story of the week

minky has always made our birthdays special. grandparents usually do well, but they live far away so they don't always know what your style is or what would be perfect, unless you ask for specific things. but minky always knows.

this year, she bought me lots of pretty things from j crew's fall collection. a purple down-filled vest, purple suede flats, a scarf. and a sweater. a beautiful, navy with white polka dots sweater. it fit so well. it was perfect. except! it was wool. and dry clean only.

i've shrunken three beautiful wool sweaters in my lifetime, and you would think i could learn not to. but i haven't. i've learned that i'm not ready for dry clean only yet. so i went to j crew on sunday when i had an hour of free time (in the pouring rain with no umbrella because i loaned it to a volunteer).

anyway before i left the house, i was looking at the receipt she had given me, and i noticed there were two sweaters on it. same size, same print. so i call her to ask if she bought herself one. nope. it was just a mistake.

so of course i went thinking i would let them know, but they wouldn't do anything.

i walk in the door and immediately, this woman alice greets me and asks how i'm doing. i say fine, but i'm exchanging some things and i wanted to let you know about this mistake, i'm sure there's nothing you can do, but it's just a shame to have spent money on nothing. but then alice says hmm let me see if there's anything i can do.. and she comes back and says she was the one who rung minky up that day, so she'll just fix it somehow.

i was so excited!

so then i went on a shopping spree, and like a dream, every time i went to the register to check out, i hadn't met my total yet.

i ended up exchanging one real sweater and one invisible sweater, and i left with two long sleeve soft shirts (one red, one blue), a white tank top for layering,  a navy sweater, a camel colored pullover sweater and a coral top.

was thrilled, to say the least. now i just need fall to come a bit quicker so i can wear my fall clothes! it's been beautiful during the day in the mid 80s, but not quite sweater weather.

sunrise, sunset

one of my favorite things we do to stay in touch while we're far away is sending pictures of sunsets (and sometimes sunrises. only one.). new mexico sunsets usually beat austin sunsets. mountains make everything prettier. 

34 minutes until my birthday!

pillow face

i love bedding.

my flowered-everything was looking pretty out of place at this house, so a month ago maybe, i took a trip to west elm and mix and matched a bunch of gray, black and white prints. was kind of pricey, but well worth it. 

not so fast

too sad to take a picture/don't really want to remember it, but both of my orchid flower buds turned pink, shriveled up and fell off in the last two days. so close! at least all of his plants outside are still alive. for the most part. ..thank goodness i'm not responsible for feeding the dogs.

incredible india

countdowns:

22 days until my 27th birthday

85 days until the election

87ish days until the boy returns to texas

95 days until we go to india 

31 days is how long we'll be there

2 days is how long we plan to spend in nepal visiting the o'sullivans

can you even waittt?!

orchid chronicles

you can't fully appreciate this picture because you didn't know how many topless bottles of ranch dressing and moldy jars of jelly and random expired foods there were in here, but this fridge has been completely girlified. there's yogurt. there are vegetables. there's peach butter. i'm not really good at thoroughly cleaning anything, but i think i might take everything out and give it a good scrub one weekend.

tonight i made smitten kitchen's bacon corn hash. it wasn't super labor intensive except for all of the chopping, but it did take a while, and it heat up the whole house. it was delicious though, and it's going to make excellent quiche filling with a little swiss cheese added.

i think it would be perfect for the fall. it would also be yummy turned into chowder. what qualifies as chowder, i wonder?

and let's all take a moment to ooh and aah at the fact that the orchids two new buds are just growing happily along and looking more and more like possible flowers every day.

travel bug

did i tell you i was going to NM to visit the boy for a couple days? i'm back in austin now, but it was such a nice trip after not seeing him for a month. here are a few of the pictures.