Hey everyone!
I’ve been blogging sporadically for about 2 years but I didn’t get consistent with it until late last year. Apparently that consistency is paying off.
I want to thank each and every one of my readers. Your comments, “likes”, and views mean a lot to me.
I’ve finally done it! I’ve finally booked my wedding venue and we finally have a guaranteed wedding date. The wedding planning process consists of making decision after decision. Choosing your venue is one of the first big decisions that you have to make. Your choice of venue kind of dictates everything else. Your wedding date, your vendors, your honeymoon, your dress, etc. Everything begins to fall into place once you book your venue. Since I’ve finally done the deed, I feel like I should share my most helpful tips for choosing your venue.
There are a lot of ways to filter through the long list of wedding venues. You can save yourself a lot of headache and confusion by getting your list down to no more than FIVE venues before you start making tour appointments. Continue reading
A while back I wrote a few posts about drinking a gallon of water each day (LINK, LINK). If you’re not drinking from an actual gallon jug or bottle, it can be a little difficult to keep up with how much water you’ve already had. I’ve recently discovered a mobile app that can help with that. It’s called Plant Nanny.
Plant Nanny uses the information that you provide about your height, weight and lifestyle to determine how much water you actually need to be drinking each day. A gallon may be too much or not enough depending on your body and how you live. Basically, the more active you are, the more water you’ll need to consume on a daily basis.
The premise is that you are watering a plant. Hence the name “Plant Nanny”. You start out with a “baby” plant and as you water it (with the water you drink), it begins to grow. Continue reading
In case you haven’t noticed, I have changed the title of this blog and the domain. I always knew there would come a time when I would have to buy a domain. For the past month or so, I’ve been wracking my brain trying to come up with something cute, unique and encompassing of what I actually blog about. I decided to go with So Lush Lifestyle for a few reasons.
The things I blog about are actually part of how I really live and what I’m really interested in. I cook, I shop, I work out (sometimes), etc. These are my real interests and passions in life.
When I was around 15 or 16, “lush” was my WORD. It basically means “awesome” in the context that I use it. I picked it up from Charlotte Church so I guess it’s actually British slang. Either way, I said it all the time and it was even on my MySpace profile so you know it was official.
I am someone who believes that women can have it all. I want to be able to say that I’m a great wife, a great mother (eventually), a great cook, etc. I want the nice car, the nice wardrobe and handbags, the nice house. I want it all. I truly believe that I can have it all. And I believe that other women can too.
Renee.
It’s a toss-up between green and blue. I like looking at and taking pictures of the sky, trees and the ocean.
A little girl named Sara. We’re not super close anymore because we only went to daycare together between the ages of 5 and 10. But I think we would’ve still been friends today if we hadn’t gone to different schools.
5’4”-ish.
Definitely dogs. I like dogs more than I like most people. Cats are cute from afar but I’d never want one as a pet. Plus, my fiancé is allergic.
In college, my friends and I would kind of play pranks on each other. Continue reading
A little over three months after my first Louis Vuitton purchase, I’ve done it again.
When I bought my Speedy 30 in January, I did so under the assumption that this would probably be my only Louis Vuitton purchase. I figured that I would buy this one item and then move on to something else. I was so wrong. I had been bitten by the Louis Vuitton bug and I was now hooked and determined to start a collection. About two months after my initial purchase, I started looking at other items on the Louis Vuitton website and watching reviews about other items on YouTube. I even have a whole Microsoft Excel spreadsheet dedicated to which items I want and their prices. I don’t really do the whole impulse shopping thing and it’s hard to do that with higher-end brands like Louis Vuitton anyway unless you’re rich (and I am not). So all the time spent doing research, watching reviews, and adjusting my spreadsheet helps me plan out which items I want to buy and when I want to buy them.
So how did I end up choosing the Favorite PM? Continue reading
Mother’s Day is right around the corner and it will be here before you know it. I’ve already managed to find two gifts for my mother but I know that there’s quite a few people who may be struggling to find the perfect gift. I’ve been in that position many times before so I thought it would be helpful for me to share some of my go-to gift ideas for my mother.
I love to give people smell goods as gifts, but I really think it’s a good gift for a mother. The trick to making this a good gift is that you have to know what fragrance your mother will actually like. Therefore, you have to pay attention and you have to put a little effort into figuring out what she likes. This will be a lot easier to do if you regularly go shopping with your mother like I do. We don’t visit beauty counters a lot when we shop but when we do, I make sure I pay attention to anything that she likes. Fragrances aren’t something that most women buy a whole lot of. We typically buy one, maybe two, a year because they tend to be rather pricey. Continue reading
Back in January, literally the day after New Year’s, I bought my very first Louis Vuitton handbag.
I chose to buy a Speedy because it’s a top handle bag and that’s mostly what I like to carry. I don’t really care for shoulder bags because that’s all I had when I was in college and my shoulders really suffered. I think I’m a little traumatized by that so I’ve been avoiding shoulder bags for a few years now. I chose to go with the Damier Ebene print because I feel like the monogram print carries an obnoxious connotation. People just look at it like “Oh, you just want people to know you’ve got a Louis Vuitton.” I wanted a print that was a little subtler, so that people would see the bag first and not the print. The monogram bags also have lighter handles and they tend to get darker and show marks, so I thought the Damier Ebene would just be better for me. I love the dark handles. It’s probably one of my favorite things about the bag.
This is a purchase that I had been thinking about for almost a full year in advance. Continue reading
One of my birthday gifts this year was Cravings by Chrissy Teigen. My mom bought it for me because she knows that I’ve been learning the ropes in the kitchen via Pinterest. I’ve never had a cookbook before so this is my very first one. And I’m also a big fan of Chrissy Teigen. I’m super duper excited to try these recipes, many of which I have never even thought about making before. Although I love my recipes board on Pinterest, having an actual book with pages and pictures that I can look at is going to be awesome. I won’t have to scroll and screenshot images on my phone or worry about my touching my phone with food on my fingers. Eventually I’ll make my own cookbook binder with all of my favorite Pinterest recipes but I haven’t had the time to invest in that right now. Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to post a link to the recipes like I usually do because that could get me in trouble but I can post a link to purchase the book. If you like Chrissy Teigen’s personality and sense of humor and you also like to cook, I would suggest buying this for yourself. Her write-ups are funny and hopefully the recipes are delicious too. I guess I’ll find out soon enough…
For the past year or so, I’ve been listening to a lot of personal finance podcasts and reading personal finance blogs. Most of the information in those podcasts and blogs is great but I’ve noticed one trend/theme that I personally don’t like. There seems to be this notion that you cannot like or buy nice things and still be financially stable/secure. First of all, that’s not true at all. You can buy a nice handbag or a luxury car and still have a good credit score with your emergency fund untouched. I know it’s possible because I do it (minus the luxury car, I’m not there yet). But I am definitely the spender in my relationship and neither my bank account nor my credit score have suffered as a result. I do realize that these podcasters/bloggers have to be somewhat general in what they say and that there are exceptions to rules. I know that there are a lot of people who can’t control their shopping habits and I agree that if you can’t control it, then you don’t need to do it. So I take the “no shopping” advice with a grain of salt, because it doesn’t apply to me. HOWEVER… Continue reading
So Lush Lifestyle 