Why I Love Vera Bradley

This post has been sitting in my drafts for a month or so, just waiting for me to finish it up.  Today's the day! I know Vera Bradley is one of those things you either love or you hate.  The people who love it usually have gobs of it and the ones who hate it are sometimes pretty vocal about it and it's bright colors and trendiness.  I think I actually fall somewhere in the middle.  I love, love, love my Vera Bradley travel bags, but I'm not really a huge fan of it when it comes to purses.  That's just my opinion; if you have a VB purse, I'm sure it's great.

But really this post is all about my travel set and how much I love it.  I got my first piece - the large duffel bag in Apple Green - when I was nearing the end of my senior year in college.  My roommates carried their duffel bags on all our road trips, and I was ready to follow suit.  A few months later, I began the interview process for a job that would require me to travel more than 50% of the time.  At that same time, I found out the Apple Green print that I loved so much was being discontinued.  So obviously, I told myself I needed to buy all the pieces immediately.  This brings me to reason #1 Why I Love Vera Bradley:

1) I was able to complete my travel set by purchasing all the pieces off eBay, new with tags.  For a recent college grad with no job (I didn't even end up taking the traveling job!), this was key because I had no money.  I was able to find all the pieces I wanted in my soon-to-be-discontinued pattern for a lower price than on the store's website.  To add to my large duffel bag, I purchased the small duffel, a mini duffel (that I guess they don't sell anymore?), a garment bag, a hanging toiletry bag (similar), a makeup bag (similar-ish), and a jewelry bag (similar).

If you aren't familiary with Vera Bradley bags, these are all soft quilted fabric bags.  They aren't the ones you want to check at an airport, but they are great for road trips.  I am able to cram so much into my duffels and they can always be wedged into a tiny spot in the car.  (Plus, since they aren't a hard-cased suitcase, my bags never get squished on the bottom.)  So the #2 reason Why I Love Vera Bradley is that they hold a lot, can squeeze in anywhere, and are comfy to carry.  (The straps are sturdy and long, but made out of the same quilted fabric instead of tough leather straps.)

I've been tossing these bags into the back of the car for 7 years now which means they can get pretty filthy.  Reason #3 Why I Love Vera Bradley is that they can be thrown into the washing machine for cleaning.  I actually have pictures to support this reason.  After one of last trips, I decided it was time to give my most used bags a good cleaning (I rarely use the garment bag, and the jewelry bag and mini duffel are used 50% of the time).  Here's my pile of dirty bags.

I can actually lump reason #4 Why I Love Vera Bradley in with these pictures too: the colors are still nice and vibrant; they haven't faded.  Here are my bags after running them through the washing machine - and no, not on gentle cycle.

I know you can't see much difference in those pictures, so let me go in closer on a couple of them.  First, my toiletry bag.  I take this with me on every overnight trip - even if it's just one night and I'm only going to my parents' house.  This is where I keep my toothbrush and toothpaste, deoderant, hair brush, q-tips, moisturizing lotion, etc.  Three of the pouches have a plastic pocket so you can the contents inside.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the bag before and after going through the washing machine.

 

Ok, so not much of a noticeable difference.  But bear with me and I'll show you the most drastic change - my makeup bag.  I use my Vera Bradley makeup bag all the time, my makeup stays in it.  I don't just drag it out for road trips so it gets pretty gross.  Since I was getting ready to wash it, I took a moment to also clean up all my makeup and throw some old stuff away.

Just wiping all of that off made a huge difference, but the bag still looked really nasty.

A quick cycle in the washing machine (and dryer too) and look at the drastic difference!

 

 

Ok, so let's sum this up.  If you're looking for some good travel totes, you should choose Vera Bradley because

1) You can usually catch them on eBay for lower prices. 2) You can stuff them full of tons of stuff. 3) They're machine washable. 4) The colors don't fade, even after 7 years of washing.

And just so we're clear, Vera Bradley has no idea who I am and did not compensate me in any way for writing this post.  I just thought I'd tell you all about a product I'd love.  That doesn't mean that if they wanted to pay me I'd say no.  In fact, I'd say heck yes because I kinda want to try out one of their pieces of rolling luggage.  Anyone have one already?  Do they hold up through airports?

Caption This

Have you seen all the baby memes floating around the interwebs these days?  They're the funny pics of kids that someone had added a caption to, making the picture even funnier.  Here are some examples I was able to find online.

Some are pretty funny, right?

So the whole point is that I have this picture of Ramer...

...that I think could definitely be a meme.  Only I can't think of something really funny so I need your help.  This is the best I've been able to come up with, and they're kinda lame.

Can you think of something better?  Hit me up in the comments.

Books... Check 'Em Out!

I did it!  I completed my reading resolution for 2011! {{{Sorta.}}}

For any newcomers around here, the resolution I made last January was to read People Magazine's Top Ten Books from 2010.  Equipped with a brand-new kindle, I figured this would be a fun way to expand my horizons by reading books I wouldn't normally choose.  The goal was to read all ten books from the list, and even 3 of the honorable mentions if time allowed.  Here's a quick refresher of the list, but you can read the short descriptions and my thoughts by clicking over to my original post (that I've updated along the way).

Room by Emma Donoghue The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot Freedom by Jonathan Franzen Life by Keith Richards I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand Just Kids by Patti Smith Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1 One Day by David Nicholls

Here's the truth: I only made it through 8 of the books.  Technically 7.5 because I gave up on the one shaded in green.  The two in blue are the ones I didn't make it to at all.  I have two friends that are completely different who both read Freedom and neither enjoyed it.  That zapped my motivation to squeeze it in.  The Mark Twain autobiography just seemed like a daunting task since it's so long.  I put it off and put it off until it was too late to read it in 2011.  I may come back to it another day, who knows.  I decided mid-December that these two just weren't going to get read.  I had one more left to make it to 8 so I buckled down and read during the holidays.  I finished the last couple chapters a mere hour before we left for our New Year's Eve party.

As for the 3 honorable mentions (The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo trilogy), they didn't get touched in 2011.  Now that the first movie's out, I'm trying to jump on the bandwagon and read them.  I just started it a night or two ago and have only read 1 chapter.  Everyone has told me it's hard to get into so I've been bad about not picking it up to keep going.  I hate books that have a slow start!

But the 8 books from the top ten aren't all that I read this year.  In between these, I had to turn to books that were more my style to keep my reading momentum going.  Here are the books that round out my complete reading list:

True Colors by Kristin Hannah The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

I know 15.5 books is not very many for one year (it certainly doesn't compare to the 68 my sister-in-law Jill read!), but I'm still proud of myself.  It's hard to find time to read between working full time and all my craft/woodshop projects!  And I'm a slow reader, especially if I don't like the book, so there's that.  I haven't set any real resolutions yet for 2012, but maybe it should be to read 20 books.  I'll just up my number a little, but I'm not going back to People Magazine's suggestions!  The plan is to read the Dragon Tattoo trilogy first.  After that, I think I want to re-read the Hunger Games series - at least the first one - before the movie comes out in March.  Can. Not. Wait.  The trailer looks so good!

So with that, I'll call this little reading adventure over.  Now the question is, what should I read in 2012?  Any suggestions?

And for what it's worth, my suggestions from these lists would be the Hunger Games if you haven't already read them, and definitely Unbroken.

Seeing Stars

A couple of weeks ago, I had a little Christmas tree photo sheet using this method.  The shoot started at our house and ended at my parents, so I have pics of both our tree and theirs. I want go into many details about the method since some of you may not be into photography, but basically I placed a hood with a star cutout over my lens to turn the lights on the trees into stars.  Definitely visit Amanda's blog for more details.  At first, I had it all wrong.  I placed the star cutout over my lens and took a picture of our tree, and this is what I got.

Not exactly what I was trying to accomplish.  The lights were supposed to be star-shaped, not the whole darn picture.  After going back and re-reading the directions, I realized I needed a subject in front of my tree.  The magic is all in the bokeh.  Bokeh is when the background is all blurry.  (That's my very non-technical explanation.)

Let me demonstrate what I was trying to do with these three wooden trees I made my mom a few years ago.  Here is a normal picture of them of them all lit up.  I didn't use my flash because I wanted the twinkle lights to really shine.

Now here they are with all the same settings, except that the trees are out of focus so that the twinkle lights blurred into circles.

For the next picture, I left everything the same as above, except popped on the star cutout hood.

Pretty cool, huh?  All of these pictures are straight out of the camera - I haven't photoshopped them or anything.  Here's the same picture again, except I tightened up my focus a little to make the stars sharper.

Now, back to the photo shoot.  Sweet Anna was my subject while I tried to figure it all out.  She moved every which way I asked her to, from sitting up to laying down to scooting back, etc.  I had a hard time figuring out where I needed to position myself and where she should be to get the stars right.

Anna helped me try to hold Lolli still long enough for a picture, too.

When I finally thought I had it all figured out, I snatched Doc and tried to get a Christmas-y photo of us.

That didn't work that well since we had to get so low to be in the frame.  And we covered up most of the tree.  Oh well.  Doc had to leave me to take the kids home and head to the airport, so I packed up my photoshoot supplies and headed to my parents' house.

My mom refused to be photographed so my subjects were Henry and Lolli - two very wiggly dogs.  I got a little smarter, though, and scooted a small bench in front of the tree to set them up on.  This put them in the middle of all the tree lights (as opposed to down on the ground, making me have to shoot upward) and made it harder for them to run away (since I could catch them before they jumped off the bench).

Henry was less than thrilled about being photographed.

Lolli did a little bit better on the stool, but my stars still aren't very sharp.

Henry again.

Lolli, so tired of this (and also in need of a bath).

They aren't perfect (and don't even compare to Amanda's!) but it was fun to play around with anyway.  I've only done it the one time and haven't tried again since.  Maybe I will on Christmas Eve, though, because I have nieces and nephews that would look pretty darn cute in front of a starry Christmas tree.

I'll leave you with a picture of my mom's pretty Christmas tree. First, a regular picture.

And now, with stars.  Bam!

A Post Without A Point

I couldn't think of a good title.  Mostly because I don't really have anything to write about, just a couple of pictures to share.  So, a post without a point. I bought a new pumpkin decoration to officially ring in the fall season.  Isn't it cute?

Oh wait, here, let me zoom in.

I think I'm slightly obsessed with door decorations.  It's ridiculous how insanely excited I get over a cute new doormat, and I was the same way about this pumpkin.  It's bright, it's cute, it pops against the house.  Oh, and it's reversible!  When it gets closer to Halloween, I can flip it to this:

Love it.

Last Saturday, I was chatting with my mom and both of my sisters-in-law when we lost site of Bren and Parker.  It didn't take us long to find them.

Even if there hadn't been lots of giggling going on behind there, the little feet sticking out would've given them away.  Three-year-olds are so funny!

You know who else is funny?  Lollipop.  I think the expression on her face in this picture kinda makes her look like a cartoon character.

She's feisty and still has lots of puppy energy, but she has sweet moments too.

(After the last time she got groomed, I thought her new haircut made the hair on her ears look really long, so I took out my scissors and gave them a little trim.  Now she's rockin' a "triangle" do.  Oops.)

She still hasn't lost all of her baby teeth, but her adult teeth came in anyway.  She's got front row and back row teeth.  I think it's kinda funny.

Fall tv is back and I'm glad.  This could be bad for my blogging because there are so many new shows I want to watch, plus all of my old regulars, and it's hard to type and watch at the same time.  In fact, I'm signing off now so I can get to watching.

Happy fall, y'all!