we made it!

12 hours of traveling on wednesday and 3 more on thursday morning, and we finally pulled into wheaton! it's even cuter than i remembered.

this was my view for 15ish hours. i'm just glad i wasn't the one driving the uhaul with no cruise control. poor james. thankfully the uhaul got a wopping 8 miles to the gallon :)

we got to cross over the MS river twice in one day. once james almost got run into the river by a huge 18 wheeler. it was a bit scary for both of us.

and then we were finally in illinois. only 350 more miles to wheaton...

in all our moving and driving, i've become a huge fan of gas stations that have sonic ice. it got me through the last couple hours on wednesday.

fyi - don't drive from ms to illinois for the scenery. i'll save you the time - this is it between mississippi, tennessee, arkansas, missouri, and illinois. pretty farmland, but not too entertaining.

and then we were finally here. the kents flew up to help us move in and this is what our apt looks like now. off to unpack more boxes.

happy day

note to self

i love love this room

source

27

what's better than celebrating a birthday?
how about celebrating for 4 days
so fun

day 1. car filled with balloons from james



and transformers in 3d with gracie and james


day 2. amazing italian with my fam





day 3. steaks on the big green egg


and birthday cake, picked out by james


day 4. pizza and ice cream with sweet friends


i've got a feeling 27 is going to be a good year.

happy day

the beach

i love, love the beach



love




and am already missing it.

lately...

i can't believe we've been home for a month! it's been awesome getting to hang out with family and friends and soak up this time before heading to chicago at the end of july.

it's been especially fun hanging out with this cutie


a couple weeks ago we headed back to chattanooga for kirk and cole's sweet wedding



and had a blast hanging out with joy and jason for the weekend. when we lived in chattanooga, joy fed us at least once a week. seriously. so now we're just adding more to our tab. it's ok with me 'cause that means we'll just have to keep going back to try to make it up to them.


slow down, summer!

indoor s'mores

as amazing as s'mores are, it's way to hot in ms to sit around a bonfire. so my mom came up with these indoor smores.

mini graham cracker crusts, and couple pieces of hershey's chocolate in the bottom, and a ginormous marshmallow on top (have you seen these? they're amazing!) pop 'em in the oven for a couple minutes and eat up. i tried to shave some chocolate on top to make them pretty, but it just melted into chocolate strips. oh well.

so good and a lot cooler than sitting outside by a fire. yum.

look what i got...

an iphone!

oh happy day.

i might have jumped up and down in the store and yelled,
'this is the best day of my life!'

maybe.

james might have done the same dance because now he won't have to 'share' his with me anymore.

thanks poppy and james. ahhhmazing bday present :)

a summer skirt

guess what.
i actually sewed something.
imagine that.

it was kinda annoying me that my favorite skirt at old navy never goes on sale because, even though it's just $15, i always feel better about buying things on sale. and then i saw this skirt at anthropologie which is really just the same skirt, but longer and thought i might like that better. so first round of this skirt was a long, black version. but i've actually never worn it. i think it holds the mississippi humidity in and who wants that. not me.


so for round two, i used less than 2 yards of cheap jersey from the hancocks sale table. gotta love piles of sale fabric.



first, i doubled my fabric over, laid my favorite old navy skirt on it, and cut it out, leaving a couple inches around it.



i serged up the edges to make a triangular - tube.



for the waist band, i cut out a rectangle twice as high as i actually wanted it to be on my waist (b/c we're going to fold it over in a minute) and wide enough to fit around my waist pretty snug.



i folded it over, hamburger style for all you kindergarten teachers, and serged up the edge to make a tube.



ok, this is kinda hard to explain - we want the serged edges to be covered up, so i took one of the edges and folded it over to meet the other raw edge. make sense? probably not...



now the tube is only half as tall with one smooth side and one side with 2 raw edges



now to put it all together - i definitely messed this up twice. on the 2nd skirt i did. ugh.
with the skirt still inside out, i lined put the tube over the top of the skirt, lining up all the raw edges



serged all around it



and walah! super comfortable summer skirt with a fold over band. gotta love jersey for the summer.