Everything is Pinker in Texas with Taylor!

Howdy hoo love bugs!!! You know today is Thursday and I am over the moon excited to share today's Guest with you!! Not only does she share the same name as my sister but her favorite color is pink, as is mine, she LOVES books, as do I, and she's a shoe-a-holic, as am I, though there is no doubt she has more shoes than I may ever own in my lifetime! She hails from the great state of Texas and wears about twenty different hats! Seriously. Visit her blog, she really does.it.all!!! With a genuine soul and sparkling beauty, this gal really has it all!!! I hope you enjoy her! She was one of my first blogging friends and I will forever treasure her for that!! 


Hey y'all! I'm Taylor and I blog over at Pink Heels Pink Truck. I'm so excited to be guest posting on Lauran's fabulous blog today!! Here's a little bit about me, just real quick. ;) I'm a Texas girl who absolutely has an obsession with all things pink, shoes and books. Great combo, huh! ha! ;) I'm a Petroleum Landman by day and blogger extraordinaire by night (at least I try to be...ha!) Today, I thought I'd discuss some of my favorite authors. I'd love to show off some of my shoes, but then this post would get into a novel form! ;) haha! I do have my shoe closet tab on my blog, so you can take a peek at some of my shoes (I've not put them all up there, but that's a good chunk of them). I like to drool over them a bit, cause I can only really wear 1 pair at a time! Right now my book club is reading "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn and OMG...what an interesting book. So many twists and turns, this book will keep you on your toes the entire way through! One of our previous book club reads was "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern and that is a book I would highly recommend! I would love for Erin to write up another book. Her creativity will blow your socks out of the water! ha! So, here's some of my favorite authors, with a book recommendation to go with it: (in no particular order, cause really..that is just way too hard!) :)

 1. Mary Kay Andrews - "The Fixer Upper"
 
 2. Jennifer Crusie - "Maybe This Time"
 
 3. Janet Evanovich - "One for the Money" {The Stephanie Plum Series}
 4. Harriet Evans - "Going Home"
 
 5. Joanne Fluke - "Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder" {The Hannah Swenson Series}
 6. Diana Gabaldon - "Outlander"
 
 7. Sophie Kinsella/Madeleine Wickham - "Twenties Girl"
 8. Sue Grafton - "A is for Alibi" {The Kinsey Milhone Series}
 9. Jill Mansel - "Perfect Timing"
 
 10. Kate Jacobs - "The Friday Night Knitting Club"
 
 So, now you have 10 books (plus The Night Circus and Gone Girl, so 12 total) to add to your "to be read" list. :) I hope you'll stop by my blog and leave some love! :) Oh and a shameless plug for my brand new venture...Fabuless Wardrobe (an online consignment shoppe where you can buy & sell gently used clothing and accessories) just launched this week. Woot Woot! This has been a baby of mine for the last 5 months. Click here to read the post all about it!
 

It really is funny to me how my Sponsors really can read my mind! Just as my previous ladies have done, Taylor must have known that I was looking for more books to add to my reading list! With all the blogging I've been doing I haven't made ANY time for reading. Plus I'm kind of waiting till June when Entwined to You comes out! I can't start another book when I'm hanging in the middle of a trilogy!! None-the-less I may have to give one of these a go! Hope you all can add some to your list as well!!! Be sure to visit Taylor in her sweet space of the blogging world AND visit her Online Consignment Shoppe! It's pretty freakin' fabulous!!

If you are interested in Sponsoring The Real Young Housewife of Southern VA for FREE. Please e-mail me at Lauran.Huffman@gmail.com or comment below! I am now booking for April and May!! 

New Year = New Faces, Friends, and Sponsors!

If you're new to following me you may want to read my thoughts/questions on Sponsorship 101 - here! The new year has begun, I have a beautiful new layout {thanks to Miss Ashlyn}, and I'm looking to take this blogging thing to new heights. In light of the new year, I have given this Sponsorship thing some more thought! I'm still not charging and I don't know if that will ever change. I get the concept, I do, I just don't know if that is for me and my little space of the world wide web at this moment.

Here is what I'm doing! Every Thursday each week I will have a Guest Blogger to introduce you too! I already have my five lovely ladies for this month lined up and ready to go! For the whole month of January {starting yesterday} their buttons will be featured on my Sponsor Side Bar. Once February arrives a new set of Guest Bloggers will be featured. If a Guest blogger wants to come back and guest post again in the next month that is perfectly fine by me. If they do it enough I may even consider a collaboration of some sort with them - i.e..hosting a link up pertaining to what they like to post about.

If you are interested in Guest/Feature Posting - Please e-mail me at Lauran.Huffman@gmail.com! I already have one lovely lady lined up for February and I am looking for three more to join in on the fun! If you are interested please let me know!

Allow me to introduce you to my Sponsors for the month of January! Be sure to stop by EVERY Thursday to learn just how fabulous all these ladies are!


Tasha from Three Men and a Girly Girl Jill from Dirty Water, Dirty South

Kimberly from The Simplicity of Being Curious

Sarah from Hott Mess Mommie
Courtney from Tales of Lace and Glitter Stop by, visit them, and say hello! Yall will adore these gals just as much as I do! Be sure to come back tomorrow to officially meet Tasha! 

A Little Food for Thought!

Happy Friday!!! Just wanted to share this little email my mom sent to me today! She is always full of great wisdom and advice! I couldnt help but appreciate this!!! Have a fabulous weekend my loves!

I’m a little girl standing on tip-toes to peer into the shiny case in front of me. I can hardly believe my eyes.


Vanilla.

Mint chocolate chip.

Rocky road.

I point at last and my selection comes to me on that wonder of wonders–the waffle cone.

My friend picks something else. I shrug my shoulders, not my flavor. It doesn’t change our friendship. It doesn’t make me look at her differently. It doesn’t cause me to sit at a table across the room.

Yet somehow as we grow up, we can forget to approach life that way.

We make our choices and then declare that the whole world must love Mint Chocolate Chip as much as we do. If they don’t, we dismiss or belittle or try to persuade.

But here’s the deal: it’s just not our flavor of ice cream.

Now, I’m not talking about absolute truth here. That’s a whole different post. I’m talking about preferences. Things that make up who we are that really have no black and white answers.

Whether we’re a night owl or morning lark.

Introvert or extrovert.

What kind of music we like.

The style of home decor we prefer.

Even some of the ways we pursue our faith.

When we run into someone or something who’s not our flavor of ice cream we tend to ask one of two questions: What’s wrong with me? or What’s wrong with them?

But neither one is helpful…or even necessary.

Instead we need to find that little girl inside us again–the one who saw past flavors to the heart. Then we can shrug our shoulders and say, “Oh, well, not my flavor of ice cream.”; So we sit down at the table again and embrace each other anyway.

Because we’re really more alike than different.

People are always more important than preferences.

And, it’s love that makes life truly sweet.  

XoXo,

Three Day Weekend Recap!

Happy Tuesday - May the odds be ever in your favor! Ha Okay Okay I'll admit I finally read The Hunger Games trilogy and now I will never every forget the line! More on the books a little later in the post! How was everyones Labor Day weekend?! Ours was a mix of housework, fun, and relaxation! Honestly, quite a perfect 3 day weekend, if I do say so myself!!

Friday evening we went to dinner with my hubby, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and niece! Jen and Marin were visiting from NOVA since my brother-in-law and nephew were having a boys weekend in Baltimore at a car race! It gave us a chance to celebrate Jen's birthday a little early, as her birthday was actually yesterday! We had dinner at my old serving stomping grounds, California Pizza Kitchen, and were actually lucky enough to have Jonathan {a very close friend of ours} wait on us! I hadn't been there in so long and it was great to see old familiar faces! Dinner was great and the company was even better! Marin will be 4 in a few weeks and she is seriously one of the smartest children I know! She ordered her own drinks and dinner and made us color for a solid 10 minutes. If we stopped she informed us to keep going! She's too precious though and if a child like her asks you to color... well you do it, no questions asked, even if you're reaching across the table to do so!

My SIL and My precious Niece! 

Saturday, HELLO SEPTEMBER 1st, I slept in later than normal. I may or may not have been up late reading and finishing Catching Fire! Once we got up and moving I celebrated the first day of September with my very first Pumpkin Spice coffee! Ohhh the smell... Ohhh the flavor... ignites so much excitement for the arrival of fall! After being lazy for a bit, the hubs and I decided to do some yardwork! We cleaned off our patio, picked up debris from the roofers, cleaned out the shed, cut the grass, and pulled weeds! It was actually quite productive and we even threw away junk that was taking up room in the shed! After our hard work we ate a late lunch, lounged a bit, and then got ourselves together for our typical Saturday night date night!

Pumpkin Pumpkin Pumpkin! 

The Oceanfront was hosting their annual American Music Festival this weekend and since my uber awesome boss gave us a residential neighborhood parking pass we decided to check it out! We had dinner at Prime 103, which happens to be the restaurant of an old high school friend and then ventured out to the beach! We knew Carbon Leaf was playing a free concert and since I knew who they were, that's where we went! While we were out, my neighbor called asking if we would let out her dog, Aldo, who happens to be a chocolate lab, because she wasn't going to be home during the night. I told her we wouldn't just let him out, we would let him stay with us, so he and Baby Reef could have a pup sleepover!

Listening to Carbon Leaf

The pups watching TV before bedtime! Yes, Im aware we need a new TV in the bedroom, but I've had that one for 20 years!!!! And it still works! I can't get rid of it until it dies! 

Sleeping at the Sleepover! 

The pup sleepover was a hoot! They played and played or more like Baby Reef harassed and harassed and eventually we got them to calm down. They both jumped on the bed to watch TV with us, or more like Todd, as my nose was now stuck in Mockingjay! They did finally go to sleep, only to wake us up jumping on the bed at 8:00 in the morning! My future life flashed before my eyes as I knew this was what it would feel like to eventually have real children! Jumping in the bed, waking us up early on a Sunday! Ohhh Joy! We spent the rest of the day being pretty lazy, ordering pizza, and watching TV.

"Mom we want to play... NOW... it's daylight! "

Yesterday, the hubby had to work but was home by 9:30 a.m. so we had the whole day together, which really consisted of another lazy day, not that I have any arguments! I paid bills, worked on my blog, washed clothes, meal planned, went to the grocery store, snuggled with Baby Reef, watched the Virginia Tech game and finally finished Mockingjay! And can I just say, that I was kind of disappointed in how it ended! I don't want to spoil it for anyone, just in case you haven't read it, but I really was hoping for a sunnier ending! Regardless, the books are an emotional roller coaster and I couldn't help but feel protective over Katniss, much like some of the other characters in the book! The hubby has Fall baseball stuff going on this week, so I'm hoping to Red Box the movie and relive book one! I hope it meets my expectations as the first book was really awesome!

My Whole Life right there! 

Anywho, enough of my rambling on about my three day weekend! I hope all of you had stellar ones as well! Even though we didn't do a TON of stuff I really appreciate the days when we are able to relax. I know in a few years we won't have that luxury so I want to soak it up as much as I can!

XoXo,