Fashion Friday

Fashion Friday!  Man these posts creep up quick!  The weeks are flying by.  I can't believe we're at the end of September.  Best three months of the year ahead!  Woot Woot!!  Let's get this party started with a whole lot of green...

I've had this green shirt for about two years now and it's a favorite.  

I've had these jeans for about four years now and they're a favorite.  I've had the red shopping cart for about five years now and it's a favorite.  l've had these shoes for about three years now and they are NOT a favorite.  They are so worn out and I'm tired of them but they have the perfect heel and are really comfortable.  I have been trying to replace them forever and can't find exactly what I'm looking for.  Not a flat, not a heel - just a semi-heel.  (Why is it so hard to find a semi-heel people!!??)  I need something just high enough to keep certain pairs of pants off the floor.  You'll all be the first to know as soon as I find a replacement.   :)

These jeans are super comfortable and stretchy and I like the pockets on the back (they minimize a certain problem area of mine - ahem).  The brand is called Silver and Nordstroms carries them.  But they were cheap (for Nordstrom standards) - like $60 bucks!  Anyone else own a pair of Silvers?  Great jeans.  

A few more shots in the green shirt because, well, I have some...

Long shirts like this green one come in so handy if you are still in the baby making years.  I wore this one a lot when I was pregnant with Kole.  I'd like to say that I was 6 months along in the pictures above, but I think I was more like 2 months along.  I popped out so fast the third time around!  My sweet niece (on my lap in the picture) turned 4 years old this week!  Happy birthday sweet Claire!  (I'm sure she reads my blog daily and will appreciate the shout out.)  She is having a pony themed party this weekend and my sister and her husband are going to surprise her and bring a real pony to the back yard to give everyone rides.  I am SO sad my girls and I won't be there!  Times like this make me really bummed I don't live closer to my family.  If Kole were a little older I would be on a plane in a heart beat.  But I don't fly with one year olds.  Cardinal rule that can't be broken.

And here's another great shot of the green shirt I discovered tonight.  Looks like one of the girls grabbed my camera and shot fast while they had the chance!  Kole is clearly upset because he heard about my cardinal rule and realized that he too won't be riding a pony this weekend.

Another Forever 21 top I've had for awhile!  Wore this last weekend to dinner with friends.  I liked this shirt so much that I bought one in purple too.  :)  Does anyone else ever do that?  Find a shirt you like and buy it in more than one color?  I try not to do it too much but with some shirts I can't help it.  Especially when they are as cheap as this shirt was ($16).  Funny though, I still find that I end up liking one color better than the other and that is the one I wear over and over.

Wore it with my Italy boots.  Kole is as fond of these boots as I am.  He's got Ellie's toothbrush in hand and is ready to give them a good cleaning.  

Speaking of my little man, here he is modeling his camo.  

He is a man on a mission.  With a purse.  

He likes the way his pockets minimize a problem area for him too.
What a stud.  

A little more green!  (You know how I feel about this color!)  This is a fun skirt from Banana Republic.  

I wore it to church last week with this white dress shirt and my black heels.  The white bracelet/watch is

 a favorite of mine from the Fossil Outlet.  

And just a few hours ago I had this on to head to a church activity.  Kenny walked in the door from work and I threw my camera at him and said "Here!  Take my picture fast!  Now take these kids fast!  I'm outta here...."  It was a long day and I was so happy to escape with friends for the evening.  We ate a delicious dinner and then learned all about how to put together 72 hour kits and how to make bread.

My mind may have wandered during the how to make bread part.  Just a tad.   

But it's ok.  I know a really great bakery just down the street....

Happy Weekend everyone!  

:)

**Linking up at The Pleated Poppy

Small changes/Halloween decor

Sharing a few small changes today!

(BTW - looking for a fun patterned dish towel to put in front of this aqua one...)

I took this simple black basket... 

spray painted it turquoise, and tossed in some fake red pomegranates.  I'll switch those out for some real ones once they pop up in the grocery store.  Isn't that a fun sight!?  When pomegranates pop up in the grocery store!  It means Thanksgiving!  Which really means Christmas!  Bring. it. on.  And the binder behind the basket?  I'm sure most would assume that's a recipe binder.  But this is me we're talking about.  Not recipes - just my home decor binder.  I stuck it there for now because it's always out on my counter anyway and I like the pattern on the front.  Still hunting for something fun to permanently display in this corner.  

I took my red mail basket that sits in another corner of the kitchen..

and painted it in my new favorite aqua.  

You may wonder where is all of the mail?

It's sitting in a lovely pile waiting for Kenny to sort through it.  I set a pile of mail/papers in front of him every few nights to sort through.  He loves it.  It's his favorite thing to do.  Right up there with hanging things up on the wall and getting family pictures taken.

I also took this red magnet board next to our back door...

taped it off...

and painted it - you guessed it!  AQUA!  I know.  You're thinking I may be over doing it with this color. Just a tad.  But this was it.  The last thing I'm painting this color.

  This week.  ;)

One last before and after because before and afters are fun.  

{BEFORE}

{AFTER}

I replaced our summer "get out the door list" with some favorite pictures of the girls from past Octobers.  I'm not as far as I wish I was on my October scrapbook (the point of that album was to pull it out every Fall so we could see past Fall pictures) so a quick fix for this year was to hang October pictures on the door!  

The girls love it.  They have spent a lot of time the past few days hanging out by the door looking at the pictures and getting excited for this coming October.  Addie is pointing to her favorite.

The girls love this picture because of Frank (our buddy who shows up in the front yard mid October).  I love this picture because of my girls.  They were 2 & 4 and just look so little to me!  Makes me sad how quickly they are growing up.  :(  I can't stop to think about that lately or I end up in a puddle of tears.

Corner of the kitchen for October!

We got out our Halloween Advent Calendar!  (Pottery Barn Kids)  I also bought the candy to go in each slot.  I also ate most of the candy that was supposed to go in each slot.  In fact, I'm eating some of the candy that was supposed to go in those slots right now.  For some reason I feel better now that I've admitted that.  

I'm really not into too much Halloween decor.  I don't do the scary thing.  Because well... it scares me.  But I did want to display my "hoot owl" and the girls love our spooky Halloween tree.  

I bought these cute little frames to hang on our tree when I bought my owl.  We make new ornaments for the tree each year so I'm sure these will soon be replaced with little beauties more like these:

Does Halloween decor make your kids want to leap across the furniture?  No?
Just mine huh.  

I still need to get out my fall wreaths which are buried somewhere in the garage.

I still need to decorate the front yard.

I still need to take pics of my hutch if I can stop tweaking it every time I walk by.

I still need to get these fun plates I bought at Z Gallerie up in the kitchen.  

I still need to fill out some school forms, clean out my purse, write tomorrow's to-do list and take off my make-up before I can go to bed tonight.   

And I still need to put away the candy.  

But at least I wrapped up a few small changes.  :)

Fall Mantel

I think we may need to name this "decor week" on my blog because I have so many fun changes around my house to share.  Has everyone decked their house for Fall?  So much fun, isn't it!?  I'm sharing my Fall mantel today and was going to share more of my decor but this post was about to be so overloaded with pictures that I'm going to have to break it up and share the rest tomorrow...and maybe some the day after that.  So!  Without further rambling from me, here is my mantel this year for Fall -

I kept it really clean and simple.  Clean and simple always appeals to me.  I'm sure you're all so surprised to hear me say that.  ;) 

You probably remember these candlesticks that used to be cream.  I painted them my new favorite shade of aqua that is popping up all over my house and added a couple of pumpkins.  I love the aqua/orange combo.  It speaks to me.  Not sure what it is saying, but something good I'm sure.

I put three more of my little pumpkins in the center.  I don't think I'll ever get tired of this picture.  I plan to have it displayed somewhere in my home for the next 90 years.  

Which would put me living until I'm about oh.. 124ish. 

 I take my vitamins.  

I had these apothecary jars on hand so I filled them with some little Fall goodies.  

Then I spray painted this pitcher yellow (used to be red) and added a few leaves.  The leaves are from the forest of trees behind our house.  Kidding.  They're actually from the beach that's behind our house.  Kidding again. The beach didn't have leaves this year so they're actually from the craft store.  I do my best.  But Kenny and I have a little New York trip in the works!  Maybe I can snag some real Fall leaves while I'm there and bring them back home with me on the plane.  Or just live with my craft store leaves... my life is full of tough decisions like this one.  Reminds me of a favorite quote by my husband -- "babe - I'm just living in the real world so that you can float above it."   :)  I'll have to ask his opinion about the leaves....

Our family picture from last year is so 'Fall' and works great with my new color scheme.  

Now I have three areas that bring my new colors together.  I'll do my best to sound like a real decorator and call it a "visual triangle" between the mantel.... 

the picture frames...

and the aqua wall/shelf.  Aqua and yellow, yellow and aqua.  Slowly replacing all of the red and black.   Happy colors for a happy Fall.  I like the world I live in.  :)

p.s.  Some of you asked what Fall shows we are watching.  Well.  That's a post in and of itself.  We completed our Fall line-up (which includes a spread sheet of all of our shows and the days/times they need to be recorded) and came to the shocking realization that there was one night when we had four shows on at the same time!  This was a major dilemma.  Major.  We could NOT agree on which ones to cut, so out came the DirecTV crew. I am not kidding.  A little re-wiring and now the shows that record on our upstairs TV will also play on our downstairs TV.  Problem solved.  Like I said, my life is full of tough decisions to make.  ;)  But really out of all of the shows we record, my favorites are Parenthood, Modern Family, The Good Wife, and Blue Bloods (I'm usually not into cop shows but there's nothing like a little Tom Selleck on a Friday night).  I also love TLC's What NOT to Wear and HGTV's Dear Genevieve.  Kenny has his own line-up which is why we record so many shows.  We've been known to have a busy week without much TV time and then knock out 4-6 TV shows on a Friday or Saturday night after dinner.  That's our favorite date.  Early dinner so we get a break from the bedtime routine and then home after the kids are asleep to watch our shows.  Then at about 11:00 at night I start reading blogs and Kenny falls asleep on the couch.  And I can see us doing that until we're about oh... 124ish.  We both take our vitamins.

Picture frame re-do!

Can I just say that I am SO excited good shows are back on TV!?  I stayed up way too late tonight catching up on some of my favorites.  Just when I didn't think I could handle one more movie picked out by my movie obsessed husband (who thinks that Armageddon should have been up for an Oscar) my shows start up again and come to my rescue!  Oh how I've missed them.  Anyway, just popping in to share the way I updated a few frames.  A while ago I shared my kitchen shelf re-do and since then have been trying to lighten up a few other things in my house.

These black frames, like so much of my house, have been feeling a bit dark.  

So I painted them yellow.  A nice happy yellow.  

And then I used some sandpaper to distress them a bit.

Here are the frames BEFORE.  Black frames, cream ribbon, dark pictures from our Italy trip.  Nothing wrong with this look, just not the direction I'm going right now with my home decor.

And here they are AFTER!  The yellow brightened things up a bit.  I also changed the ribbon to match the aqua wall in my kitchen.  And of course, added the pumpkin patch pictures of my little stud.  I'm going to start changing these pics each season.  

But for now I am loving walking into my dining room and seeing my little man at the Patch.  :)

A lighter, brighter, happier look!  It also coordinates great with my Fall mantel.  

Which I'll have to share tomorrow.  

Because tonight I stayed up watching TV way too late to blog any further.

Did I already mention that?

:)