Fresh Produce

If case you haven't heard of Fresh Produce, it is a great company co-founded and still run by a mom entrepreneur, Mary Ellen Veron and is primarily made in the USA.  You can find their clothing sold in Fresh Produce stores’ and more than 500 specialty retailers throughout the US and Caribbean. 

I was lucky enough to have them contact me to see if I wanted to try out of of their new spring styles. {Spring Dresses}Umm, yes of course I do! The funny part is that a day earlier I had been eyeing some of there clothing in a store in Sanibel, Florida {see my trip to Sanibel here}. Which is also the name of one of their colors. Everything is named after a tropical locale, from the clothing to the colors. It makes it so fun to pick stuff out. 

I swear I went  back and forth between the Maxi dress in Catalina  and the Impromptu dress in Fiji like a hundred times! {I mean how could I ever decide there were so many options basic dresses: http://freshproduceclothes.com/fp/basic-dresses} 

The names of all their clothing is so perfect for the locals. I can see my self with a tropical drink with a pineapple in it on some fabulous beach in Fiji in the Fiji dress! Unfortunately a trip like that is not in the budget, so I went with the choice that better fit my life. Catalina is after all just off the coast of California. I think this means we will just have to take a little trip off the coast to Catalina soon!

I just love my Catalina Maxi Dress in oyster. I paired it with my J Crew Cardigan and flip flops and my favorite Stella and Dot necklace.

 Can I say another thing, I love being a medium! I hate the trend that seems to be plaguing the lower end stores where I can barely fit into an XL. I mean I'm not that big ;) There size chart was right on and the dress fits me perfect. {size chart} Another great thing is that they also have plus sizes that actually look like they would be flattering. I will have to get my mom into one of their stores next time she visits. {FYI They sell it at the exchange! There is also a fresh produce store in La Jolla and they sell it at many retailers throughout the county, see here}

In case your not lucky enough to be near a store like I am, don't despair.  Fresh Produce now ships to over 200 countries, so women outside the US can enjoy the colorful styles, too. 

If your taking a fabulous vacation this summer you should check out there clothes, they would be perfect for any summer getaway! {awesome beach & summer favorites}

Seriously though I love this dress it fits great and is super flattering {I'm not just saying it because they sent it to me!} My next purchase is one of their great scarves or this awesome cardigan- and it's on sale! 

Do you love Fresh Produce too?

How would you pair the Fresh Produce spring styles? 

XOXO,

Annie

Wish You Were Here Wednesday: Julian, California- Apple Pies and Buffalo Burgers

Julian is a cute little town about an hour east of San Diego. This  historic and charming town is full of bakeries with apple pies, antique stores and cute shops. They also have great buffalo burgers and some wineries around the area. 

We stopped at a little antique shop just outside of Julian

I really wanted one of these old sinks to use as a planter

These old crates would also make amazing planters

The town of Julian

The hardware store sold Minnetonka boots, so cute and comfy! I want some!

Do you have a cute little antique town near you?

XOXO,

Annie

Furniture Revamp: Goodwill Dresser

Most of my furniture is painted in the same way {similar to my nightstands here and trunk here}. I usually strip, sand, add two coats of primer and two coats of paint. If I am being lazy {like I was here} or it's a piece that isn't wooden, I won't strip it. I still have to sand it to get the old paint off and make the new paint stick.

First I sanded the entire piece, I used a little bit of paint thinner to get the gold paint out of the creases. Somewhere between Goodwill and my house the dresser got a large deep scratch down the top of it. For step by step instruction head over to Our Military Home and see my guest post{here} on how to fix blemished wood furniture.

The Before

It was a pretty easy fix, basically you just fill the crack with wood putty and wipe it smooth. You may have to do this several times. Once dry you sand it smooth with sandpaper or a small sander {like the Black & Decker Mouse, which is what I used}.

Recently I have been using my Rustoleum 2x cover  spray primer even on furniture, though I painted it on this particular piece. I rolled on the primer then a few days later the paint. It took a couple of hours, but I think the dresser turned out wonderfully.

For the handles I spray primed them with one coat of Rustoleum 2x primer than two coats of Rustoleum glossy black spray paint. The middle drawers were missing two of the draws pulls, but luckily for me the Alameda Flea Market always has drawer pulls in every color so I bought three small black crystal nobs {$5 each}.

The dresser was $40 and everything else besides the drawer pulls I already had in my shed. So I have a great wooden white dresser and it only cost $55!

What do you think?

How to you re-finish furniture?

XOXO,

Annie

Wish You Were Here Wednesday: Sanibel, Florida

We headed to Sanibel for some beach time and a little shopping. We collected shells for my cousins daughters girl scout troop and walked along the water. 

We walked to the lighthouse. On the way to the lighthouse we spotted an osprey nest with a momma osprey and her little birdie. 

We got super hot and hungry so we were on to our next adventure. lunch at the purple giraffe and a bit of shopping.There are so many amazing birds in Florida, while shopping we came across this one.

On the way back to the house we spotted these Sandhill Whooping Crane in the neighbors yard. 

What's your favorite thing about the beach?

XOXO,

Annie

Happy Easter!

We had my cousin, her husband and their three kids at our house for Easter and had an wonderful day {you may remember them from our trip to Salt Lake City, here & here}. It was my first holiday meal that I made on my own {well, without my mom, my husband is actually pretty helpful! He would like me to state that he cooked the Ham, with a little help from princess Abby} 

As with any holiday I love to decorate, pretty much anywhere in the house that I can. This probably has a bit to do with my compulsive shopping and need to craft! A few weeks ago I went to the La Mesa Antique Street Faire. It was great, not amazing like Alameda {see here} but it was worth the drive. La Mesa village is a quant little street with cute shops and tons of antiques stores, including an antique mall. I had no idea and I will definitely be checking out the area again soon. My husband and I had a great little breakfast at Por Favor Restaurant before he headed off to golf and I walked around for about four hours... yup I really enjoyed the day there! I got some really great holiday decorations for not very much. 

The lambs and little basket are from La Mesa

The blue mason jars are from Alameda

The spring sign is from Dollar Tree

Glitter eggs I made {see tutorial here} 

The big blue egg is from TJ Maxx

I made the giant bunny, it was the Valentine's Day card from my husband and our Doghter {yes, he got me an Easter card for Valentine's day and signed our dogs name!} I just painted some cheap Walmart canvas and Mod Podged it on.

Aren't the little $5 lambs so cute?!?

I printed out this great banner over at Cakes Like A Party, check her out here!

Even my front porch needed some Easter cheer {see tutorial here}

We had such a great day, there were Easter baskets

  and yummy treats

{for colored rice krispies, just add food coloring to the marshmallows before you add the krispies}

BB had so much fun running around with the kids that she is passed out

How cute is she? Just like my lil lambs

Hope you had a wonderful Easter like we did!

We're off to Sea World tomorrow.

XOXO,

Annie

iStuff for Dummies... like me!

This week I did the much dreaded upgrade and move to iCloud, it went smoother than I expected on my computer, but not so well on my noniphone phone. As soon as the upgrade was done the email on my android evo shift went down, and if you are like me are you are all too reliant on your email so this was a disaster of epic proportion ;) 

So I did what I always do when I cant figure out how to do something I googled it. Normally this works like a charm, but this time all I found were people with the same problem and no idea how to fix it. Some had even been to their phone providers stores with no luck.  Finally after searching and searching I found a link to apples response,  if it had been worded better google would have pooped it up, you can find that here. However this didn't work on my phone so back to google I went, I finally found this brilliant blogger and he had a tutorial on how to make my phone work again. Thanks so much, Santosh! You are a life saver!  (find his tutorial here). 

Of course this didn't work at first for me either so after several tries and combinations I decided to go thru the comments. He was nice enough to respond helpfully to all of his comments {something I am guilty of not doing!}. About half way down I found a great tip, for some reason if you sign into your apple account and change your password and then set it up, following his instructions, it works. So I thought what the hell it can't hurt so I changed my password and viola it worked!!!!! Thanks so much Santosh you rock!

For some reason like having to upgrade to iCloud wasn't stressful enough the night before my cross country trip to Florida, I decided to buy and set up an iPad. I figured hey the iPad 3 was just released so the iPad 2 should be on sale as cheap as its going to get and sure enough the exchange and them $100 off plus I had a 5% off coupon and a $100 gift card. 

So far I really like my iPad. I do suggest buying the 3G one if you can afford it. You don't have to have To set it up and the data plans start at $14.99 and their is no contract, it's month to month. (disclaimer- please read or ask when you sign up to make sure yours works the same way.) My only problems so far was that the contacts and twitter will not open, when I try to open them they pop up for half a second and close back down. (yes I tried the basic reset) I also googled this problem, many were experiencing the same problem but no one seemed to know how to fix it. 

I thought I would have to head to the Mac store when I got back to Cali, but luckily Google saved me again.  I found this helpful apple discussion here.  I plugged my iPad into my computer and backed it up in iTunes, then I hit the reset button on iTunes to completely wipe clean my iPad. This would have been more nerve racking, but I'd only had it a week so not much to loose. I had to erase all the data, apps and settings on the iPad and then set it up like a new iPad, do not use the automatic backup or it will not fix it. Trust me I tried that first! I then reinstalled all the apps and movies from iTunes on my computer and my iPad works great and I didn't loose anything that as on there!

                                        Do you have a iPad? Have you had any problems? 

XOXO,

Annie

Wish You Were Here Wednesday: Ringling Museum of Art; Sarasota, Florida

Last week I went to visit my Grandpa in Florida. I absolutely love Florida, from the beautiful beaches to cheap stuff I just love my trips there. On Monday we headed to the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. Mondays was not the ideal day for us to go since the art museum is free and very crowded. We wanted to see the Ca' d'Zan Mansion and circus museums as well so we didn't really get anything free and it meant more people were there. But if you want to see the art museum for free Monday is your day! They do offer a military discount, but only to active duty. 

The grounds were huge, there are two restauraunts, the mansion, the Ringling museum, the miniature circus model, an art museum and several gardens.  It would be easy to spend all day there and we spent several hours exploring the property.

The Ca' d'Zan Mansion was certainly lavish for its time, built in the 20s, well any time really, it had 50+ rooms and was 5 stories. The outside was beautiful, but the inside was a a bit garish. Definitely not the decorations I would have gone with! The upstairs has a bathroom made completely of marble that I wouldn't mind having.

My favorite part was the back patio, really patio isn't the right word since it was probably more square feet than most peoples homes. The view of the water was phenomenal and I could have lounged there all day, especially if I had someone to bring me cocktails! Even the floor was amazing, it was all made of different colors of marble in a chevron pattern. We would have lounged their longer if it weren't for some rude people who came and loudly interrupted our shady solitude.

The Circus museum was by far my favorite part of the day, I always loved the circus when I was a girl. My parents would take me every year when the circus rolled into town. I still remember being in awe of it all, I loved it all! At the museum they have tons of memorabilia, from the sideshow banners, circus posters and wagons, there is a little bit of everything that makes the circus grand. 

Also on display in the museum is the Wisconsin, built in 1905, the private rail car of Johns and Mable Ringling. It was beautiful and even I would have loved to live in this train car. It was reminiscent of Water for Elephants. 

Next stop was the world's largest miniature circus, it was ginormous and so detailed. You really could imagine how wonderful it would have been to see the old time circus pull into tow. The main tent was 

600 by 200 and only took 2 hours to set up the city without a zipocde. The lines began at dawn for the greatest show on earth. 

Their was a band and magical performers, you could see people flying through the air and animals walk on two legs. I can see why it was called the greatest show on earth! The circus was such a big deal that in many towns the schools and factories would close so that everyone in town could enjoy it. 

 The Sideshow- was the smallest of the tents and entry required a separate ticket.  Men shouted "ballyhoo" from outside the tents to describe the strange and wonderful things inside.

The Menagerie- was the tent where the common an exotic animals were kept. For many it was the first time they saw animals from other continents. Along with your usual circus animals like the elephants and lions, there were also hippos, giraffes and even kangaroos. Many of the animals were kept in beautiful caged wagons, like the ones on display in the museum.

 The miniature circus had everything, even a bathroom!

 The Big Top- The largest of all the tents is where the performances were. It was raised in just a few hours and had over 500 stakes and 20,000 yards of canvas.  The big top was the center of the circus experience. In 1926 the performance included 800 performers and lasted two and a half hours.

I always wanted to be one of the ladies who was all dressed up and doing tricks on horseback. I sort of got to experience this at the museum. 

I bought a book of old circus poster and I can't wait to decoupage the photos onto canvas and paint the edges black. I plan to hang them in my bathroom something like how these old poster were hung in the museum. Hopefully I can get it together and do it soon ;) 

We headed downtown for some shopping and a snack and then headed to the beach for a little walk and to collect some shells. All in all it was a great day spent in Sarasota. 

What was your favorite circus performance? 

Did you ever want to run away and join the circus?

XOXO,

Annie