Annual Beach Bunko: St. George Island, FL

Year after year in October our Bunko group heads to St. George Island for a weekend of eating, sunning, boozing and gambling. Sounds like a fab time right?! It is!

We rent the same house every year, the Pelican’s Roost. It’s equipped with 8 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and 2 kitchens. I think I’ve relayed this before but this is the same house that I grew up going to for family reunions. I remember playing ping pong in the downstairs living area with my brother and cousins when there was only one digit in our age. Lots of fun memories in that house!

Needless to say it’s a weekend we all look forward to every year. I'll let the pictures do the talking. After all what happens at Beach Bunko, stays at Beach Bunko...

There are bound to be pranks.
(Poor fishy was found dead on the beach...)

Wild women playing LCR!

My Aunt Donna. Oh, Donna...

We had an afternoon of storms the first day we were there. We took the opportunity to eat, sit on the porch and play Cards Against Humanity! A stormy day at the beach is still better than any day at work!

Hey ladies!

Momma and I.
I had the traveling bunko necklace at the time.

In her happy place!

Our bedroom view never gets old. 

Those are some nice dice you have Kellie!

The sun came out for us. What a glorious day!

David sent me this picture from back home. Remi got to enjoy Tallahassee's annual Puppies in the Pool Event! I'd say he had fun and I was sorry to miss it! Moose does not care for swimming one bit so she stayed home.

Repping our Seminoles at the beach!

Hers so pretty. Heading to Harry A's for happy hour :)

There's a whole lotta crazy in that trunk. Ha!

Love my Aunt Sandra too!

Oh dear.

Love this group!!

Eddy Teach's Raw Bar

Mimosas at the beach. Because why not?

If those walls could talk...

Another wonderful year in the books. Until next year St. George Island!

Beach Bunko 2013

Beach Bunko 2012

2011 wasn’t blogged (lame sauce I know)

Beach Bunko 2010.

A Fashion Post

I’m not one to spend a lot of money on clothes. They’re honestly just way too expensive. More than $15 on a shirt or $28 on jeans is just not my forte. Therefore I’m forced to be creative with my (sometimes really old) wardrobe.

Yesterday I happened to put together an outfit I really liked. In fact after I was dressed I kind of wanted to take it off and save it for our Christmas pictures this weekend. I hate when that happens. Don’t be surprised if something similar shows up on our Christmas cards...any who, one thing that’s saving me right now is tights during the winter which just make everything better. Hello dresses that I normally feel too hooch wearing in the Summer months! 

I call this look, State Worker Holiday Luncheon. I tried cinching the waist with a belt but there was too much material and it was bunching. Not cute. I hadn’t worn this dress since I’d lost weight so it’s a little on the bigger side now. That’s okay though, more room to hide all the food I ate. I got so many compliments on my boots. It’s not every day that you see cowboy boots in an office (thanks Momma & Daddy!). We’ve got a really casual dress code though so it’s all good. I’m one of the supervisors who doesn’t actually wear jeans (except Fridays, duh) so I feel like I’m winning as long as I’m not doing that.

It got me thinking, since I’ve been a blog slacker lately I haven’t shared some fun outfits I’ve put together. Most I have shared on social media (sorry for the repeats) but I think it’d be fun to put them in one place.

I recently bought a black and white polka dot dress from H&M when Kim and I went shopping on her last visit. It was $25. That’s reasonable in my opinion and can be a lasting piece year after year. It’s going to be a really versatile dress…I can feel it. Paired with a brown jacket and well loved boots, perfectly simple!

Another go-to this season has been plain dresses with colored tights! Never gets old. Cole (my brother) said it looks like I just have yellow legs. Thanks. Just what I was going for. Chicken leg colored stems.  

This one was a winner that I recently posted. Old sweater, old tank top, old shoes, $12 Old Navy skirt and a leopard belt for the win. Cheap, easy, mixing old and new for a fun look!

Up next is this coral number with the leopard belt. Perfect way to carry over your Summer colors into the Fall season.

Lastly is this roaring combination (see what I did there?) of a leopard pencil skirt and black blouse. Topped with a big pearly bubble necklace. Loved this one.

It’s also my favorite time of year for another very important reason. Can you guess? It’s SCARF SEASON people! Granted I tend to wear scarves here and there throughout the year but let’s face it. I live in Florida and it’s 100 degrees plus in the Summer so may they be cute, practical they’re not. But Winter, oh Winter, you better believe my scarves have been in heavy rotation!

And vests. VESTS FOR THE WIN. 

Housing Situation Update

You know when you’re at a restaurant and you’ve been waiting forever for your food but you really have to pee? You finally get up to pee and sure enough your food is there when you come back. I always think to myself, darn I should have gone to the bathroom 20 minutes ago and maybe my food would have arrived then!

Well that’s what I’m hoping this blog post serves as, my bathroom break.

I’m getting so antsy to talk about our house plans but there’s nothing set in stone yet. We should be hearing news this week or next (fingers crossed) if our intent to build again will be going through. Yep, we’re hoping to go that route again! Much smaller this time and WE CAN’T WAIT. We’re just waiting on our builder (same as last time) to tell us he can build us the house we want at the price point we need. We met with him a few weeks ago and already have our plans ready to go (which he drew for us) but we don’t have a signed contract yet. The lot we picked out has even been surveyed already. It’s all on the cusp of being official, yet it’s so far away. However we have been living/breathing/thinking about when we’re officially official so I figured why not blog about it…then maybe all of a sudden tomorrow we’ll get the news we want to hear! You know, like when the food is finally delivered.

Something I am extremely terrible at is keeping my hopes down. Every ounce of me just wants to give in and get excited but I’m trying to not accept the fact yet that we’ll get the chance to build again. Which is why I’ve been so hush hush on the blog about our plans. I could come back tomorrow with a post saying NEVERMIND! I hate having to do that but at this point I just felt like giving an update. From the outside it seems like we’ve just been living in an apartment with no intent of ever leaving. Totally not the case! We’ve been working for months on making this happen and we’re in the final stages of hearing a yes or no. Either to move forward and build or explore another option!

If/when we are under contract I can’t wait to share a lot of the ideas that have been sloshing around in my brain! My secret Pinterest board is itching to go public.

I just really dislike being that person that says “We’re doing XYZ! “and then the next day saying, “oh yeah, ixnay on that…”. But that is real life and this isn’t an announcement that we are in fact building, but just that we hope we get to! If things fall through and that door closes, we’ll know that’s our sign from the Big Man that it’s not meant to be and we’ll switch courses and by a pre-loved home! Which we already explored and just couldn’t find what we wanted in the months that we spent looking. At least not for the price tags on them!

Here’s to hopefully receiving good news very soon!

In honor of #TBT (Dad, that means hashtag "Throwback Thursday") a photo from the last time we got started on this crazy fun journey – the day the lot clearing began! Oh I hope we get to do it again!!

Hot (Couch) Potato

What better way to end a blogging hiatus than with a random couch post?

We tend to get new couches a lot. Not sure why, it just happens I guess! According to David I’m temporarily pleased. Psh, what does he know! Okay maybe I am…but let’s not pretend for one second he isn’t either…I digress! Thus begins the story of the James Family couches…

Once upon a time a newlywed couple lived in a tiny little quadruplex. They sat their rears and raised their puppy on some hand-me-down cream colored couches from the wife’s parents. They look extremely filthy in this picture, must be the lighting because although they were well loved they weren't that gross.

The couches served them well but when they bought their first house the husband let the wife blow a nice chunk of his savings on new furniture. Yes, I said his savings. The husband did all the hard work preparing and planning for their new future together while the wife focused on graduating from college not saving any money, shopping and planning their wedding. Any who, the wife had a lot of fun pointing and picking in the store and ended up with a lovely chocolate sofa and loveseat amongst many other items. The husband almost fainted in the store but that’s neither here nor there. Makes a great story! 

Those couches did their thing but when they sold that house they sold the couches to a friend. Then the next couch to join the family was a large sectional that the wife bought from some other friends who were looking to change their furniture.

That couch spent the most time with us (a few years) but then the wife started having dreams of leather nailhead trim couches and talked the husband into letting her sell the sectional. She’d seen too many designer living rooms and thought she needed one too. The nice people who purchased the husband and wife’s house wanted to buy the sectional so the deal was sealed.

The husband and the wife picked out a beautiful leather couch just like the wife wanted. It had nail head trim and all. It was a very pretty couch but they quickly realized it wasn’t the couch for them. The husband was a patient man and asked the wife if she wanted to get another couch. One that fit them and their two fur children better. The wife agreed that’d be the best bet and so one Craigslist sale later, they were couch less and on the hunt for a new one…

Then could it be…just that easy? The husband and wife fell in love with a sectional in less than 30 minutes of store hopping and couch shopping. Although the cream color suited her fancy, they went the sensible route and ordered it in charcoal. The bad news is the couch is on back order and could potentially not be here until January. The good news is the husband and wife have some sweet FSU fold up chairs to sit in and whine about not having a couch for the time being.

That brings us to the end of the story. Where they lived happily ever after. Sitting in fold up chairs. In their apartment. Where they live with their two dogs and are waiting patiently on the arrival of their new couch!