I used to be a musical theatre geek.

A way long time ago, I was so sure that musical theatre was IT for me. My home was on Broadway. I was SO sure of it. It's crazy how things change right? :)
My iPod was filled to the brim with original cast recordings and you'd have to scroll through the hundreds of "Cast Of's..." to get to 'real' music. Ridiculous!
Well, I thought it would be fun to show you a few photos from mine (and Colby Kern's!) time in a local production of The Music Man. :)

 Colby, the ladies man. ;)

That was a summer well spent! I even convinced my fantastic parents to join me, and they loved it so much they did a show the next year without me! (They were in Hello Dolly!) This was my last show to have ever done, and I miss it so much. I need to get involved in theater again.
What's something you used to be super involved in? I'd love to hear about it. :)

xo Haley

Instagram Life.

1. My first Arm Party. I don't wear bracelets, watches, etc. too often... I just feel like I don't pull off that "look," but I really liked all of these together, so who knows, maybe I'll start wearing them more often? 2. Truman! This is The Midwest Indies debut album! Like I mentioned a few days ago, it's not available for purchase juuust yet, but you can stream it on BandCamp for the time being. 3. I baked cupcakes Friday night for the kiddos. They were so cute, staring at the oven, and Jack kept saying, "Mmm! Yummy!" 4. I treated myself to the latest issue of 417 Bride and a grapefruit Izze. It was a relaxing night! 5. Blake and I took a little Sunday drive out to Marshfield (my hometown) yesterday to take a little look at a small church that we were considering for our ceremony. Too bad it was a bit too small for us! And Blake thought it was a little creepy. Oh well! 6. Blake and I went on an all day date to Branson (Vegas of Missouri!) for our 1.5 year anniversary! We spent the day at Silver Dollar City and then drove down the strip looking at all the silly touristy things (like this and this one is our favorite) we swear we will do someday.

So this is life as of lately. We're being kept busy with work schedules and school stuff, but it's been a fun month so far. And next month brings my 21st birthday! I'm thinking of setting some goals for my 21st year. Maybe getting married and pulling off the wedding of my dreams is a big enough goal for right now. ;)

xo Haley

New Blog Read: Independent Gentleman

Good morning! I would love to introduce you to a new blog read! My friend Zach (a friend from Hipster Tuesday) just started a blog, called Independent Gentleman. Based on the first introduction post her wrote yesterday, I can tell it's going to be an awesome guys lifestyle blog with a little music and movie stuff mixed in there. There's not enough guy bloggers out there! Zach has been talking a lot about this new blog, so I'm super excited to see how the blog progresses over the next few weeks! Hopefully, you'll follow along too. :)
To give you a taste of what Independent Gentleman is going to be about, you can just take a look at Zach's instagram feed - the guy has impeccable style!

Be sure to check out his blog, instagram (@jfkjrjr), and Twitter! Oh, and ladies - he's single. ;)

xo Haley

ps, while I'm here, Blake's band, The Midwest Indies, just finished their album! It's not ready for purchase just yet (it'll be on iTunes in a few weeks), but for now, you can stream it here. Give it a listen!

Dream Venue + Wedding Planning Woes

It's so crazy that our wedding date is still 15 months away, yet we have a lot of the *big* details (and even a few details) planned. We have a caterer (my dad, actually!), our wedding party is pretty much all picked (yay!), a photographer, a possible videographer, invites + programs are being designed right now, we're working on the venue (it's proving to be the most stressful part), and we've got a lot of our music planned out. 

It is incredibly exciting, and such a happy time - I just want it all to go by so much faster. I'm not taking my time and actually enjoying it... I've been so excited about getting married and having a wedding since I was like two years old, so I'm ready to get the party started! I thought that I would enjoy the whole planning process, but as it turns out - I'm just stressed out (and so is my momma! haha!) But - it doesn't matter how it happens or when it happens, I just want to get married to Blake. That's all that matters. :) 

The photos are all from our dream wedding venue, Miss Gilmore's Carriage House. I had no idea this place even existed until I searched high and low on Google, and just stumbled upon it. I blogged about this a few weeks ago, but we went and visited it while Claire was in town and we fell.in.love. While we were there, the woman who runs the venue kept mentioning that she hated her website. Well, my dad's best friend is a graphic designer (and is designing our invites) and he offered to completely redesign her website in exchange for the wedding venue for our wedding. I was ecstatic when I heard that he was willing to offer that to her, and yesterday I got the news that they brought up the offer to her...and she hired someone to do a new website last week. Imagine my bummed out attitude while I was out at the movies with Blake! All I wanted to do was get out of there. I feel bad for being so bummed out about it for so long yesterday, because I know that being sad about things (while useful for some, it never helps me), doesn't get anything done. And just because she couldn't accept the offer, it doesn't mean we have to give up the venue! It just means we're going to have to move things around in our budget and continue sweet talking my dad. The only other option if all that doesn't work out is moving our wedding date so we can have our original wedding location. So nervous, but I know it'll all work out the way it's supposed to. 

And like I said - in the end, I get to marry Blake and that's all that matters. :) 

Thanks for letting me vent! Sometimes I just need to write it all down and get it out of my system - plus, it'll be great to read back on all these wedding woes after we're married and get a good laugh out of it. :)

xo Haley

*Photos from @alissaclaire on Instagram :) 

Currently...

Obsessing over the video I found on youtube... if you search some random assortment of letters (I can't remember what, or I'd tell you!) the search results come up with the ENTIRE Hunger Games movie. I'm not even joking, I watched it today while I did homework. It's the crazies thing ever!

Working on homework for school. Since the 'semester' is only 8 weeks long, everything is in super speed, and it's awful. I definitely don't like how fast paced it is, and I think that I'll probably never put myself through summer classes ever again.

Thinking about auditioning for a local production of Les Miserables. Auditions are next month, and are by appointment only. I'm kinda freaking out. I want to do it so bad, but I haven't been in a show since my sophomore year of high school. Yikes!

Listening to the news right now, but on my Spotify playlist, I'm currently listening to Fun, the new Beach House album, and Miley Cyrus ;) (Blake and I listened to her the entire way to Branson yesterday!)

Wishing for the rest of this week to speed by (I find myself saying that a lot...). I'm really looking forward to the weekend, even though I'm not doing anything much. Blake's cousin Ashley is coming home on Friday! She's been in China since February, so we are all VERY excited to have her back! We only get 2 short months with her before she heads back in August for school again! :(

I hope you have had an awesome Wednesday! Blake's band's album is finally finished, so I'm looking forward to hearing it soon. If you're in the Springfield area on July 20th (I think), you should come to their album release show! It's gonna be a good one!! :)

xo Haley

Quick snapshots of the weekend.

1. The first night Claire was here. We watched Bridesmaids, went out for Pineapple Whip, and I cooked a delicious dinner of tilapia, green beans and cheesy rice. :)
2. Saturday we went to look at a wedding venue; if you follow me on Instagram, you know a lot about it already. ;) it's absolutely gorgeous, and just the perfect place all around.
3. We ate at Grad School on Saturday. Grad School has the best burgers and fries. I always get the Full Ride!
4. This is where the ceremony will take place, if we choose to get married at the wedding venue we looked at on Saturday. The lady said its the perfect place to hang mason jars and lights. She had me at mason jars.
5. Sunday after church, we went out for a sweet treat at Andy's. I'm not a big ice cream fan (although, Blake makes the argument that it's not ice cream, it's frozen custard.
6. We were greeted this morning by a storm early this morning, and the power was out in my apartment for over an hour! So we trucked on over to Gailey's for breakfast this morning: peanut butter and chocolate chip pancakes. So wonderful...so full.


Claire stayed for the weekend. I hadn't seen her since January! We live about 4.5 hours apart, so we don't see each other nearly often enough. Miss you already, Claire!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!
xo Haley

Currently...

Obsessing Over wedding locations. As I mentioned yesterday, our original location fell through because we aren't willing to budge on the date, so we are looking elsewhere. We have around 4 different locations, 3 of which cost $1200+, which is a big shock because we were looking at paying around $200-300 for our first location. So, needless to say... we'll definitely be spending more money than we intended...and I need to sweet talk my daddy. :)

Working on school things. The summer semester started on Monday, and I'm already dreading the next two months. I have like 5 projects due on my birthday! What fun is that?!

Thinking about all the fun that Claire and I are going to have this weekend! She'll be here Friday-Monday. So we have a weekend packed full of fun things to do (including her very first trip to Red Velvet! As well as visiting some wedding venues!)

Listening to the beautiful silence known as nap time. :) Other than that, currently playing on my iPod (or more like, my Spotify account) is this song. It was the song behind the Hatfields & McCoys previews... definitely made the show look better than it was... I just couldn't get too into it.

Wishing for tonight & Thursday to be done with so Claire can be here! Getting so excited! ... I need to do some grocery shopping first. :)

Last night I watched a miniseries that was on over in the UK (and maybe in the US? I don't know), about the Titanic.  It was a rather interesting take on a story we all know by heart. I enjoyed it, but I certainly wouldn't watch it again. If I'm going to watch 3 hours worth of a ship sinking, you can bet I'll be spending that 3 hours watching Leo ;)

Have a happy Wednesday!
I'm off to read a little before the kiddos wake up!
xo  Haley

Wedding planning, thus far.

via

We have a date! We were wanting a June wedding, but the heat so far this June (and it's only the fifth!) has us convinced otherwise. Our families both agreed upon September 28, 2013. So we have fifteen months to go! Hopefully you'll stick around for the journey! I definitely plan on posting progress of planning as we go along. And I'm super excited!

Anyways, we originally picked June 22, 2013. Come to find out, Dad apparently has a "BBQ competition" already scheduled for that date. What? Seriously? So, we nixed that date. It wasn't until this past weekend we started tossing the idea around of a wedding in September. It seemed to be the least busy month for my family, so we scouted out some dates. After some talking, we had our hearts set on September 28th. Why? Because it's my grandparent's anniversary. (And grandma is SO excited to share!) 

Our first choice location isn't available on that date because of a fall craft festival (that I NEVER miss, but it looks like I'll be missing it next year...). So, it looks like we'll have to search elsewhere. Last night, my mom and I started a list of places we want to visit. I think we are going to try and fit in a visit or two this weekend while one of my bridesmaids (Claire!!) is in town. Excited to start the planning process for real!

We haven't even talked about size OR budget yet (scary topics we are avoiding, yikes!) ... so that may influence a few choices of venue. 

Did your first choice venue ever fall through? What did you do?

xo Haley