HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! 

I've always loved Halloween and I had so much fun creating this costume. If you can't tell, I'm a gothic princess. Basically, I wanted to be a princess, but I wanted to wear all black. It's like my whole inner self portrayed in the real life, because I wish I was a princess and I want to wear black all the time... and a crown, all the time. I honestly wish I could dress like this every day.

My husband kept annoying me for weeks because he wouldn't tell me what he was dressing up as. But he secretly created his costume to be the Knight Dragon... the character I wrote in my Heroes & Villains series. Let's be honest here, Chris wins "Best Husband Award" this year because the love and support he gives my writing is unreal to me. I love him so much! 

Halloween is also the anniversary of my first kiss with Chris, so it's kind of like "our" holiday. 

I made the skirt for my costume and if you would like a tutorial you can leave a comment down below. It's not something I would do without suggestion because it's been shown on many blogs before. I wouldn't be showing you anything new. 

The under-dress and shoes are from Ross. I'm now obsessed with these shoes and want to wear them every day for the rest of forever, so be prepared to see them in a lot of future fashion posts. Oh, I will have a fashion post this Friday (which, BTW, is also my birthday). 

Finally, if you want a makeup tutorial on how I created this makeup look, just let me know in the comments as well. I love doing makeup videos so I'd be happy to, but since it's past Halloween I understand if that's not something that's needed. 

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Halloween and eat lots and lots of candy!! 

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!

Happy Independence Day everyone!!! Today I am bringing you another fashion post this week for the fun of it. It's a patriotic outfit including a flag scarf I bought last year. Remember, as I said yesterday, if you want to see my real outfit for today's holiday, you'll need to follow me on social media (here are the links to my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr). 

Today I wanted to talk a bit though about my love of America. Now I want to travel and I've loved the vacations and different places I have been, but I have never had the opportunity to leave the US. So me saying that I love America could be slightly biased because I've never been anywhere else, but there's much more to it than that. 

I think a lot about the blessings I've been given in my life. Lately you've seen a lot of it with my Happy Tuesday posts, and I love taking the time every Tuesday to really think about what has made me happy and blessed me most. Living in America has always been one of those blessing. While I have no doubt my life could be wonderful if I had been born anywhere else, I will never not be grateful for the blessings and opportunities living in America has given me. 

Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the feeling of safety and protection, equality, the right to work and build a life for Chris, myself and our future family, and the freedom to publish my thoughts on this blog anytime I want are just a few of the blessings I have been given. But there's always more. 

I was born to the most amazing parents and have the most amazing family and then married the most incredible man in the world, all because my Father in Heaven knew exactly where to put me so that I could live my life the happiest. I've been given so much by my Father in Heaven and placing me in a country that I love is a big one. 

Yes, America has it's flaws and there will always be ideas of politicians and people that I don't agree with, but the country, it's mountains, valleys, deserts, rivers, beaches, lakes, and cities are what I love the most. We live in such a beautiful place and I cannot wait to continue exploring all this country has to offer. I am truly proud to be an American and live in this wonderful, beautiful country full of incredible people and opportunities. 

I hope you all have a wonderful, and safe, 4th of July! 

Shirt: Old Navy (Exact match)

Pants: Walmart (Same brand)

Shoes: K-Mart (Exact match)

Flag Scarf: Target (Similar item)

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I've been obsessed with Old Navy recently. I love my latest top from them in the pictures above and here are a few other Old Navy tops that I'm in love with. Enjoy!

Blue and White Stripes

I will be the first to say these are not good pictures. So I apologize for that. Tomorrow is the 4th of July which is one of my most favorite holidays. I'm a pretty patriotic person, I mean, the Star Spangled Banner is one of my favorite songs and often makes me cry. Firework shows sometimes make me cry too. Maybe I cry too much or maybe I just love America. 

Chris and I have awesome plans and patriotic outfits for the fourth and if you want to see what we're wearing and doing, you'll have to follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter! So please follow and you'll see the awesomeness of one of my favorite holidays! 

The following dress is from Old Navy which is currently one of my favorite stores. In fact, both the shirts Chris and I will be wearing tomorrow for the fourth are from Old Navy. This is a favorite dress of mine. If you follow me on Instagram you've seen it before, but this is the first time I've put it up on here. It's semi-patriotic with the blue and white strips and if I was specifically wearing this for the fourth, I would probably pair it with my red shoes and belt. 

Well I hope you all have a wonderful Independence Day and do something fun and don't forget to check out my social media pages to see my patriotic outfit for tomorrow! 

Dress: Old Navy

Boots: Kohls

Here's a few other Old Navy dresses that I love! 

St. George Trip

So it's apparently a tradition now that we go to St. George for President's Day weekend. Which is cool because for the past two years it means Valentine's Day and Chris's birthday as well. I absolutely love St. George, it's gorgeous and warm and for a long time I wanted to live there. The red rocks are gorgeous and amazing and I'm super upset I didn't get more/better pictures. 

But here are the pictures I do have as well as a short fashion photo shoot at the end of what I wore on Valentine's Day. It wasn't a big deal for us, so I was super casual.

This picture was taken on the ride home. The line on the top right is a crack in the windshield. I'm the worst for forgetting to take a picture like this until we were leaving. I love red rock. 

Our condo/hotel thing is in the weirdest place. You have to drive through a neighborhood and apartments to get there and the view from the balcony is this picture. A dry boring field. Where children like to shoot BB guns at each other. Apparently.  

But the condo has basketball courts, two swimming pools, hot tubs, and fun games to play. We were able to swim, which made me super excited because I love swimming so much! We also played ping pong and pool with my in-laws and it was tons of fun.

This is our beautiful condo/hotel/timeshare thing. I forget what to call it. I love that there are palm trees. Palm trees are the coolest.

My incredible mother-in-law gave me two super cute Valentines. She is the sweetest as were the treats she gave me. 

Chris and I didn't do much for Valentine's Day or his birthday. Later in the week after we were home I took Chris out to eat at one of his favorite restaurants in Logan, Indian Oven (which everyone should go to. It was really sad because we were the only ones in there and it's honestly so good and the people who work there are so nice, so if you live in Logan just go there!!!), and I gave him his birthday present:

Yep, I gave him an iPod. I spoil him. But he deserves it. 

I spent most of the trip reading and finished my book a bit too fast, considering I only brought one. I was reading Eleanor & Park for my February Book Club book which if you haven't joined in already, you have one week left to read any love story of your choosing. I have a book planned for next month as well, which is a book my mom gave me months ago and I'm just getting around to reading it, so be prepared for Book Club again next month! Yay! 

Now onto my fashion post!

Shirt: ???

Jeans: Walmart

Shoes: Kmart

Playgrounds are awesome. This was at the hotel and I had fun taking pictures and playing on it. My hair turned out super curly and awesome on Valentine's Day and I wish I had better pictures of it because even Chris said it was amazing. 

I'll have my normal widget of same or similar items at the very bottom of this post. But I have one last picture. 

Being with my in-laws means seeing my favorite dog Max. While staying at the in-law's the night before going to St. George, Chris put a soccer jersey on Max and it was adorable... and barely fit him. But he's the cutest and best dog in the world. 

Making My Christmas Sweater!!

Alright, this isn't the best tutorial, and I didn't edit the photos (because I'm really lazy) so yeah... I'm not good at tutorials. I don't do them often for a reason.

So the Christmas tree I made is a just a removable patch type thing that I put on my shirt/sweater with safety pins. I liked this idea better than making a permanent Christmas sweater, for now, I do intend to make a really ugly one next year.

Anyways, here's the very basic steps to what I did.

Firstly are the things needed. I bought a paper sized sheet of felt, green ribbon, snowflake button embellishments, and fabric glue.

I started by cutting the felt into a triangle/Christmas tree shape. Then I began gluing the ribbon lengthwise along the tree, overlapping it and trying (but, as shown by the picture, failing) to keep them even.

Then I waited for a while because I didn't realize the glue I bought took 2-4 hours to dry. Ugh! I'm pretty sure a hot glue gun would have worked just as well as fabric glue and would have dried faster. But you can do what you want. 

I don't have pictures for the next part. but I began to cut strips into the ribbon, like fringe. It was the most annoying part because I didn't have good scissors at first. I ended up using my kitchen scissors because they were much sharper than my kid scissors I usually use. I need craft scissors though. There are so many craft things I need... 

The next step was gluing on the snowflakes. I was going to use rhinestones as sparkly ornaments for my tree, but I was super lucky to find these snowflake buttons that were actually much cheaper. I just glued them on in random places with the fabric glue. Honestly, this is the most obvious tutorial.

I loved the way it turned out!! Then I just pinned it onto my shirt with safety pins, but you could always glue or sew it on if you want it permanent. 

I really did love how this turned out! I can't wait till I can finally make my ugly one, it'll be awesome. Just you wait. 

Sorry this is such a simple tutorial, but it honestly was an incredibly simple craft and I loved doing it. I want to do more craft tutorials so that might be coming soon, we'll see. 

Merry Christmas! 

My Christmas Sweater!

I made a Christmas sweater!! I had an idea for a really ugly/awesome one but apparently Walmart doesn't have the stuff. And a sewing machine would have been nice. So I opted for one that I could do without a sewing machine, and for a cuter one, which was good because barely anyone at work even wore ugly sweaters so I'm glad that I didn't wear the awfully good and atrocious sweater that I had pictured in my mind and I do intend to make. 

I do believe I will give a quick tutorial on how I made this sweater and I will post it tomorrow!! Yay!! It was super simple, but a little time consuming due to a much longer drying time of fabric glue than I had expected and incredibly dull children's scissors. 

So I'm excited to show you all my wonderful sweater, with removeable Christmas tree (Yes, bonus for my tutorial, it can be applied to any shirt!), my favorite coat, my newish jeans that I'm in love with, and my new favorite shoes. I'm basically in love with this whole outfit. And I was having a good hair day, so it was a win-win kind of day. 

Coat: Overstock; Shirt: Walmart; Pants: Walmart; Shoes: Kohl's

Oh, and the shirt and shoes are directly linked to the exact ones I'm wearing. This shirt is like $8 and I love it. I'm going back and getting more. The coat a bought a long time ago, but Overstock often has great finds. The pants are LEI, which is where the link leads, but not to the direct pants I'm wearing. 

And here's a couple fun Christmas sweaters:

St. Patrick's Day Wishlist

HAIR BOW: Icing CAMERA BAG: Accessorize SKIRT: Hollister SHIRT: People Tree SHOES: DSW   

This should be changed to my "St. Patrick's Day outfit if I lived in a warmer environment". This is more of a summer outfit (and in Northern Utah March is definitely not summer) but I think this skirt is adorable and I love the simplicity and comfort of the top paired with it. I think I definitely need to get myself those shoes and the hair bow as well. Super adorable!!

Later this week I'll post what I actually wore on St. Patrick's Day, but for now I'm just dreaming about what I wish I could wear...

This beautiful collage was made through Polyvore, which I absolutely love! Don't forget to sign up and start making your own "wishlists".