Nell Carter

Last night I went to bed with wet hair that was pulled back. This morning it’s straight-ish. I decided to channel Portia de Rossi as Nell Carter (from Ally McBeal)

I ended up like this:

Not exact, but not bad. I’m getting funny comments this morning though. First male comment: “You look severe this morning”. Second male comment: “What’s different, why isn’t your hair curly?”

Thus far, no comments from any female coworkers. Maybe they aren’t easily confused like their male counterparts. Or maybe males have been trained to comment on obvious hairstyle changes?

Either way, I feel a need to don a short skirt and maybe wear a tie (I remember her doing that often on the show).

-b-

Wine & Leather

The interwebs are currently being scrutinized a little more at my office. This stinks for loads of reasons, but one is that I’m having a tough time keeping up with everyone and everything…Nonetheless, I will persevere!

On to fun:

I’ve been very lucky recently in that I have a little group of girl friends in Houston that have started a “Ladies Night In”. We meet up once a month at someone’s house and have a different theme each time. Last night was Wine Tasting around the World. Each of us were assigned a country and brought a wine. I had New Zealand and brought Monkey Bay. It was okay...not really something I like. At the end of the night after all sampling, the bottles were corked and raffled off and I won this one: Werewolf from Romania

Again, this was okay. I don't love it, but I don't hate it.

What I’m really excited about is next month is a clothing/accessories swap! Yippee. I love those types of things. I grew up with a sister who is only one year younger, and we would swap with each other and each other’s friends.

….

Unrelated: Yesterday was a semi-stressful day so I spend my lunch break at goodwill (I know, I’m weak. Shopping as therapy isn’t the best stress buster, blah, blah, blah.)

But I found the best thing, a real leather motorcycle jacket for $10. Asymmetrical and all zippery. I’ve been looking for one, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit a couple hundred bucks to a new one. I have a tough time justifying an expensive coat purchase living in Houston. This isn’t my coat, but this is similar to the style found on net-a-porter (imagine it without the sweatery stuff at the wrist)

I can’t wait for winter to wear this. It’ll be hanging out in my spare closet for a long time (October? Probably November), but I’ll be so happy when that time comes…

-b-

30

I'm officially in my thirties, as of yesterday. So far, so good. I can't really complain. I used to think that I'd drop dead at thirty as a haggard old lady - now 30 doesn't seem bad at all.

I have a job that I actually enjoy most days

I met and married a great partner

I've managed to meet and maintain valuable friendships with people all over the country

And I'm pretty sure that I'm still cute.

Yeah for the thirties! So far, my favorite decade!

-b-

New Favorites

I don't know your opinion of monkeys, but I think they are pretty funny animals. They throw poop, and I've seen them "help themselves" at the zoo. They are basically our furry crude cousins. Although not crude, I like my silly monkey necklace that I'm wearing today...

Here's a closeup. The little dude is covering his eyes. Maybe he did something crude and is ashamed?

I'm wearing this with my earrings from Erin that I showed on my last post. It goes together quite nicely today!

I'm also wearing my J-41 shoes. I bought these on a whim from 6pm.com for $20 and they have turned into one of those fantastically lucky purchases. This style is the Sara Sport and they are uber comfortable and (I think) pretty stylish for casual shoes. I wore them for an entire 4 day time period in Chicago and my feet never complained about the constant walking. These shoes rock.

We're hosting a party this weekend and I'll be honest and say that I feel really overwhelmed about the whole thing. There are so many things to think about when more than 2 other people are coming over. Food!Drinks! Entertainment! I can't have people bored, hungry, and thirsty.

I'm even taking a half-day today, just so that I can properly plan it all out this afternoon. It's supposed to be a casual bbq, but I guess it's like natural makeup - there is still some effort going into it.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

-b-

Torquoise and Earrings

I spent last Thursday night at the bead shop crafting things. I made two necklaces, this is one of them. It's another knotted necklace. I liked the combo of turquoise with purple. I wore it on Friday...but it's tough to tell from the one photo I took that day.

I'm wearing it again today with my all over pink outfit.

The lighting is doing me no justice, but you get the point: this necklace goes with a lot of colors.

Do you see what else I'm wearing? Probably not, I need to zoom in....

More zoom? yep, more.

These are the earrings I selected for my winnings at Work With What You've Got. I love them! They are super light but big and dangly. Check out her Etsy shop LoveErinDesigns

-b-

Pop

Holy Cow, have you tried these?

Popchips

They are like chips, but not. They are supposed to be a healthy alternative, but i think I like them better than most chips.

Check 'em out.

-b-

Sweetheart search continues

I'm still looking for more items with sweetheart necklines. I think I like the quest!

This is a lovely dress on bluefly, but I can't get behind it because of the company name. tee hee:

A new thought crossed my mind this morning: Dare I even consider sewing one??

Pattern from Jalie:

Pattern from McCalls (except I HATE the opening part of the bottom)
Sewing seems somewhat disireable, but I'm really not very good at sewing and I don't really know that I have the time to get good at it.

I'm going to keep my eyes peeled for this item...

-b-

sweetheart necklines: help

I bought this shirt on a whim at goodwill...it's originally a F21 shirt. In general, I don't like to buy this brand secondhand b/c it's usually not too much more to just buy thier stuff brand new.

'm in love with this shirt. It didn't photograph the way I imagine it in my head..so you'll have to trust that it's actually quite fabulous. The neckline is really flattering on me and I'm determined to find more. But I'm having a tough time finding them.

It is a "sweetheart neckline" right?

Anyone have mad online shopping skillzzz that will point me to more like this. I've found Polyvore and searched a couple stores (including the store of orgin-f21), but I'm not really findign much like this. I'm finding a lot of tube tops and dresses.

Maybe I should search sweethear neckline and cap sleeves?

-b-

Crafty at home

Today I'm going to do this a little differently and forgo the left/right alignment on photos and just center them...this is Lola's idea and I *think* I understand why the L/R was messing me up.

This weekend was chock full of un-fun home ownership stuff. Despite living in Houston, we don't have central A/C, we have window units. Its an old house and wasn't updated when we bought it .. no problem though, the window units actually work really well.

It however was a problem when the unit in our bedroom started going last week. Not cool, man. Friday and Saturday equaled 10 trips to hardware/appliance stores. BOR-ING. I have a deep hate for spending time in Lowes & Home Depot.

But here's the new unit...yippee

We had another hot house problem to correct on Sunday - the front windows. We used to have a gloriously HUGE oak tree in our front yard.

Exhibit A

Then Hurricane Ike hit and down came the tree.

Exhibit B (this is still F'ed up for me to look at)

Without the oak tree shade, it's hotter than heck in our house by the front windows. We found tinting and now it looks like we've got some sweet mirrored windows.

Exhibit C

I hope it helps!

*Yes, that's me chilling in a housedress of sorts and yes, those are bars on our windows. It used to be a great neighborhood, then was a rough one, and is now back to great. We just haven't got around to removing these things.*

This post lacks anything crafty, beauty, or fashion related. hmm..do home repairs count as crafts? It was DIY

-b-

Formatting Assistance?

Can any other bloggers help me with formatting?

I'm having a really difficult timing with paragraph spacing in my posts due to photos. It seems like whatever I type after a photograph has goofy formatting.

I'm writing in the "compose" part of blogger and then I "preview" my post. Somehow when I publish it, everything changes. WTF?!?! I'll write a post, and then spend another 1/2 hour fussing over the spacing. It's really frustrating me this week.

I'm also going to check out any help features on the webpage, but thought you all might know some tricks.

THANKS
-b-

Knotting & 1st Outfit post

Oh boy! I learned a new, simple, beading skill last night: knotting.

When I stopped by my awesome local bead shop on Monday for the swarovski beads, the owner (Jim) invited me to hangout on Thursday night. And so that's what I did last night. I hung out with a couple other folks at the bead shop. It was laid back and very creatively stimulating to see what others work on. No two people were working on the same thing.

Jim taught me how to knot last night and I was able to repair a previously busted pearl necklace. Here is it:

Ahh, precious!

Up close view of the knots holding pearls in place.

Prepare to see a lot of this type of thing in the future. I bought more nylon thread and I'm excited to try other things.

The pearl necklace determined by outfit this morning and inspired my first actual outfit post:




shirt: Bitten, actually thrifted
Skirt: Target, bought from Fallas Peredes*

Shoes: Steve Madden, ghetto dillards

I'm not loving my first outfit post...I couldn't find a good place for the camera today and kept cutting off my head. Just to prove I have a head, here ya go:

(Plus, my threading related breakout is finally going down)

You can't tell from this angle, but is a bumpit in there! Promise it's cute from the side.

* I don't know if this is just a Houston chain, but it's an interesting place. Kinda crummy and discouraging at first look, but a good place to find cheap basics. This skirt was $1.99. Yeah, I bought two.*

Have a great weekend with all of your fun hobbies!

-b-

Unique Hobbies...

I like it when people have 'different' hobbies. You know, when they say thier interests are something other than watching movies and reading. I mean, most of us do that.




I have a girlfriend that fits this, she does figure competitions. She doesn't do the bikini modeling and she's not a bodybuilder either - she is something in between. At first this seems like a really 'out there' hobby. It requires buttloads of determination and discipline. She follows a strict diet and workout schedule, but the results are pretty incredible.



She recently participated in a competition in Austin and did really well. This was my second time to cheer her on at a show and what strikes me most is how GIRLY the women are. For real. She gets all dolled up with makeup, hair, jewelry, nails, tans, stripper shoes, etc......It's like a beauty pageant with muscle.




















She borrowed some super sparkly swarovski jewelry for her competition and I'm determined to make her some items of her own. I've spent the last two days with rather expensive but super sparkly beads.

I also did a necklace and ring, but kinda hated the ring (I haven't quite got that technique yet) and the necklace was just not quite right. I'll probably take those apart tonight and start fresh.





Anyone else with unique hobbies? I've seen that Erin does hula hooping and admit to jealously.That looks like a fun one.



Not sure that I do anything too unique. Among my own friends, I'm unique in that I still play on soccer teams and go to tournements as an adult.






















I guess there's that. We still take team photos like we're kids too!



-b-

Threading: oh no, problem

I recently had my eyebrows & upper lip (it's embarassing to say, but whatever) re-threaded and have run into problems. The actual hair removal went well and I'm nicely shaped.

But I have BUMPS! They kind of look like pimples, but not really?? IDK. There are some over my eyebrow area and some at the corners of my upper lip. It's terrible. I'd rather have some blonde hairs than pimples.

I don't know if I made a mistake before/after threading....
anyone know what i need to do?

I'm def. not posting a photograph of this one....consider yourselves spared!

-b-