Author: Melissa

fashion friday: blow that christmas money!

Melissa 15 Comments

Happy Fashion Friday! Hope everyone had a wonderful week – I really enjoyed unplugging a bit this week and spending my time alternating between spending quality time with the kids and sleeping off this monster cold. There’s been some great sales this week and I’ve been trying to decide the eternal after-Christmas question… What should I buy with my Christmas money?

My first thought – as usual – is boots. (I’m sure you’re shocked.) I’ve been wanting a pair of Cognac boots…. These are pretty amazing, I think.

Okay. I know I just said I wanted cognac boots, but these are totally awesome.

I love, love love this top from Anthropologie!! Isn’t that amazing??

Or maybe I should just get the sweater I’ve been drooling over in Free People for about 2 months…

Decisions, decisions… What are you spending your Christmas money on?




I also linked up with the lovely ladies over at Monday Mingle!

lessons learned

Melissa

This week has given me a new appreciation of just how much energy my kids have.

Seriously, WHAT am I going to do this summer? Having all three kids home all day was a little intense.  Granted, I’ve been sick and my in-laws are living here, which always ramps up the chaos a bit, but OH MY GOODNESS, its been nuts. I’ve learned a few important lessons.

1. The Easy Bake Oven, despite having the name “Easy” in its name, was not as easy as one might guess. It claims to be for ages 8 and up, but it took my mother-in-law and I a good 12 hours to figure out how to get it to actually bake things. Everything kept coming out raw and we couldn’t figure out why. We have it now, but we were very confused for awhile. And of course, the kids LOVE it. I’m so glad I buy organic so that they can chow down on Easy Bake Oven treats. *gag*

2. You’d think they would be busy with their new toys instead of driving me nuts. Humph.

3. Our cats are going to be seriously depressed when we put the Christmas tree away. It has been their chief source of entertainment for the last month. I suspect we’ll be finding Christmas ornaments in random places for the next six months, based on the number of empty hooks hanging on the tree now. Its super festive. Notice how there are almost no ornaments on the bottom third of the tree…

4. Always ask for the next size up in clothes. I requested size 3T for Colin for Christmas. And that little stinker outgrew of all of his clothes the week before Christmas, so now I have to go exchange everything he got for size 4T.

5. Last night we went out on a date. (Gotta love free babysitting!!) We haven’t been on a date in forever – we must do this more.

6. Cats hate dogs. Nick’s brother brought their dog over on Christmas day and our cats fuh-REAKED out. It was a little hilarious. I don’t think they’ve ever even seen dogs before, but they were not amused. They spent most of the day hiding under our bed. The few times they saw the dog they tried to be scary, but ended up running away.  They were a little stressed out the next day.

 

this week we will

Melissa 1 Comment

sleep in.

spend a whole day in our jammies.

read books. for fun. around the fire.

not go online unless its for fun.

clean out my closet. (yes, i know i just did that, but it was a catch all for christmas stuff, so its totally out of control again.)

go into the city and look at the lights.

make hot chocolate. with lots of marshmallows.

just be.

fashion friday: celebrate

Melissa 7 Comments

Happy Christmas, everyone!

 

1. How awesome are these shoes? And they are HALF OFF!

2. Jo-Lynne has this sweater and I love it. And now its on sale!!

3. This is one of my favorite dresses – I wore it to the Smurf’s Premiere. Its so comfy and flattering. And its on SUPER sale for just $40!
4. These are my very very favorite jeans. And they’re also on sale!! WOOT!

What a sale-r-ific day! Merry Christmas, everyone!

Here are the rules:
1. Link up a current fashion-related post. Please use the permalink to your post, not your blog’s URL.
2. Link back to one of the carnival hostesses.
3. Check out the other Fashion Friday posts and leave some comment luv. What goes around comes around!


 

my little caretaker

Melissa 1 Comment

I woke up on Monday sick (lovely timing, as usual) and since Colin is out of preschool now, he’s been my little helper. He has been getting me tissues, tucking me in under a blanket and generally being cute.

“Poor Mama. Why don’t you go lay down on the couch and watch Cars 2? You feel so much better!”
“Mom, you relax. I get this.”

It is so sweet. Not super helpful… but sweet.

fashion friday: sole society

Melissa 5 Comments

Love shoes? Of course you do! Who doesn’t love shoes?
(Well, my three year old, but whatever.)

Anyway, I will so be joining Sole Society. I went up to NYC yesterday to attend an event with Sole Society and fell in LURV with a capital L with these shoes! I’ve never joined a shoe club before – most I’ve seen have, well, ugly shoes. But if Sole Society has a problem, its too many awesome shoes.

First, sign up for free. Then, take the quiz to see your personal picks by fashion stylists. And get your shoes picks for the month! Basically, Sole Society is like a Shoe-Of-The-Month club. You can click here to see how it works, but basically, for $49.95 a month, you get a new pair of shoes of your choice from a selection picked for your style and preferences. Best part is, you can skip a month whenever you want without penalty, and shipping and returns are free. So you can sign up, only buy when you want and enjoy tons of designer quality shoes that are exactly your style!

My style? Classic, Understated, Elegant. I “radiate elegance and grace and are the ultimate in classic femininity.” They nailed me. Did they peek in my closet and see all the ruffles?  😉 Check out my picks of the month:


Those bright flats? Fabulous. The booties?? PERFECTION. I already own shoes that look exactly like those tan strappy heels and how perfect would those yellow platforms have gone with my outfit last night?
photo by @BarbaraJones

But girls, meet the cecila platform pump… the exact shoes I picked out last night!! They are much more comfy then you would think – and surprisingly easy to walk in. Loving the wood – and that fab bronze pattern!!

Aren’t they FANTASTIC?!?!?

Which would you have picked?



disclosure: we attended this event as guests of sole society and were provided with a gift bag. As always, all opinions are my own.

sole society soiree in nyc

Melissa 3 Comments

On Wednesday, Jo-Lynne and I headed up to NYC with our friend, Cecily, to go to a blogging event hosted by Barbara Jones and Catherine Connors for Sole Society. Jo-Lynne and I said when the invite came, “Shoes? Did you say SHOES?! Of course we’ll come!” We met up and took the hottest train ever up to New York City. (The train was seriously eleventy billion degrees. What the heck?) But what with the chatting at the speed of light that I’m sure all the businessmen in the train car greatly appreciated, we were able to still have a good trip. We even made it early enough to wander around a bit.

photo by @JoLynneS

New York at Christmas is amazing. I really, really want to take the kids up at some point to see it… when its not super freezing. I say this every year. Maybe some year we’ll actually have time to do it. December is so crazy. Sigh.

photo by @JoLynneS

Then we had to find a restaurant, which you’d think would be simple in a place like Manhattan, but somehow last night, we were carrying some sort of restaurant curse. Everywhere we went was closing in a few minutes for a private event or the oven was broken or they couldn’t seat us or whatever. Only we could go to a place with 20 restaurants per block and not find a place to eat, right?  We ended up having a yummy dinner at Lulu and me, then headed over to Hotel Lola for the event. Which, as I mentioned, involved one of my favorite things… shoes! The setting was gorgeous, even more so as we were surrounded by amazing bloggers and fabulous shoes and yummies like this:

I ate a lot of those chocolates. They were amazing. The shoes were so fantastic. It was hard to pick just one, but Jo-Lynne and I had to make a decision. And, as usual, we picked the exact same shoes. We do that a lot:
photo by @BarbaraJones

We had so much fun that we almost missed our train home. That’s the sign of a good night.  I can’t wait to share these fab shoes with you guys! Check out Fashion Friday tomorrow 😉

disclosure: we attended this event as guests of sole society and were provided with a gift bag. As always, all opinions are my own.