it's a jacket! it's a coat! it's a blazer! it's a cardigan! it's a trench coat!

when i bought this coat, i didn't fully realize just how versatile it would be. you see, one of the perks to working in an all-male office (except for me, of course) is that the guys don't pay attention to your wardrobe. i can wear the same outfit two or three times a week (i try to limit it to two times, don't worry) and they'll have no clue! this jacket has been added to so many outfits, you wouldn't believe it. i've already worn it twice this week as part of two separate ensembles. it's great and i'm totally getting my moneys worth out of it. when i was in high school, i didn't really have the luxury of wearing outfits twice in one week. my mom would notice that i liked a shirt or pair of pants a little too much and then would hide them from me. perhaps she was trying to save me from a social disaster, but it just plain frustrated me. my husband on the other hand, would never think of hiding clothes from me just to prevent my wearing them multiple times. in fact, i think he would encourage it because that would mean less shopping on my part. or not. =)

grown-up vacation

the hubby and i traveled 2 plane rides away this past weekend to go to the wedding of a guy that he knew in college. i loved meeting the guys who had spent four years with my husband and i thoroughly enjoyed hearing the stories that they couldn't wait to tell me about him. our entire weekend was so enjoyable; the city was great for walking and exploring, the food was incredible, and we just had a great time being a married couple on a little vacation together. it was actually our first "married" trip other than our honeymoon if you don't count the times that we have visited family. sure, we went to monterey and carmel on our anniversary, but that was more like a side trip during a family visit and it doesn't really count. i've decided that we need to follow the example of a good friend of mine and take a couple trips together year, even if they are just day trips, and spend time just being us.
and, to follow up with some topics that i discussed in some previous posts, i've included a picture of the dress that i wore to the wedding along with the coat that i ended up buying from banana republic. sara talked some sense into me, reminding me that i didn't really need a coat as heavy as the one that i tried to win on ebay. i love the mini-trench that i got on sale at banana. unfortunately, i didn't get any pictures of me in the dress without the coat. hmm, i must really like that coat! i also ended up soaking my fingernails in acetone to finally get rid of any remaining acrylic nails, and then painted on several layers of natural nail strengthener. please, if i ever talk about getting fake nails again, somebody please knock some sense into me!

sometimes, vanity really hurts

in preparation for my wedding, i went through quite a few of the usual rituals: choosing the right hair style, getting some new make-up and getting a mani/pedi. what i consciously skipped, though, were the acrylic nails. i had always admired the look, but never wanted to ruin my natural nails. nor did i want to sit in the salon every two weeks or so to get fill-ins. unfortunately, i forgot my reasons for not getting acrylics in the days before my hubby came home from deployment. i call it temporary insanity due to the excitement of everything that was about to happen. i had a set of "pink and whites" put on my already decent looking nail beds and although i was near tears during the entire, painful process, i really loved the end product. i even kept up the nails until our trip to visit the in-laws in california, because i wanted to have my mother-in-law's nail lady apply "glitter nails." you see, we don't have glitter nails out here. i had never even heard of them until meeting my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. for those of you who don't know, they are basically french manicured nails, but instead of having the white at the end, it is glitter. and boy, do they have an insane amount of glitters to choose from. i chose a light pinkish glitter that was subtle. i loved those glitter nails and showed them off to anyone who would look.
i haven't had my nails done since then, and that was at the beginning of august. there are several reasons: i couldn't find anyone who could do the glitter nails again; my mother-in-law's nail lady told me to only go to people who use a certain product and no one uses it here; i really do like my natural nails and i want them back; i hate sitting in the nail salon and paying someone to do to my nails what i could do on my own (if you haven't seen isabel's post on giving yourself a french manicure, here it is); oh and i usually pay a really big tip because i just do... and i could be putting that money to much better use.
so not only have i not had my nails done since then, but i haven't had the nerve to go get the old nails taken off! oh, i've been filing them down like crazy so that they are super short and i've even buffed until exhausted, so that the acrylic parts of my nails are so thin that you can barely see that they are still attached. at least i thought that was the case. this weekend, while my hubby and i were running errands around town, he grabbed my hand, held it up so he could look at my nails closely and said, "what is that?" i sheepishly said, "my nails from when we went to california. i'm too chicken to take them off completely because i know that my nails will be super thin underneath, so i'm just trying to let them grow out." that explanation worked for him and he could care less. but now, i'm worried. you see, we have a wedding coming up near my hubby's alma mater, and i will be meeting tons of his friends that i've never met before. how on earth am i going to make my nails presentable? anyone have any suggestions?

out of body experience

i had an out of body experience this weekend. no, i didn't go visit the girly doctor. i got a massage.
while my hubby was deployed, i went for a massage once a month to help alleviate some of the tension that built up while i worried about his safety. every month, i went to the same place and every time, i requested a female masseuse. in fact, i once desperately called at the last minute to see if they could fit me in, but they knowingly told me that there were no female masseuses available, only a male. i decided that i could live with my cramped neck muscles for one more day and waited for a woman. because of my scheduling history, i just assumed that they had it in my profile that i would only see a female for a massage.
fast forward to this weekend... my husband had been working 12-15 hour days and seriously needed to be kneaded on by someone other than me. the wifey can only do so much to ease my hubby's tensions. i picked up the phone and speed-dialed the same place that i had visited during his deployment. they were able to schedule us both for appointments at 5:00 saturday. perfect! when she told me who would be working on each of us, i was certain that she said two very girly names like "sasha" and "kristy" or something like that. turns out, my therapist was a man. a big man. with a sweat band around his head - dodgeball style. i did a double take when he walked into the waiting room and called my name, and then i looked to my hubby for support. could i possibly change my mind right now with all these people in the waiting room? could i feign a sudden migraine? or maybe shove my husband up there in my place and i would go with his masseuse? i'm embarrassed to say that i did none of the above and like a lamb being led to the slaughter, i dumbly followed this massive man back to the massage room. the entire time, i had an out of body experience like so many people describe their yearly girly doctor visits. i debated over just telling him to stop, or even kicking him really hard, pretending ti was just a reflex and then telling him that we should just reschedule. instead, i just kept hoping that it would be over soon. afterwards, i nearly strangled the receptionist who asked how my massage was. i silently wondered if she was the one who had scheduled my massage with the giant. i have vowed that next time a scheduling error like that happens, i will be the strong woman that i am and say that i simply cannot be massaged by any other male other than my husband. it just felt so wrong to me and i couldn't get out of that room fast enough. i didn't even enjoy the massage. i am happy to say, however, that my hubby's massage therapist worked wonders on the six, yes six, giant knots on his traps and back. she told him that he needs to get massages every week if possible. i guess i'll have to break out the massage oil and take care of my husband until he is back to normal!

just bragging

last night, when the hubby got home, he had a dozen red roses in his hands for me. wow! what a sweetheart. while talking about what we wanted to do for the night, i jokingly suggested that we go dress shopping (for the wedding). not only did he not laugh, he willingly agreed! i was actually excited, because i can trust him to give me an honest opinion without sugar-coating it. you see, i had gone dress shopping at lunch and had been completely unsuccessful and was slightly frustrated. i had even found the black dress that i had asked for your opinions of, and it was marked down 75%, but it was a little too casual once i saw the fabric... plus, they didn't have my size. the hubby and i went to the mall and into my favorite department store. it only took a few minutes for me to find about ten dresses to try on, but i just tried on three of them before i found the right dress. it is an adrianna papell occasions and it is a silk halter with beading on it. i'll have plenty of pictures after the wedding. i'm going to have to take him shopping with me all the time if it means that i always find what i need that fast! after getting the dress, we headed over to ted's montana grill for some yummy dinner and thoroughly enjoyed our night.

black tie optional

we are going to a wedding at the end of this month and the attire is black tie optional. i love this dress, but i'm thinking that it is going to be too informal. any opinions?

slip time

during my five year college stint (which, thankfully, ended with graduation), i worked for an engineering firm in the big city. even though i only started as an intern, i always tried to dress like a professional. this included cramming my giant size 11 feet into black, pointy-toed pumps. to this day, i still love wearing black pumps... i'm even wearing them as i write this. anyhow, as you big city girls know, being a high-heeled pedestrian in a high traffic area takes some finesse. there are times when the crosswalk sign is blatently telling you to stand still, but you can see that the SUV headed in your direction is clearly lost and driving well under the speed limit and you decide to risk running across the street. as a runner who had fallen face first in the crosswalk in front of traffic (more than once), i decided that i should give myself at least 2 more seconds to cross the road in heels in case i slipped. for friends and co-workers who walked with me, i started to call it "slip time." i would casually explain to them that the reason i waited longer to cross the road was because there wasn't enough time for me to slip, gracefully get back up and still miss getting run over by a car. and now you, my blog readers, have the opportunity to use my phrase next time you are dressed up and hesitating at the crosswalk. stop and say to yourself, "hmm... is there enough slip time for me to make it across the road?"

hardware and a quick dog story

several months ago, while my husband was deployed and i was working, our dog got bored and ate a hole in the wall. i tried to patch it once, but the dog ate right back through the plaster and ripped some more paper off of the wallboard. he is over that stage in his life now and knows that if he wants to continue to live, he will not eat any more wall, but the evidence is still right there in our entry way. yesterday, i told my hubby that i was going to the hardware store to get the supplies to fix the hole. he informed me that he would really like to be the one to fix the hole, but that i could get the supplies. that sounded good to me.
yesterday also happened to be the day that i had promised to bring lunch for my hubby's department at work. i decided to wear a dress to look cute for my handsome man, but while dressing myself, i failed to think about the fact that i was planning on going to the hardware store after lunch. oh well! anyhow, so i got to the hardware store and as i was perusing the many types of spackle and patching supplies, i decided that i needed advice on which product was best. an older male employee rounded the corner and i asked if he could tell me which was best. he advised me and then as he was walking off, he turned back around and said something about how he doesn't usually compliment female customers. huh? i thought he was about to compliment me on my bravery and confidence in coming into the store to get the supplies and repair some giant hole in my home all by myself (i never told him that my hubby was actually the one who was doing the fixing), so i probed and asked what he meant. seriously, i was getting puffed up, waiting to hear how cool it is that a woman wasn't afraid to do some hard work around the house, but i was disappointed when he went into this spiel about how he lived in new york before and has seen some beautiful women and that i was beautiful, blah blah blah. my bubble was burst. he was just another dirty old man. oh well.
oh, and a semi-funny story that i forgot to tell the other day. our dog, bozeman, has several doggy friends around the neighborhood. one of his friends just got a new puppy-sister this week and she is so adorable! bozeman was laying in the grass, letting her climb all over him, when her brother (and bozeman's buddy) came over to bozeman, lifted his leg and peed all over bozeman's chest! i couldn't believe what i was seeing, and almost wanted to laugh, because bozeman had the biggest smile all over his face like his friend had just given him the coolest gift. well, guess what? i gave bozeman the gift of the bath as quickly as i possibly could. ick.
guess what else? today, i turn 27 years old! yikes!

ta da!

here is the dress that i'm going to wear to my husband's homecoming (sorry for the sideways pic. i just wanted you all looking at my blog sideways =) ). for some reason, it doesn't show up on the store's website, but whatever. it doesn't look super special in this picture, but it is like it was made for me because it accentuates everything that i want it to and hides the parts that i need to hide (thighs!). hopefully i'll have a picture of me actually wearing it for you guys soon. what kind of jewelry would you guys suggest? the WH/BM store had a cool, chunky, black bracelet, but it was half the price of the dress and i just wasn't willing to spend that much on a bracelet that i might not wear again. maybe i can find a look alike somewhere...

THE dress

last night, 6 of us met for dinner at PF Changs and then embarked on a very important mission: to find a HOT dress for me to wear to my husband's homecoming. it felt like i was trying on and modeling wedding dresses again and i loved it. i had 5 different girls bringing me armloads of dresses in the fitting rooms of the various stores and they critiqued everything from the color of the dresses to how my chest did or didn't fill out the top (usually the latter) and what they thought my husband would say the first time he saw me in it. it was a blast. we finally found THE dress in white house black market. it was the first outfit that i've ever bought there and i think i'll be back. the dress is a black eyelet halter dress with white lining and i got a big "wow" when i came out of the fitting room, so i figured that it was "the one." one of the girls is a photographer and is going to come and take pictures of the entire homecoming, so i may post some of those after the fact. now i just have to work on my tan...

what not to wear to my husband's homecoming...

a black eye. i was playing with the dog and got knocked in the face with his "knee" (do dogs really have knees?) when he was jumping on the couch (yes, we let him get on the couch). hopefully the ice will do its trick and i won't have any bruises. don't you love my ice pack cover? =)

blue, brown and linen

alright, i need some help. you might have read where i said that my husband will be coming home soon from deployment. i'm pretty darn excited about it and i want to look my best when i see him for the first time. for whatever reason, i have it in my head that i want to wear a sundress that is blue and brown and made of linen... so, if anyone out there has any suggestions of where to find such a dress, please tell. or, if you have any other suggestions of what i should wear, that'd be great, too.