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?

Preggo Post #2

Check out Preggo Post #1 here. I meant to write these preggo posts more frequently, but there is just no time! I mean, I guess there's time, I just don't really want to spend it in front of the computer.  But for the sake of journaling this adventure, here are some updates on where we are.

• At the time of writing this, I am 23 weeks plus 3 days pregnant.  That means...

• The countdown blocks were a gift from my friend Allison early on and we have enjoyed changing them each week.  It was pretty scary changing the blue block from a 2 to a 1.  We're more than halfway there...eek!
• I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and everything still looks good.  Baby's heartbeat was 135.
• I left yesterday's appointment with the bottle of Glucola that I have to drink for the next appointment for the gestational diabetes test.  You have no idea how much I'm dreading this test, and staring at the bottle of orange grossness in the fridge is not making it any better.  My nurse told me I should limit by carbs and sugars the week of the test.  Doesn't she know that's all I eat?
• At that appointment, I will also get a shot of immunoglobulin for being Rh Negative.  Not a big deal, but the combination of the glucose test and the shot don't have me jumping up and down excited about that appointment.
• As announced in this gender revealment post, we're expecting a baby girl!
• At the moment, baby girl still does not have a name. We have options but just can't commit. Currently, we are referring to her as Polly (a name my dad suggested that we vetoed) with Ester as her middle name (wait for it...).  That means her fake initials are PEE - fitting, since that's what I have to do a lot.
• Not only does she not have a real name, but Polly also still does not have a nursery or a suitable car to ride in.  We are still on the house hunt and hoping something good happens soon.  We know the car situation will be a fairly easy fix, so we aren't worried about it.
• As far as possessions go, baby girl owns a bath, one book, a coming-home outfit plus another gown, and about 4 outfits she can wear next summer.  So, not much, but that's good since we don't have anywhere to put anything anyway.
• I have just now begun to think about nursery furniture and color scheme.  I have a vague idea of what I want, but it's really hard to figure out since I don't have a nursery room to visualize it all in.
• Haven't registered yet.  Am completely clueless on what all we need.  (Help?)
• I have been feeling the baby move for quite a while.  I felt flutters around the end of April and then, on our anniversary in early May, she gave a noticeable kick that Doc was able to feel too.  She hasn't stopped moving since and seems to be riding really low!
• I hesitate to post these pictures since they're so terrible, but a few people have requested them so here goes.  I take my weekly photo every Sunday afternoon.  Sometimes I don't remember to take it until after I've spent the day working in the yard or building in the shop or something, so they definitely aren't pretty pictures.  I won't post them all, but here are a few that show the bump's progress.

 

 

• Overall, I feel pretty good.  The only major complaint that I have are my restless legs.  I had RLS before getting pregnant, but it seems to be much worse now.  I have been carrying around a prescription from my doctor for about a month now trying to convince myself I don't need it, but I am now thisclose to having it filled.  My legs drive me crazy all the time, and now my twitching and squirming is keeping Doc up all night too.

We are enjoying this journey and can't wait for baby girl to arrive.  There are so many things that have to get done before then, though!  I try not to think about it much because it's enough to make me feel completely overwhelmed.  I just keep telling myself everyday that it'll all work out.  And it will.  I know it will.

Freezer Cooking

I've been meaning to share this with you all for a while now.  A month or so ago, a coworker of mine shared this website about making freezer meals to cook in the crockpot.  She had made a few of the meals and was bringing delicious smelling leftovers everyday for lunch.  So we had her share her secret... Jaima over at Ring Around The Rosies has created a list of meals that can be made way in advance and then stored in the freezer until ready to be eaten.  The best part is that you just take everything from the gallon-sized ziploc bag, dump it into a crockpot, and hours later dinner is served.  Y'all, this is my kind of cooking.

Doc and I had a few friends that we'd been meaning to prepare a meal or two for, and it certainly didn't seem like a bad idea to stock up our own freezer, so we decided to spend an evening making Jaima's creations.  Each recipe listed on her blog makes 2 gallon-sized ziploc bag meals, so we decided to pick a few recipes and double them so we'd make 4 batches of each one.  I let Doc choose which ones and he went to the store for the ingredients.

For our 5 meals, we made Savory Chicken, Teriyaki Chicken, Sausage & Peppers, Mexican Taco Meat, and Meatballs.  We started with the chicken dishes and Doc got to work dividing the chicken breasts up between the ziploc bags.

While he did that, I used a red sharpie to label all the bags.

The Mexican Taco Meat is the only meal that required us to do any pre-cooking.  We just had to brown the ground beef.  For all the others, we just measured and dumped in the ingredients.  As we filled the bags, I realized the red sharpie was a bad idea.  You could no longer read the cooking instructions.  Rats.  You can also see in the picture below that on the bag in the upper right I tried to add a label.  By that time, the bags were too cold/wet for the labels to stick.  Double rats.

The next day I happened to be at Michael's and found these cute tags in their Dollar Bins.

With a hole punch through the top of the bag and a little curling ribbon, boom! Cooking instructions problem solved.

Here are all five meals for one recipient.  Admittedly not the cutest things ever, but what frozen food is pretty?

For the Savory Chicken, you don't add the broccoli until the last 30 minutes, so we put it in a separate bag and attached it with the card.

And because we wanted to do complete meals, we had a few more items to pack into the box.  We added taco shells and cheese for the Mexican Taco Meat, pasta for the Sausage & Peppers, and rice for the other meals.

And with that, our box of 5 meals was complete!

Why you should jump on the freezer cooking train: We spent about $200 and were able to make twenty meals in under two hours.  You can't beat $10 a meal!  And really, I use the figure 20 meals loosely...we filled 20 gallon-sized ziploc bags full but, depending on how many people you're feeding, one bag could be enough for more than one meal.  Who knows how far they could stretch?  Doc and I recently ate the Savory Chicken over rice and there was more than plenty for the two of us and he was able to take a generous portion of leftovers to work the next day for lunch.  Did I even mention that the recipes are good?  The Savory Chicken was quite tasty and we've had a couple friends say the Meatballs are good too.  One called them, and I quote, "slap your momma good."  Might not want to invite your mom over for dinner that night; I'd hate for anyone to get hurt.

So what are you waiting for?  Get to cooking freezing!

Vacay in a Nutshell

Like I said in my last post, we've been at the beach house this week.  It has been wonderful; the weather has been in the high 80s, so definitely hot but not sweltering like it will be this summer.  The peak season here really starts this weekend with the Memorial Day holiday and we can already tell that as it gets close to the weekend, the crowds are getting bigger.  I'm really glad we were able to come before everything got packed! For the first time ever, we brought Lolli with us.  Riding in the car for that long was quite the adventure for her.  She couldn't ever settle down and nap for fear that as soon as she did, we'd arrive at our destination.  That meant a solid 8 hours of her standing in my lap looking out the window.  Good thing we had an audio book to listen to since I couldn't do much else.

First thing on the agenda was definitely to take the dogs to the beach.  Henry had seen the ocean before (see his first visit here) but not Lolli.  I just knew she was going to love it because she loves getting soaking wet outside.  If there's a rain puddle or wet grass anywhere near her, she's definitely going to roll around in it.  She completely surprised me, though, because as much as she was content with the sand, she hated the ocean.  Didn't want to have anything to do with it.

This is her giving me the stink eye after I'd drug her into the edge of a wave to get her feet wet.  She was not happy with me.  (As you can tell from the photo, I was so convinced that she'd love running in the water that I had all her hair shaved off before we left.)

She plopped right down in the sand and seemed to be telling me that she was perfectly fine where she was, thankyouverymuch.

Henry, on the other hand, was much more excited about the ocean this time around.  He loved running into the water and trying to lap it up.  (Henry is like me in that he doesn't have very cute beach hair...)

We were there too, but the only proof I have is our toes in the sand.

While my parents were here, Doc and my dad played golf a couple times which means Mom and I had some shopping dates.  We hit up several different locations and found some good deals but the Outlet Mall - usually one of my favorite parts about coming down here - just wasn't that much fun for me.  Being preggers, I found that none of the stores work for me, it's a whole lotta walking, and the bathrooms are spaced way too far apart.  I know, I know, first world problems.

We made two more patio chairs to go with the set here so we'd have 4 chairs instead of two.  With the extra chairs we were able to all eat dinner out on the patio one night while listening to a storm move in.  It was my favorite kind of meal - hot dogs from the grill, chip and dip, and fresh fruit. :)

On Mom and Dad's last night here, we went out to eat at La Crema in Rosemary Beach.   They specialize in tapas and chocolate and it's all so, so good.

I really hate this picture of me but it's the only one we took together the whole time we were there.

After they left, Doc and I spent a full day out on the beach and both turned into lobsters.  Re-apply your sunscreen, people!  We had a date night that night at Pier Park in Panama City Beach.  We ended up sitting out on the patio at Margaritaville for dinner.  The sun was setting as our dinner began and Doc tried to capture it behind me, but his phone didn't pick up all the pretty colors in the sky.

That's really about it.  We spent the last day under the shade hiding from the sun and cleaning up the house.  The next scheduled trip we have to come down here is when I'm on maternity leave.  I have a feeling I'll get my camera out a lot more on that trip!

Dance To The Music

We're on vacation!  (I was going to start with an apology for my absence but it seems like every post these days starts like that so...) Specifically, we're at the beach house.  We arrived Saturday afternoon and my parents joined us for the first half of the week.  Due to some issues with billing addresses, we realized our cable and internet had been cut off.  Luckily, we discovered that before we left town to come here and could attempt to remedy the sitch.  Unluckily, the technician couldn't come to our house until late Monday morning.  That means we had no cable or internet for the first 48 hours here.

So we had to entertain ourselves.  No biggie, right?  Here's a quick story of how we did that on Day One.

We took the dogs on a long walk on the beach (pictures coming - Lolli hated the ocean) before coming back to hang out on the screened-in patio.  We play a lot of Spades (the card game) in our family so Doc broke out the deck of cards for a friendly competition.  It was the most bizarre game of Spades I've ever been involved in.  If you're familiar with the game, I'll tell you this: at least one person went Low in each of the first 5 rounds and at least one team was set (either from Low, not catching enough tricks, or too many sandbags) in every one of those rounds.  We normally play to 500 but since we weren't even in the positive after 5 rounds, we played to 150.  (Full disclosure:  Mom and Dad beat me and Doc in the final round.)

After the game we walked to the Mexican restaurant that is just a couple of blocks away.  Our waiter gave me a hard time when I ordered a virgin daiquiri but backed off when I showed him my belly.  "Ok, Princess.  I'll make it pretty for you."  At least he got my title right.  Mom had a pineapple margarita that, halfway through the meal, had her reclining in her seat saying "Oh man, I could just lie down right here and go to sleep!"  This is important to remember for the rest of this story...

After dinner, it was Dad's idea to go on a little bike ride.  We could hear live music coming from Rosemary so I suggested we go check it out and see what was going on.  Our house is in Seacrest but practically backs right up to Rosemary.  Thanks to a fence line that runs between the two, though, you have to go back out to the main street to get there.  No cutting through the neighborhood.

So we drug the bikes out and, after airing up the tires, hopped on them to go for a ride.  Mom and Dad got the bikes that Anna and Wyatt used the last time we were here so they were riding a little low.  We didn't think to adjust the seats before leaving.

When we got to Rosemary we didn't see anything going on at all.  I mean, there were lots of people milling about like any other night, but definitely no live music anywhere.  But we were already there so we rode through the back neighborhood.  Doc was in the lead as we passed cruised around the residential streets.  We passed a big group of girls having a bachelorette party and lots of people out on their patios.  Occasionally we'd come to a street with no porch lights on so we'd have to ride through the dark.

Finally, I heard the live music again.  "It's that way!" I shouted to Doc so he could lead us to the music.  The closer we got, the louder the music got, and we soon realized we were approaching a wedding reception.  There was a block of open space (a park maybe?) in the middle of the neighborhood where white tents and twinkle lights and tables had been set up.  It was a fancy reception, one where the tables were draped with white table cloths and wait staff walked around in black suits while the little kids ran around barefooted on the plush green grass in their Vineyard Vines clothing.  A live band was playing from a stage and a dance floor had been constructed right in front of it.  The reception was in full swing with the bulk of the guests out on the dance floor, surrounding the bride and groom and jumping up and down to the music.

One side of the block had a row of bushes bordering it.  It was those bushes that we were riding behind as we approached the big event.  As we neared the corner, I slowed down behind Doc.  I was nervous about intruding on the reception but, like he said, it was a public street.  We were about to be riding along side the dance floor of the reception where we'd have no more bushes to hide behind.  My mom ended up passing me around the corner so my Dad and I brought up the rear.

Dance To The Music.

That was the song that was playing as we rode by the dance floor.  It's also the song that was playing when my mom drove her bike into the grass and crashed right into a pole.  She hugged the pole.  As in, she physically had to wrap both of her arms around the pole to keep from face planting in front of the whole reception.

Once past the reception, I had to pull my bike off to the side because I could. not. stop laughing.  I was sure I was either going to lose my dinner or wet my pants.  Thankfully, aside from the tears rolling down my cheeks, I managed to keep everything in.

Needless to say, we're having lots of fun.  More later!