Easter Greetings

Hello everyone! Been a little quiet on this here blog the last couple of days, I've been busily enjoying some time away from work and also singing a LOT at church.  Today is much quieter, we were able to enjoy a nice brunch and will be heading to my parents for Easter dinner a bit later.  I did want to share the outfit I wore to last night's Easter Vigil service though!  Picture credits to Mr. Monkey instead of my tripod for once!

Dress - Axcess by Clairborne, thrifted

Sweater - H&M, thrifted

Shoes - Mossimo, thrifted

Necklace - S&D

I knew it would be a little chilly in the church, so the sweater was kind of needed.  I was glad too, while it was nice and warm during the day yesterday, by the time the Mass was over, the temp had dropped big time outside!

I want to also wish each of you a very happy and blessed Easter whether you're celebrating the Resurrection or are happily enjoying the goodies the Easter Bunny left you.  Both ways are OK in my book!  Now I'm off to nosh on a yummy ham dinner!  I'll catch up with all of you this week as I'll be back to my normal blogging schedule!

Spring Wish List 2013

I am so excited you guys, I figured out how to post from Polyvore to my blog!  I realize this is a nerdy thing to be excited about, but I can't help it.  Anyway, since I'm off playing today on my "spring break" I thought I'd share my spring wish list!  

Spring Wish List 2013 by muppetmusic22 featuring a chain necklace

I'd love a lightweight polka dot sweater, a fitted white blouse, a bubble necklace in a light shade, some chunky brown sandals, mint jeans and a black or gray and white jersey knit skirt.  It's not a huge list but I think it's do-able.  I'm not necessarily after the specific items above either, but they're good examples anyway!  My goal is to not stray too far from these items.  I may also pick up a cheap sundress or two because they're my summer staple and it is fun to have new ones, but otherwise, these items are the goal and what I will be searching for now that I'm more or less off my shopping ban.

What is on your spring wish list?

Pink Spring Fling

Today is my Friday.  Yes, I know, how do I get so many days off in a year?  I swear, working for healthcare can be a blessing and a curse.  The blessings include outstanding benefits - one of which is our time off program.  Even when I'm good about taking my time off, I continue to accrue more, so then I get close to my cap and well, that's where I've been at lately, so I am sneaking in another couple of days this week to have a nice little "spring break" if you will.  I won't take anymore time until May, when I plan to have a garage sale and then after that it will be sometime this summer.  I am most definitely not complaining though!

How adorable is my new vintage sweater from the fabulous Amanda's Salvaged Strawberry shop?  She had put this on sale a few weeks back and I mentioned I wished I wasn't on a shopping ban so I could add it to my closet and then she kindly set it aside for me!  She had it all ready for me at the Tandem Vintage sale this weekend.  She's just the best.  And this sweater just makes me smile, it's so springy and girly and fun.

Sweater - vintage, Salvaged Strawberry

T-shirt - Old Navy

Skirt - INC Concepts, thrifted

Tights - Target

Shoes - Rampage, DSW

Necklace - Maurices 

Speaking of shopping bans, I'm technically done with mine.  Some say that what you give up for Lent ends at Palm Sunday and some say it goes through Easter Sunday.  Either way, I'm done.  BUT what I'm not done with is trying to just take a real budget cautious approach to my shopping.  I'm also only going to add pieces that I feel complete my wardrobe for the upcoming spring/summer.  I have a small list of things I want and I'll slowly start looking for and adding them.  We have some big home improvement projects coming up this spring and so I have to be better about my spending and even with thrifting I can let it get out of hand sometimes.  Maybe I'll take a clue from some of my other favorite bloggers and start a monthly budget for myself starting in April here.  We'll see how it goes!

Pinspired

It has been awhile since I've put together a "Pin-spired" outfit based on something I see on Pinterest.  Today I decided to wear an outfit I've had in mind for awhile now.  Here is the pin I saw:

And here is my interpretation.  It's not quite warm enough for sandals yet and I also didn't tuck in this shirt because the waistline just isn't quite right for that on these pants, but otherwise I think I duplicated the outfit pretty well.  Wish it was brighter outside this morning!  I should have done these indoors I guess!

And once again I'm wearing two items that belonged to my cousin.  Perhaps I should make that my theme this week!  In fact, almost this entire outfit is made up of hand-me-downs, because the pants came from Megan Bird!  

Jacket - AMX (from cousin)

Shirt - Ann Taylor (From cousin)

Pants - Squeeze (from Megan Bird)

Shoes - Mossimo, thrifted

Scarf - Target 

This week it sounds like spring might finally be making it's way here - every day it's going to be a little bit warmer, heading to 50's by this weekend!  Do you know how wonderful that sounds?  Come on Spring.  Let's do this!

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!

The love story continues

Well I promised you all I'd finish the story of how the Pants Monkey and I got together and guess what?  Today is the actual day - 15 years ago we became a "thing" as he called it and so it seems fitting that I share the story along with some pictures of us over the years - so it's a picture heavy post!

First up, let's finish the story.  Basically, a month after the birthday party I blogged about last month, we both ended up on a band/choir trip to New Orleans (he got to come at the last minute - I'd call that fate).  We took a train down and back, stopping twice in Chicago along the way.  Somehow we ended up sitting near each other on the trip down and I remembered how much fun we had at the birthday party and how often our paths had crossed over the last months and I realized - I liked this boy.  I liked this boy a LOT.  So, we ended up flirting and spending much of the trip bumping into each other on purpose.  By the time we were heading back home, our friends were starting to say things like "um, are you guys going out or something?"  And we were kind of oblivious - but on that train trip back we sat together a bunch and in the wee hours of the morning of the 22nd (cause what kind of teenagers sleep on trains?) I finally said to him "so what do you think about about what people are saying about us?  And he was so cute and quiet and was like "Um, I kind of like it."  I wanted to be absolutely sure he was feeling what I was feeling though, so I kept on goading him and trying to get him to be the one to say it and finally he said "OK, do you want to be a thing?"  Of course I said yes - and now 15 years later here we are, happily married for almost 7 of them, and he is seriously the best "thing" ever in my life.  

So now here's a walk down memory lane - you'll get to see a very young Bethie in some of these pictures!

January 1999 - 17 years old, winter formal 

March 1999 - 17 years old - close to our first anniversary, Sadie Hawkins dance

May 2000 - 18 years old, Senior Prom 

November 2002 - 21st birthdays

May 27th, 2006 - 24 years old, wedding day!

April 12th, 2008 - 27 years old, my dear friend's wedding

 June 2012 - 30 years old, a good friend's birthday

 October 2012 - Almost 31 years old, at a wine tasting

Also October 2012 - same winery, this was this year's Christmas card

Because I believe all milestones should be celebrated, today we're both off of work to spend the day together - there will be wine tasting and dinner out.  

Thanks for reading if you got this far and have a wonderful weekend!

Third Thursday Threads: Winterize a summer item

Hello everyone!  I am joining up with a "new to me" link up today.  It's Third Thursday Threads over at Work Clothes, I Suppose.  This month's theme is "Winterize a summer item."  I thought it would be a perfect challenge to take part in as summer seems light years away here but I have been longing for some of my summer pieces!

If you've been following my blog awhile, you know one of my favorite things to do is wear a dress as a skirt.  I have worn a couple of sundresses this winter as skirts, but today I decided to challenge myself with a maxi dress.  I wasn't sure how this would look, but in the end I'm really pleased.  And actually, because I'm wearing nice warm tights underneath, I'm quite warm too which is good since the thermometer was reading 7 degrees above zero this morning!

Dress as skirt - Merona, Target

Sweater - Polo Ralph Lauren (From cousin)

Necklace - Charming Charlie

Boots - Target

Barrette - from sister in law 

For fun I went through my archives and found a couple of other ways I wore this dress back in the summer.  One example can be found here.  Another example is here.  I look forward to being able to wear this when it's warm out again, but for now, I'm glad I found a way to enjoy it in cold weather too!

Be sure to check out Bri Marie's blog, Work Clothes, I Suppose for other Third Thursday "Winterize a summer item" outfits!

Spring and Five Things

Today is the first day of spring - and even though it's far from springlike outside, I'm not going to complain about it today.  I decided to instead embrace these last cold days and get as much use as I can out of my boots and scarves and sweater-dresses while I still can.  Take that winter!

Sweater-dress - H&M, via two birds garage sale

Sweater - Mossimo, Target

Boots and leggings - Target

Scarf - World Market

Instead of complaining, I'm going to channel my energy instead into sharing five things about me.  I was tagged by Heather and Kayla from H&K Style Journey to share five things - simple game to play!  Although I have had to try hard to think of five things about myself that I haven't shared before!  I think I came up with some though.

1. I love salads.  I didn't used to like salad at all because I was never a big fan of lettuce.  Now I love salad - but I still do not like lettuce on my burgers, tacos or sandwiches.  I don't want those things to crunch!  But give me a salad, especially in the summer time, and I'm a happy girl.

2. I have a bad habit of losing my sunglasses.  I had Lasik in early 2011 and one of the most fun things afterward was buying cute sunglasses and I had a bunch of fun pairs - and now I'm down to like two pairs.  I have to believe some of them are still in my house someplace, but I don't know where.  Going to have to do some spring cleaning I think!

3. At the ripe ole age of 31 I have never been stung by a bee, broken a bone or required stitches.  The only surgery I've had is my wisdom teeth removal.  I'm not bragging - quite frankly the more time that goes by without any of these things happening to me the more I fear them!

4. Now that I've been watching the Harry Potter movies I am finally reading the books for the first time.  I'm on the first one and it's going so much better than the first time I tried to read it ten years ago.

5. My standard breakfast is cereal and milk and a cup of coffee.  It's probably not the healthiest thing ever, but it's been my go to for years.  At least now I try to go for the non-sugar cereals like Cheerios, although I still have a weakness for Cocoa Krispies about once a year!

There you have it!  Hopefully you learned a bit more about me!  Because I'm tired/lazy this morning I'm not tagging anyone specifically, but if you'd like to play along, feel free!  Or share something new with me in the comments.  Have a great day!

Winter woes

Well it sure may not be all that spring like outside, but I tried to pull some spring colors through anyway!  The winter weather has really got me down, so I figured bright colors were the best way to try to cheer up!

The sun is at least shining today, but it's back to being really quite frigid outside, so it's not like you can really enjoy it.  Although it is helping me wake up a bit more than I would be without it!  And hey, since it's cold I figured I'd get another good use out of this scarf the Pants Monkey gave me for Christmas.

Sweater - Mossimo, Target

T-shirt - Maurices, thrifted

Pants - Athleta, from sis-in-law

Shoes - Steve Madden, thrifted

Scarf - ModCloth 

I'm such a good wife you guys.  The Pants Monkey had a work happy hour last night to celebrate their 13th year in business and while he was doing that, I managed to shovel the entire driveway without his help!  So then he bought me dinner when he got home.  I know how to work it.  Wait, maybe that doesn't make me such a good wife!  Oh well, I enjoyed a tasty burger and a beer, which definitely helped ease the sore muscles just a bit!  Seriously, if anyone sees any sign of Spring, tell her it's time to pack her bags and head to Minnesota!

Inspiration Monday - The ides of March

Hola peeps!  It's Monday again.  And it's snowing again here in good old Minne-snow-ta.  I'm so thankful for my short commute on days like today!

Perking up a snowy Monday just a little bit is Inspiration Monday - today's pick is Kate Hudson in a flowy shirt and wide leg jeans.

I decided to try to make the look work for work, so I chose denim colored dress pants instead of jeans.  Definitely not sunny today though, so no sunglasses for me!

There's a second picture of Kate showing her wearing the jacket she's carrying in the one above, so I added a jacket to my outfit too.  I like the look and it's definitely keeping me warmer than I would be without it!

Shirts - Decree, JCPenney

Jacket - Bill Blass, thrifted

Pants - Express, thrifted

Necklace - S&D

Did you all have a good St. Patrick's Day weekend?  We definitely Irished it up yesterday - perhaps a little too much.  We were already pretty wiped by 5:00 yesterday evening and ended up going to bed by 9 - guess that's what happens when you start your day at 10:00 am with Irish coffee!  Or maybe we're just getting old.  Either way, it was a good day while it lasted!

For more Inspiration Monday outfits visit two birds over here.

Bloglovin

Happy weekend everyone! So I decided to just go ahead and import my blog list into Bloglovin and I have to say - I am really kind of excited about it.  It allowed me to clean house a bit too and remove some blogs that I follow that went kind of extinct.  So, no worries my friends, I'll be able to keep up with all of you no matter what happens in the coming months with all this Google craziness.

I do have the follow me link at the side here, but I'll throw it in this post too just to make it easy to find.  I do highly recommend using the import tool on Bloglovin that automatically adds all of your Google Reader list though - it was soooo easy to do!

Ice, ice, baby

Hello and happy Friday!  Boy, for having a short week this week it sure felt long to me!  And here I thought I was outsmarting my body by taking Monday off and tricked it into not feeling the effects of Daylight Savings Time - but I was wrong.  The extra day really made little difference.  Oh well, the weekend is here and that is all that matters!

It is miserable outside today.  Freezing rain and ice pellets (when did this become a term - I thought we used to call it sleet).  But I refused to dress in something drab and boring, I needed a pick me up, so I pulled out my favorite flirty denim skirt for summer and then just winterized it a bit.  Leggings and boots FTW.

Pink shirt - F21

Sweater - American Rag, thrifted

Skirt -  thrifted

Leggings - Steve Madden, DSW

Boots - Old Navy

Necklace - S&D

Bag - Olivia and Joy, TJMaxx

So even though I'm not panicking, I feel it's worth at least mentioning - Google announced that Google Reader is going away July 1st.  Now I don't know about other Blogger users, but I don't use Google Reader, I just use my Dashboard list that pops up when I log into Blogger of all the folks I follow on Google Friend Connect.  Google has not said if Google Friend Connect is affected by this change or not. Some folks are speculating that it's going away as well, but I don't know that an official announcement has been made on that (if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me).  So to make a long story short - I just wanted to say that IF GFC does go away, I am on Bloglovin, I have a Facebook page and I'm on Twitter - those links are on the right hand side at the top, the cute little buttons that Laura made me when she designed my new site - feel free to use any of them.

As for blogs I follow, sometimes my Blogger Dashboard doesn't load all my favorite blogs properly, so I'm already double following some of you on Bloglovin anyway, so if GFC does go away, I'll be set.  But like I said, I'm not freaking out too much yet.  Maybe I should be, but I'm not.  That's my story for now.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!! Be safe if you're out celebrating St. Patty's Day! And, in case I haven't said it in awhile - thanks for stopping by and sharing in my world just a little!

Wild and crazy gal

Figured it's been awhile since the crazy pants have made an appearance.  I decided to wear this cute little bow shirt from Cambria to hopefully dial down the crazy a little bit.  I just love these pants though, crazy as they are!

Speaking of things that are crazy, I was watching this week's Saturday Night Live on Hulu this morning (cause I'm old and never make it to the live version on Saturdays!) and just about died when Steve Martin and Dan Akroyd brought out their "Wild and Crazy Guys" during the "It's a Date" sketch.  And I realized that these pants are rather similar to the ones that they wear.  Just give me a flowered button shirt...or maybe not.

Long sleeve shirt - Gap, thrifted

Bow t-shirt - H&M, from Cambria

Pants - No Boundaries, thrifted

Necklace - Bead for Life

Shoes - Mossimo, thrifted

Here is something else that is wild - yesterday I got home from work and it was nice enough outside to go for a walk, so I did.  It was so nice to get some fresh air.  Today however, we woke up to another blanket of light snow.  Come on winter, time to pack it up and go home!

I'll leave you with a clip of the original Wild and Crazy Guys sketch from the 70's - this is one of my dad's favorite sketches, apparently he and my uncle used to act this out all the time.  I love the classic SNL!

Light at the end of the tunnel

With spring within our grasp, I am feeling the need to wear more colors.  I feel like I've been pulling out a lot of grays and dark tones and I'm ready for warmer tones and brighter colors.  Today is only a small step in that direction as I still wore a lot of brown, but a pink sweater and white t-shirt help perk it up just a bit!

It's still quite cold out.  Last year at this time I was already wearing sandals and going out with bare legs.  It was in the 60's for highs!  St. Patrick's Day it was in the low 80's - I remember sitting out in the backyard with the Pants Monkey while he was smoking meats in his smoker for the first time and just basking in the warm sun - but also scratching my head and being puzzled by the weather!  It won't be like that this year.  We'll maybe get some 40's this weekend if we're lucky.  Yes I did just go on about the weather for an entire paragraph.  That's what we do in MN.

T-shirt - JCPenney

Sweater - Maurices

Skirt - Old Navy

Tights - Target

Shoes - Rampage, thrifted

Necklace - gift from a friend 

It's kind of my least favorite time of year in a way - the snow is melting and it looks dirty and ugly.  There are lots of puddles around so it's easy for your feet to get wet and your car is dirty all the time.  But, knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel does make it easier to deal with and fortunately, it only lasts a little while.

You know what else there is light at the end of the tunnel on?  My shopping ban!  Just another week and a half or so - because technically it ends with Palm Sunday and I planned to kind of cheat and break the ban that weekend anyway because of Amanda's vintage sale.  I can't miss out on her new shop's grand opening! If you're local, be sure to check it out, the details are here.

Almost a repeat

So something about this outfit felt really familiar this morning and as I was driving to work I thought "I think I've worn this exact combo before."  I went through my archives and figured out that it wasn't this exact combo. Swap out the pants though and it's almost a repeat!  Oh well, sometimes you just gotta go with what works!

Sweater - Merona, Target

T-shirt - Mossimo, Target

Pants - Anthropologie, thrifted

Shoes - Etienne Aiger, thrifted 

To try and make it a little more unique I decided after the first picture that I would button up the sweater all the way today.  Yep, I'm such a rebel!

I really enjoyed my "Me" day yesterday.  I even took a little break from most social media yesterday too and it was refreshing.  Not saying social media is bad, but sometimes a break is good.  But I am happy to be pretty much plugged back in today so to speak!

And because I haven't shared a kitty picture in a while, I will leave you with a picture of Miss Taylor in a box doing her best "If I fits, I sits" impression.