Food, clothes, and family

Happy Tuesday!

I love Tuesdays. I have work and no school, which means I get to catch up with laundry, cleaning, etc. which I actually really enjoy. We're really happy because my grandparents are in town right now. Most people know this, but they basically spend their lives (literally) traveling the country (also literally) as all of their 8 kids are in different states (OK, two are in one state, but you get the point). The other night Taylor was telling me he missed my grandparents so he posted on their FB wall (and yes, they have Facebook. Awesome, right?) and said that he missed them and that they should come visit. About an hour later my mom texted me to tell me my grandparents were in town! Super funny and perfect timing. We've been having a lot of fun spending time with them and enjoying their amazing food.

This is my FAVORITE. I'll have to post the recipe some time. 

My grandpa's favorite salsa, made with fresh tomatoes! 

I'm still sort of in denial that it's fall. I keep thinking it's July. However, I was so excited to finally wear a new pair of boots that I bought in the summer when they were on sale.

My new fav. boots! 

Speaking of clothes, I've gone a couple weeks already without buying clothes (which sounds so dumb, but it's always fun to buy some "back to school" clothes so I've avoided that temptation!). I mentioned here that I'm trying to go until Christmas without buying clothes...ahh! I definitely am not as addicted to shopping as some people (I don't own a credit card), but still I needed to cool it for a while. It's been really refreshing to just be happy with what I have. Even on those days where I "don't have anything to wear" it's a fun challenge to wear something I own in a new way. I ordered a dress (before I made my new goal/challenge!) and it just got here, wahoo! It's from Shabby Apple and I'm so excited about it. I'll have to include it in a post. If you know me you know I'm kind of anti full-on fashion posts, mostly just because I feel like a lot of people aren't always natural or real about the poses (sometimes awkward for readers, yes? And don't worry, most these posts are random ones I find on Pinterest, not people I know). It's totally understandable because I would feel silly too, trying to come up with multiple poses if the point is just to show the outfit. I've seen some really good ones that I like, though. The ideal fashion posts to me are the ones where you see the outfit from afar, and then you get close-ups of the details. It's the posts where people put like 17 photos of the exact same far-away shot but with different poses that confuse me. Does that make sense? I actually really like the idea of posting about fashion because I like getting ideas from others' posts, so I feel like I would force myself to be creative if I did do those posts. We'll see.

Speaking of pictures, we got family photos taken! They were taken by the lovely Lizzy of http://lizzyjeanphotography.com/  took them when my sister Nicole and her family was still in town.

Meet Leo...the cutest boy ever who happens to be my nephew. 

Our try at being serious....lasted like one second. See below.

We like smiling better :)  

All my sisters :) 

All 5 kids! 

The men. This picture makes me really excited for my dad to meet Tay, Glen, and Leo one day :) 

My mom and Leo. I love this. They make each other so happy :) 

So life is good. We've also been making a lot of cookies because we have a lot of butter for some reason (that reason is that my husband loves Costco almost as much as he loves me)...so let me know if you want cookies!


P.S. bear with me as I try to update/make changes to my blog and the layout. It'll probably be changing little by little. It's been kind of complicated lately!