Blog Star: Hi, I'm Lauren.

I'm linking up with Mrs. Monologues for Blog Star!

I am Lauren, an almost-25-year-old North Carolinian, Pirate, wife and mother. 

excuse the mirror pic (taken at work), I just realized I have NO solo pictures of myself.

When I say "Pirate" I don't mean like a creeper who wears a peg leg and an eye-patch, I mean a die-hard East Carolina University Pirate fan. The Saturday's of August through December are reserved for tailgating hard at Dowdy Ficklen Stadium before a game or watching an away game on television (or live if we can afford it).

I married this guy named Josh in June 2009 (after dating since January 2005).. he's a Pirate fan too.

We had a precious baby boy name Sawyer on Feb. 10, 2011 and we're raising him to be a Pirate too!

little Pirate baby - even before he was born.

Sawyer now

Josh and I both were born and raised in a very, very small town in Eastern NC and we came back to work and raise our family here. There's not much here, we only have two caution(not stop) lights where we live and have to drive 20 to 30 minutes to eat at a "real" restaurant, but I am proud to have grown up here and raise my family in the shadows of pine trees and southern grace.

my favorite wedding pic, in front of our water tower

I am christian and proud to call Webbs Chapel Baptist Church my home. My entire family attends, and grew up there. I was dedicated, raised, baptized and married there then Sawyer was dedicated there. 

I enjoy things like...

crafting and hosting parties/showers 

in the past three years with all of my friends (and me) getting married or having babies, I've had the pleasure of planning and hosting several showers and other events, and it has made me want to open my own event planning business or a place to host such things.... it's a dream that I hope will someday be a reality.

half the fun of parties is the printables and the crafting in my opinion
read more about these parties - Hope's Bach. (1, 2 & 3), Michelle & Eric's Pirate Shower, Sawyer's First Birthday and Dana & Bradley's Baby Divided Shower

shopping (and dreaming)

as my header says, I have quite the expensive taste (mainly centered around Lilly Pulitzer and similar preppy fashions) without the funds to support it 

working in the public relations/communications field

I am the public relations/communications coordinator for the system, and also the webmaster... oh and the graphic designer.. oh yeah and the fundraising coordinator, and I also design our marketing materials (a Jane of all trades if you will).

breaking it down ghetto style

I love my share of southern rock and some country, but give me some rap and a beat, and you've got a happy girl. This picture from my friend Hope's wedding sorta sums it up:

that's me with my mouth open, no doubt rapping the lyrics to "Get Low" or something.

So, read my blog, or follow me on twitter if you think I sound super cool (which you should, because I am).

Productive Weekend

Yes. It is indeed already Thursday and I am just now telling you about my weekend from LAST week. #mybad.

I posted last Thursday about how productive my Friday was going to be and how I had grand plans for getting lots of stuff done. Well.. it was pretty productive, but not as much as I wanted it to be.

On my to-do list for the day were the following things:

• create a "floor cloth" with a tablecloth and polyurethane like I saw here

• make some cute little bunting for my dining room windows like Miss Ruthie Hart did

• make a shelf for over my bed like this one

• clean my nasty grout in my bathroom with a recipe I found a Pinterest

I apologize in advance for the crappy pictures (even crappier than usual) - all I had was my cell.

I started the day by dropping little man off at his Mimi's - because I definitely wouldn't have accomplished anything with him at home (love my kid, but he is quite mischievous) before popping over to Target & Hobby Lobby to get supplies for my tasks at hand.

ohh Hobby Lobby, I'm a slave to you.

Before I got started on the fun stuff, I decided to tackle the grout. Ya'll. Seriously. That stuff did not work.

See? Still gross. I think my old house is just too resilient to change.

Project #1 = Failure

Since the grout cleaning failed too actually work (it did however succeed in giving me a lovely ammonia-induced headache) - I decided to start my fun little bunting project.

1. Got some great fabric from Hobby Lobby (always on sale!) along with a pack of "Wonder Under" to make the fabric stiff instead of all flimsy hanging from the ribbon

2. Then cut it into triangles and ironed it onto the "Wonder Under" - see how cutely it matches my little table runner in the dining room?

then I just hot-glued the triangles to thick grosgrain ribbon, folding one half of  the ribbon on the front side of the triangle and one side on the back and hung it on window! For more detailed instructions (and MUCH better pictures) visit Ruthie's post.

Project #2 completed successfully.

Then I had to go grab Sawyer from Mimi's since she had to pack for her trip to Philly for a conference, luckily I had Dee as back-up, so she came over and watched him while I went to visit my personal carpenter (my Papa Dude) and discuss the shelf project. 

While I had plans of just grabbing Papa and my list and heading to Lowe's, Papa had other plans. He took one look at my list and realized he had a lot of the stuff I needed already in his workshop.. but he'd need some time to find it all. He's so tight resourceful!

So, he set to looking through that nasty pit he calls a barn and I went back home to paint/arrange my items for the shelf.

I was inspired by the look of the layers in this shelf, but new I wanted to arrange things differently.

4. (and yes, I did skip 3, shut up) I spray painted a dollar aisle candle stick holder from Target black, because of course they didn't have two black ones, only one black and one brown. I also painted a picture frame for my nightstand black while I had the paint out. I gave an old iron lamp the silver spray paint treatment along with a wooden letter "E" for the shelf. 

5. Finished lamp, just poked holes and threaded a black ribbon through a existing lamp shade, and I propped a picture frame up through on the lamp with part of wedding invitation stuck in front. 

6. I wrote "Edmondson" on the letter "E" for now until I can find the kind of fabric or paper I want to cover it in (black and white stripe that matches the under-side of our comforter)

I did layout how I want the stuff on the shelf once it is completed, I plan to "anchor" the ends of my shelf with some lanterns I got from ZGallerie for Christmas and the candlesticks from the dollar aisle at Target. Then I am filling the space in with some black, silver and white picture frames and some little knick-knacks like a little faux potted plant, bird figurine and a little turquoise spice jar (not pictured). 

Not only am I framing pictures, I found a great site, The Vintage Lemon, with a free printable of your state and hearts to put over your hometown. Here is mine:

and another site, For Chic Sake that had a fun "make your own monogram" printable, so I made one in blue and cut out and put in front of a black and white morracan tile scrapbook paper. 

Now all I need is to make the actual shelf to put everything on!

 Project #3, almost completed.

The floorcloth project was pretty easy. All I had to do was buy a tablecloth from Target, lay it out flat then paint over it a few times (letting it dry in between coats) with polyurethane. 

But... I was out of rolling brushes, so I had to make a quick trip to Lowe's on Saturday morning with Sawyer, who looked absolutely precious driving the little Lowe's car/cart.

So when I got back home, I laid out the cloth, painted and TA-DA a rug/floorcloth.

yes, the next project is definitely going to be to paint that kitchen island.

Project #4, DONE!

So, it was a pretty productive Friday/Saturday. However, I did manage to pull my back Sunday night getting Sawyer out of the tub which resulted in a Monday home from work on a heating pad and doped up on muscle relaxers... and a little bit of this at my parent's house:

How I make that money honey

I am currently the Communications & Community Relations Coordinator with the school system I grew up in, as did the rest of my family. And while it makes the money, it certainly doesn't make a lot of it.

Where the magic happens!

Basically, I promote the district through press releases, create marketing materials, managing our website (our 15 webmasters at our schools) and community and district events. I also handle internal communications, create the district calendar and directories, act as the Relay for Life and United Way coordinator for the system (once again making sure my 15 school coordinators do their part too) and serve as the liaison between the media and the system.

But, my journey took me down a long and bumpy path to get here. 

I started my career in the communications world in 2007 when I had an amazing internship at The Daily Reflector, where I was the Features Intern - basically I wrote articles, helped with events and designed layouts for "Her Magazine", in fact I chronicled my June 2009 wedding through my "June Bride" column, and made the cover of their Sept. 2009 magazine which was all about weddings, including mine. 

I graduated in Dec. 2008 (a semester earlier, hollllla) from East Carolina University [GO PIRATES!] with a bachelor of arts in English with a minor in Communications:Media Studies. I thought I wanted to be a reporter, writing fun features pieces and getting to experience so many things in the world and writing them so others could experience them too..... then I entered the real world. 

Writing jobs were few and far between and sadly the Reflector was for sale and letting people go, not hiring people full time, so I moved on and took a job as an Advertising Sales Representative  (which I hated), 

....then got back into the newsroom at a weekly paper as a Staff Writer (that turned out to be more staff writer/layout designer/photographer/receptionist/bookeeper). 

whoop whoop, I remember being so excited about this issue because I had TWO stories and TWO photos on the cover.

When Josh and I had eaten through our savings due to my lovely $9/hr paycheck (yes, you read that right), I started applying everywhere. I was finally offered a job at a daily newspaper and as I was on the phone to accept it, I got an email saying a Communications Assistant position had opened at my school system. I took it as a sign from the Lord that it was something I needed to apply for and to turn down the job at the paper. And I did, on faith alone.

So, I applied, got the position and started here in March 2010 (see, God, knows what he's doing). I slowly moved up when my boss' position was eliminated due to budget issues, and I became the only person in my department and the only person who knows anything about what I do.

I will say that I am a little scared in my current position. I have nowhere to grow here now that they eliminated the position above me and my pay is nowhere near sufficient for the amount of work I do and the amount of hours I am away from my husband and son, but I am so blessed to have a job and I have faith that God knows what he's doing.