Cincinnati Day 1

This weekend was a little rough. My cousin, who also happens to be one of my best friends, spent all weekend with her family at the hospital. Her grandmother on her mom's side passed away today after about 36 hours in the hospital. I'm so sad for them! I hope and pray that they are able to find comfort in all the people who love and care for them.

I don't want to bum you all out with sadness, so I want to finally post pictures from my trip to Cincinnati (um...3 weeks ago)!

Ooooo traffic, how I loathe thee.  There was an accident on the interstate, so we sat in some traffic for a while. Luckily we weren't in a huge hurry! Oh and speaking of driving, I got to drive a new Chevy Impala for the trip...I did NOT want to give it back. It made me sad to go back to my beat up bishi.

Our room was small, but so cute. We stayed in the historic Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, which was just so stunning! The conference was also held here, so it was pretty convenient. 

That Sunday happened to be a Reds game that was really important. It was the one that decided whether they went to the World Series or not...I think. At any rate there were a TON of people downtown. Getting something to eat was pretty much the most challenging thing I've ever done. Every restaurant was out of whatever food they serve...it was very frustrating! 

There was a reception for the conference that was held in the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center. I walked around for a while and attempted some awkward mingling. I finally left and decided to try finding food again with mom. We eventually found a sandwich place called Potbelly's, and we were excited to hear they had a couple of meats and breads left...whew!

 

Despite how frustrated I was with the insane amount of people around me, it was pretty amazing to see all those Reds fans come together to watch the game in the middle of the city. It was like something out of a movie. In the picture with the red, those people are watching a big screen that is above one of the buildings. They were showing the Titans game before the Reds came on! Mom and I watched a little of it, so that was really a fun experience.

*sigh* I did not go in...

The outside of our gorgeous hotel. 

Mom and I coming in for the night. We had to get out of the crowd of Reds fans before they lost...that would have been traumatizing. Pardon the sloppiness. I drove all day and then started conference stuff, so my appearance was the last thing on my mind.

Wow, this was photo heavy. Apologies! It was a brand new city for me, so can you blame me?!

Finally!

It's finally Friday!

Can you tell I'm excited?! One of my best friends in the whole entire world is going to be here tomorrow, and I'm so overwhelmingly excited to get to see her! There are 5 of us that are going to hang out all day tomorrow...we have all been friends since our freshman year of college so it's going to be FANTASTIC. I am sure I will have a million pictures, but I'll try to only bore you guys with a few of them. I hope you all have a wonderfully splendid weekend as well!

This top is seriously one of my favorites EVER. I just bought it when I was in Cincinnati from Atomic Number 10, and I'm head over heels for it. If you get a chance, check out their Etsy shop. The physical store is way better than the online, but they have great things in both places! Also, these shoes are new and I've almost worn the mess out of them already. They were on sale at UO and I could not resist!

Top: Atomic Number Ten Vintage

Jeans: Express

Shoes: Urban Outfitters

Socks: Betsey Johnson...purple. They really make me happy

Necklaces: Express and Target

Leah + David

Here are some of my favorites from my shoot with Leah and David. They are my super adorable and fun cousins from Knoxville! They came for a visit recently and I got some pictures of them out at my Mom's house. It's amazing how fast time flies...I still remember when Leah was born. Goodness, I'm starting to sounds like my parents!

 

AH! I love these kids...cousins are the greatest :) Although, they're so much younger than me that they seem like my niece and nephew. Either way, they're great!

Unusually Gorgeous Sunset

Campus (at Union University where I work) looked pretty splendid last night at sunset. I am fairly certain that every person with a camera took pictures of this unusually beautiful light. I don't normally shoot this type of thing, but I sort of couldn't resist! West Tennessee doesn't typically have sunsets this pretty.

Susie Frances

I've talked about Susie here and here. And I'm so excited that she sent me more things to photograph! Here are a few of my favorites:

Susie sells this amazing jewelry on her website. She sent me some earrings as a gift in this shipment, which was just the sweetest thing ever! I actually have an extra pair to give away, so make sure you check back for that later. I surpassed 1000 hearts on Etsy this weekend, so I want to celebrate and heap gifts upon my lovely blog readers!

Babyology

I have been taking a bit of a break from blogging, if you haven't noticed :) I spent the weekend in Florida with my boyfriend's family. His step brother had a beach wedding down there so we went down Friday for the rehearsal dinner, and the wedding was Saturday. I'll do a post with some pictures soon.

Last week I got an email that I had been featured on Babyology. "Hooray!" I thought. I looked through the blog and thought they had some amazing things featured...I wish I had a baby now! Then on Thursday (?) I got several sales, and I started feverishly searching to find the source of these sales. I mean, I had 1 sale last month....so I was in serious shock with this sudden surge. I finally found a tweet from Ashli telling me to look at Etsy's Facebook. By this time it was buried, but I found it...there on Facebook was a link to the Babyology article. I was so excited! I spent a couple of hours last night packing everything up, and I even had enough to justify carrying it to the PO in a bag :) I always wondered what it would feel like to have that many sales at once...it's wonderful! Overwhelming (especially since I was out of town) but wonderful.

All that to say...THANK YOU to Babyology and Etsy

Over My Knees

I finally bought some over the knee socks! I got them at Target and wore them with pretty much the only skirt I have that isn't knee-length. I love the way they look, but they were a bit irritating throughout the day. I walked between buildings a couple of times at work and I kept having to pull them up. Even in the pictures, they slipped down below my knees...oh well! I still think they're cute. I took these pictures in the studio after doing some jewelry pictures for an awesome artist.

The jewelry was all my Grandma Jean's. I finally dove into her jewelry box the other day, and I found some things I really love! My dad gave it to me shortly after she passed away, but I hadn't gone through it because I didn't want to mess anything up. But then I decided that it would be really special to actually WEAR the jewelry! It makes me think of her all through the day, which I love. I don't think much of it is very old or expensive, but I love it because it belonged to her <3

Top: Forever 21

Skirt: Walmart (Miley!)

Socks: Target

Shoes: Rack Room

Jewelry: from my Grandma, Nora Jean

 I promise all my clothes don't come from mega-stores...

Guest Post for Curation Nation

Hello my dear sweet readers! Earlier today I did a guest post over on the Curation Nation blog. I'd love for you all to check it out if you get a chance <3

Curation Nation is a team of Etsy members that makes treasuries on a regular basis. We do this to promote each other and to give people a themed collection of items to browse. Treasuries are these great selling tools that Etsy has created to help shoppers browse collections rather than single items. Want something coffee related for your friend? Search coffee in the treasuries...you'll find a ton of possibilities.

I hope you all like my milk glass post!

James + Sheneka

This was a wedding near Jackson earlier this month. Sheneka was such a sweetheart! I was only there for a few hours, but I had a great time with them.

Garrett Family

For the record, I'm up way past my bedtime. I'm trying to get some things done so I can move on to some more things...it's really just a never ending cycle of things things things. Is my nighttime self making sense to anyone?

Anyway, I wanted to share some family portraits from last weekend with you. This was a family of 19 (yes, you ready that right...NINETEEN). I knew it would be overwhelming, so I had my trusty friend Alanna come along for moral support and help with arranging people. She was a much bigger help than she thinks she was! Lots of these are smaller group shots...

I didn't pick the best one of this...but you get it. I took what felt like a million to try to get everyone looking and smiling with their eyes open.

I think the last two are my favorites. I hope you've all been having a wonderful weekend! It's really been flying by. Just one more day before it's back to work I go...

Clyde's Rebirth

I haven't been aware of Clyde's Rebirth for very long, but I've really enjoyed reading her blog and looking at her AMAZING new lookbook. She's doing a pretty great giveaway of $100 credit to her stores. Check out the original post if you'd like to enter. I've seen her jewelry on another blogger (Morgan) several times and it blows me away every time! Take the time to look through her work along with some great vintage apparel and I promise, you won't be disappointed!

Winner + Flea Market

The CSN Giveaway has ended, and the winner is KRISTEN! Kristen, I've emailed you and Jocelyn from CSN Stores and your gift certificate will be emailed to you soon. I hope you enjoy it!

Now here are some pictures from the flea market with Paige (a.k.a. Peege)!

It was literally the PERFECT day. I love when the clouds look like this...and it was a nice neutral day where we could wear a sweater and not be hot. Ahhh perfection. 

The milk glass was a bit too pricey for my taste, so I skipped on that. We enjoyed talking to the vendor though, he was a nice guy. I bought a nice glass decanter from him, and Paige bought several things. Oh and that blue trunk in the second picture, I bought it! I put a lot of stuff in it when I got home (books, pillows, etc.) and then I accidentally locked it. Luckily I don't need any of the things I put in there for now.

The jewelry vendor had a bizarre amount of jewelry. I don't know how I feel about the presentation of it all...I certainly didn't dig through it while standing in the tiny aisles of the flea market! How do you guys feel about that kind of display? Would you stop to dig through? (side note: the lady was quite snippy and unpleasant)

We also came away with Carrie, which we plan to add to the scary movies we're going to watch in October. So far I've watched House on Haunted Hill (the old on) and Poltergeist. Paige picked up that cricket holder at the same booth as the milk glass. It's a really neat find! She's going to use it as decor in her room...she's crazy about things like that.

Overall, it was a great day! I spent the amount I planned to spend, and got a nice day out of the house, which is ALWAYS nice.