A Night Out

My past weekend was jammed packed with goodies planned.  Very enjoyable.  Saturday night my husband and I actually made it past my bedtime and went out with some close friends to a beer garden.  I absolutely love beer gardens...  Great greasy "bar" food, great conversations, outdoors, music, etc.  And with the hot weather we were having, I was actually glad it was to cool off that night so I can wear something comfy and not worry about getting overheated.

Does the sweater look familiar?  Maybe in a mauve color?  Yup, it's the same Lauren Conrad sweater from Kohls.  I snatched it up that day for less than I spent on the mauve one.. $12! :)  So I was very eager to wear it.

Outfit Details:

Lauren Conrad Sweater - Kohls, clearanced

Jeggings - Target

Boots - Christmas Gift

Yellow Clutch - NY&Co., clearanced

Hair Flower - ME, LLT

Taylor Swift Scarf Lookalike

When Target's brand, Missoni, came out with their zig zag phase, I wasn't all that impressed.  Maybe because my heart lies with the swing dresses and poodle skirts of the 1950's and not the big bell bottom flare pants of the 70's.

However, when Taylor Swift came out with her video for "Ours" I became *instantly* obsessed with her "zig zag" scarf.  I wanted it.  I needed  it. 

On a quick run to Kohls (in which I picked up other cute goodies that I will share with you another time), I strolled around... When I was almost finished (scanning the mens stuff as well), I was about to dash to the checkout.  But then I remembered I wanted to check out the accessories for a watch or maybe, ahem,  a scarf. :)  Since summer is rushing in, I knew I can get a few steals.

Well, it was my lucky day!  As soon as I spotted the clearance rack this scarf stook out like it was out on a display all by itself. 

If anyone was around me they might have heard me "yelp" with excitement.... and even more so when I saw the price!  It was mine, alright!

Here's the comparison.

Taylor Swift's:

And voila!  Mine:

Yup!  That's the actual price!  $2.80 baby!!!!  I may have even paid less since I had a coupon as well ;)

My love for Kohls continues.

A Hot, Hot Day

It's been a steamy hot weekend here.. Especially for being in May!  It's been in the mid 80's! 

Now, you all may call me crazy with this post, but here me out. :)  I wanted to just dive in a pool and get some sun.  Relax, read, chill.  It's way too hot just to sit/lay out for me, and sadly we don't have a pool.  :(

Well, as we were doing our grocery shopping yesterday, it's like a sign from God just appeared before our eyes... A young mother was carrying a bright pink plastic kiddy pool!  (Don't judge...)  We both immediately lit up!  We checked it out and it ended up being $12.  Sadly, for how cheaply made it was, I didn't want to spend that much.  So we ran to Meijer, quickly, for a few things and decided to glance down their swim aisle.  To our surprise, they had a blue blow up pool for $10!  So, I jumped up and down with excitement as Matt put it in our cart.

He had to close that night and didn't have a chance to get it up for me.  I had my close friend stop by and as we were hanging out, getting DQ and playing video games, my brother in law arrived.  He got our air compressor working and blew that baby up!

I filled it with water yesterday so it had all morning to warm up for me today! :) 

After running some errands today, I came home, jumped in my new bikini from Florida and hopped in!  Grabbing my kindle as well with the newest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Deadlocked, downloaded to it. 

Tease me all you want, but that little gem was soooo refreshing!  I sat right on my deck, cooled off but still getting sun and read.  Sigh...  I think I'm a little too excited for this little pool.  Low maintenance, small but still big enough, and perfect for what we needed it to do.  And now I got a nice tan forming ;)

The only thing missing was a cute little "beach" table to keep my valuables out of reach, and maybe a drink. :)

I think you all should run and get one now if you do not have the pleasure of having a big pool nearby!  I nearly fell asleep I was so relaxed!

Honeymoon Dress

Remember how I said I need to wear more clothes that get too much "hanger time"?  Here's another one.  I absolutely LOVE this dress!  My friend actually wore this to my wedding and I needed it in a bad way.  Luckily it's from TARGET!  So it was $29.99, but I think I even scored it on sale!  And what I love so much about this dress is it's meant to be just "tossed" or "rolled up" and stuffed in your suitcase.  Can you ask for a better travel dress?  Needlesstosay it's super comfy!

Here's a flashback from my honeymoon in 2010:

Aren't we so cute?? :)

And here it is making it's debut again:

Cardigan:  NY&Co.

Dress:  Target

Shoes:  Gift from my boss, seen here

Necklace:  Me, LittleLoveTales

Convertible Dress

Are you one of those people with overflowing drawers and stuffed closets in your home yet you stomp your foot in anger and shout, "I have nothing to wear!"  I know I'm not the only one. :)  I think my husband would classify me as a hoarder with clothes.  I have our main closest, plus a dresser and part of the guest room's closet...  Does that make me a hoarder??  I'm just a girl who loves clothes!  And the worst part is every few months I'll get rid of garbage bags full of items and yet everything is still sooo  stuffed.

Well, I gave myself a little challenge last week.  I decided I need to start wearing those dresses that I "had to have" that are currently being squished together in the guest room's closet.  I need to let them breathe a little! Problem is, I get so paranoid that my dresses are "too fancy for work".  However, they really aren't all that fancy!  Our office is just more on the "casual" business side.

So, I see my Victoria's Secret black convertible dress peeking out.  I bought this dress on sale (but not TOO on sale.. it was still pricey) because I figured you are getting about 10 dresses for the price of one!  I vowed to myself that I would wear this dress ALL.THE.TIME.  Sadly that vow only lasted a day..?  Ok.. A few days.  Still not long enough to justify. :)

I can count on one hand how many times I actually wore this.  Which is a bummer because it's super comfy and so fun.  

I pulled it out and searched youtube for a quick reminder of how to make this dress work, and wore it.  

I'm pleased with the results!  It was such a rainy day so I felt this was so low maintenance and I didn't need to worry so much if this dress got wet.  Being so black though, and so gloomy outside, I put one of my flowers and clipped them on to the sash for a dash of happiness.

I'm determined to wear this dress AT LEAST once a month from now on.  I truly love it and it's so fun to change up the look.  Black is so basic and can be switched up more than the styles of the dress! 

Dress:  Victoria's Secret

Flats:  Target, Clearanced $5

Flower:  Me, LittleLoveTales

My Niece's Hunger Games Party

Finally I'm getting around to showing you all the goodies from my niece's Hunger Games Party!!!  I have to say, I'm pretty proud of my sister, husband and I for how the decor turned out.  With rain in the forecast, some plans were tossed but I think we made up for it, as best as we could.

Let's start out with the Birthday Girl!

Headband made by me, thanks to the tutorial by the wonderful imbeetlebailey.  I love how it turned out and will now be making one for myself! :)

Shirt made by the birthday girl,  thanks to Average Jane Crafter.

In fact, we all made shirts the weekend before after seeing the movie (my third time :D)

The back of our shirts, in order from left to right:

Mutt 12, Katniss 12, Peeta 12, Peeta 12, Gale 12

 I know people hate comparing The Hunger Games series to the Twilight series with the "teams", but if you want to know my two cents, anything  having a potential love triangle will always create teams.  I have teams for everything!  Twilight just made it more "known" to the world and made it a big thing.  So yes, we did pick our teams for our shirts and we stand by them :)

On to the decor:

Our cornucopia was made by my husband.  We combined our vision from the book to what we saw in the actual movie.  I think it's darling.. If I can even say that about the cornucopia. :)  At least it's filled with sweets instead of weapons. (Unless there was a food fight!  Sadly, this didn't happen, but would have been fitting) :)

The cupcakes were made by my other sister who is phenomenal at decorating!  Doesn't the fire look amazing??

The cupcake flags, invitation (not shown), and bookmarks (not shown) were all downloadable content here:
http://www.livinglocurto.com/2012/02/hunger-games-party-printables/

They were perfect little touches!


I loved the candy buffet set up!  Definitely had to put our thinking caps on and received insight from others.  We decided to incorporate each district in the buffet, so we tried to get things to follow the designated district.
District 1 - Luxury:  Ring Pops & Candy Necklaces
District 2 - Masonry:  Pez "Bricks"
District 3 - Technology:  Twizzler "Wires"
District 4 - Fishing:  Swedish Fish
District 5 - Power:  Gobstoppers
District 6 - Transportation:  Disney Cars Cheez-Its
District 7 - Lumber:  Pretzel Rods
District 8 - Textiles:  Sour Rope "Ribbons"
District 9 - Grain:  Chex Mix
District 10 - Livestock:  Animal Crackers
District 11 - Agriculture:  Popcorn
District 12 - Mining:  Chocolate Covered Raisins
District 13 - Graphite, Nuclear:  Fireballs
The Capitol - Lollipops


The morning of, I actually woke up at five, frazzled and exhausted and fighting sleep..  Seems like my mind won over sleep again. So I decided to make my extra time useful and baked!  I was inspired by this idea from this pin I found on Pinterest a few weeks back.  I'm not computer savvy by any means and absolutely *adored* the tags they made, but I think my own attempt at the tags turned out pretty well!  If you are not computer savvy like me, feel free to use my tag for your own "coal" cookies:

We had a fun little scavenger hunt using "orange backpacks".  There were two teams and we held a reaping to figure out teams.

 

Hope you enjoyed my niece's Hunger Games party and found it full of inspiration!  I'd love to see or hear all about your ideas/parties/plans!

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Happy Birthday to my oldest niece!  I hope you had a great time, Kelsye!