Update & Vera Bradley

This past week was an exciting one if you live anywhere near Indiana or if you are a Vera Bradley fan. Well, lucky for me I fall into both of those categories. The 2012 Vera Bradley Outlet Sale took place in Fort Wayne, IN last Wednesday though Sunday. Oh what fun! Do you remember my posts about this sale last year? (Here they are!) Well, we had a great time at the sale again this year!

Back in January, one of my best friends Brooke decided she wanted to go. After a couple conversations she found she had an entire group of people who wanted to come with her. The more the merrier, right? Well, that's exactly what I was thinking! Brooke, her mom Lisa, sister Brinley and sister-in-law Kelley arrived at our house Thursday evening after driving from Lexington, KY. I was SO excited!

We spent Thursday evening catching up with each other and watching Grey's Anatomy. Of course the anticipation for the sale was building...actually, I could barely sleep Thursday night. Don't judge!

Friday morning we woke up and were eager to get ready and hit the road. Our shopping time was at 2:30pm, but we wanted to get lunch and get in line WAY before that. Before leaving Stephen took some picture of us all in our matching shirts that Lisa made. She is so talented-don't you love the shirts?!

LOVE this girl and am so blessed and thankful that we met on a Carnival cruise many years ago!

Louie was not too happy that I was getting ready to leave...but still, how cute is he?!

And an up close view of our shirts. Glitter? Yes, Please! Thank you, Lisa!

We grabbed lunch at Chipotle...because you know how I love that place! After lunch we headed to the sale to claim our spot in the line. Luckily, we were early enough to be pretty close to the front of the line...maybe 30 or so people were in front of us. I call that success. Now came the not so fun part. The waiting in line. Ugh. We waited in line for 2 hours before our time to shop. It wasn't all that bad though, we had plenty of people to people watch and we got LOTS of comments (and looks) about our awesome shirts!

We mapped out a game plan and decided to try and stay together. Well friends, that doesn't work. There are just so many tables and people and Vera bags. Thankfully though, our bright shirts worked to our advantage in locating each other when we were separated. Perfect! 

Finally, we were in!

Here is a shot of the inside:

We shopped for almost our entire allowed time and got some great awesome deals. For example, XL Duffel for $39.99? Nice to meet you! Angle Tote for $19.99? Nice to meet you as well! :)

In the end we bought LOTS of things and ended up saving almost $1,000 total with all our purchases combined. Thanks for a great sale this year, Vera!

Oh, and we are featured on the Vera Bradley blog today. Check that out here.

After shopping we did some more shopping at Kountry Kitchen and Target. We also got some dinner in there at Cheddars, which was delicious as always. We headed back to my house and spent the night making lollipops and cupcakes and playing some fun games of Catch Phrase. It was such a fun day! 

Saturday morning we woke up and decorated cupcakes...and then ate them for breakfast! Soon afterwards the gang was back on the road and headed home.

After they left, our day consisted of making laundry detergent and doing a lot of laundry in between taking naps. On Sunday we taught Sunday School, went to church and then went to see The Hunger Games. Oh my! I finished the book a week or so ago and was ready to see the movie the next day, but I had to wait for Stephen to read and finish the book too. Well, he did and we got to see the movie. Amazing. We both really enjoyed the movie, but agree that the book was better. There are just some details that can't be captured on film and your imagination views them better anyways! :)

Have you read or seen The Hunger Games? What did you think?

Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Weekend Wrap-Up & A House Update!

First and foremost...

WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!

To recap: We made an offer last Saturday, then they counter-offered on Monday. We waited until Thursday to counter offer which gave them until 6pm Saturday to accept/counter/deny. I was shocked and amazed when I got an email from our Realtor on Friday afternoon with their counter-offer...then I read the email and went from shocked and amazed to jumping up and down excited. Seriously, I jumped up and down and did a little dance. That's right; in my cubicle. Don't judge me.

I assume you can gather from my happy dance that we accepted their counter-offer. If not, we did!

Our plans were to get out of town asap and head to Lexington, Kentucky but that changed once we found out that we needed to meet the Realtor and sign the purchase agreement. Not that we minded altering our plans at all, I mean we got the house after all!

After signing on a couple dotted lines we were on the road for Kentucky and so excited. I think we talked about the house for the first 2 hours at least. The details that we love, the improvements we hope to make, the meetings this week to secure financing, the flowers I want to plant, the garden Stephen wants to plant, paint colors...you get the idea, we talked about it a lot!

The drive to Lexington was farther than I thought but before hitting our hotel at 11pm we made a stop at Orange Leaf for some heaven in a cup frozen yogurt. It was delicious!

Saturday morning we were up fairly early for the rest of our trek to Eastern Kentucky for Brooke and Preston's wedding. It was so great to be able to see Brooke and her family.

 Our friendship has grown so much since our meeting on a cruise years ago. Brooke is such a sweetheart and was a beautiful bride in every way. Here are some pictures of her big day:

Aside from seeing Brooke and he family, the highlight for me was the candy bar. A-M-A-ZING! Umm hello Sweet Tart jelly beans, nice to meet you! The chocolate fountain was delicious also, though I admit I was terrified of spilling melted chocolate all over my dress!

The newlywed couple is on their honeymoon cruise now and Stephen and I pray they have a great time and just enjoy relax in paradise! I know what a relief it was for me when the wedding and all the planning was over! Oh and Brooke, you better email or call me when you get back :)

After the wedding we hit the road back to Indiana. We had intentions on making it to church Sunday morning but I honestly never even heard the alarm go off. I think Stephen work up and decided trying to wake me was not worth the effort so he shut it off and went back to bed. We ended up sleeping in until 11 and it was wonderful!  Aside from missing church, our Sunday routine was pretty normal. We started laundry and then got some lunch before driving around our soon to be town, North Manchester. It had rained a lot on Saturday and there were some minor floods everywhere. We drove through water over the road coming home Saturday night several times. I was able to snap a few pictures on Sunday during our drive:

Just to give you an idea, the top two pictures of of a field. That's right, it is a place where normally there is no water. Strange how it looks like a pond or lake! The third picture is just of a ditch full of water. I was amazed at how fast the water was moving, though you can't see that too well in the photo. I was trying to be positive about the floods and pointed out that some people instantly have water front property, so in my mind that greatly increased their property value with one big rain storm!

That was our weekend :) Hope you had a great one too!

And the award goes to...

Some of you may know about blog awards. They can be fun. They can be cute. They can also be cheesy. No matter what though, it is always fun to get an award; and I feel so blessed to know that people read my blog AND enjoy it! Thanks so much to Joy at Our Lives for God's Glory  for giving me this award! *If you don't already read and follow her blog; you should because she loves the Lord and has the most adorable little baby girl!

Okay, so here is how this award works:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award other bloggers.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

1. I have recently contracted "puppy fever" and can't do anything about it. The apartment we live in allows pets, but there is an additional security deposit required that is not returned at the end of your lease AND your rent goes up. They may allow pets, but it seems to me like they discourage it at the same time!

2. I have not seen my family in Florida since Christmas and that is just too long for me. Growing up close to everyone-I am pretty sure we never went more than a week without seeing each other. Also on this note, flights are ridiculously expensive so it does not look like a trip to Florida is in our too near future. :(

3. I LOVE scrapbooking and cannot wait to finish our wedding scrapbook. I have several pages done and a vision of what the final product will look like, but you just can't be sure until it is done and you can see it all put together!

4. Friends is my favorite television show ever. I also like Gray's, but Friends tops it 100 times!

5. After a rough start at my job in September/October; now I love it! I feel so blessed to enjoy coming to work everyday for such a great company!

6. I am just like my mother in lots of ways, one being my obsessive need to clean. Luckily our apartment is small and when The Mr. helps we can get it done really quickly. I love that he will follow me around and vacuum as I dust. We make a great team!

7. A co-worker of mine is pregnant and I have been keeping the secret for weeks and it is killing me. Seriously, it might just jump out of my mouth accidentally at any time! I can't wait for her to tell the rest of our department and our bosses so we can stop whispering about it!

I am giving this blog to:

Brooke at Brooke's Happenings

Ria at Life as a Wife!

Ashley at Life After the Isle

Cherish at Southern Soulmates

Jamie at This Kind of Love

Maybe tomorrow will be the day I finally post about our weekend and Valentine's Day. I think you will have to wait and see! Thanks again for the blog award Joy!

...a little bit of everything!

This is another one of my very random posts that will cover topics across the board; from a celebrity being in my hometown to WW week one recap! Hope you all enjoy the update and my random musings!

First off let me tell you about some exciting news I got on Wednesday. I knew that Extreme Makeover was planning to be in North Florida, but the family who would be blessed by their presence had not been announced. Well, Wednesday morning they announced who the family was and it is someone I know-from a distance. Coach Pewitt was and has been the coach at the high school I graduated from for years. She also organized and directs a volleyball league in the area and several summer volleyball camps, which I can say I attended back in the day. On top of this exciting announcement for people in the area, the filming crew and stars were at the high school yesterday where they "surprised" coach with the news. This is what I was excited about. I would have been SO excited to be a student in a small high school and be surprised by seeing Ty Pennington walking in the halls...man oh man.

Since my little brother is a Sophomore at that school I figured I could live vicariously through him, yes? Well, no. He was not at all excited about the filming or the stars. He actually seemed disgusted about the hussle and bussel that was happening all around him. I can only imagine that girls want to hug/take picture with/get autographs from Ty...boys, not so much. I guess that is understandable...

I know people are already worried about what will happen after the house is built and life returns back to normal for this family and the surrounding area. Hopefully the family is able to afford the larger electricity bill that a much bigger house and new appliances will bring, along with the increase in property taxes. Regardless, this is such a huge blessing and will definitely change their lives!

Second, lets talk about WW. If you recall I started the online WW program last week officially on Thursday, so today was weigh in day! I realize that maybe I was too excited about getting on a scale today, but I just knew I was going to see results AND I did! I am down 2.8lbs since last Thursday morning. I'll take that...week after week, yes please! Can you picture me doing a happy dance in my Old Navy jingle jammies in my bathroom this morning? don't judge...it happened! {insert enthusiastic high five here} Here is to a successful second week and healthy lifestyle changes!

Last but not least, we are having company over for dinner and games tonight. I am really excited to see Tina and her new husband Kyle. I am sure there will be lots of talking about the details of their wedding and honeymoon adventures. It is such a blessing to have other newlywed friends close by!

Tina, me and MOH Keri at my Indiana Bridal Shower :)

We have so fun plans this weekend that we are looking forward to also. On Saturday we are watching our younger nieces so my SIL can take Emma to her gymnastics meet. I love these girls, and am really looking forward to spending time with them. If there is snow on the ground; which there should be, we are going to a sledding party Saturday afternoon too. It should be loads of fun and I have a feeling we will have a fun update with pictures on Monday!

New Blog!

 Not a new blog for me, but a new blog for my friend Brooke. Brooke is a really good friend of mine who lives in Kentucky and is currently planning her wedding! She has been reading my blog regularly and we have been talking a lot about blogging and she decided to start one of her own! I think it is a great way for her to document the planning process and the beginning of newlywed life! Welcome to the blogging world Brooke, we are glad you are here!

A little fun fact about me and Brooke, we actually met years ago on a cruise to Jamaica. She was with her Mom and Aunt celebrating graduating from high school and moving onto college and I was with my Mom and Grandma just having a fun trip in the Caribbean. We ended up sitting at the same dinner table and clicked right away! A friendship developed on that trip and has grown ever since. I am so excited for Brooke and her fiance Preston as they finish up the planning process for their May wedding and start their lives together!

Oh, and I totally think you should read her blog!

The End!