This is my little solution to those of you who are actually interested in hearing about our life and what we’re up to. Hope you enjoy it! I’ll be trying to add the previous posts here as well but until then I’ll just be updating randomly. Thanks for stopping by!

Cleaning out my discontinued S&D samples to make room for our fabulous new Fall line and I still have these lovely pieces available! See something you like? Email me at jesslehry(at)gmail.com for prices and to purchase!

Pave clover necklace
gold plated and sterling silver

bloom flower ring- ivory
adjustable size

Stella Vintage Link Necklace & Bracelet
14kt gold vermeil, vintage finish

Lucky 7 stackable rings – sterling sliver
Size 8

So we recently took on quite the home improvement project and I thought I’d share it here (since I’m grossly overdue for a personal update/post here!)

We’d been having a problem with our beloved kitty, Steve Perry. Ever since we brought Zooey into the house he has been very unhappy. Zooey likes to chase and torment SP and it’s been making him very mad. He’s been taking out his anger by peeing in the house, in multiple areas. We tried everything to please him- changed the litter, moved his box, took him to the vet, got the carpets cleaned, etc. Nothing seemed to deter him from using our carpet as his bathroom. It got to the point where we literally couldn’t get rid of the smell because he just kept going in the same spot over and over. It came down to the cat or the carpet– one had to go. Of course we couldn’t bear the thought of giving Steve Perry away so we decided to rip up the carpet!

We looked into hardwood and quickly realized it would cost us thousands to put wood down in just the downstairs of our house. Yikes! Since we’re already worried about recouping our investment on our home, we decided we were better off not putting any significant cash into upgrades. We ended up deciding on stained concrete. Some blogs and websites we read made it sound easy enough (although we quickly found out it was much more of an undertaking than we originally thought.) So we started by ripping up the carpet!
The first chunk we took out was the offensive pee spot that SP kept gravitating towards. Upon removing just that one area the smell almost completely disappeared. It was such a relief! Upon pulling up this area we saw that we had minimal glue to worry about, as well as a wooden tack strip around the edge of the walls that we’d have to remove.

The next day we started the carpet removal. We cut the carpet into strips using a utility knife, then rolled them up and took them to our neighborhood dumpster. Same with the padding underneath!

I worked on cutting and removing the carpets while E hacked away at the tack strip. We used a straight hoe in a jabbing motion to knock it loose from the concrete. It was much faster than trying to pry it up with a crowbar. The tack strip did leave holes in the concrete from where it had been nailed in, so we knew we were in for some patch work.

Tacking strip removed! As you can see there’s a bit of paint on the floor from where the painters sprayed our baseboards. We had to spend alot of time scrubbing and trying to remove that paint. It was definitely one of the hardest, most time intensive steps in the project. The next week we spent patching the edges of the floor.

Because we’d decided on an acid stain, we knew that the color was created by a chemical reaction and not by a tint added to the stain, so any different concrete we laid down would most likely react differently than the concrete that was already existing under the carpets. In order to make the color difference look intentional, we decided the best solution was to patch the holes in a uniform fashion by taping them off and creating a ‘border’ of sorts. Then any difference in color would look like it was meant to be that way.

I taped off the edges and E patched the border up by using a quick setting patch concrete that we purchased at Lowe’s. After he was done patching, he removed the tape while it was still wet to avoid it getting stuck!

The hubby at work! He was such a huge help!

After the patching was done we were ready to clean and prep the floors for the stain. We taped up some plastic sheeting to protect the walls and baseboards. (This wasn’t sufficient protection, in the end. We should’ve used a clean line of tape all the way around the edges of the baseboards to fully protect them from the stain. We will have to repaint the baseboards now because they received alot of stain in the process)

Steve Perry enjoying the cool concrete floors. I didn’t take any pictures during the cleaning stages, but suffice it to say that we spent a large chunk of time (10ish hours) to clean and prep the floors. We used a variety of paint thinners, solvents, hot water, TSP solution, and some steel wool to remove as much of the paint, graffiti, and glue as possible. But by the end we were just ready to get it done so we probably didn’t do as thorough a job as we could have if we hadn’t just been fed up with it!

After we finished cleaning we began applying the stain. We used a Quikrete Acid Stain in Cayenne Red, which is $75 a gallon. Each gallon covers 300-400 sq ft. To apply the acid stain, the floor had to be wet, but not puddly. E went ahead of me with a mop to wet the floor, and I was a few steps behind him with a cheap, plastic deck sprayer with the stain inside. We had to wear long pants and rubber boots to protect ourselves from the acid chemicals. The stain came out of the sprayer a greenish color, and within a few minutes it started ‘sizzling’ which indicated that a reaction was taking place. Soon, the colors started coming out, deep reds with swirls of browns and tan. It was really interesting to watch it take place.

We started in the back of the house and worked our way down the hallway into the dining room/office. Once we finished we knew we would be unable to walk on the floors for 4-12 hours. We finished the staining at around 1 AM on Friday night/Saturday morning. The picture below is of the floors once they’d dried. As you can see there are areas around the border where we didn’t get the paint and glue up all the way, so it’s apparent in the stain.

Saturday morning I had a Stella & Dot trunk show, so I left E at home to do the scrubbing. After the acid stain had significant time to dry, you have to scrub the floors with a baking soda + water mixture to neutralize the acid and clean the floors. Then, you vacuum up the excess water/stain with a shopvac to get the floors dry. You must do this until the residue is gone from the floors. E got pretty dirty doing this part, as evidenced by the pic above.

After the floors were cleaned, we put down the topcoat/gloss. We used an epoxy from Quickrete that is meant for indoor projects. It paints on white but turns clear as it dries. E painted the gloss on the border of the room, and I went behind him with a roller to roll the gloss on the rest of the floor. After the gloss is applied you must wait 24 hours for it to dry before light foot traffic, and we waited 48 hours to move our furniture back, just to be safe.

We are pretty pleased with the final result. The color is rich and marbley and the gloss seems really solid. There are areas that turned out a little ‘cloudy’ which we think is because we didn’t let the floors dry as much as we should have before we applied the gloss. Once the furniture is in place, these imperfections won’t be as noticeable. We decided not to patch the cracks or holes in the concrete in the middle of the floors, and we’re really happy with that decision. The cracks turned out to be really interesting and add alot of character to the floors.

Finally on Monday after 72 hours of work, we were able to return our furniture to it’s proper place and we are loving how the room looks with the new floors. We actually feel like the room looks bigger! You can see near the couch the spotty area of the floor– we’re not sure what the spots were but after much scrubbing we couldn’t get them up. We really like the extra character it adds! Now I am on the hunt for the perfect area rug to go under the couch/coffee table.

So that was our huge, insane, can’t-believe-we-did-it, especially-in-a-3-day-weekend project! In reality, we spent about a week and a half between the carpet removal and the final move-back-in. In general, if you are planning to attempt this project, know that it is super time-intensive. You will need to have somewhere to put your furniture so that your floors are completely clear– for us that meant that our couches slept on the front porch all weekend covered in tarps. We stacked the rest of our furniture in our kitchen which left us with zero access to our fridge or pantry! Needless to say we ate out alot over the weekend! The biggest amount of time and toughest part was prepping the concrete. Lots of scrubbing and cleaning – I never thought I’d spend so much time scrubbing concrete in my life unless I went to jail!! Seriously. In the end though we really love the result and know that the floors will be super low maintenance to take care of. In the end, we spent around $550 to do this project, compared to the thousands we were looking at for hardwoods. I think that’s a win! Feel free to send questions if you have any!

xoxo

Jessica

We decided to spend the weekend celebrating since the actual day fell on a Monday. Considering last year our anniversary fell on the day of the Nashville flood, we knew we had to get it right this time around. To celebrate this momentous occasion he took me back to the spot where we made it official, the Sam Davis Home! We spent a while walking the grounds and reminiscing about our big day. It was such a sweet suggestion by him I was totally touched.

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Then afterward we went and saw a matinee of Water for Elephants. I read this book for my book club last year and absolutely loved the book. Most of the time I am nervous to see a movie of a book I’ve read because the movie is hardly ever as good. This movie really surprised me with how great it was– I was skeptical of the casting in the beginning but I was really impressed with Rob Pattinson & Reese Witherspoon’s chemistry. And Christoph Waltz was phenomenal as the evil August. I LOVE LOVE LOVED this movie.

Then we went home and got gussied up for a fabulous dinner at Sunset Grill in Nashville. We had some delish food- I had paella and E had shrimp and grits. Then they surprised us with a special dessert since E told them it was our anniversary.Creme brulee! DELISH!

I recently got a canvas to review from Easy Canvas Prints, which was a perfect gift for our home to mark our 2nd Anniversary. The traditional gift for the 2nd wedding anniversary is cotton, and it just so happens that their canvas is made from cotton! I’ll be reviewing their service and holding a giveaway over on the weddings section of the blog very soon, so watch out for that!

So, that’s how we celebrated our anniversary. How do you plan to celebrate your anniversary?

Hello friends,

I know, I know… long time no update! Things have been crazy around here for the last month… but I thought it was time I give you all a little update on what’s been going on with me. Where to start…

If you read BSB, you already know that I lost my grandmother last week. It’s been really tough losing both of my grandmothers in the last 4 months. Losing two important people in my life has really taught me to appreciate family and to always let people know how much they mean to me. This time it was my dad’s mom, and he’s taking it pretty hard. It pains me to see my father so upset. The last time I’d gotten to see her was at our wedding, nearly two years ago. Since she lived in Wisconsin- 10 hours away- I didn’t get to see her much growing up. I regret never going to visit her in my adult life, which is something I can never change. I know she loved me very much and was very proud of me, I just wish we’d gotten to spend more time together. My grandmother was a pretty incredible woman, she had tremendous faith and a true giving spirit. She gave of her time, her energy, her knowledge, and even her money to help others. It was pretty overwhelming to see the amount of people whose lives she had touched in some way.

My grandmother impacted my life in a pretty big way… she bought me my first Mac while I was in college studying graphic design! I was lucky enough to work with her in designing a cover for a book she wrote called Faith, Hope, and Cancer– a book to help those who have cancer or know someone who does. As she battled Non-Hodgkins lymphoma for 15 years, she used faith, prayer, and positive influence to shape her thoughts and remained very upbeat for the majority of her years. She wanted to write this book to help those who might be struggling with cancer and really wanted to spread the word of God in the process. She was a truly inspirational woman and I will miss her so much. Since she lived far away I didn’t get to see her very often but I will treasure our memories together and will attempt to live with a more positive personal outlook as a testament to her.

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E turned the big 28 on a couple of weeks ago. He’s been such a good hubby that I decided to get him something he’d been asking to get for YEARS… I broke down and bought him a PS3. We normally don’t spend this much on birthdays but I decided to do something special this year. I just saved a portion of my Stella & Dot earnings to treat him! I also justified it with the fact that the PS3 is also a Blu-ray player, which we’ve wanted to get for a while, so this just kills two birds with one stone. He was very excited and now has something to occupy his time while I’m busy plugging away on blog stuff during the week nights.

As usual, I’ve been busy. Between my day job, the blog, and Stella & Dot, I am go-go-going all the time. Amazingly though, I’ve still had time to hang out with friends and have QT with my hubby and my family. I honestly have to say I kind of hate it when people tell me they’re too busy to do something. I want to be like, “You have NO idea…” Of course I don’t have any kids so the moms out there might tell me I have no idea what it’s like to be busy… Nearly 3 or 4 nights a week I have things to go to or people to see. I am NOT complaining, I love having a full schedule! I have dinner dates with friends, trunk shows, and wedding industry events pretty often and I love the opportunity to get out and see people and do things! Of course my home suffers for it and it’s definitely not as clean as it could be… but that’s just the price I pay for having a life I guess!

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Things with Stella & Dot have been building up for me the last few months and I’m so excited about that!! I am enjoying being in a position of leadership and encouragement to my team. I now have five stylists on my team and I love helping them build their businesses. I’ve been really close to earning a promotion for the last few months and I think that’s so exciting! Considering I only “work” part time and I’m earning a good amount of extra money each month, it’s just really cool to have the opportunity to grow at my own pace. I’ve got lots of spring and summer trunk shows already on the books, so it’s sure to be a good spring. My goal for April is to buy an iPad 2 with my earnings so we’ll see what happens!!

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(I’ll take a white iPad 2, 32GB with neon green cover, please.)

I just can’t get enough of our spring line… it’s incredible and has been getting so much attention from the fashion magazines. I love that everytime I wear a piece of Stella & Dot people compliment on the jewelry– it’s that awesome. In all honesty, I think working for Stella & Dot has improved my self confidence, and that is INVALUABLE to me. Here’s some of my favorites from our spring collection, all of these earrings are under $40!

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I love all the colors in our spring collection- it’s making me crave sunny skies and warm temps… here’s some of my favorite necklaces:

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I can’t believe it’s been nearly a year since I started the journey with this company, and already it’s grown so much. I’ve met lots of great women through it who I am glad to call my friends and teammates. The founder and CEO’s vision for this company is HUGE so I just feel so proud to be even a tiny part of it. I have probably watched this video like 10 times– she’s just so inspiring! Just out of college she created and sold WeddingChannel.com to The Knot for 90 million dollars. She is a visionary entrepreneur and anything she’s a part of is sure to be fantastic. This fact was apparent to the venture capital firm Sequoia (who’s also invested in the likes of Google, Apple and other fortune 500 co’s) that they chose to invest $37 million dollars in Stella & Dot. I think that’s pretty amazing!! They even spoke together about the company on CNBC’s Power Lunch about what a “Hot Startup” Stella & Dot is. I could go on and on about this company but I will stop here. If you want to know more about how you can earn hundreds to thousands of extra dollars each month by partying with other women once a week, let me know. I’d love to help you start your own business!

In other news, thanks to my extra income, E and I also paid off one of our student loans!! Hallelujah!! We are working hard on our debt snowball each month and we’re getting closer and closer to being debt free!! It’s an incredible feeling. We are also paying extra payments on my car loan in order to have it paid off within the year. I’m so proud of our budgeting!  I started an ING savings account back before our wedding and I’ve been direct debiting money from our checking to our savings every month in order to build up an emergency/new car fund. E will be needing a new car sooner rather than later I’m sure so I’m hoping to be prepared for whenever that comes up.

An update on my diet progress… I have been on the ‘slow carb’ diet outlined in The 4-Hour Body for over 5 weeks. It’s been really easy to stick to (although some of my friends seem to think I possess super-human willpower) and I have THOROUGHLY enjoyed my cheat days. As of this week I am excited to report I am down 13 lbs!! It’s incredibly motivating to see such great results which helps me even more to be committed to sticking with the plan. I’ve still got another 10-20 lbs to go until I am at my happy weight. I’m hoping to reach my goal by June when I am a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding! A few of the positive side effect of this diet have been more energy and clearer skin. I see this as a lifestyle I can maintain for a long time to come since I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself. Anyone else out there tried this and had success? Did I also mention that I’m only working out once or twice a week? And that I can drink wine every night (not that I do) on this diet? I mean, seriously– it rocks– and so do the results.

Well that’s about all I have the time and energy to type at this point. That’s what’s been going on with me! I really do hope to update more in the future, as my crazy life allows. Happy weekend!!

I realized I haven’t updated on the newest member of our family! Pretty much since we adopted Knox, we knew we wanted another dog. Dogs bring so much joy to your life! I knew all along that I wanted our 2nd dog to be a girl, and I wanted to adopt an adult dog for a few different reasons. Firstly, I didn’t want to have to go through major potty training all over again, also because there are so many adult (or non-puppy) dogs in shelters that need a home. I’d been searching rescue groups and shelters for months. We met 2 different female dogs as potential sisters for Knox, but neither of them felt like a good fit for us.

Then, I found this little cutie at the local Metro Animal Control, which just happens to be right down the street from my office. One day, I ran over to the shelter during a quick lunch break to meet the little girl. I just loved her immediately, so the next day we brought Knox down to meet her and decided to adopt her! A few days later she was spayed and we took her home and we’ve been loving her ever since. Without further ado, meet Zooey!

She is a 12lb boston terrier mix. She has brindle coloring which is so pretty and she is the best little snuggler. I totally fell for her quirky look- one floppy ear, one pointy ear. It always stays that way, and it’s pretty adorable if I do say so myself. She and Knox are getting along famously– having so much fun playing, running, chasing and generally entertaining each other and wearing each other out. Even though Knox outweighs her by 5 lbs, she totally wears the pants… they are so funny together!

It’s really not felt that much different from just having one and we just love that we were able to save a life of a dog at the pound. She had already been at the shelter for a few weeks and had not been claimed, leaving the staff to believe she’d been abandoned by her previous owners. Could you imagine ditching this sweet girl? It breaks my heart! We are so happy to have been able to give her a warm, loving home and love having her around. She really is the best snuggler!

We love our pups!

This isn’t so much of an update as much as some personal ramblings… much like the Jessica of 2008 who would post about her feelings, thoughts, fears, goals. Hope you’ll welcome her back because I’m feeling like sharing…

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Over the last few months, I’ve been having the same recurring dream once every few weeks. In my dream, I’m back in college, in my final semester and I’m SO ready to graduate. I’m super busy with all of my art and graphic design related classes, per usual, but I’ve got one lame-o math class I needed to take to fulfill my gen ed requirements. For some reason, I keep forgetting about my math class. I forget to go, I miss homework assignments, my grade is docked. I show up late to many classes only to realize we have a test that day and I don’t know a bit of the material. Forgetting about my class is leaving me way behind and my teacher is unsympathetic to my pleas for mercy… I’m faced with the reality of not graduating and having to retake the class in the summer in order to receive my diploma.

For months I couldn’t figure out why on earth I would be having this dream. When I was in my last year of college, I was desperate to graduate and get the heck outta dodge. But I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing out on a deeper meaning to this dream. After waking up after having this dream AGAIN this week I decided to talk it out with E. To my surprise he was super thoughtful in helping me find the source of this dream…

Basically, I figure it’s because I’m stressed, y’all. I’m working full time again in addition to running BSB and doing Stella & Dot on the side. I’m constantly worried that I’ve forgotten to do something– forgotten my lunch at home, forgotten to schedule a blog post, forgotten to pay a bill, forgotten to send an invoice, forgotten to reply to an important email… I have so many things on my plate and so many balls in the air that it’s hard to keep them all afloat. It totally makes sense that I would have this recurring dream because of all the things I have going on in my life.

This dream really helped me realize that I need to get a better grip on everything. I’m trying my best to schedule my time wisely so I can maximize my free time to ENJOY life with my family and friends! For a while I was working 10 hours a day only to come home and spend another 4-5 hours on my laptop working on blog stuff. It was getting to be really hard on me and even on my marriage as the hours when I was home I was preoccupied. My husband and our marriage definitely come first, so now I try not to do any additional work when I come home during the week. I have scheduled time on Fridays and Sundays as ‘blog days’ where I try to do the majority of blog posts, replying to emails, setting up giveaways, selling ads, etc. I am working really hard to find a balance… I HAVE to work at it, because I love my job, I love BSB and I love doing Stella & Dot! I don’t want to give any of it up!

Have you ever had a stressful situation that led to recurring dreams? How did you tackle your problems? I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who experienced something similar!

Over the weekend I read a few chapters of The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman

I really enjoyed his previous book, the 4-Hour Work Week which was really helpful in terms of time management and running a business. Ferriss is known for being a life-hacker, and has included lots of tricks and tips for achieving big results in different areas with the ‘minimum effective dose.’ He’s spent the last decade being a human guinea pig and running all kinds of scientific tests in order to find the secrets of life. He highlights many different things that help to lose excess fat including a slow-carb diet consisting of lots of legumes, protein and veggies. The things that intrigued me most about this diet plan are 1) having a ‘free-for-all’ cheat day- Ferriss even gives tips on how to keep your body from absorbing that extra fat by strategically drinking grapefruit juice and doing airsquats. 2) red wine is A-OK on this plan. You can have up to two glasses a night. SIGN ME UP! I am currently at my highest weight ever and I am really needing something to help me get jump started back on the healthy train where I could see real results soon and not get discouraged. I’m hoping this could be the plan for me!

I’ve decided to follow his plan of eating and see what my results are in a month and re-evaluate. Anyone else doing this plan? Want to share your experiences? I’d love to hear from you!

We’ve been living in our townhouse for about a year and a half now! Hard to believe! Still working on finishing up alot of things decor wise, but we did get alot accomplished over the holidays so I thought I’d update! You might remember this post from way back when I fell in love with some furniture from IKEA last year… well we finally got it! We took a day trip to Atlanta in the week between Christmas and New Years.

Sorry for the crappy iPhone pics… We ended up getting the bed frame and two nightstands at IKEA. The lamp I actually picked up at Wal-Mart…

We’re still working on getting some art on the walls, still have to refinish the dresser I bought last summer. The thing about owning a home is that you can’t do everything you’d like to do at once because it all costs money! At least it’s a little more inviting for guests when they come over now! What do you think?

In November my sweet grandmother passed away. She was 81. Two weeks prior to her death she was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. I will spare the gory details, but basically the prognosis wasn’t good. My mom, sisters and I were lucky enough to find cheap flights to go up and visit shortly after her diagnosis. In my mind I knew that it could be the last time I saw her, so I prepared myself for goodbye.

A mere two weeks later, she was gone. It still doesn’t feel real. I haven’t experienced much death in my life, especially not in my adult life. My grandmother was a beautiful woman. A mother of seven children, grandmother to seven granddaughters, and three great-granddaughters. She was a teacher and earned a masters degree, and also pursued a PHD while raising her seven children. She was a loving wife who never let anything get in the way of her relationship with her husband. Her relationship with my grandfather is one to be emulated- always putting each other first, and loving each other unconditionally. I’ve always looked to them as an example of what a great marriage really looks like- it meant SO much to me to have them at our wedding.

Her maiden name, Lehry, was given to me as my middle name, and it’s something I have always always loved. Growing up with a name like Jessica Miller (pretty generic- there’s like 1000 on facebook) having Lehry as a middle name made me feel like I stood out in a crowd. My grandmother stood out in a crowd- people always remarked on her beauty. But she was incredibly demure- very humble and never liked to have attention on herself. She was also very cool, calm, and collected- I never once remember her being stern or loud. She was kind, compassionate, and non-judgmental. She was an avid reader, a lover of books and learning. She was a beautiful, special woman, and she is already so very missed.

At the grave site in NY, in the midst of whipping winds and spraying rain, my sister read – through tears – this poem:

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

I love and miss you, Grandma.