiscent of something from Kate Spade? Yeah, I want those too. And given that they're crazy affordable and I don't actually own a decanter, I'm thinking I'll go ahead and order one just as soon as I can! 

What do you think of the new Target entertaining collection? Clearly, I'm a fan!

Focus

I wrote a couple weeks ago about how I am making a more conscious effort to focus on things, rather than having 20+ projects going on at one time. This has been a little difficult right off the bat because I already had a ton of projects I was in the middle of, but I've forced myself (with a lot of help from Dan) to tackle things more fully before working on something else. Which is why the bathroom painting did not happen last weekend (sorry Mom), regardless of how badly I wanted it to. Instead, I've been putting most of my free time at home into working in our office, which we completely rearranged thanks to my beautiful chair showing up and my insisting it be set up NOW instead of kept in the basement waiting for our non-existent baby to need a good rocking to sleep. It's just as amazing as I expected it to be, and I'm looking forward to curling up with a book just as soon as I finish a few other projects around here. The new furniture arrangement in the office really opened the entire room up, and there's a lot more wall space now which is in desperate need of some artwork. I have lots of posters, patterned papers and random frames sitting around with nowhere to go so I'm definitely planning to work with what I've got to add some flair to the walls. And then, I promise I will share some 'after' photos of the room here!

And speaking of focusing, I've worked really hard in the last few weeks to combat the bit of "homesickness" that I've been feeling for my old job and to fully focus on how awesome and incredible my new job is. I've gone out of my way to strike up conversations with people I hadn't really talked to before, taken any chance I've gotten to grab lunch with a coworker, and pushed myself to work towards really excelling in my new position. If I'm being honest, I had some doubts in the beginning about my decision to leave my old job, and that all came crashing back big time last week when I heard that another girl from my old department that had left about a year before me was heading back. My heart ached for my old team and how much fun we used to have, and I had a bit of a panic attack I was so upset about it. And then I remembered that I made my decision to leave for a reason (several, actually). I was not happy very often in my previous position for the last several months before I left. I worked until a different time every day and never knew when I would be home in the evenings and the lack of consistency was killing me. I couldn't focus well because as fun as the culture was, it wasn't an environment I could excel in anymore. Quite the contrary  at my new job - People are so incredibly passionate about what we do... but they do their work and then they GO HOME (at the same time every day!) and work is left behind until the next morning. I feel like I am in a position where I can really make an impact and help with leading our design team into bigger and better things in the coming years. I look forward to going in every day and I'm not stressed about getting there or being there. It's turned into an easy routine getting up earlier, leaving earlier, and even dressing a whole lot nicer than I used to. Basically, I feel like I've done a really really incredible 180 in my professional life in the last couple of months, and I am so incredibly grateful for it all.

I know I've said this a million times lately, but as I fully settle into my new routine I really and truly do hope I can get back into blogging much more regularly again! For those of you still checking in, thanks for continuing to read along as I figure it all out.

Light & Bright

I saw this image on Pinterest a few weeks ago, and have not been able to get it out of my head ever since. You may or may not know that way back when (almost 5 years ago!) we bought our house, I went a little overboard on the color and insisted on painting our bathroom BRIGHT teal. It was, and still is, my favorite color, and I figured if there's anywhere in the house that's a good place to have a little fun, it's a bathroom. Why not, right?

And it worked for a long time, but deep down I always kind of knew that someday I would tire of the overpowering color and want something a little more subdued. Unfortunately, I still tend to find neutrals terribly boring and couldn't grasp the idea of a light bathroom with white fixtures - it just seemed so... blah. But then I saw this picture and realized that neutral walls are the PERFECT jumping off point for a moody dark gray vanity and pops of colors with accessories and I was sold. I'm still not going with white walls, but I choose a super muted color that's nearly white but has some grayish-green undertones to give it a little life. The vanity will be painted dark gray, the ugly silver shelf above the toilet will be switched out for some crisp white shelves, and all of our gray and white towels and the shower curtain will stay but will be complimented by a some bright accessories to round it all off. 

(this color is not at all a good representation of the actual current color, but oh well)

My mom is coming over this weekend to help me paint while the boy is at work, and I can't wait to share some "after" photos when it's all finished!

Motto

The hubs asked me last night on our way out to run an errand "honey, do you think we need to call a doctor to do something about your ADD?" While I know he was (sort of) kidding, he had a point - I spent a good chunk of the weekend stressing out about how much stuff we have to do but rarely finding myself able to focus on just one thing. Truth be told, I was diagnosed with a mild case of ADD in college but have never really found it to affect me negatively - I've just accepted my non-stop million-miles-a-minute brain as who I am, and for the most part everything works out just fine. This weekend alone, I attempted to clean our office, bought a new computer (that has to go in the mess of an office somewhere), decided I wanted to paint the bathroom and picked out a color to do it in, read half a book, and came up with a list of at least 6 other projects I want to tackle sooner than later among other things. Overall I realize this really isn't a whole lot, but the lack of attention to one thing at a time has taken it's toll on me. My goal for this week is to attempt to focus - decide on a project and don't move on to the next until I've finished it. Given how excited I am about the new computer and painting the bathroom... this could potentially be an insanely productive week if I manage to keep myself grounded.

Wish me luck ;). Happy Monday!

If I Had a Million Dollars: Fall Wardrobe

Like it or not, fall weather is right around the corner here in Chicago, and given the mediocre weather we've had for the majority of August, I wouldn't be surprised if cooler temps sneaks up on us sooner than later. Given that I am far too lazy and cheap to go get another pedicure so sandals look cute and I have a closet full of long sleeves and sweaters but sorely lacking in tanks and tees... I suppose I shouldn't be too bummed that it will probably be time for light layers before I know it.

August is the one time a year where I feel like I sort of almost care about fashion, and that is simply because of the GIGANTIC September issues of magazines like Vogue and Elle that are full of hundreds and hundreds of pretty pictures that even Gap and Old Navy lovers like me can find themselves drooling over. Usually, I refrain from buying these issues because I know I will purchase very little of what's in them (if anything), but this year I've decided I'm going to treat myself to a couple and see what all is out there in the forecasts for fall clothing.

Ever the wannabe fashionista, outside of magazines I continue to rely on things like Pinterest for outfit inspiration. I have high hopes for a comfy yet casually sophisticated wardrobe for the coming season, and plan to do my best to track down at least some of the items in this little roundup -

Top row: a touch of camo  //  distressed denim  //  an oversized and insanely cozy gray sweater

Middle row: floral pants  //  the perfect white tee  //  graphic tees for under cardigans and blazers

Bottom row:  elbow patches  //  a comfy white sweater  //  a little bit of leopard

all images sourced from my Pinterest

Confetti

via

Today is the big 3-1 people! I am officially a "30-something" and no longer plain old "30". I feel old, which is kind of a new feeling for me since for whatever reason 30 didn't feel that way. I have really high hopes and really great feelings for the coming year, and I can't wait to see what lies ahead for Dan and I.

We're going out to a favorite restaurant with a bunch of friends tonight, and I am already salivating just thinking about all of the delicious food I plan to consume. I think at some point I may also send the boy to the store for a big bag of tissue paper confetti so I can attempt my own version of the photo above because I love it THAT much.

Happy birthday to me!

And Some Picklesssss

In the last couple of years, I have developed a strange obsession with pickles. Specifically, the half-sours from Ted's Montana Grill, which has a location right by FIL's house. A couple months ago, I learned (by asking, duh) that I can buy little to-go containers of the pickles for a whopping 50 cents each, and needless to say I've stopped in plenty of times since to buy a bunch. I've always liked pickles, but I promise you these things are on a completely different level. And every time I mention Ted's pickles, Dan quotes the Dane Cook Burger King skit, hence the title of this post.

Fast forward to this past Saturday when I suckered the hubs into going to the Farmer's Market in search of sugar snap peas. I didn't find what I went for, but I did come home with a huge bunch of basil, a GIANT zucchini, green peppers for my dad, cherry tomatoes, peaches, an assortment of baby potato varieties that we love to throw on the grill in a foil packet with my favorite Stephanie Izard rub, aaaaaand... a bunch of dill and a bag full of pickling cucumbers! It was DIY time in the kitchen, people. And it was fantastic.

The pickling cucumbers were only 50 cents each. I originally bought 3, but ran back up to the Farmer's Market for 4 more in a fit of excitement.

My helpful hubby cut all the cukes into spears for me, knowing I would likely slice my finger open trying to do so.

Meanwhile, I was prepping my mason jars with one finely chopped clove of garlic and a few sprigs of dill each.

After chopping an extra half inch or so off of each spear so they fit, I packed them into the jars.

Then poured over a brine of kosher salt, water and vinegar, and added a few more sprigs of dill to the top.

YUM. Six jars of pickles that I couldn't believe I had to wait 2 days to eat.

Ok, so I totally didn't wait 2 days to eat them. Who's surprised? I taste tested one that evening and it was good, but not outstanding yet. But I brought a full jar over to FIL's yesterday (about 24 hours after making them) and polished the entire thing off with the help of him and all 3 nieces. SO GOOD. I ate another (abundant) helping with dinner tonight and they honestly just keep getting better. I'm planning to take some to the parentals tomorrow to share, and I definitely need to see the bestie in the next couple of days because she happens to appreciate pickles as much as I do. Thankfully, even with lots of sharing I should have a few full jars all to myself, and I assure you that makes me a very happy camper.

The actual recipe I followed was from my favorite - Annie's Eats - and it was a perfect coincidence that she just posted this recipe a few days ago. The measurements for the brine in Annie's post was enough for 4 jars, but it took less than a minute to make another batch for my last 2 jars. If you're a fan of pickles I would 110% recommend making some yourself as soon as possible! Happy pickling :)