Inspired by the cutest Halloween graphics at Laura Likes Design! My apartment complex is having a contest: winner gets $50 off rent :)
Ingredients for a Joy-Filled Weekend
Inspired by the cutest Halloween graphics at Laura Likes Design! My apartment complex is having a contest: winner gets $50 off rent :)
Currently // October
ANTICIPATING my very first ever dress-up date. Yes, you read that correctly. I'm marrying a man who has never once put on dress pants or a tie to go out to dinner in the 4+ years we've been together. Look out, world: we're both 23 now, so we're going to do sophisticated grown-up things. Tomorrow night... it's going down. [It may be the only dress-up date I ever get, so I'll be sure to document accordingly.]
APPRECIATING the flowers that I received at work this week :) My man might not do dress-up dinners, but he's still pretty sweet. I think I'll keep him.
ATTEMPTING to design wedding invitations. LACKING inspiration for said invitations. #artiststruggles
BOOKING the honeymoon, boo-yah. Night one is SET. As for what comes next, I'm open to suggestions... that don't involve spending half a day in airports / on planes.
CELEBRATING my birthday week, of course! My favorite twins ensured that the day itself was fabulous, sandwiched between family parties last weekend and fiancé parties this weekend :)
COUNTING down the days until the Marine Corps ball! 21, in case you were curious.
DRINKING sweet tea like nobody's business. There are five empty gallon jugs ready to be taken out to the recycling bin. #notsorry
HOPING that UNC loses yet again this weekend... c'mon, Pack!
LOVING my seven different fall-scented candles. Yes, seven. I think I'm over-compensating for the fact that this is my first fall in a rather "urban" area... I have to go on extensive treasure hunts for pretty fall trees.
ORGANIZING my entire desk / bookshelves / craft space. I love a good 2AM project.
REALIZING that I could probably never have a job that required a 9AM or earlier start time.
also REALIZING that ^both points above^ are probably correlated...
ROCKING the "all of my hair in a messy bun directly on top of my head" look. Don't hate.
THINKING about how I'm probably going to burst into tears when Zach shows up a month from today and never has to go back to Camp Lejeune again. Cannot even begin to express that emotion.
WATCHING Ellen clips on YouTube. Earlier this week, she gave a job to a recent college grad while on the air. She also went off about "Bic for Her" pens in the funniest rant I've ever heard.
WISHING that I could be in a music video. Not sure why, but that has jumped to the top of the bucket list recently. I just think I'd be fabulous at something like that. Hmm...
and ENDING this post with a Friday Phone Dump :)
You can find me on Instagram at @simplybeffie
Happy weekend, all :)
Wedding Wednesday
Stopping in briefly today to show a glimpse of the wedding prep that has exploded in my living room. Consider it a wedding scavenger hunt: be on the lookout for each of the following (in a slightly more completed state) when the big day comes :)
Oh yeah, you're right... that's not DIY wedding decor. My bad ;)
We're officially less than 10 weeks away!
Considering the fact that wedding invitations go out at the "8 weeks away" point, I should probably pause the crafting madness and start designing. It's casual.
All The Incredibly Superficial Reasons
Disclaimer: I love my fiancé tremendously and am stoked to be marrying him for countless legitimate reasons. There's no need to call in the marriage counselor or anything. But dude, c'mon. I would be completely lying if I said that I wasn't thrilled about these aspects of marriage as well. I am not only gaining a husband; I am gaining the following:
Have you ever cooked a real meal (and by real, I mean Hamburger Helper, of course) for just yourself? Do you know what happens if you decide to forgo pizza rolls for just one night and actually mix ingredients together in a pan on the stove?
Let's be honest: I hardly know what that's like, because (a) I am a horrible cook, and (b) pizza rolls are the greatest food known to mankind and I have no idea why somebody wouldn't want to eat them every single night.
Nonetheless, I'll tell you what happens. You feel really accomplished after cooking your meal, as you should. You eat dinner and think, "Whoa, this is awesome. I have so many leftovers, I won't have to cook again all week!" You put all the leftovers in a multitude of Tupperware containers, and Monday's dinner becomes Tuesday's lunch... which also becomes Tuesday's dinner... which also becomes the food that you pick at for lunch on Wednesday, but don't actually eat because it's your 4th time eating the same meal in less than 48 hours. See the problem?
Solution: get married, obviously. You both get Monday dinner & Tuesday lunch, and then *poof*... the food is gone. Until then, pizza rolls it is.
While we're playing the "Have You Ever" game, let's try this one: Have you ever attempted to carry all of the grocery bags into the house in one trip? Of course you have. BUT have you ever attempted to carry all of the grocery bags across the entire parking lot because you can't get a decent space next to where you actually live... and then proceed to carry all of the grocery bags up three flights of stairs because you insisted on living on the top floor of your apartment?
Ah, additional grocery bag carriers... my mom claims it's a major perk to having children as well. I'm nowhere near that phase of life, though, so one additional grocery bag carrier will have to do.
Of all the incredibly shallow reasons to get married, I think this is definitely the least shallow... am I right? Trust me, I am a pro at freaking myself out at night when I'm all alone in this apartment. I'm sure all the creepy noises will stop after Zach moves in, causing him to think I was simply crazy for being convinced that someone was in the closet / shower / laundry room / etc., but we all know the noises were real.
Look out, bad guys. I'm getting married soon, and my husband can knock you out.
I worried about this constantly while I was away at college. What am I supposed to do if I break down or get a flat while my entire family is 100 miles west and Zach is 150 mile east? (My car battery did die once while I was at Duke, but fortunately, it was in the parking lot of my dorm and I handled it like a champ.) I'm so thankful I'm about to have back-up living in the same city. At this rate, it'll come in super handy when some incompetent Raleigh driver rear-ends me on the Beltline.
Folks, the battery in my smoke detector started dying last night (as I was crawling into bed, naturally). No big deal: I pull out the step-stool / ladder and proceed to unscrew the smoke detector from the ceiling... only to find that the little trap door to the battery is booby trapped. I kid you not. As soon as I read the label warning me that tampering with the battery door would cause a shock hazard (what?!), I dropped everything and sent Zach a picture of the conglomeration of red, white, and black wires hanging from the ceiling.
Help?
Fiancé called five seconds later and proceeded to walk me through "removing the A.C. quick connector and opening the access door," whatever that means. All I know is that I'm a rather intelligent individual, but there was nothing intuitive about making that obnoxious beep stop.
He figured all of that out just from looking at a cell phone pic. I'm telling you: that kid is gonna be pretty handy to have around.
No explanation necessary, really.
I've actually become the designated bug-killer at work, because they don't freak me out terribly (spending five summers sleeping in the woods will do that to a person). I don't even kill them; my nature-loving self catches them and takes them outside. But there's something totally different about a bug being in your own place. No, thank you!
While they don't freak me out terribly, they don't freak Zach out at all... and I'm more than happy to relinquish my bug-killing duties once we're married.
This one's a bit of a catch-22, because the fan wouldn't even be on if I wasn't getting married. Let's just make that abundantly clear. However, I am getting married, and Zach has informed me that he cannot sleep unless the fan is on. This is a rather big adjustment for me, but I decided to try sleeping with the fan on to see how it goes.
The result? I wake up in an icebox every morning thinking, "It is way too cold to get out of bed. I can't WAIT until I'm married so Zach can get up first and turn the fan off before I get up." It makes sense, right? If he turns it on, then he gets to brave the arctic blast in the morning to turn it off.
Nose Goes... you know, the game where the last person to touch their nose has to do whatever task everyone is clearly hoping to avoid. The problem with playing "Nose Goes" by yourself is that even if you win, you still have to do the dishes. Or you can refuse to do the dishes, reveling in the fact that you won "Nose Goes," but the dishes will still be there in the morning.
Practice up, Zach Jones. My finger reflexes & I are getting awfully good.
• • • • •
Semi-unrelated:
While working on this post, Zach asked me what I was doing. When I told him that I was working in Illustrator, he asked if Illustrator was "like Paint on steroids." I don't think I've ever loved him more than I did in that moment.
I Promise...
Switching things up a bit today with a slight variation on a Wedding Wednesday post.
• • • • •
In my 22-but-soon-to-be-23 years of living, I have created a list of phrases that I will never say. The list is rather short, and I genuinely believe that all of mankind should adopt it as the "Official List of Banned Phrases," but that's just my humble opinion. I created the list because the majority of mankind does not subscribe to such a philosophy, and I have been the target of said phrases more times than I could possibly count.
The list started off with a single phrase when I was sixteen years old:
No. Just, no. We can discuss this later if you find this to be original or clever or totally not-obnoxious in the slightest...
or if you think that raining on a 16-year-old's parade is funny.
The list progressed to a few phrases over time:
I thought the list was rather complete. Short & simple -- clearly a result of forgetting what it feels like to be an ecstatic 16-year-old or an uncertain 21-year-old (or 22, or 23, or 24, for that matter). People really do mean well -- it just happens.
But then... I got engaged. Needless to say, the list has grown exponentially.
To all the engaged women of the world, present and future, I hereby promise to never say the following to you:
*denotes a legitimate, verbatim quote. Word-for-word, people.
*denotes a legitimate, verbatim quote. Word-for-word, people.
Who possibly has the time to be a crazy bride when there are so many crazy not-brides in the world?
Loving and Not-So-Loving
1. Driving 286 miles round trip to sit outdoors in the Virginia mountains singing Kum Ba Yah with camp friends and Mutual Kumquat. I realize that sentence reveals just how much of a Brethren hippie I am, but we're gonna go with it.
Bottom two images taken by Hannah Guisewite, since I naturally didn't pull out my camera until the final song...
2. Mulled cider candles. So nom. So nom, in fact, that I had to go out and purchase apple cider to prevent myself from attempting to drink candle wax.
3. A community that comes out in record-breaking numbers to embrace differences, promote acceptance, and provide hope for a better tomorrow.
via
4. Football, friends, and fiancés... particularly all combined. Particularly when the football game ends with a win and puts your team just one more win away from bowl eligibility for the first time since you were five years old. Crazy.
5. The fact that it's my birthday week...which means this weekend is birthday weekend! So stoked :)
6. This quote:
7. The fact that Zach Jones has officially applied to college! We're still waiting on high school transcripts and a placement test, and BOOM. He gets to sign up for classes next month. This is such a big step & I'm SO proud of him!
8. This sweatshirt, period.
via
1. The stack of Kleenexes that is rapidly accumulating on my nightstand. Yep, sister here is sick. However, I think I've successfully made it through the "I feel like I'm going to die" phase and have settled into the "I want to sleep for the next 100 years" phase. Progress.
2. Goodbyes... although the number of long-distance related ones is getting super close to the single digits! Eek!
• • • • •
Tell me, friend: what are you currently loving and not-so-loving?
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