Local happenings

Happy Wednesday!  I love when I have a short week.  I think all weeks should be four days, no joke.  Anyway, it seems it really is finally spring! The bush in my yard is finally starting to sprout leaves!  This is the latest I can remember it blooming in the seven years I've lived in my house.  It has been one crazy spring, that is for sure.  

I realized it's been about a month since I've worn my cute Tandem Vintage dress!  It seemed appropriate to pull it out today, they're having another Pop Up Sale this weekend!  They are teaming up with the cutest new donut shop, Glam Doll Donuts - it's 50's themed.  How cute is that?  I have been wanting to check out this donut shop and now you combine it with my favorite vintage group?  Should be an epic time for sure.  If you're local, make sure to stop by, the sale is Saturday and Sunday from 10-5.

Dress - Tandem Vintage

Sweater - Jones New York, from cousin

Necklace/bracelets - S&D

Sandals - Clothes Mentor

Also if you're local, there is a big event over at the Fairgrounds on Saturday too - Craftstravaganza - a very large Indie Craft event that is on it's 8th year.  I have a good friend who will be selling pottery and photography there. Also, if you remember my favorite Jenna Lou bag?  She'll be there too.  I love, love, LOVE supporting handmade/crafty/independent folks like this, it's like Etsy come to life.  I have been trying to cut back on my shopping, but I plan on at least breezing through this event as well as the vintage sale this weekend.  Saturday could be a full day!  And we're already halfway to the weekend!  Yay!

*As always I link because I love, this is not a sponsored post, I just want to support my friends who part of these events by advertising a bit for them - you won't regret shopping either event, that is for sure!*

Inspiration Monday - Good times

Hello everyone!  Happy Monday!  Thank you all for the sweet comments on my last post!  As I had said, I don't always recognize our dating anniversary anymore, but 15 years was too big of a milestone to pass up!  We had a great day and I'll get to more of that in a minute, but first up, we have Inspiration Monday!  Today the birds picked Nikki Reed and my age is showing again in that I don't quite know who she is.  Oh well, she's got a pretty chic outfit on at any rate!

Once again, I decided to make the outfit work for work - so here we go.  I chose dressy black pants and two of the shirts my cousin gave me.  Wonder if she ever wore these together?  I also got a haircut over the weekend.  It had only been about three weeks since my last one, but I just felt like it was a shaggy, hot mess honestly.  This time I told the person I wanted a spiky pixie and I think she got the idea!  I'm happy anyway.

And speaking of happy, let's get back to my anniversary day with the Pants Monkey.  We went to a vineyard about an hour north and east of us in Wisconsin and enjoyed a lazy afternoon of tasting wine.  It was really quite good.  We brought several bottles home with us!  In the evening we headed down to a newer restaurant in Minneapolis - it's been there a year already actually, but we hadn't had a chance to until now, called the Butcher and the Boar.  It's definitely a "meat" kind of place, but I was surprised at the large number of seafood dishes they had as well.  We're carnivores though, so of course we had ourselves some meat.  It was delish.  I would love to go back there sometime, we were definitely treating ourselves so it was spendy, but I bet we could go back and maybe not spend quite as much!  After dinner we were pretty much in a food coma and headed home to watch our all time shared favorite movie, Punch Drunk Love.  It was a nice day!

White shirt - White House, Black Market (from cousin)

Sweater - Jones New York (from cousin)

Pants - Style and Co, Macy's

Necklace and bracelets - S&D

Sunglasses - Xhilaration, Target 

The rest of my weekend involved breaking my shopping ban a little early (more to come on this, I'm so excited about my goodies, even if a Facebook friend did comment "um what happened to abstaining?) seeing my blogging besties Lori, Cambria and Amanda, doing a beer tasting and enjoying pizza with some other good friends, and eating my favorite Mexican meal at home to close out the weekend.  All in all, it was a good one!  And it's another short week for this girl, so no complaints there either!

Don't forget to head over to two birds to see the other Inspiration Monday outfits!  And have a fantastic day!

Snowy elf

It snowed again.  It seems we're making up for our lack of snow in early winter by getting a little bit every other day now.  At least it's been light and fluffy and easy to clean.  And I have a short commute to work so I can't complain too much!

I decided even with the snow and the cold today that I haven't worn my favorite dress in ages so I just felt the need to wear it today.  It's pretty warm, especially after adding this nice warm sweater from my cousin.

Dress - two birds vintage

Sweater - Jones New York, from cousin

Tights - Target

Boots - Payless

Necklace - S&D 

I always feel somewhat elf-like when I wear these boots.  I'm not sure why, other than they're short.  The toe isn't that pointy in them.  Yet, I just feel a bit like an elf.  But, hey, they're comfy, so they have that going for them!  They got a little coated in snow as I was setting up my camera this morning.

Such an exciting post today.  I guess the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet!  Is it snowy where you are?

Inspiration Monday - Sort of

Happy Monday!  First full week since before Christmas, this could be rough!  Oh well, normal is good too right?  So today's Inspiration Monday look is from Blake Lively here. 

I think my outfit from last Monday fits the bill better than what I came up with today, but so it goes!  Two of the items today are courtesy once again of my fabulous cousin.  I ran with my mom on Saturday to pick up the bags of clothes she left at my aunt's house - holy cow there was a ton of stuff!  There were FOUR full bags, of which I kept enough to fill one bag.  And believe me, that was still plenty!

So anyway, I guess this is one of those "I followed the inspiration if you squint" kind of outfits.  This sweater still had the tags on!  Man I love hand me downs!!

That was pretty much the most exciting part of my weekend.  I tried to kind of lay low and not do much so I could kick the cold to the curb and I was more or less successful.  I have lingering sniffles but nothing like it was.  I was bummed to not really go out with the Pants Monkey this weekend, but we got burgers from our favorite place and watched the second Harry Potter movie, so it wasn't a total wash of a weekend!

T-shirt - Ann Taylor (from cousin)

Sweater - Jones New York (from cousin)

Pants - Sonoma, thrifted

Bag - Nine West (gift from in-laws)

Necklace - S&D

I had wanted to start cleaning out my closet this weekend, but decided to wait until I had more energy.  I think that may be a project for next weekend now instead.  There is something about the New Year that makes me want to clean out everything and re-organize, not just my closet, but my entire house.  Fresh start!!

For more Inspiration Monday outfits that probably follow the inspiration a little better, head on over to two birds.

Inspiration Monday - Must be the boots

Happy Monday friends!  For most of you here in the US it's probably a short week due to Thanksgiving.  It's sort of a short week for me, I still get all of Thanksgiving Day off, but thanks to working in health care that stops for nothing, I do have to work at least part of the day on Black Friday this year.  It's mostly due to my boss still being out on her leave, she just wants me here part of the day in case any of the clinics have facility related problems.  If all is calm by lunchtime though I'm free to go home for the rest of my day.  Could be worse I suppose!  

Anyway, taking the sting off of Monday, is Inspiration Monday and today's pick is Jenna Dewan-Tatum, aka Mrs. Sexiest Man Alive (she's married to Channing Tatum, whom People just picked as this year's sexiest man).  

I really want a sweater like hers - it looks like a blanket, yet it's stylish! I sadly do not have such a sweater, so I kind of went after the stripes and boots instead for my casual look this last Friday.

T-shirt - Maurices

Sweater - Jones New York (from cousin)

Jeans - Old Navy

Boots - Target

Sunglasses - Lillian's

Bag - Coach via Ebay

Jewelry - S&D 

So we sometimes practice with our music group on Friday nights, so we were over at our director's house and it was an early practice because my director had a work event, so I figured I'd treat MY sexiest man alive, aka the Pants Monkey, to a date at one of our local taprooms after practice.  I figured my work outfit would transition well to a date outfit.  I can't tell you how many of the other members of the group commented on my outfit.  "Looks like Beth is dressed for what she's doing afterward tonight."  I'm like, I did wear this to work all day too!  I think it had something to do with the boots.  I received more compliments on these boots on Friday and it's silly - I have had these boots for the better part of eight years I bet!

Anyway, we did go have a nice date at our taproom and I was laughing with Mr. Monkey about the comments and he said "well, they don't normally see you dressed up all that much."  I suppose he is right, we wear a uniform to our masses and often to practices I go in a sweatshirt and jeans!  They don't get the stylish Bethie very often!

For more Inspiration outfits head on over to the two birds blog here and while you are there, make sure you wish a happy birthday to Nora Bird too!

Better late than never

Ok, so when my thermostat said it was below 30 outside this morning I decided, I'm not taking outdoor pictures this morning, even if it is super sunny!  Too cold for me!  

This is totally not what I meant to wear today.  I was going to wear the pants no matter what, and I decided to wear this t-shirt, but I was going to wear a jacket instead of this little sweater (which yes, it's another cousin goodie, told you we weren't quite done with that!).  Then I opened the closet and saw this little sweater and decided I liked it better, so here you go!

I finally hemmed these pants too!  I won't be tripping over them any longer and now you can actually see the shoes I'm wearing!  I still adore these pants, they are hands down probably one of my most favorite items in my closet right now!

Below is Big Pippin, I had a really cute picture that she photo bombed this morning where she was actually climbing up on me and of course, it turned out fuzzy.  So I tried to recreate it and she was having none of that, so this was the result.

Pippin says "leave me alone mom!"

Silly kitty.  Also, I'm totally a day behind because yesterday I spaced on Everybody Everywhere - so I wore my pastels today and will add my link today.  Better late than never right?

Outfit rundown:

T-shirt - Decree, JCPenney

Sweater - Jones New York (from cousin)

Pants - Anthropologie (thrifted)

Shoes - Merona, Target (thrifted)

Necklace - F21