game day chic

You know when you say you will never do something again? And you are adamant about it - like an all caps I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. Well, I've found that when you say that...you eventually DO end up doing it again. See, I told myself, and anyone else who would list, that I was DONE blogging. KAPUT. I met friends (some of the best I'll ever have) and that was enough for me. But...seasons change and life is funny. So, I'm "back." (Though really, I never went anywhere! That's a weird thing for bloggers to say.) And I hope you want to read about books and TV shows and monograms...because that's what I want to talk about. 

To "celebrate" being "back," I've teamed up with some Houston bloggers to do an earring giveaway! How fun are these Lisi Lerch Button Earrings? With the most important game of the season for my Alma Mater coming up...LSU vs. Bama for you crazies who don't follow college football...it's perfect timing. We folks in the SEC take gameday seriously, there is no just throwing on a tshirt and calling it a day. (I'm looking at YOU a&m, you have a lot of work to do before you are truly SEC.) 

These earrings will be perfect with a simple gold tunic, leggings and some riding boots. Voila! The perfect fall gameday outfit, topped off with some pearls, of course. I think they will be just the good luck charm LSU needs to take down number 5. (I seriously love the fact that Oregon is ranked above Bama right now. LOVE. But number 1 and number 2 need to do a switcheroo.)

Enter below to win a pair in your team's colors!

Alice at The Lone Star Looking Glass

Whitney at The Observant Turtle
Meg at Everyday Meg  Miranda at Shop&Twirl   

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a husband win

Two weeks ago I found a Groupon deal (that apparently is ALWAYS a Groupon deal) for $5 tickets to any movie at Studio Movie Grill. Naturally I bought 4 and then bought 4 tickets to Catching Fire on the Friday it opened. One text later to my friend Haylie and we had a double date planned. 

Except when I told A about it, he responded with "sorry, we can't do that. I have a surprise planned." I immediately jumped to thinking that there was NO WAY his surprise would be better than Catching Fire and I begggggggged for him to change it. He repeatedly stated that he could not reschedule the surprise and I repeatedly made a fit about it. He's so lucky.

Friday rolled around and he made reservations to Crisp, a cute pizza/wine bar about 20 feet from our house. Don't get me wrong, I love the place (and their Texas Goat Cheese app - goat cheese mixed with marinara, soft garlic and basil served with drunken garlic bread for dipping…my mouth is watering), but we'd been there twice prior and for such a HUGE surprise, I expected something new. Also he let it slip that he had only made the reservation THAT NIGHT. So naturally I was fuming the entire dinner that the surprise was just a stupid (ok, yummy) dinner that he TOTALLY could have rescheduled! 

We got home and I proceeded to almost fall asleep on our bed but couldn't because I was still SO MAD. 

Then the doorbell rang. Which it never does because our house is gated, meaning that the only doorbell rings we get are from our neighbors and I knew they were out of town. I stomped down the stairs because A magically disappeared and opened the door….then I screamed and shut it only to immediately open it back up with tears in my eyes. 

The little stinker and my best friend planned the best surprise ever. And yes, I HAD NO CLUE. I am very hard to surprise because I do everything in my power to figure it out before hand. Alex lives in Shreveport and I don't get to see her as often as I did when we lived in Lafayette. Plus she had never been to Houston to see our new house and I just missed her dang it! So yes, this was a HUGE husband win.

Right after she arrived we went out in Midtown. I'm pretty sure we were home by midnight…we are definitely NOT in college anymore.

Saturday morning we treated Alex to the best breakfast tacos known to mankind. SERIOUSLY, if you live in or are ever in Houston, go to Chilosos and thank me later. They deep fry the bacon!! I MEAN. Then we lounged (so maybe we had headaches…) and of course I had to take her to 19th street and do a little antiquing. 

I didn't get this but I am already planning on going back tonight to pick it up. It's even real silver! Wouldn't this look so adorable in a little girls room??

The LSU game was an afternoon game (also extremely cold and rainy - SO glad we decided not to go) so Meg (the lone aggie) and Mo-Reese came over to watch it with us. We nibbled on some dip of the Gods (aka Charleston Cheese Dip) but when the game was over we were all starving, so we decided to try out Hickory Hollow, a BBQ place in our neighborhood. The second we walked in it was like we were not in Houston any longer. It was the cutest little place ever, complete with JUMBO mason jars to drink your sweet tea out of. So cute.

So, A, I have to give it to you, you pulled off one heck of a surprise! I'll try and remember how awesome you were this weekend next time you leave the seat up.

football friday | college

Linking up with Erin and friends on this beautiful (it's only a high of 96 today!!) Friday for some football fun.

Thinking about college football sends me on a rollercoaster of emotions. First I get REALLY excited - I mention in my about-me (that I just re-did!) that in my other life I operator as the prettier and much better at life Erin Andrews - because I just love it all so much. Anything that can get me to wake up at eight on a Saturday morning must be a BIG DEAL.

But then I get really sad, because it's just not the same outside of college. Sure, we still have plenty of fun when we go tailgate, but in college we would go out Thursday night, go out Friday night, wake up early and tailgate all day and then go out after the game. Now I just want to fall asleep at halftime. And then add on the fact that we now live FOUR hours away from Baton Rouge and three from Lafayette...so it's even harder to make all of our games now. Unless your name is A and you randomly buy season tickets after you realize that you don't have to go to Iraq. Looks like we'll be in Lafayette a lot this fall!

So today I'm just going to depress myself and take you all on a stroll through memory lane. 

Here's just a very small handful of some of my favorite football memories. 

For Christmas my Sophomore year in college, my gift from my sister was to go to Tallahassee for the UF game with them. While the game was less than memorable, Friday night at Kens with her will always be a favorite memory. The last time I was at Kens with her, my parents had rented it out for their graduation party and I was 15...so this time was way more fun :)

Backstory - the year above at Kens (as pictured above) I ran into these two guys...the guy on the left just so happened to be the brother of one of A's groomsmen. Now. I didn't know A at this point (ok, I knew him as the creepy guy) but I had just met Bubba (the groomsman) and had creeeeeepily seen a picture of his brother on FB. So what does a slightly inebriated girl do? She marches up to him and says "hey! I know your brother!" I think he responded with something along the lines of "every girl seems to." Anyways, my parents have season tickets to FSU games, so I invited said guys (chill out, I became friends with them first!) to the game. It's one of my favorite weekends ever - we drove to Auburn, AL on Friday night, went to the Auburn/LA Tech game on Saturday, then drove to Tallahassee Sunday for the Monday night (Labor Day) game. Only bad thing was losing to Miami - but I am choosing to remember meeting Graham Gano. 

Mr. Fred's jello shots at all LSU tailgates. And apparently pig tails. Because...WHY kaitlyn?!

Tailgating with A's sister and our brother-in-law. Even though it was so hot outside that A looks like he just took a shower. 

I dedicated a blog post to this before, but that one time I decided it was a good idea to leave for Atlanta at 3am to go to a game. I think I need to make more spontaneous decisions like this. 

Drinking champagne at ten in the morning. And A's tailgate outfits. Hello, handsome. 

This game we started tailgating at 1pm on a Friday afternoon with my best friend's dad. I left to go get advised and then came back. COLLEGE.

Another random road trip! Two years ago we decided on a Thursday night to drive to Tuscaloosa on Friday to go to the LSU bama game. We had to stay in Birmingham, but it was worth it. We were being corndogs. Anyone familiar with LSU will understand. This was for the apparent "game of the century" and it turned out to be us trying not to fall asleep while watching. So for anyone pumped up about tomorrow's bama game, just prepare yourselves that it might be REALLY BORING. ESPN just likes to make money off these things. But seriously, people are paying EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS a ticket. WHAT.

And now I've come to the conclusion that A and I need to be more spontaneous. We don't have kids yet, we could totally decide on a random Thursday to go to an away game that weekend. I just need to start going to bed at 8 every night to prepare myself. 

why I'll always be a seminole | blogtember

First things first - I have turned into someone I said I never would turn into. I curse my PC everyday, and I think that officially makes me addicted to my iMac. Whenever everyone and their mom started getting iPhones, I decided that I would never be that person who bought into the Apple hype. While I may still hate my iPhone (if you know the issue is YOUR FAULT, why would I have to pay $200 to fix it?!?), I can't go five minutes on my PC without wishing I was on the iMac. Alllll this to say - I would rather eat dirt than attempt to blog/read blogs/comment on blogs on my PC. So I moved the iMac out of the office (aka dungeon) and into the living room so I could do said activities at night while lounging with A. This combined with #blogtember should help... _____________________
Describe a distinct moment when your life took a turn.
Funny...I actually had this post in my drafts. It was (is?) long and I feel weird sometimes about getting serious and putting so many feeeeeels out there, but posts like that are the ones I enjoy reading so much on other's blogs, so I am going for it. 

My parents met while attending Florida State University, go noles!, and thus raised us kiddos as die hard Seminole fans. A majority of my memories as a kid involve FSU in some way or another. My first AOL screen name was something along the lines of "nolegal" or "nolechick." (And yes, people did confuse that for mole. Happened more often than you'd think.) And I'm just now seeing that the first one reads more as no-legal. Seems very wrong. 

Not only did my parents attend FSU, but the summer after my fifth grade year, my brother and sister left to attend FSU. (Yep, they're twins!) As you can imagine, I idolized everything they did, so this just enforced the idea that one day I would too attend FSU. While most kids in Texas were arguing about being aggies and longhorns, I was busy dreaming about Saturdays spent in Doak doing the chop. (Uh, I had a very vivid imagination as a child...) 

Fast forward 6 years to my junior year of college. My school let juniors and seniors have a certain amount of excuses absences each semester to be used to tour college campuses. Which just worked perfectly with going to FSU for the Wake Forest game. Hey, I DID take a tour, for what it's worth. Some students let their other days go to waste, and some just skipped a day and had the papers signed at a quick 10 minute trip to the community college right next to the school. 

And then some, like me, took all three other days (second semester junior year and two my senior year) visiting Baylor University. I'm not really sure why I had such a fascination with Baylor- ok that is a complete lie, my biggest crush ever was a year older and that's where he went- but whatever the reason, I sure did seem to visit a lot! 

So when the time came to apply to colleges, I early applied to FSU and Baylor. Except I never sent in my $20 along with the Baylor application, so yes, I only applied to ONE college. 

I will probably always remember this day. December 15, 2005. I woke up late (it was finals week and seniors with good grades could exempt from nearly all finals) and checked the online database to see that I was accepted into the greatest school there is, Florida State University. I remember first calling my boyfriend and then driving to my moms office to show her my "letter." She hugged me and then jokingly asked if I was SURE I didn't want to think about staying in state. UM, duh, NO. 

And then I did what every senior who got early acceptance did, I stopped caring! I still feel kind of bad that I graduated in the top 10%. In Texas, the state schools had to (at that time) automatically accept anyone in the top 10%, making it extremely hard for anyone outside of that to get accepted- mainly at the big 2 schools, UT and Texas A&M. I feel like I took someone's spot that wanted to go to either of those schools and didn't get in. Because for me, being in that top 10% didn't matter one bit! 

And then things for funky. It's a really long story and this post is already on the lengthy side, so it all boils down to the fact that April of my senior year, my dad unexpectedly had to retire from the police force. 

We never wanted for anything growing up, and we are all extremely lucky that our parents put us through college with no loans to them or us, but when faced with the loss of an income and a child about to head off to a school with an out-of-state tuition (not to mention another daughter two years behind who would also be a tuition soon), that tuition becomes hard to picture without loans. 

I'm not proud of the way I reacted to the news that I couldn't go to FSU. There were lots of tears, mine and my parents, and yelling. For a week I was dead set on taking out loans and putting myself through four years of out of state tuition. My parents, thankfully, talked me out of this option. It was very me, me, me...I was being a brat. I was also embarrassed. So for another month I continued to act like I was going to FSU still. I told two friends, but my best friends didn't know. I needed someone to talk to, but I didn't want everyone finding out. Looking back on all of this now, I wish I could slap myself silly. I clearly thought that not being able to attend my dream school was the worst thing that would ever happen to me. Dramatic, much? Now it seems like such a small, silly almost, bump in the road. But I was 18 and dramatic and sad. 

After a month of lying, I couldn't take it anymore, so I decided to tell my boyfriend while dancing at prom. Good timing, Kaitlyn! I remember telling him that I'd been crying myself to sleep every night...and he responded with "I could tell." Gee, thanks buddy! 

So it was May, and a few weeks before graduation...and I had no school to go to. Panic attack city! I had missed the application deadlines to the big schools, UT and aTm, and there was NO way I was going to go to school in Lubbock, Texas. (Sorry tech friends!) My mom did some research and if I applied that week, I could still get in before the scholarship deadline at Stephen F. Austin State University. Oh, and Sam Houston, but the state prison is there and so no, thanks but no. (Sorry EDB, had to say it!) That seemed okay, I could go to school in Austin. 

Oh wait, you mean it's not in Austin? It's in a dry county in East Texas in the Bible Belt? And how does one even pronounce Nacogdoches? (It's Nac-uhh-doe-chess for those wondering.)

Come August I was SFA bound. I spent a year and a half at SFA, and while, at the time, I could not wait to get out, those three semesters brought a lot of joy. I pledged an amazing sorority, met great sisters and friends, and got my first glimpse at fraternity parties. (Albeit on a small, small scale.)

obviously I wasn't quite ready to give up the garnet and gold. or the trashcan punch, apparently.

When I wasn't spending time at socials or mixers, I was usually spending time at a different college dreaming of transferring there. I went from wanting to transfer to UT, to dead set on going to A&M (whyyyyyy) to Oklahoma State to Arkansas. 

so many things are wrong with this picture.

One of my pledge sisters was from Bossier City, LA and 99% of her friends from high school went to LSU. We went to visit them freshman year and twice sophomore year and both of us got a crazy idea that maybe WE would like to go to LSU.

It also helped that my BIL got us on the field for the 2007 LSU vs. Florida game - second most amazing game I've ever been to. First most amazing was the 2010 FSU vs. Florida game when the Noles FINALLY beat Florida. Basically any game where Florida loses is amazing in my book.

So January of 2008, I was officially an LSU Tiger. Again, extremely lucky to have parents who sacrificed a lot to allow me to go to college and not worry about paying for it on my own. 

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LSU and always will, but I know deep down that I will always be a Seminole at heart. God had a plan for me and if that distinct moment when my dad had to retire never happened, I never would have ended up at LSU and I never would have met A. I probably would have also fell victim to some unfortunate fashion trends that are in Tallahassee. Anyone who's been to Potbelly's on a Friday night knows what I am talking about. 

I no longer wonder "what if" about FSU, but I will always, always be a Seminole. And I wouldn't mind one bit if our future kids followed in my parents and siblings footsteps and decided to be Seminoles. Although, if so, I should probably start saving for that right now. Yikes.

hey let's go to atlanta!

First things first, thanks so much to everyone who linked up yesterday! I LOVED all of the sass :) 

And if you're visiting from my BBFF Alexa, welcome!

Today I am going to re-live one of my favorite trips during college. I'm calling it throwback thursday, but really I just miss college and I will reminisce about it whenever I have the chance. Lucky for you, I had a lot of fun in college. 

Rewind to December of 2008. I had pretty much been living in the library for two week "studying" for my finals with my two best friends Alexa & Lindy and Dan. Dan was on the special teams for LSU Football and was sorta-kinda-but-not-really-at-all dating Alexa. Maybe we just used him for the fun things that came along with being a football player at LSU. I mean, he's a ginger. Which is really only OK if you are a girl. After one particularly long study sesh we started talking about the bowl game. 

Now, background. LSU played in and won the big kahoona (National Championship) the year prior. So to end up in the Chicken Nuggest Bowl the year after obviously meant that we were a no good terrible team. NOT. LSU fans are just the worse fans ever and losing one game means you suck. 

Dan happened to be there with us and he casually mentioned that the players get four free tickets for family members. Say wha? Naturally we already knew that none of Dan's family members could go, so we snagged those suckers up. And within a matter of 5 minutes I booked us a hotel room and we were ready to spend NYE in ATL. 

Except I wasn't 21 and we booked a room with the most ghetto hotel ever right next to Turner Field. Turns out that you aren't supposed to stay on THAT side of the interstate. The cab driver told us not to leave the room past 8pm. THAT BAD, PEOPLE.

Anyways, the morning after my brother got married I drove to good ol' Bossier City to meet up with Alexa. She got into some shenans for a few days (think falling asleep in the backseat of her mom's car after she picked us up at the bar) and then decided (ok, it was cheaper this way) that it would be best for us to leave around 3am the day of the game.

Eight hours after that we arrived into the glory ghetto of Atlanta. Cue a quick change and we headed out to "tailgate." Now, if you've never been to Atlanta, let me fill you in. THERE IS NO WHERE TO DO THAT. The Georgia Dome is in the middle of the city. So we bought small liquor bottles and smuggled them into the arena where there was some sort of LSU hype party. 

Remember that quick change? I wish I could rewind 5 years and kick myself for thinking it was OK to 1. Look like that in public and 2. Wear tennis shoes with jeans - IN PUBLIC. The threes we are holding up are for Dan, his number was 33. Had to at least show some support to the guy, he did get us free tickets, after all.

Then we sat on the ground for four hours and drank what little amount of rum we had. SO much fun, lemme tell ya!

The team came through prior to the game and we cheered a bit. Fun story - that massive creature is Herman. He used to come to Calzone Wednesday with us in college and he nicknamed me Carnie because my hands are so small. Said the guy who holds the record for being the biggest baby ever birthed in the state of Texas. 

We won the game and it was great blah blah blah. We hightailed it outta there to go to the team hotel so we could get some NYE kisses. Was I delerious? Who was going to kiss a girl in tennis shoes?! So we end up at the Hilton and wait. For an hour. Did you know that there are TWO Hilton's in Downtown Atlanta? We went to the wrong one. Cue some running to the other one so that we could make it there before the team got back. We made it and what do ya know, they get back just after midnight. COOL. REAL COOL. 

So we went to bed. OH - and the three of us shared a king size bed with ME in the middle because Alexa didn't want Dan to get any ideas. I am such a nice best friend, huh?

The next day we met my parents (they were in town on a church trip randomly) at the World of Coke and I had more Coke that day than I'll ever have in my life. 

OH LOOK! More tennis shoes! I was all about fashion on this trip. Oh and yea, that's Dan. The ginger.

I love looking back at this trip because it was NOTHING like we planned. We ended it by going out in Buckhead that night. But I had to drink Sprite because I was 20. Who plans an awesome fun NYE trip when you're 20?!

Even though it was nothing like we planned, it's something that Al and I will never forget. We also will never let her live down Dan. 

things are looking up

Someone got herself a makeover today! I'm in love with it and keep looking at it every 5 minutes to remind myself of how pretty it is now. Hope you like it to!

My weekend update is terrible today - I did a very bad job at taking pictures this past week, but here goes nothing. Next week I'll use my real camera!

When we got to Houston on Monday night my sister pawned off her dessert she needed to make on me. Considering I had to direct her through the grocery store to find the apples, it was probably a good thing. I made these mini apple pies...and they were SO good. And probably the easiest thing ever. I got a little crafty with it, as you can see. (And these are pre-baked ones.)

They were so good that I made them again on Thursday. YUM!

Work made Tuesday and Wednesday pass by pretty quickly. I got off at noon on Wednesday and headed over to my sister's house to play with my nephew. He went down the slide by himself for the first time.

pretty excited about the slide!

On Thursday the family came over around 10 and we had a relaxing morning playing with Reid and eating WAY too many dips. I didn't eat any turkey due to the disgusting amount of dips I ate. But man, TJ's knows how to make a dip or two. Insert drooling here.

We realized while we were playing that Boo (that's my sister's nickname, long story) dressed Reid in the WRONG bib. Bowden tried to bite it off, but missed and got his hand. Orange and blue are NEVER allowed to be worn together!!

Then we jetted off to the airport. There was no one there, of course, but we didn't account for the fact that there were ZERO parking spots left. In the entire airport. We BEGGED the parking spot guy to let us in and THANK GOD they had one teeeeny spot left. We barely made it, but we did!

Friday bright and early we left Little Rock and headed to Fay-town for the football game.

so jealous of all those people in the sun.

we had seats right next to where my tigers came out of. was fun!



Don't let the picture fool you - I WAS DYING. It was the coldest I've ever been. I took my boots off when we got back to the car to warm my feet. When we got to the restaurant 20 minutes later they were so swollen that my boots wouldn't fit. DEAD. At least LSU won!

We got back Saturday to a houseful of pissed off people thanks to the nasty Florida gaytors. I'd rather go to a shitty bowl game and beat UF than go to a good one (holla Orange bowl!) and lose to UF. HATE HATE HATE IT.

bowden was pissed too, can't you see that scowl?

go link up!