Thrifty Wife Happy Life

Casual Fall Dress

November 1, 2017 by Katie Haller

A few months ago I ordered a clean-out bag from ThredUP, which is an online consignment and thrift store. I filled my bag with a bunch of Jack and my gently worn clothes. To be honest, I really had low expectations of getting any kind of money back for it, because I normally don’t have good luck with resale shops. I ended up having a few treasures in my clean-out bag and I ended up with a credit of $98 and some change! I was so excited! I ended up getting a ton of new clothes and accessories for Jack and myself, so many of my blog posts for the next month or so might include all my new fun ThredUp purchases.

I shop at thrift stores a lot, and the biggest downfall for me about thrifting is that it’s hard to find clothes and accessories that are still in good condition. It takes me hours to search for a good item at a thrift store. Everything that I ordered from ThredUp came in perfect condition. It was like I ordered it brand new from the original store. Thrift shopping can be really time-consuming, but I loved being able to sit from home on my phone and thrift shop!

Today, I wanted to share this casual Old Navy dress, that was just one of the many items I ordered from ThredUP. They actually had 3 dresses in this style, but I picked this one because I liked the pattern on it. I felt that it would be the perfect fall dress. It’s perfect for work, church or even to wear for Thanksgiving. The best part about this dress is that it’s so comfortable. I like to call dresses like this “pajama dresses” because they are so comfortable I feel like I’m in my pajamas. I also bought these adorable peep-toe booties. I’ve wanted a pair of peep-toe booties for the longest time and these are perfect. I love the color because they can be worn with almost anything!

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/ or making a purchase through a link, I will receive a small commission. Thank you for your support!

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life- Casual Fall Dress

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Dress- Old Navy-ThredUp (similar, similar) || Shoes- Target- ThredUp (similar) || Purse- Last Call Neiman Marcus (similar, similar) || Necklace- LC Lauren Conrad- Kohl’s (similar) || Belt- Target (similar) || Sunglasses- glassesshop.com (exact)

I have had a lot of people tell me that they weren’t sure about ThredUP, but they wanted to try it out. I will tell you that you should go for it! They have so many cute styles and designer brands, plus I loved that they have kids clothes too! It’s the perfect way to update your wardrobe for the season changes. Plus you will get 40% off your first purchase! Incase you’re wondering, this post is not sponsored by ThredUP. I just love to share how I save money on my wardrobe. I hope that you can save too!

Blush Cardigan

October 25, 2017 by Katie Haller

My entire wardrobe is all about layering. The weather in Las Vegas in the fall and winter is cold in the mornings, but the sun is always out, so I easily get hot in the afternoons. That’s why I love cardigans so much. They are so easy to throw on over a t-shirt or tank top. Last winter I bought this blush cardigan at Target. I love how it has the cozy sweater feel, but it’s easy to remove if I get too hot. For today’s look, I wore it with distressed jeans and a simple white tank top that I bought at Old Navy last spring for $2. I accessorized with my taupe ankle boots, black satchel purse, and a silver statement necklace.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking and/or making a purchase through a link, I will receive a small commission. Thank you for your support!

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life- blush cardigan with distressed jeans

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life- Layered look with blush cardigan with distressed jeans

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Cardigan- Target (similar similar) || Tank Top- Old Navy (similar) || Jeans- Express (similar similar) || Shoes- Burlington Coat Factory (exact) || Purse- Last Call Neiman Marcus (exact similar) exact) || Necklace- Savers (similar)

3 Ways to Accessorize a Simple Little Black Dress

October 19, 2017 by Katie Haller

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life | Making the Most of your Wardrobe | 3 ways to accessorize a simple black dress for a special occasion

October seems to be flying by. I can’t believe that it’s already time for another Year of Color linkup post. In case you just started following along, every 3rd Friday of the month I team up with some of my fellow blogger friends to host a link party called A Year of Color. Each month there is a color theme and you can share ANYTHING you like on that color. I always like to share an outfit post, because that’s what I feel I do best. This month’s color is black!

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/or making a purchase through a link, I will receive a small commission with no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!

I can’t lie, I was so excited about this color. Black is always my favorite color to wear. It’s easy to accessorize, you can wear it with anything, plus everyone looks good in black. With that said, I had a difficult time narrowing in on what kind of outfit posts I would do for today. I ended up deciding on one of my favorite wardrobe pieces in my closet…..a Little Black Dress a.k.a. LBD.

In my mid to late ’20s my weekends were filled with going to weddings. All my friends were getting married, and to be honest I couldn’t afford to go buy a new dress for every wedding I attended. I bought this simple empire waist black dress for my rehearsal dinner (similar). Instead of going with a traditional bride rehearsal dinner dress, I played it safe and went with a black dress. I’m so happy I did because I’ve worn this dress on a number of other occasions since then.

Today I am going to show you how easy it is to accessorize an LBD like this.

The first way is a very classic traditional look. I wore black patent leather pumps, rhinestone jewelry and a satin clutch with rhinestones. This is perfect for a more formal wedding. I wore this exact look at my husband’s cousin’s wedding in Chicago a few years ago.

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life- Accessories for a formal occassion

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life | Simple black dress accessorized with rhinstones

Shoes- Ivanka Trump- Von Maur (similar) || Necklace- Target (similar) || Clutch- Jessica McClintock (similar)

For my second look, I chose leopard accessories. I wore my gold sandals, with my leopard clutch and gold jewelry.

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life | Gold and Leopard accessories

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life | LBD accessorized with gold and leopard

Shoes- DSW (similar) || Necklace- LC Lauren Conrad- Kohl’s (similar) || Clutch- H&M- ThredUp (similar)

For my final look, I accessorized with some color. I always love how turquoise looks with black, so I wore turquoise jewelry with my turquoise clutch. For shoes I went with my nude pumps. I think that this look would be great for a destination wedding.

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life | Turquoise accessories

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life | LBD accessorized with turquoise

Shoes- Target (similar) || Necklace- Kohl’s (similar) || Clutch- Hand-me-down (similar)

Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to accessorize your black dresses and maybe help you out next time your stumped on what to wear to a wedding or special occasion.

I hope to see everyone back here next month for the color Orange. Don’t forget to leave your link below!

An InLinkz Link-up

How to: Distress Your Own Denim

October 16, 2017 by Katie Haller

Today, I want to share my latest obsession with distressing my own jeans. I love the look of distressed denim, but I’ve had bad luck finding distressed jeans that I really love. They are either too distressed or not enough. I feel like the ones that I really like are way out of my price range. I feel like you shouldn’t have to spend $70 + for a cute pair of distressed jeans. That’s why this fall I started looking over some of the jeans in my closet that I never wear anymore and I decided that I would make them new again by adding some holes to them and distressing them a bit. (sounds weird to make something new by destroying them, but hey it’s the style.)

I started searching on Pinterest for how to distress your own jeans and I was confused by some of the articles I found. Some talked about using a cheese grader or sandpaper. Luckily, I was able to find a good video on YouTube that broke it down for me.

So here are the steps I took to distress my jeans.

Step 1: Pick out a pair of jeans that you want to distress. I would go for an older pair or a cheaper pair of jeans that you wouldn’t mind if you messed up. The jeans I picked for this post are a pair of Express jeans that I’ve had in my closet for probably 10 years. They needed a makeover! I recommend that you do some research first on what style of distressed jeans you want. I personally don’t like too many holes, so I kept it simple with 2 holes on the knee and a small hole on the upper leg on one side.

Step 2: I used a white eye shadow to mark where I wanted to make the cut. (I read to use eye shadow instead of a marker or pencil because it washes out easily.)

Step 3: Once you have your spots marked, start cutting.

Step 4: After you’ve made your cuts, use your fingers to fray the material a little until you see the white fibers.

Step 5: Once you’ve frayed the ends, you will be able to see the blue fiber ends. Use a pair of tweezers to pull the blue fibers out. This is the time-consuming part. I recommend you do this part in your bathroom or somewhere you can easily clean it up because it gets a little messy.

Step 6: Once you’re done with one hole, move on to the next and do the same technique until you’re done. I was very pleased with how my second pair of jeans turned out. Now a pair of jeans that I was ready to put in my Goodwill bag a month ago are my new favorite pair of jeans.

I hope that was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions. I’d be happy to help!

Favorite Fall Look

October 13, 2017 by Katie Haller

Hi everyone! I feel like I’ve been so busy lately, but you probably can’t tell by the number of blog posts I’ve been putting out. I feel like I have so much that I want to share, including all my favorite fall outfits. This time of the year, I am always inspired more with my wardrobe. I love it when the weather starts to cool down and I can start layering again. I have so many new clothes that I’ve purchased in the last 2 months, plus I’ve been working with some of my old wardrobe pieces and reinventing them.

For today’s blog post, I’m sharing one of my favorite fall looks. It’s a mix of new and old. I bought a couple items at Old Navy last month for my birthday. I’m obsessing over leopard right now, so I picked out this leopard scarf that is the perfect fall accessory. I also bought this long t-shirt at Old Navy. I like how it fits and it’s perfect to wear with scarfs. My jeans are old, but I’ve been into making my old jeans new again by adding a distressed look to them. (I promise to have a how-to post on that soon!) These were a pair of jeans that I was debating getting rid of until I reinvented them and now I’ve been wearing them all the time. My boots are from last fall. I find ankle boots to be much more practical in the fall, instead of tall riding boots. Don’t get me wrong, I love my tall boots, but they do make my legs hot, especially when the temperatures warm up in the afternoons. My sunglasses are from my glassesshop.com post that I did back in July (post HERE). I love the style of them with the cat-eye frames, which are super popular this fall. My purse is also from last fall. It’s from Last Call Neiman Marcus and unfortunately, they sold out of this style bag, but I did link some similar options because everyone has been asking me about it.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means by clicking on and/or making a purchase through a link, I will receive a small commission. Thank you for your support!

Thrifty Wife, Happy Life || Fall look with black top, distressed jeans, ankle boots and leapord scarf

Shop my closet
Top-Old Navy (exact) || Jeans- old (similar) || Scarf- Old Navy (similar, similar) || Purse- Last Call Neiman Marcus (similar, similar) || Boots- XOXO- Burlington Coat Factory (exact) || Sunglasses- Glassesshop.com (exact)

What are your favorite styles for this fall?

Baby Update- 20 Months

October 11, 2017 by Katie Haller

I’ve been really bad at keeping up with Jack’s baby updates. I meant to do a post for 15 months, then I didn’t get to it so I thought I’d do it at 18 months, but that didn’t happen, so now I’m trying for 20 months. I really love sharing updates on Jack, because he’s the light of my life. Plus, I like to use my blog as a way to look back on memories. I don’t scrapbook anymore, so this is my way of making a scrapbook.

Jack is 20 months and I would like to know where the time went?? I can’t believe that he will be 2 before I know it. Jack is really developing into his own little person lately. He has a great personality. He’s very smart, very serious at times and he just soaks in everything around him. He also loves to laugh, he’s funny, playful and he can be super sweet.

Currently, Jack’s favorite toys are his puzzles, cars, foam letters, books, train and oh yeah… the iPad. I know a lot of people have different opinions on children under 2 having screen time, but I don’t mind it at all. Jack has learned so much from the YouTube shows that he watches. He knows almost all the upper case letters, his colors, shapes and numbers 1-10. I am so impressed with his learning abilities. He catches on so quickly.

Jack has been in child care full time for almost a year now and he loves it. We have had such a great experience with his school. He loves his teacher, his friends and I’m pretty sure that he likes the toys there more than his toys at home. I feel like it’s been so good for him to spend time around other children his age. Although, I am learning that he is really bad at sharing. Apparently he doesn’t like it when the younger baby’s in his class play with the toys incorrectly.

As for sleep, Jack has been sleeping through the night for about 6 months now. Halleluiah!! It was a long first year of getting up almost every 2 hours, but as soon as we got rid of bottles, Jack stopped waking up. Now mommy and daddy can finally sleep soundly, besides the few occasional nights when he’s not feeling good or teething.

Over all Jack is a good eater, but it definitely depends on his mood. If he’s in a bad mood, he throws his food at me, if he’s happy he eats it. He really loves cheese, macaroni and cheese, pears, oranges and milk. He loves his “ma” as he calls it.

Jack is talking up a storm lately. I swear he adds 3 new words to his vocabulary everyday. He says “dada” all the time. He says “mama” when he wants something or is crying. My favorite word that he says is flower “fow fer”. He loves listening to music and dancing. He’s even starting to sing, which I think is hilarious. He sounds like a dying whale or something, but it’s just too cute.

I can tell that 2 is right around the corner, because my little baby boy is turning into a toddler monster at times. He has started these dramatic tantrums when he doesn’t get what he wants. He screams, throws himself on the floor, kicks his legs and throws things. It’s all a show to see how far he can go. I’ve even caught him watching himself in the mirror during one of his fits. It’s pretty entertaining, but also a little frustrating when you can’t reason with your little human.

Over all it’s been an amazing 20 months! I love everyday of being Jack’s mom. With each age, I feel like somethings get a little easier and other things get harder. I only wish I could slow him down a little bit.

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