How To Pack Light

I just was in Saskatoon for five days recently. It was out first trip with our newborn son James. Zeke was looked after by our roommate. Even though the drive took seven hours instead of the usual five and half to get there (due to two diaper changes and feeding stops) it was a really great drive. It was so nice to get out of the city for awhile and to introduce James to my parents, my sister’s family, my brother’s family, and some of my friends. Now I am a total clotheshorse and normally pack like I’m going away for three months instead of five days. This has always bugged me about myself so I thought, “Why not try something new?” So I did! I decided to only bring eight pieces and two pairs of shoes on my holiday. While that may not seem like a lot of clothes, I could create ten different outfits! Let’s see what I brought.

Blazer

Cardigan

White Tank Top

T-Shirt

Skirt

Shorts

Jeans

Dress

Here are outfits I created. NOTE: I only used the one pair of shoes in all of the shots because I had to get the photos done quickly (see why here).

Blazer Combos

Cardigan Combos

Wild Card Pairings – These combos didn’t fall under either category.

And finally the shoes:

Tim and I just got the last shot done in time, because our sweet baby James decided to wake up. I noticed that he too was wearing neon so we took this pic:

Neon buddies! It truly wasn’t intentional that’s why it’s funny.

Now if you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know I love outtakes from shoots because hey, no one is perfect – especially animals and children. So here they are:

                            Got your chin!                                          Billy Idol playing air guitar.

                          Drunk Baby                                                       WAAAAAAAAH!!!

 

CND Vinylux Giveaway!

It’s time for another international giveaway. This time I’m giving away two bottles of CND Vinylux from their Summer Paradise Collection – check out my review of their polish here. The shades up for grabs are Lush Tropics (a bright matte green) and Bicycle Yellow (a bright yellow with yellow sparkles).

Here’s two ideas on how to use them:

Lemon lime nails from Kayla Shevonne:

Leafy Lemon nails from Nail Nerd:

So what are you waiting for? Enter below before time runs out. This giveaway is international and ends at midnight Mountain Standard Time on Wednesday August 13th, 2014. Good luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tuesday's OOTW - Polka Dots Rock!

I feel crazy admitting this as a fashion blogger, but until recently I never owned any shorts other than a blue denim pair or two. I have tons of skirts and dresses, but was short on shorts. (See what I did there? Yep lack of sleep has caught up to me – see why here.) I was at WALMART the other day and couldn’t pass up this cute white pair. They were only $7! So I also bought them in black and a faded blue pair. Plus I actually needed them. I have lost a lot of the baby weight, but still need to ditch the last dreaded ten pounds. Therefore not a lot of things are fitting me nowadays (a huge thanks to my roommate for letting me wear his shorts to Saskatoon). It’s been super hot in Edmonton these days and jeans just were not going to cut it anymore. I was actually getting tired of wearing dresses and skirts all the time. It was also rather windy while wearing a skirt the other day and a passersby saw more of me than I would’ve liked! 😛

Hat $5 WALMART (in stores now) // Blouse $20 Reitmans (in stores now) // Purse $10 Smart Set (in stores now) // Shorts $7 WALMART (in stores now) // Shoes $8 Army & Navy (in stores now)

 

Monday’s Meme

Why was I hospitalized recently?

In case you haven’t read our last post, I want you to know that Zeke and I are on holidays until the end of July. Yes it’s summer finally and we love it (Zeke is outside lying in the sun as I write this), but there’s a reason why we are taking a break from our blogging.

I ended up in the hospital on Thursday June 19th for two days. Did I know ahead of time that this was going to happen? Sort of. Did I know what day? No. What was wrong? Nothing. Want to know what happened? Read on.

On Thursday June 19th, 2014 at 10:30pm James Matthew Donald Forest was born weighing in at 6 pounds 8 ounces. Tim and I are super happy and blessed by this gift from God. James is the only grandson on my side of the family and the only Forest male on Tim’s side to carry on the Forest name. He was born on Tim’s Mom’s birthday. YAY!!!!!!!!

 James freshly hatched! He didn’t cry but just looked around in awe.

The way I rock an arm party! 😉

Now regular readers of our blog may be  confused. “When was she pregnant?” “She didn’t look pregnant in her Outfit Of The Week posts.” And that’s when creative posing and/or photoshop came into play.

Example of Creative Posing

Example of Photoshopping

Now why did I hide being pregnant all this time? It was for three reasons. First off, I didn’t want this to become a blog about pregnancy and/or pregnancy style.

My second reason for keeping my pregnancy a secret is that my husband didn’t tell his family except for his Mom and Dad. Yesterday was their 60th anniversary celebration and we introduced James to everyone. There were definitely some surprised people!

The third reason is that I am a private person in some ways and didn’t want advice or to hear about horrific labour stories. I wanted to have my own experience in my own way.

All of this being said, I am going to eventually put up one or two posts maximum on pregnancy style and what I’ve learned and leave it at that as I’m not a pregnancy blogger by any means. I will leave that to the pros! However after nine long months, I want to have some sort of record of what I learned and help other expecting Moms in some way. I’m just not going to “belabour” the point.

So now it’s back to my vacation for me. Tim, James, and I are “running back to Saskatoon” (reference to an old song by The Guess Who – you can Google it if you wish) from July 2nd to the 7th so James can meet my Mom, Dad, sister, sister’s husband, and their two year old, brother, brother’s wife, and their three month old. I was born and raised in Saskatoon in the province of Saskatchewan. GO RIDERS!! <——Canadian readers will get that.

What are you up to this summer?

And for all us Canadians out there: