Fashionista Wannabe

I am proud to say that I am one of the few people in my life who has not become obsessed with Pinterest. However, I must also say that I think this website is absolutely fabulous and a great way to discover new DIY ideas, recipes, and fashion concepts!

Every once in a while, I will put together an outfit that I'm pretty proud of. Good color combos, sweet accessories. But for the most part, I feel like I dress a little too generic. I shop at Loft a lot, because most of the time I need work clothes. Loft's clothes are really cute, but still, I don't always feel like I put outfits together well. It is my goal this fall to work on my wardrobe. And I plan on using Pinterest to do so!

{Blues and greens are my favorite!}

{I love everything about this color combo}

{Sparkly tank, yellow sweater, brass bangles, and bf jeans. I will recreate! Cute coffee mug = icing on the cake} 

Thank you Pinterest for the cute ideas! 

So what about you? What are the staples in your closet? What advice would you give a fashionista wannabe like myself?

Weekend Recap (in pictures)

{I cooked a fun dinner for Luke and I on Saturday night}

{Yup, he wore this out of the house on Sunday to run errands}

{Knowing how much I love reading and how big of a nerd I am, Luke bought me a Nook!}

{And I organized my closet}

Hope you all had a blessed weekend!!!

Man's Best Friend(s)

{Luke loves his baby dog}

{And Luke loves his guns}

And I love Luke. :)

Rain (or lack there of)

South Texas is not inexperienced when it comes to hurricane season. Rain is expected every summer/fall in these parts. Residents living on the gulf's edge or out on the islands will board up their windows when necessary, but there is an aura of perseverance and/or denial when it comes to bad weather in this part of Texas because what we're always told will be a destructive storm just turns into a few showers here and there. And if for some reason a bad storm does hit, we're prepared for whatever comes our way. You have to be, if you choose to live in a "high-risk" area.

 {Hurricane weather in CC}

However, this year is playing out a little differently. As I sit here on my couch watching MSNBC's coverage of Hurricane Irene and thinking of all my friends that live up in or near NYC, I can't help but think of how lucky we were to get the short rain shower that showed up yesterday evening. This summer, South Texas has been DRY. Record droughts. Cracked earth that is begging for just a small drink of anything. A couple of weeks ago when Tropical Storm Don was sure to make landfall directly in Corpus Christi, our dry earth simply shut the storm down. Parts of South Texas got .5 in. of rain; others got nothing.

 {Watching Irene cause problems on the east coast}

As I was driving home from work in the rain yesterday, I couldn't help but think of the song "Gratitude" by Nicole Nordeman. In this song, Nicole sings about the people's need for rain, food, and peace, but ultimately turns back to the Lord, reminded that He always provides in His own way. These are the lyrics I could not get out of my head:

Send some rain, would You send some rain?
'Cause the earth is dry and needs to drink again
And the sun is high and we are sinking in the shade
Would You send a cloud, thunder long and loud?
Let the sky grow black and send some mercy down
Surely You can see that we are thirsty and afraid
But maybe not, not today
Maybe You'll provide in other ways
And if that's the case . . .

We'll give thanks to You
With gratitude
For lessons learned in how to thirst for You
How to bless the very sun that warms our face
If You never send us rain

I put this song on in my car as I was driving and before I knew it, I was tearing up. This song convicted me, reminding me of what I really needed to be thirsting for. Now yes, our land does need the rain terribly. Farmers crops aren't growing, cattle are dying, families are losing the money with which they provide for their families daily needs. But could this drought we're having be representative of a people not thirsting after the Lord? And me personally, what am I thirsting for?

A little later in this song, Nicole sings, "We are blessed beyond what we could ever dream, in abundance or in need," and these words really stuck in my head. This is so true and yet I'm so quick to forget this when I'm too focused on work, the future, etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm grateful. Grateful for the 2 hour rain we got yesterday, for the many blessings God bestows on me daily, and for the little reminders that I'm supposed to be thirsting after Him and not after things of  this world.

Food for thought: What are you thirsting for these days? Could it possibly be time to re-focus?

 {Water collecting around the sidewalk at my apt. Hadn't seen this in a while!}

5QF

1. Did you make any fun purchases this week? Well, unfortunately I spent too much money on groceries on Sunday, forcing me to make my own coffee every morning this week and stay away from any shopping trips to Loft. I'm actually pretty proud of my self control! 

2. If you could go to any musical concert, what would it be? Do Broadway shows count? They have music and singing in them! I'd go see In The Heights or Wicked over a concert any day!

3. What is your least fav/ most fav house chore? I like cleaning any horizontal surface with multi-purpose cleaner and a paper towel. My apartment always looks instantly cleaner when the dust has been wiped away!

4. Would you prefer new appliances or clothes? Really?? Clothes!!

5. Miracle Whip or Mayo? Light Mayo. :)

The Summer Peddler's Show

Last November, Aubrey took me to my very first Peddler's Show. I have such fond memories of that trip!  The weather that day was perfectly fall-ish and I bought some really cute Christmas decor for my first apartment out of college. So when Aubrey asked if I wanted to go back to The Peddler's Show on Sunday for their summer weekend event, I immediately said YES! We spent about 2 hours out in Robstown and I bought a couple more items than I had originally anticipated, but who could help it? The hand-made house decor, jewelry, and baked good/spices/mixes call to me!!

{This is one of my favorite booths! I'm a coffee lover and you can try as many samples of coffee as you'd like. They have amazing flavors and you just add hot water. This is great for those early mornings before work!}

{The homemade soup/dip booth is another favorite. So many samples at the Peddler's Show!}

{You can buy tons of jewelry, clothing, and shoes at the show. This is a picture of individual beads that a buyer could string on a necklace or bracelet chain}

{I just HAD to take a picture of these boots with the cute husband sign on them! I actually found a turquoise and tan pair in my size that I fell in love with, but gasped at when the saleslady told me they were $400. NO WAY!! But after telling Luke how beautiful they were, he asked me, "Why didn't you get them?" Seriously babe?!}

These are the few items I actually purchased...

{Two bags of coffee: Turtle and Snickerdoodle. Three bags of dip mix: On The Border, Tangy Jalapeno Ranch, and Dilly-icious}

{I feel in love with these two items instantly! The wall decor on the left could be hung anywhere in our apartment and has a blank space for a 4x6 picture to be glued to it. I already have a wedding picture in mind! The block on the right stands alone and is now hanging out on our entertainment center}

{I can never pass on a good jewelry deal! Cocktail ring: $3, Pearl earrings: $4}

{And lastly, this sweet little leaf/fall wall decor will be hanging on the front door of our apartment come October 1st}

The next Peddler's Show will be in November and I can't wait!! I'm ready to do some Christmas gift shopping and to buy more Christmas decor. :) Plus, once November rolls around, the weather will be cooler and hopefully I'll have a pumpkin spice latte in hand. Pleeeease hurry fall!!!

5 things I learned about my husband on our honeymoon

 {At Cocoa Beach Pier}

When you've been when someone for over 6 years, it sometimes feels like you couldn't learn anything new about your significant other. But leave it to a honeymoon to teach this "old married couple" a few new facts about each other! These are mainly things I learned about Luke, but I'm sure if you ask him, he could tell you a thing or two that he learned about me on this trip too. :)

1. We don't need a king-sized bed ANY time soon! We had a king-sized bed in our hotel at Disney and it felt SO huge! Our bed at home is a queen and I think it's perfect. Luke and I both have the right amount of space and Brook always curls up in her perfect little ball at the foot of the bed. In a king-sized bed, I felt like unless we made it a point to sleep side by side, there was way too much space between us. I woke up multiple times that week with 2-3ft. in between Luke and me. This was no bueno!
2. Luke is not a very good morning person. This one SHOCKED me. I mean, he is worse than me without my first two cups of AM coffee! The first morning of our honeymoon, it took Luke until about 11 a.m. to really be fully awake and excited to do anything. This was in no way a bad thing; he was a great sport. But you'd think after 6 years, I'd know this about him. I guess with both of us waking up early for work on a daily basis, we don't spend much of our mornings together. Weird. P.S. He got WAY better throughout the week! :)
3. Before this trip, Luke had never seen another body of water except the Gulf of Mexico. When he told me this, I thought, "No way! This guy that loves to surf and swim so much??" But alas, it was true. This is what spurred our decision to rent a car and drive to Cocoa Beach, FL, which is on the Atlantic Ocean side of Florida about 75 miles east of Orlando. Once we were at the beach, Luke rented a surf board and tackled his first official ocean. I love the pictures from that day!
4. When Luke is in a new place, he takes every aspect of it in and then creates his own opinion about it. When we would hop on the bus to a different park every morning, Luke would be very quite. At first, I thought this was a part of his not being a very good morning person quality, but I later learned that this is not the case. Because Luke was in a new place, he was taking it all in. The sounds, the scenery, the people, etc. A little later in the day, he would start giving me his opinion about different aspects or he'd ask me mine. Ex: "Babe, why do you think they do this like that?" "Hey--did you see the way this person helped that person? Disney does a good job of this..." And so forth and so on...
5. Luke is the best at holding hands. No matter where we went, Luke held my hand. If I had to pull away to open my purse, put my hair up into a ponytail, or whatever, his hand was reaching out for mine the moment I was done. Now again, we've been together for a little over 6 years. You would think that I would be extremely used to holding his hand, but there was something different on our honeymoon. He held my hand as if to protect me from the many people surrounding us or anything that may separate us. I loved every minute of it!!

I guess the biggest lesson I learned on my honeymoon is that I still don't know everything there is to know about my sweet hubby, but this excites me! We still have 50+ years to learn it all! :)

Let me be perfectly Claire

This is Claire Marie, my little sister. She is #3 of the 4 Martisek women. Yesterday, she took off on a jet plane to the Netherlands and will be traveling all over Europe this semester for school. I'm so excited for this wonderful opportunity for Clarabell to spread her wings! I helped her start a blog a few days ago and if you'd like to follow a cute young blonde through Europe, you should definitely check it out. :)

Claire's travel blog: Let Me Be Perfectly Claire

We're home!!

Luke and I are home from our honeymoon in Florida!!!

It was a wonderful week away from the real world, Corpus Christi, camp, and life, but we are so very happy to be home. 

Not only did we fly back to Texas today, but my sister, Claire, flew to Europe today (she's actually STILL on that 13-hour flight). 

I can't wait to update you all on what is happening in her life, plus tell you all about our magical honeymoon!!

But for now, it is bedtime. :)

{Before dinner at the California Grill!}

Leaving on a jet plane!

Today's the day!! At 11:55 a.m., Luke and I will take off from Corpus Christi International Airport, land in Nashville for a quick layover, and then take off again for Orlando! We'll land in Florida around 8 p.m. and head over to our hotel on the Disney grounds. We can't wait!!!

Luke and I are still packing, cleaning up around the apartment, and playing with our puppy. We think Brook is going to miss us like crazy, but the reality is that she'll completely forget about us after about an hour and have a grand ol' time hanging out at Aubrey's all week! I think I may hit the sack and finish the last minute packing for around 8 a.m. :)

The next time I'll post will be after the honeymoon! Have a great week everyone!!

Friday To-Do List

Sara's Friday To-Do List:

1. Get a mani/pedi 
2. Finish packing for the honeymoon
3. Clean the apartment
4. Workout
5. Check-in to our hotel online
6. Send the last hand-full of thank you notes from the wedding (I know this should be done already; don't judge me)
7. And have a hair feather put into my hair!!

I'm super excited about this last one!! A friend of mine that is a make-up artists does feather extensions and said she wanted to put one in my hair before our honeymoon. I'm pretty excited about it! My friend Sarah Leyda has one in right now and it's really discrete and sassy. I can't wait to see how mine turns out!

{I think mine will be a little more tucked away than this one, but I love this look!}

FREE furniture? We'll take it!

So there I was, sitting as my desk at work checking my Facebook right before I took off for lunch, when all of a sudden I noticed that my aunt updated her Facebook status to say that she was moving from San Antonio to Rockport. The moving part does not shock me. My great-aunt GREAT Aunt Cissy is an adventurous traveler with a love for the coast. The exciting part was that she mentioned that she's trying to clear out her house to make the move easier and asked if anyone wanted anything. Umm, excuse me, what about the not-so-rich newlyweds?? We love free stuff!

Of course, the first thing I asked about was furniture. Luke and I need more drawer space for clothing than you could even imagine! We have one large dresser and one small, both of which I was using before he moved in. I've also been wanting to buy a second couch for a while now, but just haven't found anything I loved for the price I had in mind. But as luck would have it, Cissy has one of each of these!!!

{Don't let the lighting fool you. This couch is more of a blueish-gray microfiber}

My aunt also told me about this awesome chair/ottoman combo that she has and I jumped on this one, knowing Luke would love it. When I texted Luke the picture, he said, "Oh my gosh, my chair has FOUND me!!" I think he is envisioning sitting in this chair while eating chips and guacamole and playing video games, ha!

{This (suede?) chair is fabulous! Plus, I love the ottoman}

I wish I had a picture of the 3-drawer chest of drawers to show you, but I actually haven't even seen it yet. But for free? I don't care what it looks like! I'm sure it's perfectly wonderful (my aunt has great taste), but even if it needs a little work, I love a good DIY project!

I'm picking up my dad's truck in Beeville on Saturday morning and then driving up to SA to get this furniture. I'm SO excited! It will sit in my dad's storage garage until we get back from the honeymoon, but this gives me something to look forward to after we return. You better believe there will be a follow up post about where we put all of this fun new furniture! Have I mentioned that it's FREE?? Pretty excited about this part. :)

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Today, I am loving...

1) Looking through all of our wedding photos...for the 1,000,000,000th time. :)

{Photo by Journey Tree Studio}

2) That Luke and I will be staying here for 1 glorious week starting Sunday:

{Wilderness Lodge at Disneyworld}

3) This jersey knit dress that I will pair with cute sandals while hanging out at Disney with the hubs:

4) This guy, who I hadn't seen in a week until last night. Oh, how my heart has missed him so! I can't wait to have him all to myself for an entire week. Honeymoon in T minus 4 days!!

 {He's so cute!}

The Versatile Blogger

This weekend I was in Dallas for a college friend's wedding (I will talk about about this fabulous weekend in my next blog post!). On Saturday night my iPhone beeped, letting me know that I had been tagged in a post on Facebook. When I checked out this tag, it was not at all what I was expecting! A sweet friend, Amanda Molleur, had tagged me in a Facebook post to let me know that she had nominated me for The Versatile Blogger award. Thanks so much for reading my blog, Amanda, and for considering me for such a fun award!!

Official Rules:

• Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.
• Tell your readers seven 7 things about yourself.
• Give this award to up to 15 recently discovered bloggers.
• Contact those bloggers and let them in on the exciting news. 

So, here's 7 facts about Mrs. Hinton...

1. I married my best friend just a short 6 weeks ago and we are loving the newlywed life! We also leave for our honeymoon in 7 days and we can't wait to go on our first official vacation together!

 
2. I graduated from Baylor University and couldn't be prouder to be a Baylor Bear! College was some of the best years of my life. It was during this time that I met some of my best friends in the entire world, realized that Luke was the man I was supposed to marry, and lived/worked in New York City for a semester. Thanks for the incredible memories BU and Sic 'Em Bears!!!!

3. A little over a year ago, this little one came into mine and Luke's lives. She weighed 1.7 lbs. and was just a fluff ball. Now, she's a little over a year old and the smartest, cuddliest pup I know. I can't imagine life without our Brooklyn!

4. I am left-handed (right-brained!), but I kick with my right foot, throw a softball with my left hand, shoot a better right-handed jump shot, shoot a better left-handed lay-up, and bat left-handed. I definitely use this confusion against my opponent when playing sports!

5. I am the oldest of four girls and my husband is third of four boys. I am very curious to see what our first kiddo will be. In 5 years, of course!! :)

6. I am addicted to coffee, chips and dip of all kinds, finding great shopping sales/deals, and reality TV.

7. For 4 summers (throughout college), I worked at Camp Zephyr. This is one of the most incredible places on God's green earth. It was at this camp that I met my husband, made some life-long friends, learned my first lessons as a business professional, and discovered what a life Christ-focused truly looks like. 

Now, it is time for me to pass on the blog love and give some of my blogger friends The Versatile Blogger award. Check out these awesome blogs!!

Jade: Life In The Sunshine
Molly: The Cash Family
Cat: C.A.T.: Creative All The Time
Stevie: Following The Walkers
Tamara: A TSP of Thoughts
Natalie: Clem in Time
Sarah: The Griesemers
Bethany: Fun with the Phillips
Shay: Little Adventures in a Big Place
Aubrey: Some Like It Aubrey
Katie: The Crabtrees
Natalie: Married Meets Healthy
Libby: Honeypied
Stephanie: The McCalls
Lisa: The LID

Rambling. :)

I feel like I've been slacking on the blog the last couple of weeks, but with good reason. Life has been so busy with weddings, weekend trips, work, etc. and I just haven't had time to sit down and flesh it all out. I actually find that I miss my blog when I haven't done a lot of writing recently. I think it's the journalist in me that just needs to lay everything out on the table to clear my head.

At 5:30pm today, I will leave work and head straight to Houston, where I'll stay the night at my college roomie's house. Then she, I, and another girlfriend of ours will leave early Saturday morning for Dallas to attend a wedding for another college friend. It is going to be a beautiful weekend full of love and girl time. I can't wait to see many of my college friends. When we get together, you can guarantee there is never a dull moment!! Pictures of this fabulous weekend to come. :)

Luke is currently transitioning from summer season to retreat season out at Camp Zephyr, which is always a treat (said with a small amount of sarcasam). He's been on a weird schedule lately, which throws us both off a bit. I've decided that I am undoubtably ready for the fall, cooler weather, and for Luke's schedule to settle into a more regular routine (wishful thinking camp wives?).

Well, that is about all I have to talk about. I guess I'm sort of just rambling, but sometimes it just feels good to write type it out. I'm excited that it is Friday, excited for my weekend adventure, and even more excited about God's faithfullness and perfect timing. In 9 days, Luke and I leave for our honeymoon in Florida. This trip is much anticipated and MUCH needed! So many exciting plans are in the works and I can just feel God moving in our lives right now. I am anticipating many fun blog posts to come in the near future.

Hope you all have a blessed weekend!!

Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Lewis!!

This past weekend, my sweet friend, Sarah, married the love of her life, Andrew, in a beautiful ceremony at River Hills Baptist Church in Calallen, TX (right outside of Corpus). The ceremony was beautiful and we had a great time celebrating at their reception afterward. I was a bridesmaid in Sarah's wedding, which was very special since she was a bridesmaid in my wedding just 5 weeks earlier. Sarah and Andrew, like Luke I, met and fell in love at Camp Zephyr, which just made the weekend that much more perfect! I'm so excited for these two as they start their new life together in San Antonio, where Sarah just accepted a job as a labor and delivery nurse. Congrats you two lovebirds!!

{Bridesmaids with the bride at the rehearsal dinner}

{The Hintons at the rehearsal dinner}

{Husband and wife. Wasn't she gorgeous?!}

{Friends at the reception}

{Congrats Mr. and Mrs. Lewis!!}