WWJW?

So, we have been friends for like a week now.  Time to get better acquainted. 

I am tall.  Like, really tall.  75 inches tall. 

I love fashion.  Like, really love.  I have always been interested in clothes, even if the clothes I would choose to wear didn’t fit into what was “cool” or “in style”.  I don’t really have one particular style.  I am inspired by so many different things that it would be impossible for me to stick to one style.  Each morning I decide on a statement I am going to make that day.  Preppy slouchy to boho professional to Bette Davis in Now Voyager meets Lady Gaga while vacationing in Galveston.  Those combinations make no sense you say?  Oh contraire.

I realized at a young age that people were going to stare at me…because of the 75 inches thing.  So I decided that if they were going to look, I was also going to give them some interesting ensembles to gaze upon. 

Of course I grew up and entered the professional world.  Interesting ensembles are mostly reserved for the weekends, with the exception of a fun necklace here and there.  As my career has taken a much more professional turn over the last year, it has been a challenge to find clothing that fits the long, lankiness that is my body and at the same time looks professional and feminine.   I hope to chronicle some of the challenges and some of the triumphs from time to time here to help my sisters out.

This blog is not a fashion blog and fashion, although one of the great loves of my life, is by no means my only love or even my greatest love.  Over the course of this blog, I hope to introduce you to a few of those other loves as well.

Tip one from this baby giraffe is FIND A TALENTED AND TRUSTWORTHY TAILOR!!!  I cannot stress this enough.  It is hard for anyone, of any size and with any frame to find clothes that fit just right.  A tailor can really be 6'3'' girl's savior.

It is hard to find dresses that are a professional length on a tall frame. I often buy dresses that are far too large because with the larger size comes a longer length.  One of my favorite tricks is to then have that dress taken in by my tailor so that I can maintain the extra length but then also achieve a professional fit.

And example of that would be my Jackie O' dress I posted a picture of last week:

 

 

I had this sucker taken in about three sizes a few years back (and now I need to have it let back out a size).  Of course, having a dress taken in is just one exmaple of many things a tailor can do for you....I will bring you more examples in the following weeks. 

 

In the meantime, remeber, when in doubt...think to yourself, WWJW? 

 

What Would Jackie Wear?,

 

tbg

 

 

Gone but not forgotten

It is a sad day in the DFW area today.  Legendary radio host, Kidd Kraddick, died this past weekend. 

I have listened to him for 20 years.  He was a huge part of my day almost every weekday since I was about ten years old. 

He had such a huge heart and did amazing work with his charity Kidd’s Kids.  He touched me in so many ways and I will never forget the impact he had on me as a little girl and as an adult.  It is so strange how someone on the radio can become a part of the family, but that is how I feel about the entire morning show cast.  Love you guys and am thinking of y’all! 

Keep looking up, ‘cause that’s where it all is!

          

                                

Hug your loved ones tight,

 

the mornful baby giraffe

 

 

 

 

 

Jackie O and a recap of the weekend

Good afternoon loverlies!

Me today =

I was dragging this morning so I decided to throw on something a little more colorful and professional looking than usual to pep myself up.  I ended up with a Jackie O inspired look.  I need to try and do this more often because Inoticed the people in my office responding very positively to the whole thing.  When in doubt, try to look like Jackie! 

Ok, weekend recap.  As I mentioned Friday, it was the fella’s birthday weekend. We spent it at my parent's house on Lake Granbury for some fun in the sun and a little family time. 

Here is a picture of their house with a fresh new paint job.....

We call her the Bluff House.  She sits atop a beautiful bluff overlooking the lake.  Hence the name.

I promised a recap of the new brewery out there, Revolver Brewing.  Good times were had, however, I got very few pictures because I am the best blogger in the world.  Five posts do not a blogger make.

Revolver was a little bit in the middle of nowhere.  Not too much, but just enough to make you feel like you are driving out to a moonshine distillery during Prohibition…..which is awesome.  There is live music, food and brewery tours from 11am to 3pm every Saturday.
 
The music this Saturday was supplied by Fish Fry Bingo.  A super fun band that I swear may have been covering Dr. Dre songs with a banjo.  Something like that anyway. They refer to themselves as “A pure, raw hillbilly tour of American music, original and otherwise. You ain't heard nothin' like it”. Very cool.

I took a fun picture of the stage but it keeps uploading sideways and I can't figure out how to change that.  (Another example of why I am the best blogger in the world.)  But it was very cute and very Luchenbachesque.  Nobody outside of Texas got that reference, did they?

The “tour” was really just a guy standing up with a fuzzy sounding microphone talking about hops.  Same stuff I heard at Shiner and Sam Adams.  But nobody cared about the tour anyway because for $10 bucks you get four half pints of beer. Although I am pretty sure they actually gave me full pints.  For those ten bucks you also get a cool pilsner glass that showcases the cute Revolver logo. Cute, that is, if you ignore the fact that the logo is a picture of two guns, which kill people (guns, not pictures).  The picture of the tour guide speaking also uploaded sideways, so that was a no go as well.  I am so good at this.

The fella played a round of golf and I failed as a wife because I didn’t manage to wake up for the 7AM tee time!!!!!!!!  Nuts, right?  I don’t feel that bad.  He knows I don’t do mornings. We also went to a little winery and did a tasting.  Way better than beer. The rest of the time was spent on the water. 



The Fella

Looking at these pictures makes me long for Friday soooooooo much!  Come on weekend!  Get here.

Holla!
tbg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Monday, er Tuesday!

Wow, am I a great blogger or what? Only my fourth post and I am already a day late. My goal was to post at least once a day every weekday....FAILSIES.

Truth is I was swamped yesterday. Sorry. To myself. Since nobody else is reading this.

Ok so, I promised a little rundown of our home buying experience, here she blows.

People always told me that the right house would find us and that any previous let downs or realty heartbreak we may suffer would all make sense once you find “it”.  They were so right.
We came into the market at a very interesting time.  For years we kept thinking that we need to hurry up and decide to buy before the economy recovered and we miss out on the tax breaks for first time home buyers and the great deals a buyer could find at that moment in time, etc.  Still, we never pulled the trigger.  We worked as independent contractors for a few years, and while there are many perks to being your own boss, it is also a very terrifying concept to purchase a home when both of your livelihoods could disappear in the blink of an eye (at least in our line of work that can happen).  Once we had both made the transition into more stable career paths, we began to dare to let ourselves dream.  For the next year or so, I asked a million questions of a million people about neighborhoods, schools, commutes, grocery stores, you name it, and I asked it. 

Next, after deciding what general area of the city that we wanted to settler in (we live in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area so that was no easy fete); we began looking at homes in our price range.  We started to notice a trend in the area that we chose as well as within the price range we were looking.  Houses were being gobbled up by investors, flipped and then put back on the market out of budget’s range.  Basically, we chose to enter the game right as the market turned upward and exploded in our area.  Figures. 

(This is what is considered to be the DFW area by the way)

All of the sudden there was a frenzy in the DFW area of all sorts of realty shenanigan: bidding wars, prices jumping up, incredible lack of inventory, prices being marked too low to entice bidding wars, etc.  Names were slurred and faces were punched.  JK.  Long story short (too late for that, huh?), we lost a house we thought we were in love with for $60,000 over asking price! There was something like 9 bidders.  Cray cray. 

We got the next one though.  The right one.  The “it” one.  I randomly stumbled across this baby and called a random realty company listed online because our realtor had blown us off that day.  Don’t worry, we hadn’t signed anything with the other realtor.  And I must say I am not proud of this, but when you have strike while the iron is hot, right?  I am not the type of Gal who sits back and says “ok person, it is ok that you canceled on us the night before.  I will just sit back and wait four more days for you to show us our future even though I know in my heart it will be gone by tomorrow.” I get shit done.  Sometimes aggressively…but almost always politely.  I am Southern after all.  Anywho, the new realtor had a showing set up within thirty minutes of speaking with him.  He gets shit done too. 

Ok this is where it gets cool.  We were earlier than our showing but knocked on the door anyway.  The sellers were who actually showed me the house!  I knew within moments it was our house.  We had an offer on it within hours.  By the next day there were six offers.  And although some people offered more money, we go the house!  We became friends with the sellers through the process and they later told me that they knew if we got the house they could rest well knowing it would be well taken care of and loved.  So cool right?  Luck?  Serendipitous?  Fate?  Divine intervention? 

Whatever it was, I am so grateful.  We are right where we were supposed to be…..
Our house found us and thank goodness we made sure it didn’t lose us. 

 

Tomorrow I will have recap of the Fella's birthday weekend and the new brewery I told y'all about.

Far thee well,

tbg

Bonjour vendredi, si heureux de vous voir!

Hello Friday, I am so happy to see you!



Daily Decolletage

I am welcoming Friday with a little neck fanciness. It may be 100 degrees outside but it's only 65 degrees in my office.



I love Fridays. (collective sigh of duhs heard all around) The fella's birthday was this past Tuesday so we are headed to Lake Granbury to celebrate with a little golf, water sports, wine and family. These are the best kinds of weekends, when everyone is happy and wanting to be adventurous outside. The fella doesn't get much time off work for relaxing so I am so happy to give him a weekend full of the things that he loves to do. 

What I think I look like water skiing:

 

What I actually look like:

 

I really hope that Giraffe wasn't harmed in the making of whatever that movie was.....

For anyone who may stumble upon this blog who also frequents Lake Granbury, we are going to check out the new Revolver Brewery. I will post a little recap next week and let you know how it was. I hear they have food trucks and live music on Saturdays. I am all over that like a skiing Giraffe's legs (are all over the place). Did that make sense? 

And I know yesterday I mentioned writing about what we went through while buying our new home.  So you have that to look forward to...a woo hoo for you. 

Have a great Friday!!!

Peace in the Middle East,

tbg

Changes for the good......and bad.

Yesterday I mentioned that I would like to use this blog as a way to organize my thoughts.  This past year has been jam-packed for me.  Many bad, really bad, good and really good things have happened and change the landscape of my life.  Although I am sure I will mention a few of the bad from time to time, this is not a pity page and I want to focus on the positive.  Among the many good and the many really good are these: a big change in the direction of my career, my husband and I decided to try to start a family and the most exciting of all….we bought a house.

Ever since my husband and I met, we have been dreaming about owning our first home together.  Six years later, our dream came true.  We got our own little 1960’s, updated slice of Heaven.  We call her our “Heavenly Grass”. 

Here are some pictures that were posted on Realtor.com when the house was for sale. We will call these the befores:

 

 

 

I am so in love. 

 

Finding a house was much more difficult and emotional than excepted.  Tomorrow I will write a post about the process of finding our perfect, heavenly grass.

 

Of course we will be making changes, decorating, etc.  I hope to keep track of all of that on here. 

 

Have a great rest of your Thursday!

 

Over and out,

 

tbg

 

Bonjour!

I have wanted to start a blog for some time and have finally taken the plunge.  It just seems like a great place to “get it all out”.  A place to organize my thoughts, hopes, dreams, projects and the like because my brain sometimes (always) fails to organize all of those things on its own.

I am hoping, like many of you out there in blogger world, that this blog can serve as my creative outlet.  I have a very small creative muscle that is hardly, if ever, exercised in my career and every now and again it aches for a little jog around the block.  Unlike the rest of the 640ish muscles in my body (Thanks Google) that never, ever ache to jog.  Ever.  So I thought I might oblige the poor, wee thing.

Also, I want to document moments like this,

And this,

And a little bit of this,

 

And some of these,

 

And so forth.

In no way, shape or form do I believe that anyone will ever read this, but who knows?  Maybe I will make a new friend or help someone out in some way.  That would be pretty cool.

In summary, I am going to throw myslef into this new world and see where I land.  I may be in over my head but how many times does that get to happen to a baby girrafe in her life time?  And after all, "if you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?"~TS Elliot.


Over and out,

the baby giraffe herself

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