Where Will You Be In 10 Years?

Hi Foxy Friends. The ladies at The Blended Blog were reading What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty and thought, where do we think we'll be in 10 years. So every third Tuesday of the month, we're hopping 10 years into the future and trying to predict where we will be. Guess who's first? That's right, ME! So hop on over to The Blended Blog to see how old I'll be, where I think I'll be living and what I think the kids will be doing.

Where do you think you'll be in 10 years?

 

Feel free to use this graphic if you want to participate, just link back to my blog or The Blended Blog for credit. Thanks!

 

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$10 Target Haul: June Edition

Back linking up with Becky, Beth, Courtney. Elizabeth, Rachel, Stephanie, Tif  and Whitney to show what we got for just $10 at Target.

I was all set to get up early, go to Target by myself...as I'm sneaking out of my bedroom, I hear a familiar *Thump*, sigh...Baby Fox is awake and has heard me sneaking out. He cracks his door and I see a big smile..."want to come with me?"   YES!

Here's our $10 stash.

So we were at Target, and of course stopped by the $1 section first. Baby Fox found these Legos, so we bought one for him and one for his sister, we didn't currently have any girl Legos, she's obsessed with them.

Then I found some magnets, you can never have enough cute magnets for the fridge, and then I FINALLY found those pens everyone has been talking about. I do admit they are really nice to write with and for $3, can't be beat. Baby Fox had his half birthday party this past weekend and I know those beach balls would come in handy. Although blowing them up...man that was hard! Usually those things aren't that hard, but you had to hold it a certain way, upside down and standing on one foot to get it to work, seriously, not even exaggerating one bit...

And now for the price...I did have a giftcard for $10, so I could have technically bought something for $20, but I decided to use the gift card another time, so the total was...$8.51. As I was paying, I thought, dang, I over estimated the tax...I could have bought one more $1...darn. Oh well, better luck next time!

 

 

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Friday Favorites #74

Happy Friday Foxy Friends! I'm off today and prepping for Baby Fox's Half Birthday! It's a pool party and it's suppose to be 90°! After having several weeks of 70's, I'm not sure if I'm happy it's going to be hot, or dreading it...at least I know everyone will have fun, at least I hope so!

Monday: Let It Go Summer Fun - How to have a summer the kids will remember
Tuesday: How to go 3-5 Days Between Washing Your Hair
Wednesday: Create 28 - A Swing Dress
Thursday: I give you 5 tips on what to do after you buy a house

 This weekend we're hosting Baby Fox's half birthday, So excited to set everything up. Baby Fox is so excited to help me decorate. This is the invitation I made, I think it came out pretty good.

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 This week, Mr. came home with this...what's better than Chocolate Malted Crunch? He said when he got there, there was a wall of Rocky Road and no Chocolate Malted Crunch in site, but he kept looking and found this one in the back behind all of that Rocky Road, phew!

Baby Fox was complaining about his books, so the moment has arrived, I thought he was ready to start reading Harry Potter. We've been reading about one chapter a night and he's loving it...He started on top of the covers....

And eventually worked his way under the covers and hunkered down for a good read...

In other news, we're getting rid of that pacifier in her mouth...today! We're giving them to a baby we know...she's passing them on, I hope it works! Party on Saturday with a kid with no binky's...we might be in trouble! But no weekend is a good weekend right? Fingers crossed for us please. We've been prepping her for this for months...

 Some random pictures from the week...

I got one workout in, because....

 

Mini Fox started ISR (Infant Self Rescue) swim lessons. We need to get her water safe this summer. Coach C says that she's doing great, and that she's doing stuff with her that he normally does weeks later...and it's her third day. I hope it works! I snuck this picture, we aren't supposed to take pictures...not sure why but what can you say I'm a rule breaker....

 

Dinner with my parents, it had been a couple of weeks since we had dinner. We needed to order all of the food for Baby Fox's party, so we figured, order food, get dinner...win. They still had their Cinco Dey Mayo stuff out.

Oh and after that work out I did up there...we went to In and Out, yep I was still in my workout clothes...haha.

Hope you have a great weekend! See you on Monday with my $10 Target Haul!


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5 Tips To Do After You Buy a House

Hi Foxy Friends! Last month I did a post on how to buy a house, so I'm back with some more advice...on what to do AFTER you've bought your house! Let's assume that you've signed the papers, the inspection went great and you now have the keys in hand,yay! Congrats, welcome to home ownership!

ONE

Make a list of everything that you want to do to your house and prioritize. Rome wasn't built in a day, and either is doing everything you want in your house.  So make a list and try and figure out how much things are going to cost. We knew we wanted to change the color of our house, STAT. See that graphic up there...yep that was the color of our house...and that makes it look nicer than it was. So first thing we did, literally we got the keys and the told the painter GO! If you want more details on  what we renovated, click here.

Much better right? See all those boxes in the window? Yep that was our "blinds" for a good 6 months...haha! Our neighbor across the streets bedroom window faces this window and he could see our tv...so yep those boxes stayed there for a while.

TWO

Be patient, you have a budget, stick to it. I know you want to buy drapes and blinds for every window and decorate and fill every room with house, but most likely you have way more room than furniture...take your time, find the pieces that fit you instead of going all out and getting everything at once. We waited a YEAR before we got drapes in our room. We saved up and then bought our drapes...boy was it nice to have a dark room to sleep in.

Best day ever when he came to install our drapes.

THREE

If you can do it yourself, go for it, if you know it's above your knowledge hire it out...we know our time is valuable so we hired most of our renovations out, the only thing we did do was paint...and man did we paint. We went through 23 gallons for primer and 20 gallons of paint. We painted every wall, every ceiling, every baseboard and doorway. We did not paint the doors...that seemed to intimidating to me! We didn't get cable for the first 5 months we lived there, I knew if we had cable we would watch tv instead of paint...so we painted from the time we got home till dark. Great motivator to get stuff done!

If I never saw another paint brush it would be too soon. That being said, I know how to cut in between the wall and ceiling like no ones business, if you need tips just ask, throw that blue tape out, there is an easier way to do it!

FOUR

We took the Dave Ramsey Classes, read about that here and here, that being said we like to budget for everything, I can't remember where Mr. read it, perhaps it was in the Dave Ramsey class, but we were told that you need to save $1 for every square foot of house each year for maintenance. We've been in our house for nearly 7 years and this is very true for us. And even if you don't use it all in that year, you're going to eventually need to get a new roof, water heater breaks, etc. It's nice to have that little bit of savings that you know you can use and not have to worry of something major happening. When Mini Fox was 4 weeks old we got a slab leak, so we decided to replace our plumbing, which totally sucked, but you know what financially we had already prepared for it, so it wasn't a big deal money wise. That's always nice to know that. If you want to see what our house looked like getting re-plumbed...click here...it's scary, you might want to click away, hehe.


FIVE

Just remember that you don't need everything all at once. We really wanted to get our backyard redone, but figured while we save up the money to get it done, we would use it to see how we really were going to be using the space. Turns out what where we thought we wanted the table was not where it ended up because it was in the direct sunlight all the time. But had we done the backyard right away and not lived with it for a couple of summers, we wouldn't have know how we wanted it. Same goes for the house, use the space a little, it may surprise you how you end up using things!

OH and one last tip, buy small plants! They are cheaper and just let them grow! We bought the smallest ones we could, and it took a year, but it was worth saving hundreds of dollars to go the cheaper route, and what's a year when you're in your "forever" home? And space out the plants, they grow more than you think, ask the people where you buy the plants how far away you should space it, we totally would have bought too much had we not asked!

So there you have it, 5 tips of what to do after you buy a house! Hope these were helpful! And congrats on getting your house!

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Create 28: A Swing Dress and Hair Challenge Week 24

We're back to week 2 of the Create 28! Head on over to The Blended Blog to see a recap on how each prompt was styled.

This week I didn't do much, I wish I had something with fringe, perhaps that is my new goal, find something cool with fringe, I'm thinking summer sandals or a purse. Or maybe some fun fringe sleeves...hmmm...anyway, I got a new dress from Old Navy.....actually just after I bought it Whitney styled the same exact dress...great minds think alike!

Apparently I don't like the iron, oops! Sorry about that. I am just loving the swing dress style this season. Mr....not so much, but what does he know? He think everything just looks big, lol...he has a point, but it's so comfy, you can't NOT wear it!

I went simple with the accessories, just added a simple necklace, I find when I wear earrings, Mini Fox finds them super fascinating and either asks to get her ears pierced (over Mr.'s cold dead body, he says at least 12, I'm pushing for 8...well see who wins that battle), or tries to steal them out of my ears.

I saw this hair style and immediately wanted to try it. I think I've decided that my favorite looks are the ones where my hair is half up, gets my hair out of my face and at the same time I get to feel girly with my hair down.

Now onto the hair challenge, this week I just did a couple, it's hard to do my hair during work...

Seriously I am messy bun challenged...no matter how hard I try...I JUST CAN'T DO IT!

One day...one day...

Off to dinner and Mini Fox asks me...where Mama Make-Up? I said I'm not wearing any...she said...make-up Mama...uh oh, I'm creating some sort of monster that won't go out of the house without it...so I complied and quickly did my hair and make-up in 10ish minutes...okay more like 15, caught.

Mr. and I have waited patiently for Game of Thrones to start up, and then we let 7 episodes stack up before we watched, so we had been binge watching them all week...so I took this style from the Mother of Dragons...she has way more hair...but ya know I had 10 minutes.

Sunday we went to a birthday party, this might look familiar from above...yep, I took that outfit picture after naptime. This was before we went to the party.

Did you read my post from yesterday? It was all about how to go 3-5 days between washing your hair...for the record this is day 3 hair.

Link up your outfits posts, I want to see what you styled this week!

An InLinkz Link-up

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5 Tips How to Go 3-5 Days between Washings

Hi Foxy Friends! I decided since I am almost half way through my hair challenge that I would give you my tips and tricks on how I can now go 3-5 days between hair washings. Let me tell you it was a longish road, but totally worth it!

Let me first start off by saying that I was a wash your hair every night because if I don't my hair is a big greasy mess on day 2. So if this is you, there is hope! For reference I typically will wash my hair 2 times a week. Usually on Monday nights (because I workout that day) and then again on Friday night or Saturday morning after working out.

Be patient. This is just like anything else, it's going to take time to train your hair.  You've been washing your hair everyday for how long? You can't just one day tell your hair, hey I'm going to wash you every 4 days and have it be happy with you. You are going to have to go into this know that you're going to have some crappy greasy hair days ahead of you. Seriously, like there were times when I just wanted to wash my hair! But it was for the greater good, so I continued on. I bought some of these oil wipes for my face, and used those to help bridge the uncomfortable gap between washings.

*I did buy these with my own money, but linked products are affiliates and I will receive a small commission if you click on it. Thank you for your support!

Dry shampoo is your friends, I repeat again dry shampoo is your friend. Once you get it wrapped around your mind that you're going to have a couple of months of uncomfortable days, you can move onto the next step.  Which is find a great dry shampoo. You are not going to get through this without it! Seriously, you might have to try several, but it's out there, I promise. I can tell you that I've tried 4 different ones and this one works the best for me. I've tried some of the popular ones, and they just didn't work for my hair...so there is one out there, you just have to find it. Note: I've never tried the non aerosol kind of dry shampoo...not because I don't want to, just that I keep forgetting to look, so if any of you have one that you love, pass it on my way!

Tip: If you want to try this out and don't want to pay the $20ish that it is, Sephora has it for $10, you can find it in those little bins that stand next to while waiting in line. You get to try and new dry shampoo and it's travel size so you can take it anywhere.

I did a quick video for those that have never used dry shampoo, how I apply my dry shampoo. I use it liberally. I think it works best that way, especially after a workout.

I didn't realize this either, and I have NO idea if this helps or not, but I switch up my shampoo every single time I wash my hair. I do tend to use my Target Hair Food Shampoo and conditioner for when I know I'm going to go longer between washings, cause it seems to work the best on my hair. Then the other days I wash with whatever shampoo I'm trying get to get to the end of the bottle.

It takes time to build up how long to go between washings. Start with every other day, until you feel comfortable, then go to every second day, etc. Typically I try to just wash my hair twice a week. I like to try and wash it on a hard work out day, so I will wash it on a Monday night and Saturday morning...it just works out that way right now. But do what works best for you. I try to do my hair that doesn't involve heat on the first day or two, and then on the second or third day I'll add some curls so by the third or fourth day I can throw it up and have the curls help with the up style.

This was done on Day 4 hair.

You are going to need to do your hair on day 3ish to 5, sometimes I can get away with just throwing up my bangs with some bobby pins on day 3, but days 4 and 5 I need to do something with it. It's going to sometimes feel a little limp and flat, I like using a texturizing spray to help with volume, I absolutely love the Amika Un.Done Texture Spray. It gives you volume you didn't even know you had! When I first started using it I was convinced it was magic in a bottle...it's amazing stuff, especially if you have fine hair, give this a try!

This is the bobby pins keeping my bangs away (even though I don't have bangs, you get it), I do this on day 2 or 3 hair

A simple braid, I do this on day 3 and 4 hair

I also like doin the braided crown for day 4 and 5 hair.

There you have it, 5 tips on how I trained my hair to go 3-5 days between washings. Trust me girls, if I can do it anyone can. I thought, eww gross, going that long between washes, but dry shampoo really does the trick to get rid of the grease and make your hair feel fresh again.

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