A few highlights

I had to take a mini hiatus from The Blog. During my weeks, I've been busy trying to build the jewelry empire, and on the weekends we've been consumed with homeownership. Here are some highlights from the past few weeks. (Let me warn you, this might be the longest post ever.)

A few weeks ago I had a trunk show at hands down my new favorite home decor store, Revival Home & Garden. It was fun, and I met the lovely designer of Sabrina Love handbags. Brian, Katie, and Lindsay & David showed up to support - thank you!



And, I totally have a crush on this store:






Next highlight. Angela, the lovely designer of Flora & Fawn, has helped me navigate the jewelry scene a bit over the past month, and I hooked up with a company that can manufacture my line. It's too early to announce anything official, but things are moving well in this arena and I'm super excited. My head is spinning but since this is how I generally operate, it's all good. Here is me enjoying celebratory margaritas with my favorite biz ladies, Cori & Aviva of The Adventure School.







Moving on! Over the past few days, we made major leaps and bounds in terms of the shape of our yard. Our yard is totally insane. It's gigantic, for one -- there's a lot of space. And two, the people who lived here before us lived here for 32 years, and the woman was a gardner. And by gardner I mean she filled the entire yard with every color of flowering plant possible. So slowly but surely, we are (appropriately) ripping certain plants out, trimming back, and just generally just trying to dejungle-ize.

Yesterday I ripped a bunch of plants out of our backyard. There are so many pointless old lady plants back there. So that was good. And today Brian and Steve tackled the front of our house. We have lots of gigantic evergreen bushes out front. I don't know, walking up to our house, I kind of feel like an old republican, with so many gigantic sculptured evergreen bushes. Here is our progress. (And by our, I mean their.)











It looks a little bare now, but here is where we're going. This is a picture of a house in Magnolia that we looked at during our home buying process. It was suuuper wonky inside but the yard was so thoughtful.



Just give us a few years (and a couple thousand dollars?).

Last but not least, our weekend commenced with a fun evening with our lovely neighbors, Tim and Kathryn. Tim owns a delicious smoothie catering business called Pulp, and Kathryn is a wonderful photographer. (High fives for dual self employment.) I think our search for a dog breed might be over after meeting their dog, Bella.

We have been researching and discussing certain breeds, including the Shiloh Shepherd, but I've sort of been holding out. The Shiloh Shepherd is a cross between a German Shepherd and a Malumute, and they are insanely smart and mega people pleasers (read: easy to train) but their crazy amounts of shedable hair freaks me out to a paralyzing degree. I am the one who does most of the vacumming and laundry, and apparently I don't do enough of it because our house is often times resembles one giant hairball. As much as I loved the idea of this perfect canine companion, I kind of can't imagine adding a shepherd to the mix. Anyway back to Bella! She is a Redbone Coonhound -- a breed that has minimal shedding, and no dander, making them as hypoallergenic as any big dog can be - PLUS, she is my ideal dog in terms of aesthetics (this isn't her but it's her type):



Long floppy ears, beautiful red coat, rather svelte. In terms of their build/lines, Redbone coonhounds somewhat resemble Weimaraners, which I love (but apparenly weimaraners can be smelly, and somewhat difficult to train). We're not in a hurry but we're super jazzed!