Catching Up

Hi, Everyone! Just wanted to drop some quick lines so we can all catch up since life has been so busy! 

The Housewife has been super MIA. I am sure you noticed. But, she does have a valid excuse.  She is mid-rennovation this week and has been staying with her wonderful In-Laws while all the dust settles on those gorgeous hardwoods.  They ended up starting two days later than planned when The Housewife noticed that the brought in the wrong size planks for her floors.  It's always something!

We are still in full-on Bridesmaid mode this week! Today we leave for a girls trip to Folly Beach/Charleston, South Carolina for Little A's Bachelorette Weekend.  This vacation couldn't come soon enough for me for a few reasons.  First, I have decided to take another job.  I had some interviews over the last few weeks and found a more stable company that is also closer to home.  It's been a rough week because it's hard to put in your notice at a place you loved and leave your work family.  I have so many co-workers there that I value and some incredibly close friends there as well.  More on this later! Secondly, I have had to cut some vacation time I already had planned out since I have to start my new job where I need to accrue my PTO {lame}.  So I am going to enjoy every second of my time off until I go back to work on Tuesday. 

In other random news, I was jokingly texting Little A about TDH and then I sent a second blip about wanting to beg him to be my wedding date in June. Except I sent that text to TDH. Yes -- you read that last sentence correctly.  It didn't really mention him by name, but I was mortified.  Actually, I am still mortified.  I said "beg" for goodness sake! Beg!  I was dying {why does this not look like a real word????}.  Seriously.  I am a moron. 

Thank God he is nice and understanding and wrote me back immediately that it was "no big deal".  It doesn't appear that I have sent him running back into New Jersey to disappear forever {not yet anyway}. 

Also, I hate my iPhone right now.  You know, since it's my phone's fault, not mine...

The Housewife and I wish you an early "Happy Weekend" since we are hitting the road this morning! 

Love you. Mean it. 

~the single gal~

The Bridal Shower Crisis

Last week The Housewife and I had to get into serious TCB {Taking Care of Business} mode to get everything together for the bridal shower we were putting together for Little A.  I know y'all are really wondering about my vague mention of what will forever be known as "The Bridal Shower Crisis".  And most people looked at me like I was totally cray when I told them I was having this crisis.  Except when I told them what happened, they were all like "Seriouslythat'snotgoodatall!!!". 

The Housewife, myself, and our friend Mackie thought we were total badasses and reserved Mittie's Tea Room in cute little Old Town Roswell for the shower weeks ago.  This place has been there forever.  Then we had our perfect invites printed and mailed with all the deets.  Soooo perfect.  The Housewife sends off our $125 deposit to secure our date.  

Fast forward to last Saturday when I am harassing The Housewife to send the owner of Mittie's our final number.   She hadn't asked, but we are super anal planners so we are on top of that for her.  Except we never hear from her. We call Mittie's probably a million times. Except the phone line is disconnected.  At this point we are starting to wonder a bit and on Monday night I tell The Housewife to straight up send her a nasty gram to write us back.  Nothing.  The Housewife went so far as to drive out the to speak to someone in person...except no one was there. And no cars were in the parking lot.  

This is where we start to hyperventilate; a) because she already cashed our damn check and b) because we are scared we will show up with a total of 14 people and the doors will be locked and we won't have anything to eat or anywhere to have this shower.  The Housewife and I are straight freaking out.  So much so that we haven't even told Mackie anything about the situation (she lives in NYC so there wasn't much she could do at the time anyway). 

We basically had to make the decision to try to find another place to have this shower at the last minute.  The Housewife and I were in full agreement that the shame of having to call everyone and change the location was not as bad as the shame of showing up to some place that seemed closed for business.  In our frantic attempts to call the owner of Mittie's in Roswell we called the one in Alpharetta. They are the same except they are not affiliated with each other at all.  BUT...Cindy had one of her private rooms free.  She let us reserve this with no deposit and even gave The Housewife some food samples as if we were a hard sell. 

I did have to call my dear friend and tell her of the debacle for her shower and change the location, however; but everyone made it to the place and the actual shower went really well! We are currently working to get our deposit back from the crazy lady at the other tea room. 

Here are some of the pics!

The Housewife and Mackie are super crafty.  They made a towel cake and some really lovely tissue paper flowers.  My amazing supervisor at work baked our beautiful (and seriously delicious) lemon and vanilla cupcakes.

In the name of Pinterest I slit a wine cork and stuffed our invite in there to display it.  Yeah, the one with the wrong address for our shower.

Big thanks to sweet Carlonia for our cupcake tower!

Yarn wreath!

For party favors we sent the guests away with cookies! We used this amazing Etsy shop and got umbrellas and monogramed cookies in Little A's coral wedding color.  Not only were the cookies beautiful, but they were also delicious!


And now that we have braved the bridal shower we are moving on to the Bachelorette Party! Off to Charleston in less than two weeks!!!!!

Love you. Mean it.
~the single gal~

Monday Obsessions: Better Late than Never Edition

Apologies for the late post today! The Housewife and I were basically in a whirlwind bridal shower crisis last week (more on this later) and had our best girls in town all weekend so we have been missing in action lately.  Luckily, The Housewife is a super cool customer under pressure and thanks to us being really anal planners everything all worked out.  I only almost hyperventilated once last Wednesday.  And we thought about crying, but we didn't.  

Today I am super obsessed with locating this powder/mineral foundation (whatever you want to call it) in medium beige from {philosophy}.   

The actual philosophy website is out of stock but I did find this awesome website with a 20% off sale through tonight and free shipping (You. Are. Welcome.).  I have tried what seems like 3000 powders that seem similar to this or try to make do with grocery store stuff but I haven't found anything that competes with  this one.  Seriously -- I returned some Lancome powder.  Who does that? Oh wait, I do.  

I like full coverage foundation so I will warn you that if you don't, then you probably won't like this particular foundation.  But for those of us with uneven skin tone, it really does have an airbrushed quality, is super fine, and a bit luminous.  You also get all this for the fun price of $35.  Totally, totally worth it!! 

Other stuff from {philosophy} that we live and die by: 

amazing grace shampoo, bubble bath & body wash {all-in-one}

The Housewife also loves the perfume! 

If you are super green I think they use fancy natural stuff, too.  As always, no one pays us to promote their stuff.  This is just stuff we love.  Even so, go out and get philosophical! 

Love you. Mean it. 

~the single gal~

Monday Obsession: Bethenny Ever After

As someone who has not been able to stomach any of the Housewives episodes in the past few years one thing I am obsessed with is Bethenny, one of the original NY Housewives. I adored her in Bethenny Getting Married and love her as well in Bethenny Ever After.  I usually DVR my Bethenny episodes and wake up early to have my coffee while watching them before #1 wakes up. She seems like such a hard worker and very real on TV. I mean, who lets cameras into their therapy sessions? Not too many people who are having their lives broadcasted on television.

I really haven't been watching much television at all lately. I've been reading or on my iPad. (Not that I've even bought March's PG Book Club pick The Paris Wife.) I have flipped on some of the college basketball games for background noise but otherwise not keeping up with any other shows. The Single Gal is interested in the GCB and plans to DVR that.

What are y'all watching these days? I am definitely excited about Mad Men coming back if you've never checked those out either. I love that Don Draper and Roger Sterling.

Have a happy start to the week!

The Housewife

Clutching Friday!

I have been dying for Friday to get here! I need more Fro-Yo and dinners with 3 Putt at Oak Street Cafe in my life and a little less work and nagging the GA Department of Revenue. 

Y'all I know I just got a new, super beautiful purse...but as I do more spring dating I realize that I also have some weddings and other events coming up this summer and I am needed a better purse option.  While I love {understatement of the year} my Tory Burch bag it's pretty much the size of luggage.  I really like that fact for work days and errands, but for the other stuff I am really dying for one of these fabulous envelope clutches! Finally they are making a clutch big enough for my main necessities! I might even be able to squeeze my Kindle in there {nerd alert}. 

ASOS Slot Cutch

ASOS Black Clutch

And how cute is this for the summer?

I may be grabbing this one up sooner rather than later! Looks good for festivals, baseball games, & the beach to me. 

Target Mossimo Striped Clutch

Happy Friday! Wishing you fun and lots of shopping this weekend. 

Love you. Mean it. 

~the single gal~

Remodeling Woes

Remember when I talked about my living room here? The Turtle and I tackled getting all the toys moved upstairs into out bonus room along with storage for those said toys, a TV, TV stand and a new Ektorp Sofa. I have been in heaven. #1 loves to go "upstairs" and it's working out just as I dreamed it would. Turtle had some trying trips to the IKEA store but he survived and he's a better man for it. Actually, all THREE of us managed a pleasant trip the second time and on a Saturday no less. Not super parents, more like "thankyoutheyhaveafoodcourt."

Here's where you ask, well Housewife, what is going on in your living room? Right now we are truly living a bohemian lifestyle.....it may not even qualify as bohemian at this point either. We had some decent furniture and we tried to move some of it on craigslist with no dice. Power tools and bookshelves were where it was at with selling our junk. So I called a local charity organization who took large items and they would send a truck and movers as long as everything was on the first floor. Perfect. The contact guy called me and I offered to send some pictures via email and he called a few hours later and wanted to pick everything up the next day. I even got the guys to move our heavy ass old TV into the back of my Jeep so I could drive it up to Goodwill. Just like that, there is nothing left in the living room.

We are having hardwood floors installed in about two weeks and they dropped off the wood today so it could acclimate. We've been in the Lazyboy store working with their designer for a sectional and an ottoman. I've called an electrician so I can have an outlet installed in the floor. We also have to find a place to live for the 5-6 days they are working on the floors. (Umm....hint, hint Single Gal?) We have existing hardwoods on most of the main floor except the living room and hallway to the other rooms. They will have to lace in new floors to the existing and sand and re-finish all of them.

These are not really "woes." We are savers and have had in-expensive items in the living room for a long time and we have finally decided it's time to update some things. The floors just seemed like a no-brainer since I could have most of the bottom floor empty before the new furniture arrives and the floors will add value to the house (even though that statement is a complete joke with the housing market right now but it will be worth it down the road).  I just hope we don't end up like this.....

Don't worry! I'll be posting the good, the bad and the ugly from start to finish. I even have a picture with all the kid crap in there. Just insert embarrassing and more embarrassing. 

The Housewife 

Date #2

I'd like to think you have all been on the edge of your seats dying for my date re-cap all week, but even though that's probably not the case I am going to divulge the details anyway. Well...most of the details. 

Again -- this weekend was so much fun! First -- I had the pleasure of an overnight stay at The Grand Hyatt here in Buckhead.  I never think much about our hotels here in Atlanta because I live here so I never really pay attention to one over the other.  Holy Moly! Wonderful, wonderful hotel and staff.  They even had a driver in the hotel SUV take us to dinner so we didn't spend money on cabs! Joe was our driver -- he was a darling to chat with and provided us excellent transportation. 

To say the least, I was really impressed with TDH {again}.  I was going to try to snap a picture of the beautiful view of the city from the 19th floor...but I would probably have to explain a few things...like blogging about him.  

Since I didn't have to work we went to happy hour at Dantanna's!  I don't really keep up with basketball but we had a ton of fun chatting, laughing and watching Norfolk State beat out the number two seed Missouri {this apparently screwed up a lot of brackets}.  Don't y'all love my basketball jargon? I  got carried away by how cute my koozie looked on my Coors Lights and almost had one too many beers before dinner...luckily I reeled my crazy ass back in and was able to maintain my ladylike composure {or, I really hope I did anyway}. 

I got the feeling that TDH really wanted to plan dinner so I gave a few suggestions but was really pleased to hear we had a reservation at Nava!  The Buckhead Life Restaurant Group has a ton of amazing places to choose from but with this gorgeous weather we were able to eat on their huge patio -- it was just lovely and the food was so, so, so good!  

And, no trip into the city would be complete without breakfast at The Flying Biscuit.  We grabbed spots at the counter because it was super packed.  Confession -- we got there a bit late because I dropped my contact lens on the floor of the bathroom while getting ready and ended up spending an extra 20 minutes in there crawling around on my hands and knees for what seemed like an eternity trying to find it so I could see farther than 3 feet in front of me. I think he probably thought I had died in there. For realzies.  But back to breakfast. Our server John was so kind and super funny!  Breakfast and coffee are some of my two most favorite things on the planet and honestly this was probably my favorite part of the weekend.

We also had some time to kill so we wandered down to Phipps to browse and had some St. Patty's Day beers at The Tavern.  I really can't believe he bought me those beautiful Kendra Scott earrings from my Monday post! I love them.

Clearly this Single Gal couldn't have asked for more out of a weekend at all!

Love you. Mean it.
~the single gal~