Sailor Stripes

Guess who's shower curtain was in terrible need of a makeover??? Mine, mine! 

Somehow a little bathroom cleaner stained our old shower curtain and I couldn't handle it anymore! 

BEFORE

Can you see that tiny little white spot? Would it bother you to no end, too? A couple weeks ago, I decided to upgrade to this West Elm shower curtain:

AFTER

So much better right?

THE SECRET

Have you guys read the book or seen the movie called The Secret? Ironically, we started watching the movie adaptation of the book but didn't finish it. I think the book is probably better.  The movie was not what we expected and seemed more of like a documentary. But, I digress. The point of The Secret is that you can make anything you want to happen with positive thinking. Wikipedia says that The Secret is based on the law of attraction and claims that positive thinking can create life-changing results such as increased wealth, health and happiness. It might sound kooky or weird to some of you, but I totally agree with the author.  Maybe it doesn't work for everything... but it does work for some things. 

Via wikipedia

I really think that whether you tell yourself you can or can't do something, you are right. I remember after I graduated from college, I didn't think I could pass the CPA exam. I told myself it was just too hard - and why bother because I wouldn't pass anyway, so I took another path in life, but quickly realized that wasn't what I wanted to do long term. Fast forward a couple years, and I passed all (4) parts of the CPA exam on my first try {thanks to Becker, a lot of hard work on my part and probably The Secret}. I totally proved myself wrong! It's amazing what we can accomplish when we try.   

Imagine what we could do if we got rid of all self doubt. 

On a kind of side note that is partially related: remember here how I was all upset and sad that we thought we had to move because the owners of our apartment building wanted to move into our unit. Well, the owners decided to stay overseas for at least another year {which means we can keep our apartment}! The best part is that we hadn't signed a lease on the new apartment because the guy never sent it to us yet. I also only packed one box so far. So we unpacked that yesterday, cancelled our UHaul reservation and breathed a sigh of relief.

Sometimes weird things happen that are unexplainable. I'm just glad we don't have to move.

Weekend Recap

Hello, internet! I have been a little behind in posting because I got a new job {woohoo} and life is crazy busy and we are moving in 2 weeks! You get it. I had a mini-vacation from Jan 5 - 13 between jobs so it was really nice to sleep in, work out, go grocery shopping, and just not worry about anything at all.

I spent the weekend in Vancouver, BC, Canada for the Lady Gaga concert. I learned that you can put your iPhone on airplane mode and use the hotel wifi for free to use safari, imessage, instagram, etc. Let's just hope I did everything right and don't get a cell phone bill for a million dollars. It's so hard to "completely unplug"!

Here are some snaps from my weekend.  If you follow me on instagram {@thevintagemodern} then I apologize because you probably already saw all these:

View from our hotel room. Not a cloud in the sky.

The BTWB Tourbus!

The group of 6 girls - We <3 GAGA!

The concert {and lighting} was amazing!

I tried "poutine," a Canadian specialty. fries + gravy + cheese = AMAZING!

I also went to joeys for the first time! I had a lobster grilled cheese. BOMB!

You know how much I love food which is why I *had* to include those pictures!  Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

Ciao,
Kim

Our Spending Diet

In other news, we have started a "spending diet" as inspired by my friend Megan, who was inspired by a blog called {And Then We Saved} - I was going to do a "spending fast" which means no spending AT ALL outside of basic necessities: rent, utilities, groceries, cell phones, student loan payments... wow... that is a lot of necessities... but I digress. and I needed to start with baby steps. We now get an allowance that is less than 1/3 of what it was before we started the diet. But I think it will be good to focus on saving before spending {vs} spending first. And we can discuss larger purchases together and decide if you want to do them or not. Another thing we are both doing is putting away a little money each week in our savings account. I posted it to my facebook wall, but its basically $1 for week 1 of 2013, $2 for week 2... etc.. to $52 for week 52 and we should each have $1,300+ saved up by 12/31/13! Pretty neat right?

I had some gift cards from Christmas so I went shopping. Ooops, not the best start to our spending diet, you say? I made sure to only go to stores where I had gift cards. And I only bought one top - on sale, thankyouverymuch. It's a shirt I could wear to work too. Score! And it was only $22!

My new shirt from the loft!
My brother asked if i was preggers after he saw this photo
The answer is NO.

The second ironic thing that happened today is that I got a parking ticket. It was my first parking ticket ever :( Long story short {I hate when people say that}, I parked in a parking lot adjacent to the one I was supposed to. I am a freak about any kind of extra charge or fine, but there isn't much I can do about it so I just wrote a check for $45 and I am going to mail it tomorrow so I don't have to worry about it anymore.  My bad. But it's pretty amazing that I lived in Seattle for 4.5 years and hadn't gotten a parking ticket, right? Right. 

:(

I miss blogging! Things have been so crazy lately! But I am hoping to find more time to blog...

{{NYE}}

Some people look at New Years Eve, or {NYE} as kind of a pointless holiday. And I can kind of see where they are coming from. It's kind of like Valentines Day or one of those artificial holidays created by Hallmark. 

This holiday is very special for me because I met Jake on New Year's Eve 2006/2007! I'm sure many of you have heard this story a million times. It's very special to me, so I thought I would reminisce in honor of NYE. 

2012/2013 NYE in Portland visiting friends

I was in Seattle, visiting a friend from college over Christmas break during my senior year of college. We were planning on going out in Seattle for the big NYE night out. But, at the last minute, we decided to stay at her parent's house in Everett because our other friend's mom didn't want us out driving around with all the "crazies". So, I thought... great...a New Year's Eve party in Everett with my girlfriends. But, it turns out that my friend's brother's invited a couple of their friends {Jake being one of them}.... throw in some back to back dancing to Justin Timberlake 's Sexy Back... and the rest is history. Here are some photos from that night - unfortunately, Jake and I didn't take any together but that was probably for the best ;)

When the night was young...

Close up!

Peek a Boo!

Dancing Time!

Singing to Regina Spektor and doing the "seagull"

 Happy 2013! I am looking forward to a new year and new beginnings!