Weekend Ramblings

This weekend went by waaaay too fast. Chase was out of town and I spent a ridiculously large portion of my weekend watching the Olympics while surfing Pinterest. I also squeezed in some time at my parents house and made a quick trip to the book store to buy A Discovery of Witches. Has anyone read it? It's the first part of a trilogy and I haven't cracked it open yet, but it came highly recommended to me on GoodReads (new addiction, btw) after I finished The Night Circus.

I also did a lot of cleaning which included finally moving a dresser for Chase into our bedroom. Seeing our room clean plus my weekend Pinning had me thinking about really decorating our bedroom so it's not just a mish-mash of furniture and bedding. Everywhere we've ever lived, the bedroom has always been utilitarian and not very relaxing (or clean - ha!). I'd really like our bedroom to be relaxing and an enjoyable place to be. Here are some of my inspirations:

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 

If you can't tell I'm all about clean lines and a neutral palette with pops of quirky color. While most of our furniture in there is second hand (actually, now that I think about it - ALL of it is) it's in ok condition, and could be given new life with some paint. I would like to make a few investments including a new headboard, a small flatscreen (yes, we have a TV in the bedroom - gasp!), some art for the walls and this guy which is only $35 at Home Depot!

What about you, what's your bedroom like? Messy, clean, nicely decorated and styled or purely functional?

Friday Finds & Favorites 07.27.2012

Happy Friday! On Monday I though I'd never see the end of this week, but the past few days have actually flown by. I have been battling a summer cold (boo hoo!) and am glad to currently be on the downhill end of it. Whoever invented being sick in the summer is a bad person.

Tonight I'm ready to get settled into the Olympics with the opening ceremony. I missed most of the Beijing opening ceremony and have been kicking myself ever since. With promise of 30 Mary Poppins battling Voldemort in London, I can't miss it! Are you going to watch? NBC has an app that I'm going to download for my iPad to keep up with everything (mainly gymnastics, swimming and some track events). Also, I'm sure the next two weeks will make for some great Kate Middleton fashion gawking.

Mixing patterns is very now, daaahling. Learn how to here and here.

If you're going to (awesomely) humiliate squirrels, you should probably be nice and feed them at the same time.

I think Lauren and I are style soul-sisters.

Love Reese Witherspoon and her home at ElleDecor.

Would love to do this to my very 70's dresser.

Things I Love Right Now

Every once in a while I like to share the things that I'm really into at the moment. This month they all just so happen to be beauty products.

1. Garnier Wonder Waves I just got this stuff last week and I LOVE it. My hair is semi-wavy naturally and this stuff really brings out the waves and tames the frizz without any crunch, and adds a lot of softness.

2. L'Occitane Shea Butter Hand Cream I bought the limited edition tube on our honeymoon last October. I keep it at my desk so I can have a quick jolt of moisture whenever I need (which is often in this dry heat!). I've never spent this much on lotion, but it's worth it!

3.  Revlon Lip Butter I have this in the peachy color and have been using it for a few weeks. It really does live up to all the hype you've heard; it goes on smooth like a lip balm, but the color is great (not too sheer, not too heavy) and stays on longer than most.

4. Essie in Tarte Deco I'll admit it, I'm pretty cheap when it comes to beauty products so it took me a while hand over $8 for nail polish. Every time we were at the store I'd stare at the pretty display and wonder if it was worth it. It finally took Chase saying "Well if it stays on longer, than isn't it worth the extra money?" I thought he'd freak out at the idea of spending that much, but if you say so, honey! It definitely stayed on longer than most polishes, but I'm pretty rough on my hands sometimes so it didn't last much longer. Regardless, the color is sooo pretty!

Peach Pickin'

After a lazy Saturday morning that consisted of watching a lot of Nickelodeon and Disney Channel with my niece, we decided that blueberry picking sounded like a pretty awesome way to spend the rest of the day. I searched online for a local u-pick farm and we were on our way! 

Thirty minutes later we realized that the farm was no longer open (or had really poor signage), so with the last few minutes of battery-life on my phone we searched for the next closest farm, about 45 minutes away. I quickly scribbled down the directions on a piece of scrap paper just incase my phone died. We've had some bad experiences with Google Maps lately, so I was really hoping it would work so we didn't look lame infront of our niece or break her heart (she was pretty excited). 

Luckily, Google Maps didn't fail us, but the farm was only harvesting peaches this week. Oh, well. As long as we could pick something.

The only kind ready to pick were of the Saturn (or Donut) variety.

None of us had gone picking before, so it took us a while to find the good ones. A lot of careful squeezing and smelling.

But eventually we walked away with quite the haul. We gave away half to my in-laws and we still have too many. 

I think I better get to making some cobblers and pies!

Friday Finds & Favorites 07.20.2012

It's been a while since I've done Friday Finds & Favorites. I was feeling pretty uninspired by them and needed to take a break so I wasn't just linking to random things to have a post go up on Friday.

This weekend I think we're going to lay low since we have a pretty busy August ahead of us with a small trip out of town and guests staying with us. The one thing I would like to do is see Moonrise Kingdom. Our little town isn't showing it, so we'll have to drive about 30 minutes, but I hear it will be worth it!

What about you, any plans for the weekend?

I'm really looking forward to this series.

Just as I was trying to think of a way to jazz up boring shelves for the office. Bri gets it.

Looking for an easy way to save?

Loving all the (mostly) affordable art pieces suggested by Emily Henderson. Especially this one.

Strawberry Icebox Pie? Yes, yes and yes. Thanks, Tracy!

An awesome new-to-me blog.

On Repeat

We saw Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros live about two years ago and it was one of the best shows I've ever been to. Their live presence is just as enchanting as their album and makes you feel deliriously happy. Made me want to go join a commune or something. The lead singer, Alexander Ebert, has a really great solo album, too.

Sunday Drives to the Middle of Nowhere

Sunday we grabbed some lunch at Subway and headed toward a local scenic byway that we'd never travelled. 

Zander slept a lot.

We stopped at this part of the Oregon trail where people would decide if they'd head southwest toward the Willamette Valley or straight on to Portland.

In the nine years that we were gone, thousands of windmills have popped up in the region. They're HUGE up-close and are a bit creepy a night with their blinking red lights.

Overall a peaceful drive to the middle of nowhere.

Garden Progress

Confession: plants kinda creep me out. It's not a full on fear, but in certain instances they give me a twinge of the heebie-jeebies. I think it's ones that grow aggressively, because I don't mind flowers or pretty little green plants with colorful buds on them, but ones that are just green and grow, and grow kinda gross me out. Also, house plants are totally fine unless they start to drape over their pot. Strange, I know... 

Luckily our garden doesn't bother me, but there is something about the rapid growth of one of my tomato plants and the cucumber plant. I love them and am excited to see them produce fruit, but seriously plants...slow your roll.

Here they are! They still have a way to go, but I'm so excited to eat them. There is nothing better than a fresh tomato.

These are our carrots and in the back some lettuce and sweet peas.

The cucumber plant started off slow, and I was actually a bit worried about it after Zander ate some of the leaves, but now it's HUGE. So far it's been all flower, no fruit but here you can see what I think is the beginning of a cucumber. 

Basil! I shall have tons of pesto.

It's been hovering just below and above 100 all week here, so I'm trying to make sure it doesn't all get fried in the sun. I think Zander has the right idea for beating the heat, no?

Back in the Swing of Things

I'm sure I'm not the only one that had a major case of the Mondays today, but man, it was rough! I had a mini-vacation and hadn't worked since the last Tuesday so today was particularly long.


On Tuesday night some friends came in from out of town to stay with us, and on the 4th we had family over for a BBQ under our new gazebo. That evening we headed to the local fireworks show where a man actually complained that it was taking too long. Who does that? Maybe he should have gone to San Diego? Later, we went home to shoot off our own and an ember must have blown onto our porch, because as we were heading inside for the night I noticed some SMOLDERING wood on our patio. I spent the rest of the night paranoid that our house would burst into flames.

Why yes, that is an office chair in our yard. We're classy like that.

Then Tursday we headed up to our family's cabin for a weekend of nature-y bliss. 

Then we came home to this:

Welcome, summer!