Begging for some style

Ok so here's the deal. I pretty much wear my hair the same way everyday. Wait - that's not true, I kind of alternate....straight/curly/straight/curly...so not really the same everyday, but day in and day out it's always down and in my mind it's pretty much the same boring thing. I'm dying for some new ideas and new 'dos :) One night when Jimmy was at the KU game late, I actually was looking at youtube videos on his iPad called "how to make a cute messy bun" (don't ask haha!) and watched a few that were not very helpful. Funniest part of the story? The next night we were laying in bed and Jimmy was trying to watch something on you tube on his iPad and the video of some girl from hong kong demonstrating step by step a "messy bun" came up. He was like "what is this?!". Yep, I'm that desperate for new hair styles I'll watch girls in hong kong walk through messy buns with no words. Sad city.

Not sure if anyone else feels the same way, but I'm dying to spice it up!!! Especially with spring on the way :)

My answer today? Headbands. I feel like most of them are a bit "bold" for my work attire tastes...actually just my tastes in general but I'm dying to try some on. Check out these fun looks!! And the best part - so cheap!!

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1. Charlotte Russe Flower Headband - $3.99

2. White House Black Market Tr-Flower Headband - $32.30

3. Forever 21 Full Side Floral Headband - $4.80

4. Forever 21 Chiffon Floral Headband - $2.80

5. Forever 21 Fab Dual Braid Headband - $1.50

6. Charlotte Russe Leopard Skinny Headbands - $2.99



Check out this fun blog with lots of headband styles, pictures and tips - I love it!!

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I really like the big headband and pony tail! And it looks so effortless - which is exactly what I want!

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Check out more celebrities rocking the headband. I LOVE the top 3 pictures, but I'm not that big of a fan of the "across the forehead" look. But maybe that is just because I'm not a celebrity? Probably has a lot to do with the fact I'm not sure the reactions I would get walking into a meeting with that either...I'll stick with on top-of-the-head look!

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I am really loving this jeweled headband that is very subtle :) Guess you know what I'll be picking up this weekend!!!

Any tips for the blog world on spicing up the hair styles and not the same old hair down every day?!?

Date Night #7 - Dining for education

Ok, so I was responsible for planning our February surprise date. Well, if you saw my calendar for February with going out of town 3 weekends, Pi Phi budgets being due and having to grad 15 chapter evaluations, school getting busy with a proposal due and a debate the following week....oh yeah, not to mention that thing called a full time job and maintaining some sort of sanity. Welp, that's my excuse. Yep, my excuse as to why our date was on March 2. However, I had an even better excuse for Jimmy, which was, February was a very short month, so if it was a "normal" month...March 2 = February 30. So there you have it. Take it as is. But the most important thing is, it happened, right? :)

I picked Jimmy up from happy hour (he got off work early again, rough life!!) and then we headed home and then after taking the dogs out we rushed to our reservation. I did have to promise him that we would be home in time for the KU game that night. That was the "activity" portion of the date for him.

Pre-date...I made him take pictures. Duh. Gotta love the self-timer!

All we need is Toby in the next one for an im-promtu family pic!!

However, when I pulled up to Broadmoor Technical center, which is just East of Metcalf on 83rd St...he was very very confused. (As a side note, I got this brilliant idea from the same friend at work, Katie, that we got the surprise date idea from! She's always thinking of great ideas!). So when we got out and walked into the school he was pretty much mystified as we walked down the school hallways!

....and walked into this restaurant in the middle of the school! (we were early birds @ 5:45PM)

Presenting the Broadmoor Bistro! Jimmy was SO confused. Asking questions like "so this is a high school?" "do they have sports teams?" "well if they don't....then they are not a school". So closed minded :) We had a wonderful server, who was very nervous but very nice! We tried to be super super nice to him because you could tell he was trying to remember everything and do it perfectly. So when he put the steak knife upside down...and his teacher came around and changed it for him, all we could do was laugh.

We were very hungry and the menu called for the following:

You pick 2 out of the 3: Appetizer, soup and salad. Jimmy picked the appetizer, which had fancy stuff in it (es cargo)...and I went for the ginger carrot bisque soup, and it was delicious! We both had a tomato and mozzarella salad, which Jimmy liked a lot better than I did. But overall, it was good.

For the main course, Jimmy picked a steak with a jerk sauce and some fries that were from different types of potatoes (I think)...I totally forgot to take pictures of all the courses!! I even told Erica I would for Andrew to see :) Dang it! But for the final course, dessert - I finally remembered! And boy was it delicious. You pretty much had to roll me out of there.

And it did pick up a lot after we were into the meal. It costs $25/person and you pay when you make the reservation and all the proceeds (minus the costs of the food) go back to fun the program - which is awesome! And wow, with all the food they served us it probably would have cost way more at a restaurant!

Ah - I love this guy. Mid-dinner, I did break the news to him about something that was very very upsetting. And I seriously started crying! AH! What is wrong with me? The bad news? At lunch earlier that week with friends from work, I took a pen out of my purse to pass around the table to use to write their name on the tab....and I left it there. Why is that bad news? It was a pen from our honeymoon....and for some reason I was really upset about it. Not sure why, but I just liked having it in my purse and taking it out every once and a while when needed...and then thinking about our honeymoon and how much fun it was. So I guess we will look for another one to see if we took a few, or last resort? Do you think the Excellence will send me another pen!? Haha - what a sap I am....who knew?

Man cave: new basement carpet

Here's something you may not know about me. I'm one of those people that's pretty impatient. I'm one of those people that once I see something I like or decide I want it...I have little patient actually waiting for it. And it truly shows in our house projects. Yes, we have long term plans (like bathroom remodel), but when little stuff comes up that I can keep at a lower cost, my patience is tested. Which is what happened recently. With the basement.

I was downstairs doing laundry and decided I wanted to put flooring down over the concrete floors in the basement. I just kept thinking of how much it would make it more like a "room" than just a room. You know "room" being "homey, room that people want to go sit in and hang out" vs. room being just a room in your house.

Anyways, I decided I wanted flooring in the basement, so I did the research and found this picture on Home Depot's website. Those are brown carpet tiles. And I loved them. A great basement solution (according to reviews, websites, etc) for flooring because you can always rip just one up at a time if there is a leak or something spilled, but enough padding to make it not be concrete and feel like a "room".

So at the beginning of the week...I knew I was going out of town that weekend to Oklahoma to visit Katie...so I asked Jimmy what he was going to do. He said nothing. I said, "want to carpet the basement" and he said "sure"....homedepot.com with free shipping and on Wednesday, they arrived at our door step. Oh Jimmy - you are just the best husband!

We spent some time moving all the furniture and stuff that was in the room. And wow. Luckily it fit in the other unfinished room!

Biggest task? Take down the huge entertainment center...

Here are some "before" pictures. Steps from the basement!

Basement with one finished wall. More to come later, but Jimmy likes the concrete walls and his painted on KU flag for now in his man cave!

Jimmy's weekend fun!! Look at all those boxes! The best thing about the installation of the carpet tiles is that there is an adhesive back on them so once you place them and get the room ready (more complicated than I realize, which I'm aware of!!), you just stick them down!! So while it's not easy kneeling down, Jimmy said it wasn't too hard!

I wasn't sure what to expect when I got home on Sunday, but holy cow. Again, what a rock star husband! My dad had a bball tournament all weekend so as he would usually jump at the chance to help Jimmy with a house project - Jimmy took on all of this himself for the weekend!! And what a fantastic job he did! Check it out!!

My little worker bee! I LOVE IT!!

Blurry picture, but really just focus on the floor!

Where Jimmy's future bar will be. That is still TBD if we are going to buy on Craigslist or make. Jimmy wants to build it himself. That could be cool, but lots of work. We shall see. But it's his man cave and his bar...so I'll let him make that call! But the bar stools are there and ready!

The coolest part is that the squares are flexible so you can stick them to the stairs. And I absolutely love the stairs with the carpet!!

Ta-da! Man cave continues to be a work in progress :) Now Jimmy is trying to convince me to move his big screen TV downstairs and put it on the all mount. We shall see on that as well.

What do you think?? Didn't he do a great job in just 2 days when I was gone?! Love it!!! I'm excited to see how this room continues to transform!

Katie gets engaged!

Ok...and I think I'm finally caught up on the fun weekends in February since this was last weekend and today is less than a week later - YEAH!

Early on a Saturday morning - I left this to road trip it to Bartlesville, OK with Lauren to visit Katie, who recently moved back from Houston, yeah!!

Apparently neither Lauren or I watched the news because the weather was worse than we thought with just some cold temperatures and ice on the highway! After a pit stop for a bathroom break, bag of Munchies, a pack of twizzlers, 2 huge diet cokes, one wrong turn and four miles on a gravel road....we made it to Bartlesville, OK!! Wahoo!!

After a lunch downtown Bartlesville, we headed to downtown Dewey, OK for some antique shopping. I was the only one who bought something and it wasn't really antique, but oh well. But what a cute little street full of fun shops!!

And then Katie insisted that we stop at this Amish store just on the other side of the street where they had lots of samples, cheeses, candles, etc. Katie bought some chocolate covered pretzels that I'm assuming they made. And yep, they were delicious.

Next we headed to Tulsa (after a stop to let Stewie and Ellie out!) and on our way, we made a stop in Collinsville, OK. What is there you ask? Katie and Barry's new house that they close on in a few weeks and Katie will be moving into! It was gorgeous and so fun to get to tour it. Loved it and she wants a lot of decorating help/advice, so you better believe I said I was up for it - but really, just check out YHL...because they're brilliant!

When we made it to Tulsa, we went to Utica Square for some shopping and some coffee. Katie found a really cute wiener dog note pad that she bought for Barry (who we were meeting for dinner later that night). None of us had any idea at all how well her little present set him up for what was to come later that night!!

We went to Redrock Canyon Grill for dinner and it was delicious! Katie and Lauren started off the night with a bottle of wine and I opted for a beer. Once we finally got to the table, they ordered another bottle. Haha. But oh.my.goodness. Was the food delicious - wow. Amazing guacamole, jalapeno cornbread and brace yourself....deviled eggs. At a restaurant? Yep and they were absolutely delicious!

So anyways, when Barry and his friend Greg got there, the 5 of us enjoyed dinner and talked. We had a great view in the back of the place! And did we talk about some interesting things....and let's just leave it at that. I will say I did say during the course of this meal to Barry (in reference to Katie saying moving into a house and buying all new stuff will be expensive)..."Not to pressure you Barry, but if you propose you can always put lots of house stuff on your wedding registry!". Well - I guess I had a premonition or something :)

Because...THIS happened when we walked out of the restaurant. You can read Katie's blog post more for the specific and adorable details (she was SOOO surprised!). But Lauren and were in shock and so pumped we got it all documented because the second I realized that was what was happening...I whipped out my camera, thank goodness!!

Check out that BLING!!

BFFs with the newly engaged couple!!

After all that excitement, I drove Katie, Lauren and I back to Bville in Katie's fancy car that has it set up so she can call people on speaker phone through the car. So it was so fun calling her sister and hearing what she had to say and how excited she was...and her parents freaking out! Haha! Everyone was so excited and so glad we got to hear everyone's reactions.

We we got back, we headed to a new bar called 2 Sister's Pub in downtown Bartlesville for a celebratory drink and then we headed home after a long day!! The next morning, we were up early and off to enjoy a delicious breakfast and one last meal with the newly engaged Katie before we headed out to drive home in this....

Poor Lauren because she had to drive! Thanks :) Hopefully I kept you entertained!!

It was crazy because you couldn't even see in front of you!!

But when we finally made it back to my house, I dragged Lauren to an open house just 3 doors down from us....and got some more great house ideas and projects :) So yeah!!

And now let the wedding planning begin for Katie and Barry! So excited for them and all the fun to come in the next couple months/year/forever!!!! So glad we got to be a part of it!! Love you Katie!!

Caramel Apple fun!

So after a weekend with my sister in Manhattan, she mentioned how one night she and Andrew made caramel apples themselves one night...and Jimmy loved it. One of the few desserts he will eat is something with caramel and he likes apples. That's about it besides cheesecake. And since I'm a sweet freak, I always jump on anything like this that he will actually eat :)

This is what I came up with as a surprise one night for dessert:

Per the instructions on the caramel bag I bought, you just melt the caramels and stick the sticks in the apple and cover it. Easy right?? Kind of - but quite messy! Messy and delicious :)

SURPRISE - haha. He knows I will do anything to make him eat sweets :)

And...go....eat it....

YUM! What a quick and easy way to enjoy a delicious dessert :) Another easy idea to spice this up is to add an additional topping that you love...like nuts, oreos, M&Ms, heck I've seen all of those on the caramel apples they sell at the store! What a fun treat!!!

However, make sure you soak the pan good in an attempt to clean it!!

P.S. Just as an FYI, I'm sure you can all tell how much Jimmy loves me taking pictures of him! Haha!! What a good sport!