1. Scariest Real Life Experience?
A. I’d have to say it’s when I first moved into my own apartment and my husband had gone to work, and at the time he went to work at 2am. I was alone with our baby and someone started rattling the door and trying to get in. He was very drunk and screaming to be let in. It turned out he was the last tenant in the apartment and was so drunk he’d forgotten he’d moved. In retrospect it’s a simple mistake, but when you’re living all on your own for the first time, it’s down right terrifying.

2.Scariest Paranormal Experience?
A. I can’t say that I’ve had one. I used to believe in ghosts, but at some point, from watching shows like Ghost Hunters and Paranormal State I realized that I thought it was absurd.

3. Have You Ever Known Anyone Convicted Of A Violent Crime?
A. Yes, unfortunately. A person I went to school with killed someone in a car accident, and another person I went to school with is in jail for drugs.

4. Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Why Or Why Not?
A. Yes, but it’s actually not the dark I’m afraid of, I actually like the dark and night time. But I am bloody terrified of what might be in the dark that I can’t see.

5. Does Your Home Town Have Any Scary Legends?
Yes, but if I tell it to you then you’ll know where I live. But if you are looking for scary stories about places then I’d check out this article from priority one jets

6. What’s Your Favorite Urban Legend?
I actually have a few. My favorite website is Snopes. I’d have to say that my favorite is either The Hook or The Boyfriends Death.

7. What Is Your Scariest Nightmare?My nightmares are usually really strange. I once had a bad dream that someone cut up my Hunter rainboots. Mostly my really terrible nightmares either involves someone being murder or someone being stalked to be murdered.

Genevieve has finally achieved her dream, she’s left London and all it’s stresses behind, bought her boat and is renovating it. All she had to do was watch a package for Dylan. But she hasn’t heard from Dylan in over 5 months when her best friend turns up dead and now Genevieve’s past comes back to haunt her. She never thought she’d have to tell any of her dock mates that she was once a dancer, or that the events that caused her night job and her day job to collide would catch up with her.

I was pretty surprised by this book. I wasn’t sure that I was going to like it when I grabbed it out of my library’s new section. However this book was absolutely riveting. Seriously, this is one of the best thrillers I’ve read and it’s been added to my to buy list. I loved how they interspersed her past and present and how every thing flowed together fluidly.

Final Verdict: If you like thrillers or suspense novels then I completely recommend this.

This weeks outfit really had nothing to do with this book, but it’s been kind of my uniform as the weather starts to cool down.

Outfit: Loft Sweater, H&M Leggings, Knit Scarf, and Pink and Pepper riding boots.

On My Face: Nars Sheer Glow Foundation in Siberia, Nars Radiant Creamy Concealer in Vanilla, Benefit’s Benetint, Benefit’s Watts Up, Benefit’s They’re Real, various Lancome Shadows, Makeup Forever HD Setting Powder.

My bracelet is the October Birthstone Bracelet from Alex & Ani which I absolutely adore.

And if you’re wondering about my scarf it’s an infinity scarf that I knit myself. There’s is also a matching hat to go with it because I’m awesome like that, that you will probably be seeing very soon. I’m so excited for it to be getting colder and the season to bundle up.

I was pretty in love with how this outfit turned out and felt that the colors were perfect for fall.

I’m also incredibly excited about all the leaves and will be raking them up this weekend for leaf pile jumping.

Both of those assumptions are correct. Though the first one more so than the second one. I adore Halloween, so I decided a little change of background would be nice. Lemme know what you think. Or if you think Holiday themed backgrounds are too kitchy.

So I decided that since October is such an awesome month for me, that I would keep the awesomeness going and buy one of the Old School Coco Hoodies:

Grey Coco

Seriously, how cute is that hoodie? I absolutely adore it. And October through November they’ll be donating 20% of the proceeds from all sales of their Old School Coco Hoodies to BullyBust. BullyBust is a nationwide bully prevention awareness effort that helps adults and students stand up for what is right. Boy Meets Girl support BullyBust through an online video campaign #bmgLiveOutLoud with youtuber Cassandra Bankson or DiamondsandHeels14. The video campaign encourages women to speak about times they stood up to a bully so others will be less afraid to stand up as well.

But then I noticed they do a personalized version:

Personalized

Pre-Made You And Me

And now I’m torn. I’m virtually certain that I want the personalized version but I don’t know if I want to go with the pre-made You and Me, but in Grey and Black or if I want to do the Personalized Old School Coco Hoodie.

If I did the Personalized Old School Hoodie then my options are:

1. Andy – Mana
2. Shrew – Bear
3. Photographer – Blogger

While I think I know my favorite, I’m not completely certain. I’m torn between buying the plain one and donating to BullyBust or buying a personalized one. So that’s where you guys come in, I want you to vote on which one I choose in the comments below, and then I reveal which one I chose when in a future OOTD.

Bonus note: The youtuber I first heard about the company from was Meghanrosette. I absolutely adore her, and should you decide that you want one of your own Boy Meets Girl hoodies, she has a 10% off code over on her blog that you should go check out.

All Images were taken by Mark Mez and used with permission from Boy Meets Girl. All opinions are my own, and this post is not sponsored.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is very near and dear to my heart. Having grown up with a sister who was very ill, I spent some time visiting in the hospital. Thankfully my sister was never sick enough to need a wish, but I have met some children who were. So when I was contacted by the One2One Network about writing a post promoting the Straight Talk: Give A Minute, Help Make A Wish, I agreed immediately.

Every Saturday in September, if you go to your local  participating Walmart and listen to a Straight Talk Representative talk for one minute about Straight Talk, then they will donate one dollar to the Make-A-Wish foundation up to 1,000,000. Everyone has a minute to spare.

Don’t know if your Walmart is participating? Or just flat out don’t live near one? Well don’t worry because Straight Talk will donate $1 up to $100,000 towards their $1,000,000 goal for each share of the video on straighttalkwish.com. It is limited to 1 per viewer, per day.

Before you decide you won’t “waste” just one minute of your time or the time it takes to watch and share the video, think about all the children that deserve to have just one wish come true? Think about the happiness that a wish come true could bring a very sick child. Then think about the 6 hours you wasted last night on Candy Crush. Yep, I went there.

This is the second year that Straight Talk is hosting this program. Last year’s was super successful in reaching their $1,000,000 goal, and I don’t see why we can’t all make this year’s just as successful!

To everyone that has already, plans to, or goes out and participates in Straight Talk Wireless’s: Give A Minute, Help Make A Wish program, I would like to extend a very sincere Thank You. You’re helping make a child’s wish come true.

For this weeks book review we have Getting Rooted in New Zealand by Jamie Baywood. Since I’m ill I will not be doing an outfit post with this book. I do however have a get the look board.

Start off with a pretty dress, I love this one from French Connection (It’s on major sale right now!), then a sweet bow belt, I, of course, chose this one from Kate Spade. Then you need so black patent flats, and you just can’t go wrong with these from Zara. Then for accessories I chose this Apple of My Eye necklace from Kate Spade, it’s so dainty and perfect. Top it all off with this great Trench from H&M and this red hat from Anthropologie. And you have the perfect look to match the cover of this book.

On to the review!

Jamie Baywood is a California Native that after a string of bad breakups, decides to uproot her life and head for New Zealand. This story is about adjusting, finding your place, and falling in love the right way.

About the actual story though, it was strange for me to read because it’s written in diary format, and is a memoir of her time in New Zealand. Normally neither of those are a style of book that I enjoy. Then adding in that some of the things that happened to her while she was in New Zealand were absolutely horrific. She did have some absolutely lovely things happen, but you have to slog your way through the terrible things to get to them. Honestly when I got to the part about her ex’s, I put the book down and walked away. But then I decided to pick it back up the next day and see what happened.

I’ll just say, that like life, love and shopping, this book gets better as you go through it. She’s very frank and seems to tell things exactly as they happened with no embellishment. It’s this deadpan delivery that truly makes some of the things that happen to her seem all the more horrific. Really that’s all the only word that I can come up with for those things. I can’t even imagine how I would have handled them had I been in her place.

However, when she meets the love of her life, you instantly know it’s him. Not because she blatantly says so immediately, but because he’s the brightest spot in her life at that time.

Final Verdict: I highly recommend this book if your thinking of moving to New Zealand. It was definitely an eye opener into working conditions for expats there.

Bonus: Look how adorable the author is!

I’ve linked up with Get Your Pretty On, so go check it out

*This book was provided for review by the Author. This does not effect my opinion or review of the book at all. I was not compensated for this review.

New Zealand Look by fashionandhappythings featuring a kate spade belt

We all know that I’m a sucker for anything that says buy me and do good. Seriously from September to December when stores finally run out, all my household goods and food are covered in those little pink Susan G. Komen symbols. I just can’t help it, if I’m going to buy something anyway, I may as well help someone while I’m at it. However, Sevenly always gets me, and I wish I could buy tees from them more often. A few weeks ago they had a cause that really hit home with me, so I rearranged somethings so I could pick it up.

First can we just take a second to look at how cute that packaging is? It’s flat out adorable.I almost didn’t want to open it, but I knew it had my shirt inside, so I did.

This particular shirt supported ending Gendercide in China. Which is a cause very near and dear to me. I hope to one day bring one of those little girls home with me, and teach her that she is worth so much more than so many Chinese people believe. It just breaks my heart when I hear about little girls being, orphaned, killed or aborted, just because they weren’t a boy. I really hope they don’t close off adoption between America and China before I am able to do this.

The shirt says ” Live Simply So Others May Simply Live.” It’s a reminder I need on a daily basis. I am a consumerist at heart, and believe strongly in retail therapy. I haven’t had a problem yet that I couldn’t solve after a few hours shopping. Except well the problem of being broke. But I need to learn to take a step back and breathe. If I’m ever going to adopt, I need to save, so this shirt is the perfect reminder.

The shirt came with a sticker that says “People Matter” that I’m pretty sure my son ran off with, and a card that tells you exactly where your money went and a bit about the organization you supported. I know you can’t read it here, but I thought I’d show it anyway, so you know what to expect if you order from Sevenly.Com. I kinda really love the stickers and have one from last year stuck to my laptop that says “World Change Is How I Roll.”

If you’re looking for a new graphic tee, I highly recommend you check out Sevenly.

I picked up the sports hoodie I showed in my wishlist post and a cute tee shirt.

The sports hoodie is my favorite, it has a bright pink hood lining and the GH Sport Logo written on the left sleeve in the same color pink. It’s light weight, but still really warm. It has really cute thumb holes with I really love because I don’t wear gloves when out walking the dog. It’s similar to the Lulu Lemon jackets, but it has a hood. I don’t have and haven’t seen those jackets to really compare though. I’m really happy with this hoodie, because it’s everything I was looking for in a exercise jacket and it looks really cute on too!

I also picked up this tee shirt from the sale section which I completely adore. I love the different colored stripes, though the mint one is my favorite. I also adore the cute little pocket with the logo on it. But my absolute favorite thing about Gilly Hicks clothes, which sadly isn’t on the sport line is the little tiny bow on the tag. It makes even the most casual outfit feel more girly even though I’m the only one that knows it’s there.

I had also ordered a pair of sweatpants, but I’m exchanging them because they don’t fit properly. I need to send them back, but I still don’t know what I want to exchange them for.

I can’t even tell you how excited I am for what I’m about to say. I have been waiting years for this, ever since I discovered European countries had this option and we didn’t here in the States, I’ve been waiting. I’ve signed petitions, I’ve emailed the company. And I’ve waited. But now that day is finally here and I’m so happy.

H&M now has online shopping in the U.S.  Seriously! You guys know how much I adore H&M. And since I had to drive to the store, I was finally starting to branch out to other stores again, like Gap and Gilly Hicks, so I wouldn’t have to drive there. Since in case you guys haven’t guessed by all the wilderness in my photos, I live in a town small enough that our park is bordered by woods. I went to a town a bit away to take my barbie photos. My H&M was about an hr or so away, and that’s a lot of gas used to get there. But now that gas money can become shopping money and I’m so so so happy!

I put together an outfit that if I could I’d buy right now. It’s so cute! I didn’t include shoes or accessories because I just couldn’t decide. There will probably be a whole post dedicated to them another day.

I love trench coats. I have one already so I don’t need this one, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting it. I kinda really love hats, and since my Fedora got ruined then I might need to get this Felt Hat to replace it for winter. This Cardigan is sort of my perfect dream cardigan. I love big slouchy long cozy sweaters to snuggle in for the winter. This Oversized tee is perfect and I love that I actually know what it says is (Translation Hello Darling, How’s It Going?). And then these Slim Regular Jeans are absolutely perfect for me.

Then while I was looking I of course found some other things that I feel should come home with me.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

Obviously I’m not going to be buying all of this right now, because that would be insanely expensive, but there will probably be an H&M haul coming within the next few weeks, because I am just far to excited about this! So excited in fact that I had a post already written for today and decided to save it for tomorrow so I could blog about this today.

I’d also be really grateful if everyone could go check out the H&M 50 States Of Fashion contest and vote for me, just search ManaSmith86