.golden birthday.

Twas the mecca of all birthdays: the golden birthday. Today I turned 30 on the 30th.

And as I type this us, I'm laying across the arm chair, legs draped over one arm of the chair, head resting on the other, laptop propped up on my knees. Feeling like I'm getting sick, aka, achy with a dry cough. But even though this birthday ends on a not-so-great note, the day itself was quite enjoyable.

But the celebration really started about 3 days ago, when my friends surprised me with a dinner at Houlihan's. Then we went to Target and tried on fun hats.

Having my sister in town gave us a few days to spend together, which I relished in. We even got a long-time dream up and going, but that's another blog post. ;-)

She and I did a lot of shopping and also spent some time at my neighborhood pool.

Then there's today, my actual birthday! It started out with church, followed by a delicious lunch at a downtown coffee shop with the hubs. Earlier in the morning, he surprised me with two cd's I wanted. He had them stashed in the drawer we keep our Bibles in, and when I went to get them out for church, I saw the cd's. He's good at surprising me! After church, we went to a flea market where I picked out my gift. (Hubs had originally ordered me a pair of Chacos, but they weren't comfortable, so I returned them.) At one of the flea markets, I ended up getting this cute little blueish gray distressed curio cabinet. I plan on putting baskets in it and storing our medicine and bathroom supplies in it. The little lines on the glass is my favorite detail.

Once we got home, we relaxed for a while and hubby watched the Nascar race then ran to the office to do some work. When he got home, I told him I wanted to take Simon to a park and have a picnic or something since it was so nice outside. We sat around and tried to figure out where to go and what to do, when the doorbell rang. Turns out it was a pizza delivery girl. Hubs had ordered a surprise dinner for me! We loaded up Simon and the food and headed to a nearby park for a picnic and walk.

 

Thankful to have kicked off the 30's with such a wonderful day.

I don't think it's fully hit me yet that I'm not in my 20's anymore. But I keep thinking of the Deana Carter lyrics from "Strawberry Wine."

"I still remember

when 30 was old..."

I just keep reminding myself that some day long in the future I'll look back on this birthday and think about how young I really was.

Gonna enjoy this time in my life and be content, not wishing away time or longing for years past. This is where God has led me at this point in my life and I am thankful for all He's blessed me with!

.my take on the diy ruffle-front tee.

I love finding creative, straight-forward sewing tutorials on Pinterest. I've seen the stretchy ruffle fabric in stores for a while now, and even though I've always liked it, I never knew what to do with it until I found this ruffle waterfall tee tutorial from In Honor of Design.

It's very simple in that you only need 1/4 yard of the ruffle fabric and an old shirt.

I like how the original tutorial used white-on-white, but the shirt I wanted to use is mint colored. Hancock Fabric didn't have any ruffle fabric to match, so I went with white.

So here's a few pictures to show how I pulled off my very own version of this DIY top.

I used an old J. Crew tee that is very fitted, and until I get flat abs, I'll never really be comfortable wearing it. But I knew the ruffles down the front would help mask the tightness of the shirt over my non-flat abs.

I took my 1/4 yard of white ruffle fabric, laid it down the front of my shirt, and trimmed it to the width I wanted it to be across. (I think I only had to cut about 3 ruffles off.)

 

I used a measuring tape along the edges of the ruffle fabric to the side seams of the shirt to make sure it was staying somewhat centered as I pinned the ruffles down. I left excess along the neckline and bottom hem, to be trimmed up later.

 

Making sure I had the right needle in my sewing machine (one meant for stretchy knits), I sewed along the sides, bottom, and neckline of the ruffle fabric. When sewing around the neckline, I did my best to sew right under the curvature of the tee's necking.

Let me just stress that I am not a pro at sewing two stretchy fabrics together. I had to rip out one of the side seams because the ruffle fabric had somehow gotten so off-center. For this reason, it wasn't as EASY of a project as I would've liked it to be, but if you're comfortable sewing with stretchy fabrics, you shouldn't have the same problem I had. Ripping light-colored seams off light-colored stretchy fabric is NOT FUN!!! Trust me on this one. ;-)

Once the ruffle strip was sewn down in a semi-satisfactory manner, I trimmed the excess from the neckline and bottom hem. And I was finally done!

I like the summery feel of the white on mint. I'm thinking about saving this shirt and wearing it on my 30th birthday that is coming up in a week!

.diy stream-lined thrifted top.

My sweet friend picked me up a J. Crew top while she was thrifting out of town. (Girl after my own heart, right there.) And I love the top, but when I tried it on, I thought...it could be a little more form-fitting and cuff ruffles aren't really "me."

It didn't really look bad before, but I knew with a few snips and stitches, it could fit even better.

So I first found a shirt in my closet of similar style that I like the fit of. I laid it down on top of my thrifted top, which was inside out.

I then placed straight pins along the outside edge of the top shirt so as to give me a sewing guideline to create new side seams on the thrifted top.

Once I sewed the new side seams, I grabbed my cutting board, ruler and rotary cutter and sliced off the cuff ruffles.

I turned up the raw edge of my new sleeve cuff and ironed a crease. Then I sewed up the new straight cuff hem.

And that was that! I held my breath, put the top back on and breathed a sigh of relief that it still fit. And even better this time around!

The changes are minimal, but enough for me to feel more comfortable wearing this fun top.

Hopefully this project will give you confidence to tweak an article of clothing from something you kinda like into something you love and will wear often.

.me as a non-dating bachelorette.

June 2, 2013:

I am currently in the midst of 4 days sans husband, for he is on a work trip.

Learning a lot about myself and what type of bachelorette I am--minus the dating scene, of course, since I'm married--as far as things I do differently when my husband is here versus when he isn't.

I will keep this blog post open and add to it as I see necessary until my husband gets home, but for documentation purposes..

My Four Days as a Non-Dating Bachelorette.

Do I cook? No, I don't cook. I eat out. Every possible meal. Or, at least the ones I'm not bumming off of someone else. (Had lunch today at my brother and sister-in-law's house.) Last night, I enjoyed a box of cheese sticks from Papa John's all to my self. The whole dang box. Then I watched the Bachelorette with no apologies.

Do I clean? Heck yes, I clean. I think I actually do a better job straightening up when it's just me to impress. Actually, this makes no sense at all...

Do I go places? Well, yeah, I go places. Shopping, obviously. But the key is: I drive HIS truck. "Bachelorette me" gets a thrill from driving the V8, large-and-in-charge Chevy truck. And she parks it quite beautifully. Even drove it to church by herself this morning.

***

Later that same evening:

Oops, I had cheese sticks for dinner for the second night in a row.

***

June 5, 2013:

Ok y'all. He's home. And I'm back to being a wife again. Trust me, it's better this way. I missed my boo. Plus, it's dangerous being a bachelorette--a girl can't live very long (or lean) by eating pizza errrnight.

I even managed to surprise the hubs by having a couple of home improvement projects done when he got back. By enlisting the help of my brother and mother-in-law, our new light fixture got hung over our dining table and our master bathroom got beautifully painted. These projects had been hanging over husband's head for quite some time now, and he was very appreciative and relieved to see they had been taken care of while he was gone. Maybe...I deserve a wife award after pulling that off?

Now I'm off to go pat myself on the back and put my empty pizza boxes in the recycle bin.

.amiee's chevron baby shower.

My friend Amiee is having a baby boy named Greyson in a couple of weeks.

We utilized my neighborhood clubhouse and threw her a chevron-themed baby shower.

The menu consisted of:

+ pretzel chips and hummus

+ quiches

+ cake

+ punch

We incorporated as much chevron as we could. It was on the cake and napkins. I used some pieces of chevron fabric I had as table runners.

I found this letter G at Hobby Lobby and spray painted the back of it with light gray and mod podged chevron-print paper onto the front. Amiee took this home with her after the shower to use as decoration in baby Greyson's nursery.

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut his banner out of card stock. The letters were cut out of the same orange and white chevron paper I used on the front of the tabletop G. She can also hang this in Greyson's nursery if she so desires.

My friend Chrissy brought her chalkboard tray, and we drew out this message.

Amiee's daughter Ella helped open all the gifts.

I'm so excited to meet this sweet baby boy!

.camping & canoeing on the elk.

I don't know if I've ever revealed this or not...but I have the coolest small group ever.

This past weekend, we went on a camping/canoeing trip together.

This marked my second time to camp, my first time (and most likely, my last) time to canoe.

We stayed at The Eagle's Nest in Noel, MO. Our camp site was beautiful, but with a road close by, railroad tracks, and a nearby cow field...sleep was pretty much futile. BUT there was a bathroom, like right there, so I was cool with the loss of sleep.

We walked down to the Elk River from our campsite and practiced skipping rocks.

For dinner, we heated up some burgers, hot dogs and ribs over the fire. For dessert, we had s'mores. It was pretty warm during the day, in the 80's, but the night we camped got pretty chilly. That's another reason I didn't sleep well, but again, I was ok with it because there's something so fun about sleeping in a tent and feeling the cool evening air all night long.

By the way, I don't particularly care for s'mores because of the marshmallow part. But I still ate one because duh I was camping and that's just what you do.

Something neat about our campsite was the plot number we pitched our tent on. Number 61. For reasons that go all the way back to high school, 61 is my favorite number. How cool is that?!

The next morning, we got up around 6:30 (to the sound of a train) and had a breakfast of eggs and bacon. We walked down to the river to mess around, then we took our tents down.

Then the canoeing adventure began.

Let me just say, I am dang proud of myself. I'm proud of all of us, but considering it was my first time and I have a very unhealthy fear of water, I'm super proud that I didn't wuss out.

Eight miles down the Elk River in 2.5 hours (and that includes stopping halfway to eat soggy sandwiches).

I almost cried, almost had a panic attack. The two non-swimmers wore life jackets...

But I found my comfort in sitting on the floor of the canoe as opposed to the seat. I didn't feel like I was going to fly overboard as much with the walls surrounding me. After my panic subsided, I got into the groove of paddling and actually did quite well.

The Elk River was beautiful!

And minus the drunk people that so rudely squirted us with water guns and that one time we almost tipped...I ended up having fun.

Oh, yeah, we ALMOST tipped. In choppy, deep water that carried us straight towards a fallen tree. We had to completely duck to avoid getting decapitated by the fallen limbs. Upon rising back up, we realized we were about to tip, I prayed "Lord!!" out loud, followed by a choice word as my oar got ripped out of my hands and my life flashed before my eyes. 

A nice boy scout in a kayak saved my oar and brought it back to me.

Thankfully, this near-death experience happened towards the end of our adventure. Once we got back to shore and all the canoes from our group returned, we learned that one of our friends' whole family tipped in the rapids that almost tipped us. They lost everything out of their canoe, but the husband was able to swim and retrieve it all. Well, all except for my friend's flip flop, but that floated downstream to us eventually.

Needless to say, after all the drama and excitement, we were exhausted and just ready to get home and shower.

One thing's for sure, you don't go on a trip like this and not grow closer to the people you share in the experience with.  I absolutely love this group of people and I'm go glad I could be a part of these memories.

.will & savannah's wedding.

It's been a while since I've gotten to go to a wedding, so I've been anxiously waiting for May 4th to arrive.

My "brother from another mother" tied the knot with his beautiful bride, Savannah.

This match made in Heaven couldn't have pulled off a more beautiful wedding, in my opinion. It was very Pinterest-inspired without going overboard. The colors were coral & aqua.

And since the wedding took place in a tiny country town about 4 hours from home...ROAD TRIP!

{Side note: Yeah, ok, I'm kinda obsessed with road trips. Love 'em.}

The decor was perf. Gorg. Amazeballs. (AKA awesome)

Got to spend good quality time with some family and friends I hadn't seen in a while. And my handsome brother was the best man!

The wedding was originally supposed to be outdoors with the reception inside, but the rainy weather pushed it all inside. The setting was just so beautiful, I can't get over it. And I can't wait to see the professional wedding pictures they took outside because I'm sure the overcast sky made for some striking colors and gorgeous photos.

So very happy for Will & Savannah!