Still Here

I sooo did not want to weigh in this morning... not feeling great, I've been unmotivated all weekend, etc, and I thought I probably gained due to hormones and such... but I did jump on the scale and I've lost a pound! Not incredible, but a move in the right direction. And it's amazing what even a little move can do for the morale. :)

I have spent more time and energy and frustration than I care to count this weekend on trying to get my old/new nightstand painted. I've been wanting a new nightstand for a long time now - I've been using this one that I got for free at a church yardsale/giveaway, but it's sooo ugly!

See? Horrendous! So when I saw this nightstand for $15 at the thrift store (I know, it seemed like a lot to charge for a thrift store to me, too, but it's really cute!) I bought it. The legs and drawer were painted pink but the top was a natural wood color. I figured it would be easy to spray paint black. Turns out, not so much. Everything was going great except the top - the paint puckered, slid away from the wood in places, bubbled, etc. In short, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong with it. My dad and I ended up sanding off all the paint and starting over, then sanding again, then spraying it one final time. It still isn't "perfect" but I'm declaring it done. Maybe when I'm feeling better I'll drag it out and try something else, but at least it's painted and the paint is holding ok.

Cute, yes? I think so! And nice and tall so now I won't have to practically hang off the side of my bed to turn off my alarm clock, lol. I can't wait to see how everything will look put back together again, as I was playing with furniture arrangements this afternoon to see how I could make my room a little roomier for when Robin and Khy come to visit. I haven't discovered anything great yet, so I guess I'll keep rearranging.

I've made a new goal for myself: Someday, eventually, possibly even this summer, I would like to run a 5K (for those of you who have always wondered, like me, how long a 5K is, it's just a tad over three and a half miles). I'm going to start by using the "beginning running" schedule/guide and hopefully eventually move into a 5K training schedule. I'm going to take it slow but I'm really excited about the possibilities!

Hope everyone is revved up for a good week. I'm excited about going into the new week... new week, new possibilities!

I Miss My Angels!!!

I'm home sick today (an allergic reaction turned sinus infection gone bad, methinks) so I missed getting to meet my new second cousin at her baby shower today. The family did bring back pictures, though! Isn't Zoe adorable? (And isn't her mama and daddy brilliant for naming her Zoe? It's always been one of my fav names!)

Beautiful Zoe and my cousin Brandon.

I am consoled a little bit by the pictures Robin sent me - apparently the package I sent this week finally made it to Alabama! (I am a bad BFF - this package has been sitting on my desk for weeks now, waiting to be sent, and only the fact that I wanted pictures of Khy wearing the little hat I made him was enough to motivate me to take it to the post office).



"How exciting! A package from Sarah!" At least I'm pretty sure that's what he's saying, lol. "Whatever could be in it?"


A Pooh Bear toy, some bath toys, some stuff for mommy, and...

...an adorable hat! Actually, judging from the look on his face, I'm pretty sure that's one gift Khy wishes I'd waited a little longer to send. He doesn't look impressed at all! But his mama likes it, and that's good enough for me. Isn't he cute? :)

Even though I didn't make it to the shower, Abby did, and apparently had a good time. This picture makes me miss her so badly... Weekends are always weird for me because I feel like I'm missing something (or someone, rather!) but I'm especially sad that I could have seen her today and missed it. :(

As for me... I want to stop being sick so badly! I don't have the energy to actually go DO anything, but I'm starting to feel bored out of my skull, lol. Hopefully the worst is over and tomorrow I'll be on the mend.

Testing

Yesterday Allen tested for his green belt, second stripe in Tang So Do (I sure hope that's worded correctly!). I always try to make the testing days - I love to watch the boys! I'm always amazed by the order and complexity of what they are being taught... I'm definitely a believer in Martial Arts as character building!
Warming up together.

Allen reading his essay.

I couldn't make myself take pictures while Allen was showing his forms, breaks, etc... I was too busy watching! But I caught some picts of the other student testing to show you what sort of things they do.

Breaking a board.

Breaking a board with a flying front kick (I think!).

Breaking a board with a flying side kick (again, I think).

Allen receiving his certificate and stripe. Next, red belt!

All in all, a good showing. Two of Allen's classmates earned their midnight blue belts this year and so the dojang heirarchy has shifted a bit, which is fun to see.

After the testing, Maggie and I took Allen with us on our weekly date - Red Robin's again! We stopped in at Target afterwards to do a quick shopping trip, then came home and crashed. :)

More Foodie Fun

A couple of days ago, Natalie came home and said, "I stuck a box of peppers in your truck." Apparently she got a good deal on them and they needed to be eaten right away. I didn't really think much of it... until I got into my truck ten minutes later. The smell of the peppers nearly drove me nuts! I wanted to eat one SO BAD, lol! And I was thrilled by all the colors - red, green, orange, yellow, purple, and lots of in-betweens!

I came home and discovered my family was having roast chicken for dinner, which didn't sound all that great and was pretty high-point, so I decided to whip up some stuffed peppers.


Here are the peppers I'm using - aren't they yummy looking?

And here they are, all trimmed and ready to go!

I whipped up this filling of lean ground turkey, rice (I don't think I'd added the rice yet in this photo), a can of diced tomatoes, and some of my favorite HEB brand fajita seasoning - which, sadly, died in the making of this dish. Time to go to Texas and get some more. I wonder if I can order it online?

I think the points count for one stuffed pepper came to about 4 points, which wasn't bad at all. I had a ton of points left over so actually had a bowl of the new Honey Grahams cereal I'd picked up that day, too (4 points with milk). So yummy! I've never been a cold cereal person EVER, but my tastes seem to be changing... either that, or I'm just grateful to have something low-point to put in my mouth!

Foodie Fun

Recently on the Weight Watchers messageboards someone started a discussion about "go-to foods"... it made me start thinking about my personal favs. I've started building up quite a list!

I'm not a good breakfaster... that's probably my hardest meal of the day because I don't feel fully awake until after I've eaten and the temptation is really, really high to just eat SOMETHING to get going. For weekdays, I try to keep frozen breakfast foods on hand for grab-and-go mornings, or I throw instant oatmeal in my favorite covered mug. But on mornings when I'm home, I get a tad more creative.

I couldn't live without deli flats... 1 point per roll and no taste difference whatsoever. This particular morning I had some sesame or almond butter (I can't remember which), a sliced banana, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. Maggie is always on me to eat more cinnamon - apparently it's a hunger suppressant. :)

I found these pears at the grocery store today - they're tiny, so they make the perfect midmorning or afternoon snack! Pears are great... lots of fiber. :)

I also found this fruit... it's a cactus pear! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it - time to go check our allrecipes.com.

Pretzels and Laughing Cow cheese is probably my favorite snack of all time... 10 mini-pretzels and one cheese round or wedge are only 2 points.

After hunting high and low, I finally found Laughing Cow light blue cheese. Love the spreadability- easier to squish between pretzels than the little rounds - but I'm kind of underwhelmed by the flavor. It has a slightly chemically taste. I'm going to try the spreadable swiss before going back to my rounds. :)

Girl's Night IN!

A few weeks ago, while my family was out of town, I had several of the younger girls from church over for a girl's night in and sleepover. We had a ton of fun! One of the girls, Rita, arrived a little earlier than the other two and helped me cook dinner - build your own burritos with all the fixings. :) Yummy! When Hannah and Faith got there, we ate dinner and began a long night of board games!
Faith getting ready for a game of UpWords. Love this game - kind of like 3D Scrabble!

The only one brave enough to read the directions and actually figure out how to play and count points properly was Hannah. We made her keep score. :)

Look at how smart we are! :)

All four of us - me, Faith, Hannah, and Rita (L-R).

After we finished with Upwords, we played a game of Parcheesi, since Rita had never played. She kept saying that the pictured the game with elephants and a miniature Taj Mahal, and the rest of us were, quite frankly, puzzled, since we'd never seen a Parcheesi set with elephants and a Taj Mahal. Lo and behold, I google it later, and the newer sets DO have elephants and miniature Taj Mahals. :)

I always think my family is intense when we play games, but these gals had us beat! I'd never even heard of blockades, etc. :)

The beautiful Faith!

Me and Faith!

After we finished playing games, we brought a couple of air mattresses into the living room and basically turned it into a wall-to-wall mattress. :)

Rita and Faith, getting ready for a movie. :)

All in all, it was a great time of fellowship and I hope to do it again soon!

More Fall Fun

I guess I'm on a roll with the fall decorating... Yesterday I took a long walk along our wooded road, collecting acorns, pinecones, nuts, and some pretty colorful leaves. :) When I got home, I pulled down my "seasonal decorations" storage bin and rediscovering some stuff I'd put away last year. I had fun decorating my room with my finds!


I placed this "Granny Smith Apple" candle into this wide-mouthed glass vase and filled the space with acorns.

I bought these fall-colored glass hurricanes last year for $1 a piece last year and waited all year to use them! Now they're lined up along the back of my desk. I need to buy larger candles for them, though.

Okay... maybe I'm jumping the gun a little here - it seemed like a very "fallish" idea but looks a little Christmasy in actuality. The big burgundy bowl was given to me by a friend, and the "Fireplace Log" candle candle was given to me by another friend. :) This candle smells sooo good! I love it!

Some non-decorating fall yumminess... pumpkin pancakes! And only 3 points! The pumpkin adds flavor and fiber and they smell sooo good. I spread them with a little reduced-fat peanut butter in lieu of syrup, but I'll bet they'd taste just as good with a dab of our honey.

I want to preface the next few pictures by just stating that I am totally ANTI-HALLOWEEN and do not celebrate or condone celebrating the "holiday" in any way, shape, or form. However, I do totally love pumpkins. :) My fav color is orange, they're big and round and have adorable ridges along the side... what's not to like? So this Saturday I picked up a pumpkin at the local Wal-Mart and brought it home for some carving!


I like big, round pumpkins - I know this is a matter of taste, some of my friends like them tall and skinny, some of my friends like them slightly misshapen, etc. I dug through three bins to find this "perfect" pumpkin.

After I cleaned it, I tried this technique that I read about online. I printed the pattern I wanted to carve onto some printer paper, covered it in vegetable oil, and squished it onto my pumpkin.

I forgot how hard it was to paint a pumpkin! I've cut out the outline of my design, now I'm just doing the hard work. :)

My beautiful final result!

All lit up! I love my stars!

Assorted Fun

Mondays are pretty much the only days Abigail and I don't have anything on the agenda - no classes, no preschool, no gymnastics, just whatever fun we conjure up ourselves! Sometimes we use this day to recover from the weekend, but if someone is feeling bouncy - literally, this morning, lol - a lot of times we pack it full of fun!

We spent the morning hanging out - ate breakfast, watched a little bit of Curious George and a little bit of The Cat in the Hat, colored, read Dr. Seuss, did puzzles, etc - then we packed up into my truck and went to pick up Maggie. While we were at my house, Abby played a little bit with Ranger, Anna's cat. Ranger is normally too cool to allow himself to be petted, so we handed Abby the treat bag and let her feed him treats. Ranger was on his very best behavior, and Abby made sure to take advantage of it, patting him in between doling out food. :) I have a love-hate relationship with that cat, but even I had to admit that they were adorable together.

We went to the park by my house and played on the playground for over an hour. I had to wipe down all the equipment with a towel due to the heavy dew, but it was so worth it! Abby went on everything - even climbed the bars with me spotting!

After wearing the munchkin out, we went into the historic square of a nearby town for lunch, where Abby flirted shamelessly with the waiter :), and then we sat in a little coffeeshop for awhile, then walked to the nearby pet store to ooh and ah over all the cute critters. There were some newborn mice that were adorable! It's times like these that I miss my pet mouse, Jack, so dreadfully. The first thing I do when I ever get my own space will be to get another pet mouse!

The coffee shop we stopped in had a big picture frame full of children's art. This card caught my eye. I had to snap a picture and send it off to my best friend. :)

Bits of Twine And String...

Here's to a random modgepodge post. :)

Today is weigh-in day for me! I love that it's on Sundays - I get up, look at the scale, and feel twice as beautiful when I get dressed up for church. :) Even when I have a little loss, or no loss at all, the number on the scale is still way smaller than it was six weeks ago!

Today - after a long week of plain old "steady plodding" and staying totally on plan - I lost 2.6 pounds, and this brings me to my third WW milestone: the 5% loss mark! I have now lost just a bit over 5% of my body weight. Sounds small, but it feels nice. All in all, today was a nice reward for the hard work this week.

Because I had a really low-point breakfast and a decent lunch, I let myself have an afternoon snack. I love my afternoon snack but I've been skipping it a lot this week. :( This afternoon I whipped up a batch of 1-point oatmeal raisin drops. Yummy! I've been on an oatmeal kick this week - I've had it for breakfast every day but one, and I even ate it for dinner one night because I was craving it so badly - so I figured this might satisfy the craving in a different form. They sure were yummy!

Some of the gals who I think have the nicest hair are big fans of sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner, but whenever I looked at the prices online I nearly die. $32 for a bottle of shampoo?!?!? So when I saw the ad for the new L'Oreal sulfate-free shampoo, I was super-excited! I picked up a set of shampoo/conditioner when Maggie and I were out on Thursday and so far I've washed my hair twice with it, and I can completely tell the difference! I chose the "bodify" formula, because most conditioning shampoos leave my hair too greasy, but I'm thinking now that when I run out, I might get the hydrate conditioner. The strands of my hair feel thicker and just... nicer. At a little over $5 a bottle, this is a GREAT compromise!

Fall-ish Things

It seems like EVERY BLOGGER I KNOW has done a "Fall projects" post -Valencia over at Buildeth Her House is doing some cheap/free decorating, Jenny at The Whole Jenny discovered the joys of dollar-store decorating (gotta love Dollar General!), and (my personal fav), the True Femininity blog just shared how the house is shaping up for fall.

Pretty much all I've done for fall has been to comment on how much I love it, lol. But yesterday I went back to my cold-weather hobby - crocheting! I've kind of accepted that crocheting is something I only do in the cold with freezing fingers. :) I just never feel the urge to whip something up in the summer!

I don't know how it came up, but somehow it was decided that I would crochet Khy a hat. At first I was going to use the same "pattern" I used last year to make myself a winter cap, and then I figured, why not use an actual pattern? So I headed over to Crochet Pattern Central and began looking through patterns. Whatever I made had to be easy (since my pattern-reading skills are really low, lol), but look adorable. :) There were tons of cute hat patterns, but I really flipped when I found this one. ADORABLE, and the pattern seemed easy to read. Best of all, it called for two contrasting colors, but I already had this yarn in Seaside that I knew would create a nice pattern all by itself, so I wouldn't have to join any colors!

The pattern picture. I can't believe now that I thought this was so cute when I think my finished hat is so much cuter, lol! But then again, I guess I'm biased.

The pattern was super-easy to read... I had to read a couple of parts out loud a few times but that isn't really unusual for me when reading crochet patterns, and I didn't have to rip out any stitches on the first one (I did on the second one, but that was because I was trying to watch a movie with Maggie and crochet at the same time, and I was distracted, lol).

The first had was done in about an hour, and I was pleased.

This is the pattern, followed to the letter of the instructions with the proper size of needle and thread and everything. To be honest, it looked a little large to me even though the baby model in the picture looked even younger than Khy. My family laughed at me and said they thought it was designed more for Abigail. While Robin insisted that she liked bigger hats (I love my BFF!), I decided to try again. This time I used a size smaller needle and also made some slight alterations to the pattern - I followed the pattern exactly for everything up to the earflaps, but instead of creating the ties the way the pattern showed, I edged only the back (you can't really tell anyway, lol) with two strands of yarn that also became the ties.

I love it! It just seemed to be calling out for a little pompom on the top, and I had just enough yarn left over. :)

My final product on my squash model. :)

All in all, I'm pleased and Robin loves the photos she's seen. My little hat is going into the mail on Monday and hopefully I will get some pictures of Khy wearing it as a thank-you (hint, hint). :)


I can tell that this is only the beginning of my crocheting adventures for the season, lol.

Maggie and I had a great day yesterday - we went to the park in town and used their 1/2-mile track for walking laps. I have definitely been majorly slacking on the exercise front, lol, so it felt good to get out and go!

Night On The Town

Every Thursday night (since I have Fridays off), Maggie and I go out for dinner and fun. Sometimes shopping, sometimes a movie, sometimes if we're tired or just need a night in we rent a movie and go home to crash on my bed. Tonight I was in need of our date night extra badly, since it's been two weeks since Mags and I got to hang out since she was in Florida last week.

We were originally going to grab a quick dinner and then go see Secretariat, but we ended up getting sidetracked at Wal-Mart and then by the time we thought to check the time, it was too late and we were having too much fun to rush.

Maggie and I go through stages about where we hang out. At the beginning of the year, you couldn't pull us away from Teariffic. Then it got hot and we couldn't pull ourselves away from Ruby Tuesdays and their watermelon spritzers. But it's not so hot now and Ruby Tuesdays is expensive and lately the food hasn't been so great, so we've been kind of hunting for new grounds. We keep wanting to try Olive Garden, but it's always so packed out! And we like to relax and chill without feeling like we're gumming up the works. Today we were looking across the side of the road and we were joking that Olive Garden didn't have a single parking space available - then Maggie joked, "Oh, we should go to Red Robin, they're practically EMPTY since they've got TWO parking spaces available!" So kind of on impulse we turned in and went.

As soon as we hit the front door, we started smiling. :) The employees were hanging out around front, opening doors for customers and greeting folks. We asked to see a menu and said that we were dealing with a food allergy and wanted to see what Maggie's options were like. One of the employees asked what she was allergic to and ran back with an allergy binder telling her exactly what foods were "safe" and what could be modified for her. That pretty much sold us, so we were seated.

The place had a great vibe tonight... just a nice mix of folks, music loud enough to be fun but not overbearing, waiters scurrying left and right but amazingly the service was just great. It was tons of fun to be there. :)

Maggie chose the turkey sandwich and offered me a bite - it was INCREDIBLE! Nice amount of heat and really yummy.

I went for the Bruschetta Chicken sandwich with pesto aioli and balsamic cream. It was great - reminded me of Cheddars (but not quite that good, more reminiscent). I totally indulged tonight and had steak fries, too. I was scared about how this was going to impact my points, but even though it was a "pricey" meal in terms of WW points, I did scootch under my limit and it was soo worth it.

While I was looking up showtimes to Secretariat this afternoon, I noticed that the theater in town is now selling tickets for the first midnight showing of Megamind. Anyone who knows me knows I lovelovelove kids movies, and I've never been to a midnight showing, so I talked Maggie into letting me get us both tickets. I'm so psyched! :) I know I'll laugh hysterically since EVERYTHING is funny after midnight, and the trailers/previews made me laugh anyway!

Speaking of kids movies... did anyone else see that Cars 2 is slated for release next summer? I'm so excited! Ee! I loved Cars and I love Pixar and always try to go see their movies in the theater to support the family-friendlyness.

AWOL With Good Reason

So I have been gone for a little more than a week due to the fact that my family was out of town and took the computer (and thus the Internet access) with them. That's right, I stayed at the house alone for a week, without suffering any major freak-outs. This is rather significant for me since the last couple of times they've left me home alone I've a) huddled inside my locked room with the dog and music/videos playing while I "slept", or b) just stayed up all night listening to imaginary noises until the sun came up. The last time they left, I gave up trying to stay in by myself and just invited a friend to basically "move in" with me for the week.



This week I stayed in the house all but one night, and spent the last night at my grandparents, mostly because I had company the two nights before that and the house seemed twice as big and lonely after that. :( I have definitely decided that if/when I move out on my own, I'm either moving into an apartment with other people around or with a roommate.



But I'm pretty proud of myself for this last week, especially considering I didn't play music or videos while I was sleeping OR lie awake in terror. I only had one moment where I got freaked out and then I dealt with it by getting the dog to investigate with me (good old Oliver!). All in all, I feel like I've proved something to myself, and it feels good. :)



Anyway... I spent some of my free alone-time doing some cooking from my new cookbook, which was tons of fun, and trying to stay on-plan without access to the Weight Watchers website. I kind of did - ok. I did a lot of guessing, but I tried to play it safe, and I ended up maintaining. I personally think I lost some fat and gained some musle, since I was super-good about exercising, and I feel like I still feel my body changing. Even if I didn't lose anything, I'm glad not to have gained. I had no idea how dependent I was on the website to look up food stats quickly (like, how much sweet potatoe can I have for three points? Would it be better to cook the acorn or the butternut squash considering how I've eaten today? If I have one cupcake tonight and one tomorrow, how will that fit into my day? If I make the cupcakes low-fat, how much will that help? Stuff like that.

This week I'm kind of in "recovery" mode. I had no idea how much I was stressed out last week over being responsible for the house and all the critters, so I'm pretty much just focusing on going to bed early and getting good sleep, and staying completely on-plan. My only downfall so far is that I haven't walked a step - no exercise at all so far this week! I'm hoping that today I will feel awake enough to go after work, as I probably won't get to go tomorrow and I want to stick to my three times a week commitment.

My class is going well... after a few really intensely emotional weeks, we're studying a theory my professor has cobbled together from several other theories that he calls "raquet" theory. The basic principle as I follow it is that we all form circles or patterns that can be self-destructive, but we continue stepping into them because they're familiar and comfortable. But unless we do something to form a new pattern, we'll never change because a circle is infinite and keeps going and going. The point we're learning is to learn a) not to step into the circle and b) form new habits. This is something I've kind of learned myself over the last few years, so it's not really new to me except now I have terminology to put to it.

I'm also excited that Christmas is only, like, eight or ten weeks away! I love celebrating Christmas. I would totally celebrate it year-round if I could. Confession: I actually listened to my first Christmas CD two weeks ago. Granted, it was the only non-western CD in the drawer, so it wasn't like I did it purposefully, but still, I enjoyed it and it made me want Christmastime dreadfully. :) I'm already thinking about Christmas gifts. :)

It's The Little Things (Apparently)

I SWORE I was not going to turn this into a weight-loss bloss, but I also said, and I quote, "...this blog is about what's going on in my life, and this is what's going on in my life right now!" So... all ye skinny people, feel free to skip this post. :)

This week has been a little weird, because although I've followed the plan without any slipups, and even started exercising this week, I haven't been able to make the scale budge this week. Last week I lost less than half a pound, but I was willing to write it off to hormones, etc, since I hadn't done anything differently. This week, not so much. If I'm doing everything right, then why won't the thing budge? And I can really see why people get wrapped around the axle over the number on the scale. Because if you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing, and it's not working, it does feel kind of discouraging/hopeless. :(

I kind of had a mental regrouping. I realized that I'm really not in control of losing weight - I'm only in control of what I eat. My goal is to stay on-plan, not to lose X amount of pounds.

Once I "reconfigured" my thought process, I suddenly noticed a bunch of small encouraging signs. This week, everything seems to fit better, or worse - everything that was just a little too snug last week looks awesome now, and everything that fit great last week feels a bit baggy. I wore a khakki skirt last night, and I distinctly remember considering throwing it out recently, because it felt so snug around my hips/waist, and last night I felt ridiculous pulling it up constantly.

Maggie and I went shopping last night, and I found a dress I absolutely loved, but they only had one size smaller than I normally wear. I don't even know what made me take it to the dressing room, since I don't really feel like I've lost a full size yet, but I did, and it looks great. I totally bought it (I know, I know, I said I wouldn't shop for clothes yet, but I think it'll make a great "transition" piece since it's a dress and I can just keep cinching in the waist). Then I found a skirt in the size I normally wear, and it was obviously too big. So that was encouraging.

But I really wanted to have a loss - even a small loss - just to take me under that magical ten pound mark. And it just didn't look like it was happening.

So this morning I got up, went to the scale anticipating a slight gain since Maggie and I went out last night and absolutely stuffed ourselves silly with seafood, and lo and behold... suddenly I was 1/2 pound lighter. Go figure. Anyway, I'm just thrilled to have lost something and to finally have crossed the ten pounds mark. Which is pretty exciting in and of itself.

I figured today would be a good day to mix it up and do some non-walking exercise (I've walked three times this week, either by myself or with various family members) so I went downstairs and powered up the Wii Fit. And there was another positive sign!

So all in all, I'm happy. Obviously I would love to just be shedding pounds left and right, but as another blogger recently pointed out, if you remove only half a pound per week, that's 26 pounds per year - at least one dress size, a bra size, a few years added to your life. So I'll take it.

In other news... if anyone wants to meet to walk laps, etc, let me know! :)

So This Is What It Feels Like To Be In Love

I've fallen in love.

Seriously.

:)

Remember how I talked earlier about wanting/needing a new big handbag, but being unable to find anything I liked?

And do you remember this purse that I bought on vacation with Robin, that I totally love, that I ADORE, actually?

Today I walked in to Marshalls to kill some time before picking the Abster up from Mom's Morning Out, and staring back at me from the purse rack was a giant-ish size version of my zipper rosette bag!

I was stunned, but there it was. And it's totally just as awesome huge as it is tiny. And I've always looked at that bag after using it for a weekend or an outing and thought to myself regretfully, it just doesn't work as an everyday bag - it's my go to bag for those days when I don't want to lug a small suitcase around with me, but if it were bigger, I would totally never want another bag in my life. Cuz it's so adorable! It's a rosette, but it has edge. :)

I went home and googled the designer's website just to confirm that I love it as much at home as do in the store, and I completely fell in love with this line. Seriously - go check out olivia+joy. Their website is beautiful, too, and their designs are just fun. Obviously, I'm partial to Rose, but there are definitely some other styles I'll be keeping my eye out for, should they hit Marshall's or Ross's (Exposed, for instance, or Ruffled. Or Peekaboo, for that matter). Even the bags I don't neccessarily want to own I can appreciate.

So it's funny I found this bag today, because (hopefully - crossing my fingers here!) I'll be reaching the ten-pounds-lost milestone this week, and I've been thinking that deserves a reward. I actually had my eye on another handbag, but now that I've seen this one I think it just has to be the one. :)