This Lil' Birdie is Getting Married

(I'm warning you now, this is a LONG post with LOTS of pictures, but it's well worth your time! Promise!)

It's official!!

Sweet boyfriend is no longer the boyfriend!  He's future hubby (aka: FH!)!

One incredibly slow Saturday at work, FH's mom walks in (she's also my boss) holding a beautiful arrangement of alstroemerias (my favorite flowers).

Me: "Ooh, pretty! Who are those for?"  Future MIL: "You!"

And then she hands me this.

Operation VISH (Very Important Scavenger Hunt).... at this point I kinda knew what was going on, but it was still exciting!

I'm currently obsessed with a nursery glider we have in our store.  It's a fabulous suzani print that absolutely MUST MUST MUST come live with me soon!  This was under the seat cushion....

We actually met at a Mexican restaurant on The Strip in Tuscaloosa.  My comment about his purple shirt got us talking.  So off towards campus on Football Fan Day (oh, and did I mention it was also Sorority Rush Week's Bid Day?) in the worst traffic of the year... to El Rincon...

This was taped to the front door (lucky no one pulled it down!!)

FH's old roommate was very much a part of our relationship when we first started dating. "Rob" actually slept on the couch in FH's condo.  That couch has been moved, but this was in its place...

At this point I'm thinking, OMG, this is really happening.  He's upstairs.  Wait.  Where was his car? 

At the top of the stairs, this was sitting on his open computer...

Both doors upstairs are closed, so I assumed he was hiding behind one of them.  And for the life of me, I could NOT get his computer to open.  He normally has it password protected and I tried at least 6 times to type that password in correctly.  Seriously?!  Are my hands shaking this much?! Finally I had to text him.  The reply?

"Just hit enter"

Lemme tell you, I'm genius. 

Here's the video....

Isn't he adorable?!

So I head off to my old apartment complex where I lived when we started dating (the "Mont by the River").

And this is what's taped up outside of my old apartment (and when I say taped, I'm talking I took paint off the post when I took it down!!)....

 

1. He hates Pride & Prejudice.  I love it.  We watched it on one of our first dates.  He suffered through the whole thing.  I think he might love me a little bit.
2. I had mice in this apartment.  Not pets.  Wild, field mice.  Ick.  This is why I moved.

But my clue led me on to our church and I found this...

This one made me cry.  Big time.  So sweet.  And I haven't even mentioned this before but FH and I bought a house (but aren't living together) so that's where I went to find this...

This one's hard to read, but it says my furry friend (aka: Puppy) had my last clue.  My first thought?  Oh, no, what did he tape to my dog?!

But it wasn't taped to sweet Isabelle; just to the gate I use to keep her from roaming the house and making messes...

So on my way upstairs, I notice that my flowers somehow made it from work to the house, and I snapped a picture...

They're lovely!

When I got to the third to last step upstairs, FH (standing in our bonus room) dropped to one knee.  I lost it.  I don't remember the last few steps, exactly what he said, or even looking at the ring, but I remember one thing...

"I want to spend the rest of my days with you.  Will you marry me?"

"YES!!!!!!"  Cry cry cry.  Blubber blubber blubber.  Ring on finger.

Next thing out of my mouth?

 "You couldn't have done this on a day when I actually washed my hair?"

This Lil' Birdie Loves: Big Sunglasses

Yes, yes, it's been a while.  Yadda yadda.  All that.

But there's a lot going on and we'll get to that sooner or later.

For now, let's talk about my obsession with big sunglasses.

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I think this is the epitome of classic fashion.  If Jackie O wore a paper bag, I would probably still love it. But to me, the sunglasses just make this whole thing fabulous.

It is extremely possible to go too big (and I think Hollywood proved that point for all of us a few years back), but a classic big round sunglasses in black or tortoise shell, and you really just can't go wrong.

Which is why my next purchase will be these

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I will be sure to post my Jackie-inspired look as soon as (1) these come in and (2) I find the charger for my camera.

This Lil' Birdie Is Techy

Okay, so I might have maybe lied just a little bit in the title of this post.  Seriously, I'm probably one of the most un-techy people.  Ever.  But you'll understand the lie in, oh, about 5 to 7 minutes (depending on how fast you read, of course).

I had a conversation at work today about how babies born in 2011 will never understand life without a cell phone.  I remember getting my very first ever cell phone in the ninth grade.

It looked like this.

Except that I was amazingly cool and "high tech" and had a pink faceplate cover. Just the front.

But that phone lasted a whole of less than a year before it was "outdated" and I got this lil' gem.

And I seriously thought it was the coolest thing ever when I got a phone cover (front AND back, no less) with "blah blah blah blah" written all over it.  'Cause you know, in the ninth and tenth grades, all you do is talk on the phone.  Oh, wait.  No, I didn't at all.

Anywho.  This phone was amazing! I could play snake (Ooh, do y'all remember snake?!)  And then I figured out the genius behind texting (when it took you sixteen minutes to text one letter because you had to push every button six times to get the right letter to come up and you could pretty much forget about capitalizing anything or figuring out the punctuation.  Was there even punctuation?).  And noone I knew even texted then.

See, I was totally techy before techy was techy.

But wait.  It gets better.  I remember pitching a. Fit. because I wanted a flip phone!  OOOH!  They were so cool!

So Mommy and Daddy caved, and I got this just before my senior year in high school...

Except mine wasn't blue, it was silver.  But oh, it was so COOL!  That black and white screen, the antenna, and when I hung up on people, it was just so SATISFYING!  And the best part about it?  I bedazzled it.  Yup.  Seriously.  I had red and clear swarovski crystals absolutely COVERING that thing.  But I was a cheap do-it-myself kinda girl even back in the day, so I didn't actually pay for a cover.   No, no, instead, I individually glued like 60000000 teeny tiny rhinestones to the front of this sucker.  And over the course of the next year, they fell off.  Slowly.  One by one.  Until I had like 6 left and FINALLY decided to take them off.

Yep, I was totally cool.

But wait, my freshman year in college, this technology changer came out...

And I had. to. have. it.  So on Black Friday my freshman year in college, me and my sweet momma and my extremely annoyed sister stood in line for THREE HOURS to get me this stupid phone.  And oh, how I loved it!  Once again, techy.  See, it had a COLOR screen.  And could play real music ringtones.  And this is when my cell phone addiction came into play full force.  No turning back now.

The Razr was followed by this guy cause it was even SMALLER and, wait for it, played iTunes.  I mean, really.  I HAD to have the phone that played iTunes (and I think I might've used it once.  Ever.)

Which was followed by this...

Because... well... blackberries were just cooler and I wanted the full keyboard for texting.  Seriously, at this point in my life I was the texting queen.  No, really.  From senior year in high school until about junior year in college, I texted.  I didn't call.  Half of my relationships started and ended over texts.  Ahhhh... the good ol' days.

Then the Pearl was stolen when I dropped in during class (true story), and I ran around like a crazy person with no phone (had to stop someone one the Quad and ask to borrow their phone because I had ABSOLUTELY no way to get in touch with anyone *WAHHHHHH*), so I got this.

And email on my phone.  And oh, bud, it. was. cool.  Looking back now, I'm think this was the biggest, clunkiest phone I ever owned.  But this was probably the one I had the longest.  From Sophomore year in college all the way until my senior year in college when...

Sweet Petunia fell out of my rain jacket pocket and died tragically in the world's deepest rain puddle. I tried to resuscitate her.  She went in the oven at 150 for six hours.  She went in a bag of rice.  She went under the fridge and came out dusty.  Nothing helped. 

So in the "Hi, my name is Ashleigh and I have no phone because land-lines are so not cool" stage, I found this. And it was a touch screen.  And I was anti iPhone/Apple.

Really, please do not ask me what this phone is called.  All I know is it sucked.  So when my brother in law got an iPhone for Christmas, changed his mind, and offered to sell it to me for $50, I took it.

See, techy.  And this was about a year and a half ago.  iPhones weren't exactly new.  But I had one!  Yep, techy.

And since, as you can tell by now, I have an amazing track record with taking care of cell phones, within the first two weeks of having this bad boy, I dropped it, and shattered the screen (thanks, adorably cute pink sparkly case that did absolutely nothing in the way of actually protecting anything).  So I lived with the phone with a broken screen for MONTHS until Boyfriend (who truly is the most techy person I know.  Really.) decided he wanted the iPhone 4 (ooh, back to the bar phone but this time with color screen and a compass!) and I decided I wanted one too. So we pre-ordered.  His came in first. 

And that's how this came into my life.

We have discussed at length my obsession with phone cases.  But I would say, at this time in life, the obsession is definitely not with the phone.  The phone has become a part of me now, though.  Could I live without an iPhone (provided I had SOME phone, of course!  This isn't exactly the dark ages.)?  Probably so.  Do I want to live without my iPhone?  Not particularly

Will I get the "new" iPhone when it comes out?  Nope.  'Cause, you see, I'm already techy.  And I'd really much rather put my money into new cases.

Like this.

AHHH!  It's on sale! Off to purchase more things I don't need.  Someone stop me?  Please?

What's your cell phone evolution look like?  Am I the only one

This Lil' Birdie Sanded

So we've talked about my little obsession with Halcyon Green.

But if you know me at all, you know I'm never really "done" with anything.

Like the dresser that's currently my TV stand.

Here's the story:

The dresser was my Daddy's growing up, then mine as long as I can remember, and it wasn't particularly ugly, just not the wood color I would've picked (think walnut).  So when Sweet Sister and I were moving in together for college, she needed a dresser, this was an extra, and somehow it made it to Tuscaloosa.

I painted it cream and then added a brown glaze so that it would match her "shabby chic" room.

Then when she moved out, it was once again my dresser.  For two years, it was pretty and cream and made a great TV stand (plus, who doesn't need extra storage space, right?!).

You can see it in the background of this picture (please overlook the mess -- my best friend had decorated my apartment for my 21st birthday -- yes, that was years and years ago).  That's Isabelle being a nerd about the balloons.

But apparently that wasn't good enough because I got a whim to paint it one day.  I headed to the Sherwin Williams store, got Halcyon Green paint (didn't even take it home to look at the swatch), and bought paint.

Two coats later it looked a little like this....

(Hi Isabelle!  Always in the pictures....)

But I'm not a perfectly painted kinda girl (if you didn't know that before, now you do).  So I took some brown paint and "antiqued" it...

This was the "finished" product....

Here's a close-up of the brown on top distressing (it looks very light blue in this pic but it's not!).

In retrospect, the handles should have been changed, but I'm lazy.  They were good enough.

But now?  Now that I'm moving into a big girl house (more on that later!) and this could possibly end up in my foyer, it needed SOMETHING.

So on the rainiest day Tuscaloosa has seen in a month of days, I decided to sand it.

Here's what happened.

It turned GREEN and white.  Not quite what I was expecting, but I like it!  Sanded is obviously on the left.

I definitely like it better.  Like I said, it was absolutely pouring so I had to bring everything inside without finishing, but it gives you a good what it looks like now vs before picture!

Left is sanded, right is not.  And here's a close up of the sanding

This piece is a favorite of everyone that visits (except the Boyfriend, he doesn't much like it).  And now I think it's one of my favorites.

Can't wait to finish sanding it! (But my hands can definitely use the rest!).

This Lil' Birdie Loves Ruffles

Hello, sweet little ruffled friend.  Since The Limited is have a 40% off everything (yes, you read that right.  EVERYTHING) sale tomorrow, you will most likely be living in my closet from here on out.

Heartbroken, Devastated, and How You Can Help

Some of you know and some of you don't, but I have been blessed for the past six years to live in the wonderful city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama.  If you've watched the news at all this morning or last night, that name should ring a bell.

Last night, around 5, a F5 tornado one mile wide tore through Tuscaloosa.

As I sat in a saferoom with 8 other people 5 to 10 miles away from the tornado, I was the most scared I have ever been in my entire life.  We had watched the massive tornado rip through Cullman, Alabama earlier in the afternoon, and couldn't even imagine that happening to our town.

It's one thing to see it on the news in another city, another state.  It's a whole other thing entirely to hear reports of "total devastation" in YOUR town.

For some reason we're pretty much a tornado magnet sitting here just 45 minutes from Birmingham, Alabama.  And we're no stranger to tornadoes.  April 15th of this year we had a tornado rip through the south part of our town.  But it wasn't like this.

To put it in perspective, the cottage I used to share with my sister is roughly where that arrow in the picture is.

This is Forest Lake and 16th Street E.  I lived on Forest Lake and 19th Street E.

A sweet friend and her husband (our church's neighborhood missionaries) visited the site last night to pass out water and clothes.  This is what she said to me...

"All roads impassible.  Having to use dozers to clear roads.  Talked to a police officer at Rec Center and he said there are more than 15 dead because he pulled 9 himself and in Rosedale[a government housing project] there were so many dead that they just marked them and set them aside. It's really bad... People can't even get out to get home to other counties, not even by the interstate. Only two gas stations open in all of Tuscaloosa; everyone coming to Northport."

My heart breaks when I hear this because this is my town.  I know these people.

If you haven't seen it already, please watch this video.  I don't think the person should have been in their car that close to the actual tornado, but I was with a friend in this area just Tuesday night for a Stella & Dot show.  Now it's gone.

I would hope that your first response to seeing something like that would be to pray for anyone and everyone that was in that monster storm's path.  Apparently it crossed four states (Alabama, Georgia, and then North Carolina and South Carolina).

I would hope your second response would be "How can I help?"

The prayers are much needed.  The estimated death toll is 128 in Alabama, and that is before workers had daylight to search the debris.

We also need blood.  I've heard reports of a blood drive today in at Northridge Fitness in Tuscaloosa.  I don't know that for sure, but I do know that our local Red Cross location was directly in the path of the tornado yesterday.  The Red Cross released a statement and you can read it here.

Also, our University of Alabama Student Rec Center has been set up as a shelter for those without homes.  They are in desperate need of toiletries, pants, and undergarments.

If you would like to send a care package with some items, please send me an email at thislilbirdie at gmail dot com and I'll provide you an address.

Today, it's not about what team you root for or where you graduated from college.  It's about human life and helping others. I hope you'll find it in your heart to help my beautiful city, because God knows, we need it.

This Lil' Birdie is Spent...

My newest inspiration....

Keep Calm Parody Print, Earmark's Etsy Shop

It's been that kind of week.

Thankfully tomorrow starts a new one!

(Thanks, Sweet Sister for sharing!)