My Very First "Fix" - Stitch Fix Review

Have you heard about StitchFix? I have been looking forward to getting my first one in the mail!

Basically, after you fill out a fun Style Profile, your personal stylist picks out 5 items specifically for you and mails them to your house! You pay $20 for a styling fee, and then that $20 goes towards any purchase you make from your Fix.

I actually REALLY liked everything I got! This flowy top is not something I would usually pick out for myself, but (even pregnant) it looked really cute on! 

Each piece comes with a card showing you ways to pair it with things you already have! So smart!!

I LOVED these polka dot cropped jeans!! How adorable! I knew they wouldn't fit - hello, I'm 34 weeks pregnant (which I didn't mention in my style profile because I was afraid they would send me moo-moos/I'm so close to the end, I don't want any more maternity clothes), but I think they would have been too small for me non-pregnant too. Very cute idea though - polka dot jeans! Who knew?

And this dress... A belted a-line dress! The fabric was heavier than I expected (in a good way) and I liked how this one looked on me too, but again... the belly was pretty ridiculous on this one. I looked like a GOOFBALL. But even without the belly, this one would have been too short on me. It needed at least 3-4 more inches for me to feel comfortable in it (non-pregnant).

And this gem. This was my FAVORITE PIECE!! Again, not something I would immediately gravitate towards at the store, but I LOVED it. The sleeves, the no fuss flowy-ness of it. It was super cute! EVEN pregnant!! (It's the only piece I got a picture in, I'll show you in just a second.)

The 5th piece was this "long horse bit link necklace" which I really liked too!

So here's a picture of me in this top!

How in the WORLD do people take such awesome pictures of themselves for these kinds of posts? I have NOWHERE in my house that has a good mirror for this kind of stuff. And by the time my hubby gets home at night, it's too dark to take pictures. So... a couple blurry shots in front of the mirror in the new big boy room was as good as I could do!

PHOTO-BOMBED!

Okay, so here's my opinion on all of it! It was so fun to try on different pieces that I wouldn't have normally picked out myself. And like I said, I really liked how most of it looked on me! BUT.... the least expensive piece in my Fix was $48. I already paid $20 which would go towards that price, but the piece I really wanted (that top, of course) was $58, and I truly couldn't justify spending that much on ONE thing. 

(Especially since I just got back from the outlet malls and hardly bought anything for myself because things were "too expensive"... like $15-20 for a shirt... yeah, I'm not spending $60 thankyouverymuch.) 

So all in all, do I think I'll do it again? Maybe this summer after I've lost some baby weight, and want to treat myself to something fun. Or if one of you decides to sign up, I would get a $25 credit, so in that case I would definitely try it again! I think compared to boutique prices, and higher end places "regular prices", these prices are probably normal, but I tend to be someone who only shops the sales racks these days.

Anyway, I was REALLY excited to try StitchFix, and I'm glad that I did!!

Update: Check out my Second Fix here!

Song Singing Sweetheart

I had only sung it to him a few times, and never for the purpose of actually teaching him the song, but the other day Jack started singing "Jesus Loves Me"! He must have been learning it in Sunday school!! How precious is that?

Another song we've sung lately is the "Itsy Bitsy Spider", and he knew WAY more of that than I realized. So now, for your listening pleasure, here is my song singing sweetheart:

He makes me so happy - what a JOY to be his mommy!

We are excited about Little Brother coming in 7 weeks or less!! AHH!!!

Blog Design Update

Those of you checking out the blog in Reader (that's how I read blogs too!) will have to stop by the actual blog today! I've been working hard on a redesign/re-vamp and am finally at a stopping point! 

Same overall look and feel, but updated with some fun new things! Starting with a new name! 

Y'all remember back in May when I had to change my blog name due to trademark infringement? Well, I've had a few name changes since then, but nothing has felt personal enough to last and I didn't want a forgettable or cliched title. "Gooey" has always stuck with me as a fun nickname from my maiden name, and "SKilLs" is a play on my married initials "SKL". Hopefully it's just weird enough for you to remember it!

I've also created a spiffy new rotating picture header! Sweeeeet!! But don't ask me how I did it because I'm pretty sure I did it wrong 800 times and 1 time it just happened to work. Yeesh...

And I've got some fun new side buttons for you to check out, so go do that!!

My next big blog project is to take new "After" pictures for all of the renovated rooms in our house. Seriously - I never did a reveal of our (formerly pink) hallway bathroom! WHAT?! And pretty much every room except for our master bedroom looks different today than what is on the Our House Tour tab, so yeah - it's time for an update.

Well, what do you think? I know it's not drastic, but hopefully the changes I made will help you navigate the blog more easily - and I just plain like it! 

Now on to my Pinterest boards! 

(Just kidding. But they need it.)

Jack's First Car

Today we went to Mimi and Poppy's house to ride in Jack's new car! They got it for him for Christmas, but we've had a hard time getting up to their house on a clear/warmer day, so this is the first time he's ridden in it!

Here's a video of when he first got in there:

What a HAM!!

We had a blast! He loves his new ride! 

Last Look at Jack's Nursery :(

Oh goodness. Just the title is killing me. 

I've been REALLY excited about getting the Big Boy Room (BBR) ready for Jack (and Little Brother when he's a bit older), but for the BBR to be done, Jack's nursery as it has always been, has to be dismantled a bit. :( 

So I thought I would do one last look at the nursery before we start moving things around. 

Here's what the room looks like right now. 

And a final video tour I did the other day:

My little boy looks SO BIG in his bed!!

...compared to the tiny little thing he was in this picture at 6 weeks - ahh!!

The gallery wall still looks the same as it did when I finished it - I will DEFINITELY have a hard time taking this down! (to move some of the pieces over to the BBR)

One funny change is this wall:

Besides looking like completely different colored dressers (the first picture is more accurate), you can tell that Little Man has accumulated a TON of stuffed animals over the last year and a half! We're going to add a new element in the BBR to corral some of these friends, so that the bookshelf can be available to hold - wait for it - more books!

the original nursery reveal

nursery update - the gallery wall reveal

Well... nothing left to do now but start moving stuff! We're going to try to move everything but his crib to the BBR and bring in the full sized bed from the office/guest room in the next few days. Then we'll let him start sleeping in the new room! He already loves it - my mom painted it and we did a cool feature wall(!!), and he goes in there all the time and says "Jack's NEWWWWW room", so I think he will be happy to move. It's just Mama we have to worry about over here!

Do you get sad when the "end of an era" comes? Surely I'm not the only sap around here...

Inspiration

I've been feeling inspired lately (in spurts, mind you). 

And here are a few of the things that have been inspiring me:

One of my FAVORITE bloggers (iHeartOrganizing) is featured in this season's Storage magazine, so I HAD to get it! I also saw the newest HGTV Magazine and between the two mags - there is so much beautiful eye candy! I'm not usually a big magazine person (I've cancelled all my subscriptions because I would never read them and they just added to my clutter problem), but these two are awesome.

My family got me the Young House Love book for Christmas! I hadn't actually seen it in person, so I had no idea that it was this thick hardcover book with all kinds of tips and tricks - it's a really awesome resource! And I got Organized Simplicity (by Tsh of the Simple Mom blog) about a year ago, and just pulled it out again this fall. The first half of the book is the mindset behind living simply, and the second half is a room-by-room cleaning, organizing, and simplifying guide - both helpful at different points of your organizing journey.

Finally, I've been reading through 7 by Jen Hatmaker (another blogger, do you see a trend here??) and it has been really good, but hard to get through. You can read more about it if you want to, but basically it's a convicting read about how much STUFF we have. It will make you want to get rid of a million things... and if you're like me - you need to!

So between all these things - getting rid of stuff, simplifying, and beautifully displaying the things we choose to keep - I'm feeling very inspired. 

The best thing I've been doing is writing down smaller tasks of things to do. A big goal right now is to clear out the office and transform it into the Big Boy Room. Well, that's overwhelming, but "go through everything under the bed" or "put up curtains" are not nearly as daunting. And y'all know I love to cross things off my list! 

What's inspiring you these days?

Baby #2: 31 Weeks Pregnant

This is the part where I totally beat myself up for not keeping up with weekly pregnancy updates, but I'm going to give myself some grace here and just move on!!

This week I am 31 weeks pregnant with Little Brother!! 

Looooovely wet-hair-in-a-bun picture for ya. If I waited until things were perfect, it would never happen... kinda like it hasn't happened for the last 20 weeks...

*Little Brother is about 16in long, weighing between 3-4 pounds!

*I have gained 17lbs so far, which is 1lb+ more than where I was with Jack at 31 weeks

*Overall I'm feeling good! No major ailments to speak of, just tired and sore, especially in the late evening and early morning.
*I'm doing my best to take a little nap in the afternoon when Jack is napping, so that I'm not a total monster by the time Jason gets home. :)
*We're working on getting the Big Boy Room ready for Jack to move into, then later on, Little Brother will join him! BROTHERS!!

Can't wait!!!! :)

We Went to Jamaica!!!

Be sure to check out the Our Travels page at the top of the blog! 

We've been to some pretty cool places!

To celebrate Jason's MBA graduation and as a "Babymoon" before Little Brother comes, we decided to go to Jamaica!!!!

We got up super early on Wednesday, December 19th and left out of Chattanooga, stopping in Charlotte, NC, and headed on our way to Montego Bay, Jamaica!!!! 

We stayed at an all-inclusive resort called Secrets St. James at Montego Bay, and it was AMAZING!!! The resort was lovely and not over-crowded, the beaches and pool area were beautiful, AND the food was awesome (my biggest complaint about the all-inclusive we went to in the Dominican Republic). 

We spent our days lounging by the ocean and the pool - ahhh... what better way to spend our kid-free time? There was a great reef within swimming distance of the beach area where we set up shop, so Jason was in heaven, just swimming out to the reef for 30-45 minutes or more at a time. He said he saw lots of beautiful fish, including a big puffer fish!

MY days were spent reading, reading, and reading. You guys - I read FIVE books in FIVE days!!! My dream vacation - for real. 

God is so good. This place was BEAUTIFUL!

Jason was off taking pictures of the beautiful scenery and snuck this one of me - you guessed it - READING! (I'm in the very center of the picture.)

starfish

dinner date at Bordeaux - French restaurant

before our dinner at Portofino - Italian restaurant

Our last full day - lounging by the pool. This was the day I decided to be brave and wear a two-piece! Haha!! I was 28 weeks at the time. :) It was super windy that day, which was nice because we never got too hot, but bad because I didn't put enough sunscreen on and got a little burned! Whoops!!

My favorite picture from the whole trip. This. Is. The. Life. 

There was this guy that made jerk chicken on a rolling grill - it was FANTASTIC!! Mmmmm... you could just go up and get it - all-inclusive at it's finest. Between that and all the non-alcoholic drinks I had (strawberry daquiris, pina coladas, etc.), I was one happy mama. :)

Our beautiful room!! 

I should have remembered to take pictures right after room service, but alas, my brain was elsewhere.

balcony

beautiful balcony view

looking back inside from the balcony

big soaking tub and open area bathroom

And this last picture was just because it's so funny that $100 USD got us over $7,000 in Jamaican money, so these are some $1,000 dollar bills before we exchanged them. 

We left on Sunday, December 23rd and couldn't get home fast enough to our little boy! He cried when he saw us, like he just realize we were gone, but after a few minutes, he was all smiles and hugs. Both sets of grandparents said he was an angel the whole time (2 nights at the Guins, 2 nights at the Millers)! That's our sweet boy!! 

We are SO GLAD we decided to take this trip. It was really hard to leave Jack for 4 nights, but it was definitely worth it. We felt relaxed and refreshed and came back in time to celebrate Christmas with all of our families! 

Now we are counting down the weeks until Little Brother 

arrives and we become a family of 4!! (Only 9 weeks to go!!)