What's in Your Bag? Challenge

I'm constantly amused by the random things my girlfriends pull out of their handbags. You can learn so much about somebody by what they have in there! We tend to keep a big part of our lives stored away in there, and I thought it would be a fun post idea to show what's been hiding in my handbag. I thought it would be even more fun, if you all joined in the challenge by snapping a photo or two of the contents of your handbag and posting it on your blog too! What do you think? You game for the redBungalow What's in Your Bag Challenge?

Here's my random assortment of goodies hiding in my handbag today:

*bobby pins and hair ties - 80% of the time when I leave the house with my hair down, it is somehow pinned up and tied back by the time I get home from work.

*wallet and keys - essential for obvious reasons :)

*chapstick - can't leave home without it! I have tons of different chapsticks all over my apartment.

*pen - because you can never find one when you need one.

* Blackberry - I don't think you can see it in the pictures, but it's a very important tool for me and it hardly leaves my side! I am however, thinking of switching to a Droid...or at least a touch screen. It's time to get with 2010!

*work badge and old hotel keycards - as a testament to the fact i travel way too much for work

*Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert - This is the book I'm currently reading. I really loved the section when she traveled through Italy, but I am having a harder time getting through the India portion. I also have to admit I'm sad they are making a movie out of this because the author has soo much internal monologue in the book and I know it will all get lost in the film. I just know if I try to watch the movie I will be thinking of all the great tidbits of info they are leaving out.

*Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital Elph - My handy little point and shoot camera. It's great that I always carry my camera with me, but I have to admit it usually stays right inside my bag. I REALLY need to work on that.

*random thumbdrive - Because you never know when you'll need to transfer some pics from friends or work documents or whatever. I'm aware this may make me a geek. I'll accept that.

*ipod - yay!

*a few pair of sunglasses - Two of these are vintage and the Black ones are Valentino. Sunglasses are one of my many random obsessions. I like having a couple on hand so I don't have too worry about matching my outfit when I'm running out the door in the morning.

*Smart Water - I tote water bottles back and forth to work everyday since they started charging us for drinks in the kitchen.

Now what am I missing? I should probably carry around bandaids and lotion, but meh...I've got so much stuff already. :) Sometimes I have an extra Special K protein bar in my bag too to help me not hit the very unhealthy snack drawer when I get the afternoon munchies in the office.

OK. Now that I've exposed what's in mine, I'm excited to see what you have hiding in yours! Have a great weekend, and hopefully I can peek into your bag next week too!

xox,

Bre

My Closet: Grey Day

*just a grey kind of day*

The past few days the weather has been cloudy and moody, and my clothing naturally followed suit. It was just one of those grey kind of days, so here I am in grey head-to-toe (sorry it has been so long since I did an outfit post, I will get better I promise).

Hopefully the weekend will be nice and sunny.

xox,

Bre

outfit credit

dress - haute hippie

tank - BDG

blazer - H&M

shoes - Nine West

pearl bracelets - gift from Dan a few years back

ring - vintage

necklace - unknown. I've had this one a long, long time and simply don't remember.

Found these on my doorstep...

*Knotted Ankle Booties, $27.80 at Forever 21*

Last night when I got home from work I had a nice little package on my doorstep. I took a chance and bought these online from Forever 21 and I am pleasantly surprised with how they look in person. They are a little bit large, but not a big enough deal for me to return them, and now I know next time to order a half size down.

I've been impressed with some of the shoes they've been turning out lately (although it always seems really hard to find them actually in stores), so kudos to Forever 21 for your great little finds at such great prices (I'm mean seriously who would think these were only $27.80?!).

Any great little steals of your own lately?

xox,

Bre

p.s. Yes I know I have a serious shoe problem, but in my defense I still haven't bought those wonderful Steve Madden booties I blogged about a few weeks back here. I still want them, and I will eventually get them, but maybe next payday since I think I've hit my spending limit this time around (I really treated myself this week with a little something I might show in another post soon).

Swimwear Search 2010

*LSpace Girl's Best Friend Halter and Scanty Bottom, $68 & $70 each at Molly Brown's Swimwear.*

I'm a little late in the game, but I'm finally starting my Swimwear Search 2010. The dreaded search for the perfect suit that almost always ends in frustration and compromise. Well this year Dan and I have a trip planned to Belize, Cozumel, Honduras, and a couple Caribbean islands....so I know it's getting very late in the Summer but I'll be damned if I can't find SOMETHING that will look halfway great on me since I'm bound to spend 80% of our trip in swimwear. That also reminds me that it's been over 3 months now since I've done any exercise and I should seriously start thinking about getting back to that.

Here are some options that I'm thinking about trying on. The problem with waiting until it's almost August to look for a swimsuit, is that a lot of places are very sold out. I might have to buy online and just return it if it doesn't work out (I really really don't like the thought of not trying on a suit before I purchase it, but most online sites have such great return policies these days I suppose it's not that big of deal). Luckily I have a couple/few months to find a couple/few suits, but since I'm picky and self-conscious about how these might fit...I don't want to be stuck at the last minute with boring old suits in beautiful exotic places. What do you think? Any favorites or other suggestions?

*LSpace Porsha Top and Foxy Bottom in Ashore Thing, $70 & $64 each at Molly Brown's*

*L Space Twister Top and Taboo Bottom in Milano, $65 & $60 each at Molly Brown's*

*L Space Twister Top in Katmandu and Taboo Bottom in Black, $64 and $65 at Molly Brown's*

*L Space Porsha Bikini in Ladoccia, $150 at Butterflies and Bikinis*

*Vitamin A Signature Collection - Bianca Halter and Jade Bottom in White, approx. $144 each at Molly Brown's*

*Vitamin A Silver - Topanga Halter and Doheny Bottoms in Big Love Pattern, $49.50 each at Molly Brown's*

I think I like this one better than the one just above, but not quite sure yet. Vitamin A Silver - Original Twist Top and Le Blon Bottoms in Big Love Pattern, $49.50 each at Molly Brown's*

xox,

Bre

DIY Industrial Lights

Remember my post awhile back about needing to find a new closet solution (HERE)? Well, we finally came up with a solution, and I will do a post for it later, but in the process it was one of those “if you give a mouse a cookie” situations. We realized that with the new closet, we had to move our bed, and we had to get rid of our old nightstands, and old lamps, and suddenly needed new lighting for our bedroom. Our bedroom doesn’t have ANY ceiling fixtures, or other hard-wired lighting. So here’s when a trip to Home Depot became a necessity. We wanted lighting that looked somewhat industrial to match our industrial closet system (I promise I will post pics later), but we didn’t want to pay a fortune for lights. Since we live in an apartment, we also couldn’t do any electrical wiring in our bedroom so this creates quite a challenge (To find lighting that we could mount to the wall and/or ceiling without hard-wiring and not costing too much money).

We came up with a solution, eventually, but I have to say this one was really all my husband. He found these great lights at Home Depot and instantly figured that we could spray them to give them a galvanized steel look, but there was one tiny problem….these lights are meant for hard-wired fixtures. Well with Dan the Man as my husband, this didn’t mean we couldn’t have these, this just meant a little bit of DIY work. And he was up for the challenge. So here is the DIY (courtesy of Dan) on how to take hard-wired fixtures and turn them into mounted non-wired lights.

1) Here is one of the lights straight out of the box. Purchased at Home Depot for $11 a piece (not too shabby).

2) Here’s the beginning of the deconstruction. The insulation needed to be removed to make way for the these LED lights we would be using from IKEA. Since we didn’t have hard-wired lighting in our room, we found some super bright LED’s at IKEA that we wanted to place inside of these fixtures. We put two LED’s in each fixture, which provides plenty of light.

3) Note the gloves. Very important. Dan wore gloves, eye goggles, and a face mask during the deconstruction. You don’t want to get fiberglass in your fingers, eyes, or throat. Saftey first people. Dan was able to remove the majority of the insulation just by pulling it out with his glove-covered hands.

4) Here’s the light fixture disassembled from the front. You can see where the old hard-wired fixture is that Dan will be cutting out.

5) The insulation was glued on to the fixtures, so it left a bit of sticky residue on the back. No worries here, we can fix this on step 7.

6) Dan cut out the old fixture (the front view of this fixture is shown on step #4 above). He used a Dremel tool with a reinforced cut-off disk. He made the opening wide enough so we could slide in the alternate LED lighting that we purchased from IKEA (seriously these babies are bright! And Eco-friendly, we will basically never need to replace them).

7) Next Dan removed the excess insulation & glue (and cleaned up the cut area from step #6) with a wire brush. The cut-off disks don’t leave the cleanest lines, so the wire brush really helps smooth out the edges.

8) Here are the lights insolation free and ready for primer.

9) Here are the lights primed….

10) Here’s the paint we used for our light fixtures. We seriously LOVE this paint. If you are looking to spray paint ANYTHING where you want a metallic effect this is the stuff to use. The spray seems uneven, but not to worry, it gives a great hammered texture (which is the idea).

11) Here’s everything painted and drying.

12) The end result. Notice the texture on the fixtures from that spray paint? Really awesome effect.

OK OK. I know you want to see them mounted now right? It's just not the same without seeing them in action! What a tease this post is…well you will just have to stay tuned. Next week I will post pictures of these babies mounted in our closet/bedroom (considering our bedroom is basically a closet with a bed now, lol).

I also noticed we didn’t show how we put the LEDs inside the light fixtures, but it’s fairly simple and we couldn’t really put the lights in until we were ready to mount the fixtures. You will see the end result when I post the pictures of the new closet system. Intrigued? Stay tuned.

Have a great weekend! Maybe you'll do a little DIY-ing yourself. :)

xox,

Bre

I'm Featured on HGTV!

*my knitted ottoman featured on HGTV*

I can't believe it! I can't believe it! This was back on July 2nd, but somehow I missed it until someone sent me the link yesterday. I'm overjoyed that my little knit ottoman (and my Etsy shop: The Red Bungalow) was featured on HGTV's site this month. It's fascinating, and oh so exciting, to see a crazy little vision of mine featured on such a renowed site. I guess I'm not the only person seriously obsessed with thick, textural knits :)

For the full article click HERE.

I hope a great little surprise comes your way this week too!

xox,

Bre

New LA Flea Market: The Good, The Bad, & The Crazy

*me at the Grand Opening*

This past weekend was the Grand Opening of the new LA Flea Market at Dodger's Stadium. There was a lot of hype surrounding this new flea market, and at a general admission price of only $5, the man and I thought we'd definitely give this one a try. Well needless to say, if you've talked to anybody who went, it started off on the wrong foot. We sat trapped in the car for over an hour because they weren't ready to open on time and they wouldn't even let people in the parking lot (if you live anywhere near LA you know this is the type of thing that would cause a riot...a lot of very unhappy people standing outside of their cars yelling...). Then once again, after we bought our tickets they made us wait AGAIN, because vendors were still driving around inside frantically trying to set up.

I felt very bad for the vendors. I talked to one of them that told me she had to wait for 2 hours before she could get in to even set up her booth! 2 hours!! That is crazy compared to how well run the next closest flea market is run (Rose Bowl Flea Market and Swap Meet). Now with that said, yes this was the very first time they had run anything like this here, so I'm pretty sure it would improve next time. Well they basically HAVE to improve the management aspect of the flea market or people will simply not go.

*waiting in the car*

Now on to the Good: While there weren't as many vendors as I expected, and it certainly wasn't as large as the Rosebowl Flea Market, I managed to score some great finds. In fact I spent at least an hour at just one of the booths and scored some beautifully constructed clothing for a really great price. A designer got into a legal battle with his backer and wasn't able to sell his collection. It is a really long story (I will share in another post some time with some of the items that I snagged), but he was basically forced to donate his collection and have the proceeds go to charity. The price tags were still on these babies, I literally bought $1,200 jackets for less than one-tenth that price. The attention to detail, craftsmanship and vision in these clothing were just amazing. I was really sad to hear the story behind it, but was glad that I was lucky enough to randomly fall upon it.

This flea market also has a great view of downtown LA. That's always a plus when you get a chance to see the "pretty" side of the city, and somewhere way in the background you could see the famous "Hollywood" sign up on the hill. Oh yes, and another plus was that they had PLENTY of food trucks and some large Shark thing? Couldn't quite figure out what that was, lol.

me and the man in front of the LA skyline

my shopping bag full of great little gems!

Dan with his new found friend :)

Food vendors and some Shark Attack!

After a tough morning of waiting, and hunting the Mr. and I stopped at one of our all time favorite Mexican joints (El Farolito) for a tasty margarita (did I already mention it was SUPER hot this weekend?) and amazing grub.

Did anybody else go to the new flea market this weekend? I'm curious to hear what other people thought too. Whatever you did, I hope you had a great time.

xox,

Bre

Hildee's Wedding

This weekend I went to a wedding for a dear friend of mine, and she looked GORGEOUS and oh so happy. Her hair and dress were fabulous, and she even surprised her (now) husband by hiring a bagpiper to play as they exited the church (his family is very Irish, so I'm pretty sure it was a big deal)! While it was almost 100 degrees outside that afternoon (and the AC was NOT working in the church) it was a great day anyhow. Here are a few pictures from the wedding and celebration.

*the happy couple*

*me, Michelle & Ann*

*Michelle & Me*

*Me & Dan the Man*

*me & Michelle*

*Dan + me*

*the bride, Michelle, and me*

*Dennis & Me*

*Michelle, me, Hilda, Dennis, Ann, and Diana*

Congrats again Hildee & Kevin!

xox,

Bre