a brand new hooray.

The new Hooray blog is here! A cleaner, hopefully more organized space, and a long time coming. I'm still working out a few issues and waiting for the new url to start redirecting, but in the meantime, feel free to look around. And thank you for reading, encouraging, and being generally awesome over these past two years of blogging.

*Post update: the new site is now working and redirecting, so the blog url is officially: hoorayblog.com (yay!).

*Post update 2: I made a few more changes...see updated photo above : )

endings (+ beginnings)

Afternoon in the park:


Ice cream at sunset:

These last two weekends were reserved for staying at home and trying to enjoy these last bits of summer. I get all sentimental this time of year and start informing Q that we still need to fit in more of those summery things I dream about all winter long, like picnics and ice cream runs, so that's just what we did.

PS. I also spent some long overdue time working on this:

It launches tomorrow!

tomatoes + happy weekend

Yes, a post about tomatoes. We have so many over here! My dad gave us huge bags full of his organic garden tomatoes and we've enjoyed them with everything lately: BLT's, salads, tacos, and delicious egg + cheese sandwiches. This weekend I'll be making batches of sauce too.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and if you're on the East coast, stay safe.

on our bookshelves...

(photos of our books by andrea dozier)

I'm over on Lillian's beautiful blog Unstitched today where she let me talk about our bookshelves and wax poetic about Austen. Check it out here!

PS. Do you have actual bookshelves in your home? We don't yet, so this is the alternative I came up with for now...

rainbows + roses (and paris, too)

Kayla, who writes the incredible blog Exquisite Banana, sent this lovely little package in the mail recently. I happened to win a giveaway of one of her paintings right before she left for Europe (where she got engaged!), so she sent me this beautiful rainbow painting, framed and all.

She included a couple gifts from her trip too: a postcard from Paris and a wooden bottle filled with authentic rose oil from Bulgaria. It's funny how quickly everything became a part of our home - the painting is perfect on the shelf in our dining room and I love the pretty postcard on the wall cubby in our kitchen. Needless to say, the thoughtfulness of it all just makes me smile.

up in the air

Amazed by artist Susan Dwyer's beautiful ceramic and papier-mâché works of art in her shop, up in the air somewhere (her pieces are surprisingly affordable, too).

(found via J.W.K.)

camping, rain, + a haircut.

Hello again! We're back from a fun vacation camping with my parents and best friend's fam. We saw a lot more clouds (of the dark, wet variety...) than sun, but we did eat some great food, spotted lots of deer, and (desperately) made a campfire + s'mores in the rain our last night.

Some rainy day lifesavers: good music, the new Ikea catalog, crushed ice, board games, salt + pepper kettle chips, and episodes of Rachel Zoe on the ipod (strangely addictive).

I also got my hair chopped short! I'm still getting used to it. And, I'm looking for new glasses and tried out some of these - what do you think?

happy weekend + lake inspired

I am oh so ready for this weekend! Q comes home from a short-term deployment he's been on since around mid-July and even though he'll still be on base for the weekend, at least we'll be in the same state so I can visit him.

As for the random blog-posting these past few weeks, I haven't been feeling as inspired and am just ready for us to get back to some normalcy around home. But first, we are headed on a week long family vacation next week, and we're already dreaming of the lake, the sun, and the stars (and a whole lot of food). Have a lovely weekend.

Links to check out from photos above!
1 tee + colors I find so inspiring from anthro.
2 sea-traveling inspiration from mae mae.
3 beautiful views of istanbul from chasing heartbeats.

road trip - chicago

We took a fun and much needed girls getaway to Chicago this past weekend. Even though everything that could go wrong on the first day did (including standing for five hours in a massive, hot crowd and getting sick during a concert), we made up for it with a timely late-night run to McDonald's, hilarious moments back at the hotel, and ending the trip with an afternoon in downtown Oak Park.

(I've never stopped in Oak Park before but loved everything from the shops - like Paper Source, a must-visit store! - to the Lake Theatre and tree lined streets
with charming houses. Oh, and there's a Chipotle, you know it doesn't get any better.. :)

ten minute zipper bag

I'd forgotten to share a little aha moment I had with sewing awhile back. Thanks to Liz's easy zipper tutorial, I officially sewed on my first zipper and now I can make any size bag I'd like with whatever pieces of fabric I have on hand. It feels so fancy for a lazy beginning sewer like me, and I use my bag all the time for traveling. Above is a quick sketch for reference, and my only tip: use a cuter zipper!

(images by hooray)