happy halloween!

trick r treat

halloween is my favorite holiday. it's austin's, too! unfortunately this year, celebrations were just not in order. i closed at work saturday night and i close again tonight, so i'm probably just going to end up wearing a little hat with ears and calling it a day. for today, i thought i'd share my faaaavorite halloween that austin and i have spent together, ever.

first of all, my costume requires very little explaining, but austin's requires a lot. so, i was the morton salt girl:

i literally owned every item for this costume, except for the umbrella that i borrowed from a friend, and the salt canister which i bought, emptied, and used as a purse for the night. this picture was taken when we were meeting up with austin at his work, a local coffee shop, to see his costume and do some homework (which is why i had the bag).

now, my best friend at the time (who i miss soooooo much. so much.), jeff, is this real cool guy who dresses straight out of the 1940s. it's perfect and awesome and i love it. so for halloween, we all thought it would be so cute if jeff and austin dressed up as each other.

that's jeff on the left dressed as austin and austin on the right dressed as jeff. oh man. it was a confusing night for me, to be honest.

jeff served me some coffee.

austin didn't look like himself.

is it weird to say that they smelled like each other? i mean obviously they did, but i also think it's weird to say that. i don't know. either way, it was a confusing night and i didn't end up liking them dressing like each other very much beyond the initial hilariousity of the whole thing. seeing jeff in "normal" clothes was so perfect! we bet him he'd get a million numbers. ;) ;) i can't remember if he did or not, though..

and just because last year's costume was a DREAM. COME. TRUE., i'll share one of the two pictures that was taken of us ( :/ ):

i've been obsessed with wayne's world for as long as i can remember. and i've wanted to do this costume for probably just as long. i'm hoping to resurrect and upgrade it one day, because i know we can do better than this. and we already own the hat! :)

what are you dressing up as this year, so i can live vicariously through you?! <3

my days off

working in retail, my days off are random and scattered, which is kind of how i like them. usually, i have two mini work weeks, while everyone else has a long one. this is how i spent my last couple of days off:

1. i went shopping with my grandma and my aunt cindy, who was visiting from colorado. we were at the mall for about 3 hours, so i made sure to find some time to sit. down. haha. shopping trips are exhausting!!
2. i babysat my girl for a little bit. she started climbing into my laundry basket, which was adorable.. then she wouldn't stop, so i had to move it. but obviously i had to snap some pictures first.
3. austin and i celebrated halloween last night, since i have to close on actual halloween night. we carved our giant pumpkin, roasted a million pumpkin seeds, and watched trick r treat (our fave).
4. austin got this weird card with a working plastic lightbulb in it awhile ago, and avery LOVED it. she was dying over it.
5. i bought the new taylor swift cd (from target for the six extra songs!!) and read all of the lyrics. ;) she's perfect. i'm scheming a way to see her in concert now.
6. i wore a really silly outfit. i actually only wore it to the doctor's office and then changed into leggings and socks, buuuut whatever. i took a picture for becca's approval before leaving the house.

i like to think that since my days off are sort of scattered, i use them more thoughtfully than i would if i had weekends off like everyone else. <3

little spots at home that i love

since making the decision to move out of our house in the near future, i've fallen even more in love with it than i ever was. that always seems to be the way that things go, right?

to be honest, decorating this space was never important to me at all. mostly because we lived with someone else, and i wasn't interested in dealing with all of that, but also because i knew we'd be leaving after a year. but lately i've been throwing stuff up for the heck of it, and really getting excited about making it a home. even if it's just temporary.

becca always sends me these really random and gorgeous pieces of art, and whether they're postcard collages, prints of angela chase, drawings of john cusack, or a color palette from a school assignment, i try to give them the respect they deserve. this little guy is perfect on my bedside windowsill. it's usually the first thing i see in the morning. thanks, b!

amanda and i made these bat chandeliers last week and i love when i walk past our record room and it catches my eye. ;) i especially love the little ghosties that i added. i only wish it was easier to photograph!

this is another idea that i stole from heidi kinney (she's my serious blogger crush these days, if you haven't noticed yet), but i wasn't ready for the real flowers and we're pretty sure our neighbor doesn't like us decorating the porch. at the risk of sounding tacky, i kinda wanna leave these little cuties out year-round <3<3.

<3

every year since our first anniversary, we've gone to the layman family corn maze to spend a day in rows of corn and grab that year's pumpkin and some apple cider. i look forward to it every year, and it only seems to get better (and easier).

this year, i took control of mapping out our corn maze routes. ;) usually i just like roaming around, but for some reason, i was on a mission. austin and i have fun ducking into dead ends when we get stuck between big groups of families. i like how peaceful it is in between the stalks, and screaming kiddos kind of ruin the effect.

after we finished the two sections of the maze, we walked around the farm for a little bit.. and checked out how tall we are.

i'm standing on my tip toes.

the hayride is my favorite part of the entire shebang.

a man and his pumpkin

i love this little tradition we've started for ourselves. <3

aunt/niece style post

this blog is quickly becoming an avery appreciation blog, but whatever. she's what i take pictures of. and really, if i'm not working or cleaning, i'm probably trying to hang out with her. ;)

yesterday, i brought her a few presents from becca (who has a blog! and i can link to her! and i'm so happy about it!), and we immediately decided that she needed to wear the skeleton pajamas for the day.

then i realized that we matched, and obviously there needed to be pictures because i go crazy for this kid.

avery's outfit:
onesie: old navy
shoes: stride rite

my outfit:
jacket: uo (old)
sweatshirt: uo
necklace: catbird (no longer available)
dress: uo (old)
leggings: ae
socks: c/o austin ;)
boots: doc martens

we were roaming around an advance auto parts parking lot because kendall's car broke down. it ended up being like a two hour ordeal, during which avery and i took several adventurous walks around the entire building.

we were all a little crazy by the end of it. poor kendall's car is still out of commission, so i drove us around the rest of the day. we had lunch, went grocery shopping, and played with the puppy. avery even talked a little bit for me! which was ridiculous and i died.

the perfect version of a kid, in case you were wondering

today (my second day off in a row after 12 straight days of work), i have no plans (except for the dishes). so i'm going to lay in bed for a little bit longer, catch up on parenthood/project runway/the mindy project, and maybe take a nap. ;)

i hope you're having a good day! <3

guess i'll go to sleep

man, i'm tired. this week has been never ending, it seems. i did start my new job, but my work schedule went like this: sunday at my new job, monday and tuesday at my old job, wednesday through now at my new job. thankfully, i'll actually get two days off this week, but they could. not. come. sooner. to be honest, i'm glad to finally be in my forever job (please don't tell me that i just jinxed myself), because everything changing all of the time is THE WORST. but everyone knows that american eagle has always been my kind of retail home. ae cult status. so i'm stoked on life. obviously. just a sleepy, burnt out girl.

on top of that: last monday night, when austin and i were out to celebrate our anniversary, someone hit my car. womp. i still haven't even gotten to handle it fully with my insurance company, and my little dented door is so sad, but thankfully we were fine and everything is fine. just stressful, you know? i don't handle things like that well (i'm kinda the worst at dealing with STUFF), so i'm glad austin was there to chill me out. it wasn't even a big deal!

also this past week, kendall and her little family adopted a puppy! i'm mostly excited to puppy-sit, so that austin and i can get some practice in. since we're moving soon.. and that (hopefully) means puppy time!! ah! i even have baby/puppy pictures to share.. one day.

so halloween is coming up, and there are a few things i'm pretty serious about getting done beforehand:
- coming up with costumes that beat last years (we were wayne and garth from wayne's world - something that i've wanted to do for as long as i can remember, so this may be impossible)
- the corn maze! we go to the same one every year, and it's perfect and pretty and fun and i love it. unfortunately, i have no idea when i'm going to have a day off with austin, so this actually might not happen :( :(:(
- going to see frankenweenie! i don't even really like tim burton, but i love frankenstein everything, and it just looks so cute. eep.

i promise i'll be around this week. we didn't have the internet last week, and things will be a little bit calmer. :) <3

lately..

source

i've been really busy and things have been really exciting lately. i was at my grandma's house last week, and our conversation kept getting interrupted by my texting (i'm sorry, grandma!), but i couldn't stop because i noticed that, while i was texting, almost EVERY SINGLE ONE was about how excited i am - for changes in my life, in my friends' lives, whatever! all kinds of things are happening all over the place and i couldn't be more proud of my friends or more excited :) for my/their future.

last week, austin and i spent a lot of time looking at halloween decorations and deciding what direction to go in with our decorating. one thing that i've kind of noticed (and that i think is austin's ulterior motive) is that every year, we buy halloween decorations and then we end up leaving them out year-round. see: eyeball lights in our kitchen, eyeball lights in our bathroom, giant jack o lantern pillow in the record room, ghost pillow in the living room. i think that i'm actually alright with this little plan of his, but it makes me want to be a little bit pickier buying them in the future. ;) i think this is next on my list!

also last week, i FINALLY got to get my hair cut! i had to cancel my appointment due to a double shift, and then chicago, and then work every day, but fiiinaaallly i got to make time for it. i was super extra excited because my hairdresser's new salon opened up. i tell everyone this, but she is such a huge inspiration to me. every time i see her and talk to her, i'm refreshed and feel a lot better about everything going on in my life. she's just super encouraging.

recently, i started a really dramatic post about relationships and growing up and people and stuff like that that was entirely spurred over seeing an exboyfriend at work. it was uncomfortable and gave me the icks for like three straight days. this is maybe the only by-product of living in this town that bugs me. sometimes people are out of your life for a reason, you know? wah.

next week, i'm starting my new job (it's kind of where i'm meant to be) and i get to bring some of my favorite current employees with me! one of them grabbed me another of our favorite keychains (this one's a bagel!!) and, combined with the deathly hallows keychain that austin's mom brought me back from harry potter world, my keys are getting a little outrageous. i maybe need a different way to display these little guys.

i just caught up on the two first episodes of "parenthood" from the new season and seriously all i want to do is talk about how much i love that show. i love mae whitman's character the most of all, but really every single thing on the show is perfection. ugh. i wish becca lived closer so that we could watch it together and i didn't have to cry alone every episode like a freak. ;)

this really is my favorite time of every year, and it just seems to keep getting better. in case you forgot, i'm seeing jack white this week, and i have two days off in a row to get re-acquainted with the internet. :) how are you guys? anything super exciting and new?! <3