Life Changes Along with the Leaves

It has been a long time since I have posted. It's not something I'm proud of but it is also something that I know needed to happen right now. A lot of changes have taken place in my life in the last few weeks and since they impact the blog, and since there are a lot of family friends back home who read the blog and are interested in what's going on, I felt like I should give a little life update before I get back into outfit photos. (If you just want to see the outfit photo, scroll to the bottom. If you just want to hear how the changes will impact the blog, scroll almost to the bottom!)

Change #1: We Moved Out of Our Temporary Apartment
Change #2: We Moved Into Our New House

It would be wonderful if Change #1 and Change #2 happened simultaneously but various difficulties with closing on the house made it so that my husband and I had to pack our entire apartment back into boxes and put them back into our cars. I will be forever thankful that we have a supportive church family in our new home with friends who let us store the larger things in their basement and who let us stay with them until the house closed. When my younger brother visited, rather than getting to stay with us in our new place, he helped me pack my car as we rushed to be out of our apartment before the deadline. After the craziness of that week and the fact that all my clothes were packed back into boxes and suitcases, a blog post was not going to happen.

I am happy to say, however, that our house did come through and we absolutely love it! I should have gone through and taken pictures for you before things were in it but since the house closed almost 3 weeks late, and since our cars had been loaded down with household goods for a week already, we unloaded the contents of our cars upon arrival. The few pictures I did think to get before our Uboxes were delivered (a whole complicated story in itself) still contain various "junk" in the picture.

(My adorable puffer vest, which I bought on major sale!)

(The wood floors are gorgeous!)

Our Uboxes were delivered and friends helped us move all of our things into the second floor apartment of our new house. It only took 2 hours! For the first time in two years we had all of our "stuff" around us and I felt a feeling of hope and satisfaction that I couldn't explain exaclty. Two years ago we packed up the contents of our two-story house (with the intention to move to a smaller town) and moved into a small, two-bedroom apartment. Since then our things had been in boxes that really couldn't be unpacked because of space, and my parents had been storing a number of items. So as we stood in our new apartment, in our beautiful small town, with all of our possessions in one place, we felt so happy. So, in the excitement of unpacking and discovering things I hadn't seen in 2 months and some I hadn't seen in 2 years...the second blog post was missed.

Change #3: I Have Not Gotten Any Work

I am used to working full-time, even when I taught part-time. My employment here hinged on getting our storage units, which contained documents I needed to prove I could work in the US. However, though I have applied to one full-time job and to 5 districts as a substitute teacher, I still haven't gotten any work. One district has put me on the sub list and I wake up each morning wondering if I will get a call. This is stressful in many different ways but it has allowed me time to unpack our whole house and do "projects," which I LOVE. Our new apartment has a number of things to upgrade. I have started this process by building an Ikea Wardrobe to give one of the bedrooms a closet, and starting to upgrade our mix-and-match, outdated bathroom. Once the wardrobe was up, I was finally able to unpack ALL my clothes and I couldn't wait to pull out my boots and blanket scarves! (see below)

Change #4: We are now landlords. 

As we considered what our next house would be, Jeremy and I decided that we would choose a house that we could live in for the short-term but would provide us an income in the long-term. Our new town has many beautiful old homes that have been turned into 2 and 3 unit multi-family homes and we purchased one of them. It will allow us to have a low rent for ourselves right now and save up our money for a "forever home." When we move out, our apartment will bring in significant extra income each month. So, between unpacking boxes, building and painting, and applying for jobs, I have been tracking down old lease information and hiring and working with a new property manager.

How These Changes Will Impact the Blog

All of this goes to show why I haven't been posting. It was hard to be inspired by clothing when most of mine was in boxes but things have changed and these changes impact the blog. I now have all of my clothes again and I can't wait to put together outfits! However, since my husband is the only one with an income right now, I  have not been buying clothes that can't be worn substitute teaching (ie: much more formal and boring) so I'm sorry to say that my outfit posts will be more inspirational for awhile. I will do my best to link items that are identical but you may not be able to find the exact item I'm wearing.

The exciting part of these changes for me, is that I will be doing more Do It Yourself posts. When I originally started the blog, I intended it to be about Fashion, Beauty and DIY. When we lived in the small apartment back in Washington, it was very difficult to do DIY posts because I had no backyard or garage in which to do my projects. My blog became much more about fashion. Now, not only do I have the time and the space to DIY, but I have a house that is inspiring all my DIY creativity. So, expect to see more DIY posts.

Outfit Inspiration

I snapped this photo for you after church. Please ignore the mismatched purse, but don't miss the beautiful fall leaves! 

(Fall in New England is NO JOKE! You just HAVE to play in the leaves!)

To Create this Look:

Over the Knee Suede Boots (or these) / Striped Long-Sleeve Tee / Blanket Scarf (or here) / Cat Eye Sunglasses

If you read all the way to this point, you deserve an award! Thank you for hanging in there with me during this move and I hope you're as excited about what's to come on this blog as I am!