sunny sundays

today was the first day since nashville that austin and i have had off together. so we had big plans: laundry. all day. like 5 loads. thankfully, those plans were postponed (for a couple of hours) so that we could stop by an estate sale. i mostly like estate sales because i think i'm kind of a creep?, but also because they're awesome places to shop a little for the store/my life. i ended up with a lot of adorable vintage kids' clothes, a handbag, some pretty books, a pink/white striped crocheted blanket, and an embroidered wall hanging. austin was the clear winner today, because he found a working/perfect record player for $8.

i use days off to dress up a little bit more than i can do for work, too, so i thought today would be a good day to start outfit pictures!! austin took these, and i think it's really obvious how new we both are to the concept of outfit pictures. ;) here's to hoping we get better as time goes on!

throughout the day, i was told what a good "church-going" outfit this was, as well as that i was reminiscent of "1970s dolly parton." neither of those compliments(?) wholly resonate to me (in regards to this outfit..), but i'll take em both.

sunglasses: uo
necklace: CM via local honey
top: target
cardigan: american eagle
belt: american eagle (similar)
skirt: thrifted
shoes: crochet toms


tonight, i'm planning on going to visit my grandma while austin has band practice. then i'm hoping we'll meet back up here for a little ice cream date before bed. :)

hope you had a good weekend. <3

the button factory's first etsy update

this morning, my dear friend and business partner, bekuh, and i opened our online boutique, the button factory. within 30 minutes, we had sold two dresses, and so far, we've had 5 sales. i'm overwhelmed, to say the least. this dream has in the past kinda sorta almost seemed like a pipe dream to me, and no matter how much planning and work we put into both the online launch and our (hopeful) brick and mortar store, we could not have known how much interest there really would be.

this day has just strengthened my passion and my drive.

as bekuh said in her blog entry, the story behind the button factory, all of the sales made through our etsy store are going towards making the button factory bigger, both in it's online presence, but more importantly, towards a store to sell our goods here in our beloved roanoke valley. this picture is becoming more and more clear to me, as our (fairly secretive) hard work pays off today.

<3

the prettiest baby i know

now that you've been caught up on the first parties to celebrate little avery's life, i thought i would post a little bit about the sweetest girl and prettiest baby that i know.

born on may 12, 2011, avie is almost a year old! we can't wait to celebrate her first birthday (spoiler alert: i got her some tiny toms.. and her mom some gift cards for diapers and snacks) in a couple of weeks.

she has five teeth now, and it really seems like she likes showing them off.
one of my favorite things that she does is point and whisper (almost all of the actual words that she says are said in whispers) "what's that?" for literally no reason. she'll point at nothing, or at everything. we think it's because when she stays with our grandma once a week, grandma will point at things and tell her what they are. including telling her every person in every picture on her fridge. i love that.
her giggle is hysterical. it's really deep and throaty.

 

she's tiny!! she's almost a year old, but she's wearing 9 month clothes, and still can't fit into her size 2 shoes. which is alright, because it means she can still wear some of my favorite outfits, including:

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i never thought i'd love a baby as much as this. i bought her this book from the 70s at a library sale called "my aunt and i: the best of friends," and i gotta say, i hope it comes true for us. <3

kendall's baby shower(s)

in 2010, my little sister called me out of blue and told me that she was pregnant. then, a couple of weeks later, she found out that she was having a little girl. i was stoked. like seriously so. excited. we started shopping for and obsessing over everything baby right away. i decided that my number one priority as sister (til i became a real aunt!!!) was to throw her the cutest, most low-key baby showers ever (two for luck, obviously. ...just kidding. two because i'm apparently insane). i used the same invitations, decorations, and theme for both.. they just happened at different locations with different guests, food, and outfits for the guest of honor and i. ;)

since i'm probably not going to make a habit of party-throwing, i thought i'd memorialize my career here with a few pictures from the parties. they were held about a year ago.

 me and my sister/ my sister and my mom

the first shower was at my mama's house. :) at this shower, we had a sweet little cake made, based on the invitations.

the second shower was a little bit bigger. we had it at my grandma's house, and invited all of kendall's friends (some of mine came to help and to love on ken, too!) as well as even MORE family than the shower before.

me, kendall, and dad

for this shower, i did more desserts than finger foods, mostly because there were so many people, but also because we held it at a somewhat strange time of day. the cupcake/donut table was my definite favorite..

i also did a teensy tiny more decorating (i'm using that word VERY loosely) for this one.

 

i think i made like 150+ feet of those paper chains. we gave them to my dad's girlfriend to give her daughter afterwards; i always forget to ask, but i hope she got some use out of them! i know austin was beyond over seeing those scraps all over our apartment by the end of all of this.

 

the front table had the favors (candles that i made little cardstock labels for.. most of them matched the invitations [little birdies], but some of them were just doodles), envelopes for everyone to write their names on (for the thank you cards), and a little notebook that i passed around for everyone to write advice to a first time mom in :) kendall uses it now to keep track of things for avery. i love it <3

and, just because i love this picture:

the exact same laugh :)

<3

i'm obsessed with these

source: huffington post

so, i bought the 'limited edition' happy 100th birthday to oreo birthday cake oreos. i usually stick pretty seriously to ben & jerry's strawberry cheesecake ice cream as my one-bite-for-dessert-every-night lil treat, but someone who has the same six year old tastebuds as i do highly recommended the oreos.

and can i say.
they were right.

so, if you have a mini sweet tooth, go out & buy some of these! limited edition means who knows how long they'll be available. ;)

ps, a highly credible source, the av club, agrees with me.. kind of.

i went to nashville, part 4

i'm sorry for stretching these out soooo looong, but i wanted to make sure that i posted about everything. it was mine and austin's first vacation and hopefully not our last trip to nashville.

i mentioned that we took the last bit of our trip to make mini stops in other big cities in tennessee.. namely, knoxville and gatlinburg. in knoxville, i really wanted to stop by nostalgia.

 

this picture was taken from across the street, but i loved the turquoise accents on the front of the building (the sign, the walkway). this place was huge, and we were lucky to have gotten there fairly early in the day, so we had time to mosey around the whole store.

one of the first things that greets you is this cute cute old-tv-turned-aquarium:

 obsessed! <3

they had incredible selection.. i ended up buying a sweet little vintage top, something that is forever alluding me. :)

our reasons for stopping in gatlinburg were a little bit sillier.. i wanted austin to see the main street with all of the tourist attractions (i LOVE that road.. i bet that it's just as much fun to stare at as the attractions would be!), and i needed a new pair of jeans. i only owned one pair of jeans prior to this trip, and, with weather changing/my current job requiring dresses to be worn with tights at all times, i needed another pair or two. my one pair of jeans came from the levi's outlet in gatlinburg, so i figured it'd be a quick stop because i knew my style and i knew my size (when i bought my first pair of jeans, they were the only pair that i tried on!). unfortunately (to austin's dismay), i was wrong. THIRTEEN pairs of jeans later, i ended up spending exactly what i would have at home on a new pair. don't get me wrong, they're perfect and i really did need them, but it was a bit of a waste.. and not a fun side adventure. ;)

after those (and a couple of other) stops, we had to really head home.

i was a sad pup. <3

i went to nashville, part 3

even though third man records was the obvious outlier in terms of things we did in nashville, we did so many other awesome things!! a few were even awesome enough to mention. :)

hatch show print
this letterpress shop has been running since 1879, and the interior was incredible. we couldn't help ourselves and bought 4 posters from them! i took a few pictures, because i was in awe of the walls and also of their letterpress blocks.. there seemed to be millions!

in this one, i spotted a poster at the top for a show at the salem civic center! i got pretty geeky excited, because we lived in salem for a time (it's about twenty minutes down the road from our current home)

las paletas
i was SO. EXCITED. about these popsicles. unfortunately, i forgot to take pictures... whoops. but i got the avocado, and austin got the pineapple blueberry. thumbs up from both of us! we enjoyed them while walking through the park across the street.

rare bird antique mall
i was told beforehand that even though this was a little bit of a drive compared to everything else we visited while in town, it was worth it. that was so true!! i was OBSESSED. we actually showed up on a day that they were planning on closing early ( :( ), so we didn't even get to see half of the place. i bought a little pin, because i wanted something.. but this is one place i definitely absolutely for sure will be visiting again.

the day after all of this, we left nashville. but we took a long route home, stopping in knoxville and gatlinburg (no dolly parton sightings, unfortunately). i'll write about those detours later. <3

i went to nashville, part 2

so. i was in nashville. but why? i mean it's a pretty cool city in it's own right, but i think people were confused as to why austin would take me there rather than somewhere closer/bigger/more interesting, whatever.

anyone who knows me, probably knows that i idolize jack white. in a pretty serious way. i have these strange tiers in my head of my favorite music/bands, and his bands are generally at the top of each tier. especially the white stripes. so, when i read years ago that his record store in nashville, third man records, was like a teeny tiny sorta white stripes museum, i dreamt & dreamt of the day i'd be able to see it.

well. saturday, april 14th was that day!! unfortunately, i'm real awkward and i was SO nervous (SOOOO nervous) to even be in the place, so this was the only picture that i took. however. i can highly recommend the store to any vinyl, white stripes, third man, or jack white fan. :) i think i got most excited seeing the 'fell in love with a girl' lego pieces ;)

luckily, this trip DID coincide with my birthday, so i had some extra birthday money to spend.. not nearly enough, seeing as i wanted e v e r y t h i n g (honestly. everything.), including a lil white stripes onesie with the pope and the devil shaking hands for my niece (i passed on that, though).

here's a really blurry cell phone picture of my third man swag that i took on the hotel room bed when we did a drop off because i was scared of my records warping in my hot car (i know, i know)!
(clockwise l-r: 3 free prints, the white stripes' 'under great white northern lights,' the white stripes' 'white blood cells,' first aid kit's 'universal soldier' 7 inch [which i didn't know existed! and freaked out about! did you know that jack is doing his european tour with them?! what a dream.], jack white's 'sixteen saltines' and 'love interruption' 7 inches, a cute little third man records tshirt, and the teeniest white stripes peppermint swirl button. <3 austin had to drag me away from the mini record player (it came with 6 wrapped 1-inch records.. what in the world so cute).

even though this was the most important and most exciting part of our little road trip, we still did so many cool things! but i'll save those for later. <3

i went to nashville, part 1

back in january sometime, austin told me that i needed to take the second weekend of april off of work. he didn't exactly tell me why until last thursday.

he was taking me to nashville!!

we left around 5pm friday night (i attended a funeral in the morning while austin was at work), but not until after we stopped for huge mcdonald's iced coffees.

my ollllddddd gps (circa uh, 2005?) only steered us wrong once (unfortunately it was right at the street of our hotel.. but we figured things out). austin drove the first couple of hours, and then i powered through the rest.

i'll post the rest of our trip throughout the week <3

first post!

hi everyone! my name is katie, and this is my first post in my new blog. i'm really, really excited (and really, really nervous) about doing this. i blogged from middle school until halfway through college on livejournal, and wish that i had never stopped. i have a TON of exciting and big, scary things happening in my life right now that i want to keep track of, and i'm hoping that blogging will be the perfect outlet.

i'm a twenty-something living in a small city in southern virginia with my sweet boyfriend, austin. i am a part-owner of the button factory, a soon-to-open (april 26th!!!) online vintage clothing boutique, with my friend, bekuh. i hope to use this space to share our dreams and to be able to look back on them (hopefully!) coming true. :)

i'm keeping my fingers crossed that i can start learning blogging html, miraculously start taking more than one picture every time i go out of town, and learn how to write again (it's been a long time since college)! i want this to be something big for me. <3

ps. my 'i' key is broken so excuse any lack of i's ;)