lins.in.love: Kansas

Happy Friday yall! Ive decided to kick my Friday morning into gear by posting, as promised, my thift store scores from our Kansas Vaca! (and even some things I didnt get and wish I would have).

The Salvation Army in the little town in Kansas where my mom lives was the Holy Grail of vintage sheets and blankets. I snagged two blankets (top), a set of pillow cases (bottom left), and 3 sheets (bottom right) that Im hoping to make into curtains for the house.

THIS. Ive been looking for one of these for quite some time, so of course I snagged it right off the wall... for $1 (!!!)

Cute little wall hanging that currently resides in my kitchen.

I honestly could not believe it when I spotted these hand painted, wooden Matryoshkas. So amazing, and only $2!

Little owl to add to my collection.

Cash got to pick one toy, and he's REALLY into the alphabet and counting right now so this was perfect!

And lastly, the big daddy purchase of the trip, my perfect condish, $40 vintage sofa that I could NOT leave Kansas without purchacing. I found her on our second day in Kansas and could not shut up about her the entire trip. It was love at first sight. I honestly thought I was going to have to pass her up, since we had no way to get her back to Texas, BUT my dad had told me he was planning a trip to KS this summer, so I called him to see if he'd be able to pick it up from my moms while he was here and bring it back to Texas for me. And he said yes (!!!), and my mommy even bought it for me and stored it in her garage. I could not be more excited about this couch. We are so desperately in need of a new (old), sturdy, comfortable couch, and she meets- nay, excells in all these catagories. I cannot wait to finally get her down here and settled into our home.

And lastly, some things I am kicking myself for not getting...

These cannisters.... I found these on my last day in KS. I REALLY loved them and wanted to snag them, but couldnt justify spending $6 on them, when I already have an overabundance of cannisters at home. But when I showed the picture to the mister, he loved them too, so we planned to swing by the Goodwill on our way out of town... but they were closed. :( So we didnt get them. Such a bummer.

I know, I know... I totally should have gotten this little gem, but Cash had already gotten his alphabet desk and Im pretty sure he wouldnt have played with this too much, since all it did was open the cash register when you turn the handle... so I chose the learning toy.

These three things were at the Salvation Army, and both the clock and the brown leather chairs were a bit over priced, and the yellow floral chairs had rips in the seat and were wobbly, so I opted out. In retrospect, I really wish we would have budgeted a ~~little~~ lot more for thrifting. I would have LOVED to take those brown chairs home!

Welp, thats all for now.

Hope yall have a great weekend!

xo, L

I FINALLY got around to uploading and editing all of our photos on the camera from our little Kansas vacation, and here they are! Along with the story of our incredible journey... (I'll do another post with our Instapics for the week)

We picked up the rental last Monday and decided that driving through the night would be the best option for driving ten and a half hours with an infant and toddler. We rented this FANTASTIC crossover, the 2012 Ford Edge, that was so roomy and comfortable and completely badass. We completely fell in love with this vehicle over the length of our trip. We’re seriously thinking of making it our next car this year sometime. Anyways, so we loaded up, ate dinner, bathed the kids and got them dressed for bed, then put them in their carseats with milk, and BAM- both passed out before we even got out of San Antonio. SUCCESS! … or so we thought. Cash ended up waking up when we were going through Dallas, half way through the drive and stayed away until 45 minutes before we arrived. He was good though, and quiet, so it wasn’t too bad. Luckily, when we got there, my sister Ashley was there waiting (the folks were at work) and took the boy, plus my nephew Ryder, so Ro and I could sleep. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out at the house and called it an early night. The next day, we got up and got all the kids bathed and dressed to go into Wichita to have all the grandboys’ pictures taken. My mom, sisters, nephew, and us met my brother and his family at the portrait studio, which was quite the experience with a four year old, 2 two year olds, and 2 four month olds. We got some pretty good shots, considering, and I’ll post them in another post. Afterwards, we all went out to eat at Applebees before heading back to the Eldo. Thursday we spent the day relaxing, and Ro and I left the kids at home with my mom and sister and drove into town to explore. El Dorado has the most adorable bunch of houses, and we love to just cruise up and down the streets and scope them all out. First we hit up Braums for some UH-MAZING single dip cones (for only $1.30!!!!!), then spent the next few hours creeping around and taking pictures of gorgeous houses. We also found quite a few thrifting spots! Id been to the Salvation Army and the Goodwill there before, so I knew I wanted to hit those up, but we also found a huge blue building labled The Bargain Barn, and a cute little shop called Gizmo’s Flea Market. The finds in this town were INCREDIBLE. Seriously. I hit up a lot of stores here in SA but never have I ever experienced such a epic amout of finds. Especially in the furnature department, which of course, is off limits to me since I have no way of getting furnature back home to Texas. Naturally, I found my dream couch at the Salvation Army. But more on that later. I plan to do a post just on my Kansas thrift finds. I will tell you, however, that I did make that sweet girl MINE! Hahaaa!

Needless to say, we had a pretty fun day just cruising around town and eating ice cream cones.

Friday was a big day. My sister decided that come hell or high water, we were going to the the matching tattoos that we’ve been wanting to get for years, while I was there. Back when we were still in high school, I bought all 3 of us girls a necklace from James Avery with a silver clover charm that’s made up of 3 hearts, one for each of us. We wore them constantly and decided that some day we would get matching tattoos of the charm. Since we’re only together once a year at the most, it never worked out for us to get it before, but this time she was deturmined. So we called a shop, made an appointment and planned to go in on Friday while Mom kept the kids. Which meant that we had to decide exactly what we all wanted, if they would match exactly, or all have their own style. We decided on the later. Ashley got a single line version of the charm on her ribs, and Bailey and I got them on opposite forearms, hers in black and grey and mine a traditional style with color. Mine is currently in the gross, scabby phase, but hopefully it heals nicely because it’ll end up being the center piece for a tattoo Ive been planning. Anywho, we got the tattoos, then headed to the mall, ate delicious prezels and drank Orange Julius, and picked up some green accessories for Saturday. You should know, upon planning this vacation, we picked the dates in accordance to when the annual Fake Patty’s Day celebration takes place. It’s a HUGE St Patty’s Day party in the down town area of Manhattan Kansas, home of Kansas State University. Its an area called Aggieville, and its basically streets and streets of bars where all the college kids party. Take that, throw in a bunch of green clothing, and LOADS beer and you have the ultimate party. The reason its called Fake Patty’s Day is because they host this insanity a week BEFORE the real St. Patty’s Day, since the 17^th always falls during Spring Break and a lot of people go out of town. Thus they created this holiday as another excuse for everyone to party and for the bars to make even more money. The people there take it very seriously though! They get up at like 9am, and have house partys for Kegs and Eggs. Green keg beer and green scrambled eggs. After the house parties, everyone heads downtown to Aggieville and hits the bars to drink LOADS of gigantic $5 cups of green beer. My sister has a fabulous downtown apartment above one of the resturaunts in Aggieville, right in the middle of the party. We were able to go down to the bars and get out drink on, find friends, and take them back up to the apartment to take shots, or pee. It was a crazy day. We both drank WAY too much, but luckily Bailey didn’t, so we filled our bellies with greasy food and headed home to Eldorado and the kids. We had a BLAST but I was excited to get home to my babies. Plus I was a little worried about Mom having all three boys by herself. She was fine of course.

Sunday, we spent much of the day nursing hangovers. My stepdad made busciuts and gravy in the morning and barbequed all day for the family dinner we were having later. My grandma, uncle, cousins, brother and his family all came out and ate bbq that afternoon, hung out and the guys (and me) even went out and shot all the guns in the pasture. It was great fun, and made me miss being able to go to the range all the time like we used to before we had kids. Monday was our last day in El Dorado, since we planned to leave that night. Bailey was off work that day, so we took the kids into town, met Mom for lunch as she was getting off, then decided to go back to the thrift store for a few things I still wanted to snag, including my glorious couch. It was great ending to an incredible trip and I cried as we loaded our things back into the rental and said our goodbyes. Ive had to do this so many times throughout my life that I don’t usually get upset about it anymore, but it seemed especially hard to leave this time, and I did. And after a looooooooooong drive back to Texas, we finally reached out little green house.

We had such a great time, and I was SO incredibly sad to leave, but I can honestly say that I am glad to be home. I really missed our little home and our regular schedule. Sylas didnt sleep well while we were gone, AND caught a nasty cold which caused him to be uncharachteristly fussy, and Cash barely ate the entire time. I can happily say that Sylas is (mostly) well and back to his usual giggley self, sleeping all the way through the night and Cash has been eating everything in sight! Not to mention the fact that there were two kitties anxiously awaiting our return! Looking back while editing these photos reminded me of what a great trip we had, how much I missed my family, and how much I HATE living so far away from them. If I could ever convince the mister to move, I most certainly wouldn’t hesitate. It makes me so sad that Cash and Sylas will never be as close to his aunts, my best friends in this world, and my mom as they could be if we lived there. Theres nothing, besides my dad, keeping me here, but Ro’s entire family lives here in San Antonio and his close circle of friends, so convincing him to would be next to impossible. But I’ll keep trying. In the mean time, I’ll just have to get us back up to Kansas as often as possible. We’re already planning to return in August, if at all humanly possible, for my brothers wedding. Fingers crossed it actually happens!

Ryder and Cash playing outside on our first day