the year's last lovely smile

The other day I was out grocery shopping, and when I looked down at my phone and realized it was September 12th, I almost dropped my bags.  It's insanely hard to believe that it's the middle of September already.  Fall often feels more like a new year than the actual New Year, and especially this year.  I started yoga teacher training this past weekend, and it really feels like the beginning of school.

Inspired by that feeling, I decided to make a fall resolution list - not so much based in self improvement, more for the purpose of making sure I make the most of my very favorite season.  In no particular order...

1.  Keep the windows and doors open as long as I can.  I LOVE the brief time period where leaving off the air is an option.  I'll keep this up until I'm wearing socks and sweaters in the house.

2.  Make the most of Tower Grove Park, whether it's for biking, reading, yoga, or walking my dog.  We live by the most beautiful Victorian era park, and it's trees are pretty much unmatched by any other area in St. Louis.

3.  Drink a few pumpkin spice lattes, and never feel bad about the calories.

4.  Get to an orchard to buy cider, honeycrisps, and apple butter, and make the most of the farmer's market fall harvest.  Definitely make a pie with all the apples.

5.  Really dress up for halloween.  We tend to really fail at this - me and Darrell never match, and my costume is always pretty weak.  I need to put a little more effort in this year!

6.  Have a dinner date at home, making dinner and sitting out by our fire pit, have smore's for dessert.

friday link love

Anybody have fun plans this weekend?  I'll be at yoga teacher training for the whole weekend, and when I'm not I'll be cooking healthy dinners and watching movies at home!  I'm actually really looking forward to it.  

Here are a few fun things I found this week: 

A beautiful essay on how to make the most of every day of the week - not just your weekends.  

Love is a verb - one man's explanation of how he learned to love his live AFTER their wedding.  

The Unofficial Guide to Being a Man - also some good advice for the ladies in here.  Take note.  

A wonderful blowout guide - I tried out these tips today and got way better results.  Practice makes perfect!  

I think I need this top for yoga, so funny!  

Girl Code, by genius Elle writer E. Jean.  

REALLY good advice!  

To go along with my post about natural beauty, a list of ingredients to avoid in all beauty products, courtesy of Free People.  

little changes

I'm always so eager for change around this time of year.  Since I can't exactly wear fur vests in 80 degree temperatures, I get into changing the little things.  I've been wearing more booties, carrying a darker brown leather bag, and I switched up my iPhone case to THIS one.  

Here are four of my favorites for fall.  I think leather & leopard are my favorite - how chic is a simple brown leather case for your phone?  

Leopard.  Kaleidoscope.  Arrows.  Leather.  

St. Louis Fashion Blogger Awards

Hi everyone!  A little shameless self-promotion on this Wednesday afternoon.  I'm thrilled to have been nominated for several St. Louis Fashion Blog Awards, and would love your vote.  

  

You can click here to cast your vote. 

Thanks so much for your support, and as always, for reading my little musings on life & style!  

trying out naturebox snack delivery

First and foremost, I want to put out there that this isn't a sponsored post!  I actually got a coupon code to try out Naturebox for $10 from A Cup of Jo which is now expired, but you can also follow my referral link to get 50% off your first order here!  

SO!  

I placed an order a few weeks ago, and it came to our doorstep yesterday.  For your first box, you don't get to pick which snacks you get.  This is pretty typical of delivery services - for example, Honest doesn't let you pick what's in your first box, unless you call.  With this though, I was fine with it, because I had no idea which snacks were the good ones anyways.  But I'm here to tell you, they were all pretty darn good.  

Here's what we got: 

These are the savory guys: Sante Fe Corn Stix, Cheddar Pub Pretzels, Teriyaki Twists.  Truth be told, we only really LOVED the Cheddar Pub Pretzels, but the Teriyaki Twists and Sante Fe Corn Stix weren't bad, i.e. we'll definitely still eat them!  

And the sweet ones: Cocoa Waffle Wafers, Sweet Blueberry Almonds, and Cherry Berry Bonanza.  These were ALL awesome.  Especially the blueberry almonds, which tasted REALLY blueberry-ish.  A plus for these is that even though they're sweet, they're still REALLY low sugar.  None had more than 7g per serving - about the same as a plain yogurt.  

Next week me and Darrell are starting a vegan challenge - HIS IDEA if you can believe it.  So I decided to get online to switch all our snacks out for vegan options (most of their snacks already are, but not the cheddar pretzels, etc.)  

I got a little frustrated when I realized that I didn't have the capability to pick our snacks online even for the second box, but I called anyways to try my luck to at least get an all vegan box.  Turns out, if you call and ask to pick your snacks they will open up your online interface so that you can do it yourself!  They're rolling it out to every account soon, but for now it took all of a 2 minute phone call to get it set up, so I'd highly recommend doing that.  Oh, and their customer service is awesome - no waiting or electronic people, they take you straight to a representative!  

All in all, I give them a thumbs up.  6 bags of healthy, organic grab-and-go snacks would've cost easily $25 at Whole Foods, so considering your first box is $10 and it just shows up at your doorstep, it's totally worth it.  

Like I said, click here to try it out!