#1 Moving to Des Moines
As most of you probably already know my boyfriend and I moved to Des Moines in April and we are loving it! Seriously, if anyone in their 20's is looking for a decently affordable place to live with lots of great places to eat and tons of things to do Des Moines is definitely worth looking into! We were a little hesitant about moving to a bigger city but we are so glad we made the leap! There is so much going on in this town that boredom won't ever enter your vocabulary. We looked at a ton of different housing options before moving here and while we fell in love with a few, most did not include parking which would end up being around $250 per month alone. Ouch! We actually ended up living at the very last place we looked at which is infuriatingly hilarious given how many different places we looked at but it's downtown, includes free parking, an amazing community of people, and a dog park! Which brings us to my next update, or should I say pupdate!
#2 We Rescued 2 Dogs
If you know me at all you know I'm a huge dog lover. Seriously, I'm the girl who actually squeals when I see a dog in public. (Sorry Chris!) It's actually kind of a funny story how we came to adopt these two, so I have to tell you. Shortly after we moved here we discovered that our building has a get-together called "Yappy Hour" every Wednesday night where everyone brings their dogs outside to the dog park so the dogs can play and the owners can socialize. It's so much fun! The first few weeks we went just to meet our neighbors and get our puppy fix. After a few weeks we toyed around with the idea of getting A dog. Singular. One dog. Well Chris, against his better judgement, let me drag him to the animal shelter around the block from our new place where we asked if they had any dogs. It seemed they mostly only had cats but she said they had two dogs, brother and sister (Freya and Odin), who had just arrived. However, the brother (Odin) was already pending adoption. This broke my heart because they are 4 years old and have been together their entire lives and the thought of someone splitting them up left me devastated. We fell in love with both dogs, they have totally different personalities and it is so funny to watch them interact! We begged the adoption counselor to reconsider splitting them up but she said that there wasn't much she could do. We agreed that we couldn't leave Freya there by herself so we signed a contract that day and headed directly to PetSmart to pick up all the supplies we needed for our new pup! We were set to pick her up the next morning so we could have that night to get everything we needed and get the apartment ready for her. Little did we know, life had other plans! When we returned to the shelter the next morning the same adoption counselor from the previous day was working and she informed us that Odin's adoption had fallen through. The people planning to adopt him didn't have the heart to split them up so she asked if we wanted both of them. I had told Chris the night before that I wanted both of them and that if for some reason Odin's adoption didn't work out we would either take both of them or neither because I couldn't be the one responsible for splitting them up. So we decided on the spot that we would take them both. We asked her to keep them for a little while longer while we ran back to PetSmart to get another set of everything, she agreed. So like little kids at Christmas we ran back to buy more supplies and go back to get our new puppers! We signed all the rest of the paperwork and brought them home that day and they have been so happy! We've definitely seen their personalities come out and they both LOVE to snuggle. There has definitely been some times where we've been overwhelmed by the fact that we never meant to have two dogs but it has been such a gift! You can enjoy some wonderfully weird pictures of them below.
#3 New Jobs
Obviously with moving comes the stress of finding a new job. For both of us, we didn't want to settle into something we weren't passionate about and we wanted to get into the career fields we want to end up in. We have both been so incredibly lucky to find jobs we love! I took a job as an Ophthalmic Technician at Iowa Retina Consultants and I love it! Most of you don't know this because I don't talk about it very often but I have worked in eye care for about 4 and a half years now and I can't imagine myself doing anything else. Chris got an amazing job in the legal department at Meredith Corporation. He wants to go on to law school eventually, and this job is great for getting his foot in the door and getting some legal experience before he takes the LSAT and applies for law school. I'm so proud of him!
So that's just a little taste of what has been going on lately, as well as me updating the blog! I feel like my life and style has changed a lot in the past year so I've been trying to figure out how to balance blogging with working full time and trying to have a social life and to be honest it's been super hard. I'm starting to fall into a routine finally so you should see a lot more posts here soon! I've also been revamping the blog to reflect my more casual but still classy approach to my personal style. I feel like my outfits have been a lot more simple lately and as much as I love my Lilly and always will I just don't find myself reaching for it like I used to. I'm excited to share my new style that I hope will be not only attainable for everyone but also affordable. I'm really excited to change things around here, so look forward to hearing from me more!
