Izzy turns three!

My oh-so-sassy niece Isabella Lee is turning three! I cant believe it. My little, sweet, sassy, loud, wild woman, mini-me is going to be three years old!
Since FROZEN is all the rage right now, that is the theme of her birthday party. Little lady has watched it about a million times and is obsessed. The party will be at my parents house. There will be a face painter, frozen wands, snowman popcorn cups and of course good food and cake for our girl.

For those who don't know, Isabella was a big surprise to our family. My brother and his girlfriend (now fiancé) Summer were very young when she got pregnant. I believe Sum was 16 and Stink may have been 19?? Something like that. Anywho, it was a total shock. I remember all of the feelings.. they were hard to take on. On one hand I was happy to get to have a niece or nephew. On the other, I was so, so sad to think of all of things Stink and Sum were going to miss out on with having a baby. How much their lives were going to change. How much Summer was going to have to sacrifice. Missing out on being young, wild, free, running around with friends, going away to college. How much our families lives would have to change and adjust to this new addition. I didn't know if Stink and Summer would work out as a couple.... I didn't know if my family would get to be close to Isabella?... Would Summers family welcome us? The unknown was scary.

Now, here we are.. 3 years later. I cannot even remember life without Isabella. She is the light of so many of our lives. EXTREMELY smart (too smart for her own good lol), shes really funny, loving.. and we have one of the most special bonds and relationships that I cherish more than anything. Also, Summer and my brother are engaged. I love Sum-Sum. Seriously, if you could dream up a sister in law, it would be her. She is a total girly girl like me, loves fashion, is funny, a great mother, loves my bro and loves my Tori. Izzys third bday is not just a celebration of Izzy, it is a celebration of our families. It is taking a step back to remember where we came from and where we all are now. Stink and Summer are engaged to be married, they have an apartment together, Summer is in college and working.. yes, you read that right, the teen mom is BEATING THE ODDS. She is in COLLEGE, she WORKS, she is ENGAGED to the father of her child and she is an AMAZING, HANDS-ON MOTHER! Our families will continue to support them, to support our Izzy.. to do whatever we can to make sure that even though their family may not have started the "right" way... it is perfect to all of us. Stink and Sum are wonderful parents to Iz and I know one day when she is older and understands what they sacrificed for her, she will be so proud of her mom and dad, just like the rest of us are.

Happy birthday Isabella Lee Covello. Zia loves you so, so much. You have made every day of the past 3 years of my life a better, brighter, happier day. XOXO

13 months

I suppose this is the time of Toris life where Im supposed to stop counting months and start counting years but I cant. She is still growing and changing regularly.. everyday learning something new, showing off some new skill, picking up a new facial expression.
Lately she is more and more into making noises. It is adorable. She spits and sticks her tongue out and makes silly faces while shes doing it. She climbs on anything and everything. I love seeing her use her body more as a person. I noticed it a lot today. She was going after a ball.. and just watching her like lay on her belly, use her legs to reach, stretching her arms out and looking under her chair to get the ball.. she seemed so much more grown up in that moment. She sits in her toddler car seat (rear facing no worries people lol)... her baby stroller which her infant seat used to latch into is now in our guestroom and has been replaced in my trunk with another much smaller, lighter and easier to use stroller. She eats real food. She had a GRILLED CHEESE for lunch yesterday and ATE THE WHOLE THING (without crust). She still only has two teeth so I have to be careful with what I feed her but she pretty much eats whatever. She has a tree nut allergy so we are still staying away from that stuff but in a few months the dr said we could try introducing it to her again slowly. She likes oatmeal.. eggs.. peanut butter (not a tree nut)...her puffs... ok, lets be honest, there is not a food we have found that she doesn't like lol. She is also taking steps now. The past two days it has been 3-4 steps in a row! Crazy. The first time she did it I started crying. It was weird. I didn't think I would be that mom who would cry at that sort of stuff... but I was. I was just so happy and so proud. Seeing her personality and all of the learning she is doing, its hard to explain. She really is the thing I am most proud of in my life. She can hug and kiss on command. She HATES getting her diaper changed. She HATES getting dressed. She loves bath time. Outside of Dan and I she has a special connection with her Aunt Sum Sum and her Grandpa (Joe..Dans dad). They are two people who she especially lights up for, reaches for when she sees them, etc. It is really fun seeing her develop these bonds. She is definitely getting really close with Isabella too. Izzy just loves her baby cousin so much and you can tell shes really having fun with the fact that the older Tori is getting the more interactive the two of them are becoming with each other. I love love love to watch them play. It solidifies my feelings that Tori must have a sibling!!! ;-)
Update on the house process is just that we are officially in mortgage mode. Lots and lots of paperwork.. and this weekend we are going to start packing!
Spring seems to officially be here which I am so happy and excited for. We have been going to the library for baby mania once a week which is a lot of fun, we usually go on at least one shopping trip a week right now (no, we aren't spending money Dan don't worry lol), we try going to market.. and we are SO READY to add the park to this. I cannot wait to see my little girl walking around the park, to push her on the swings, take her down the slide. Between the new house, Tori and then Dan finishing up the school year.. we are about to embark on a really amazing chapter of life together.

Welcome Spring, enjoy everyone!

New house

I think I am ready to say it out loud. We have sold our house and bought a new one! We have been working with the buyers of our home for months now and it has seemed like we were never going to get here.. to a place where the settlement was finally in our view but here we are! If all continues to go as planned we will settle on the sale of our home in mid April and we will close on our new home a couple of days after. The buyers of our home are being fabulous and letting us move out as we need/can because they don't need our house right away or even have a plan for it right now.
The home we bought is in Grandview Heights which is my absolute FAVORITE neighborhood in Lancaster. I lived there before for about a year when I moved out of my apartment I shared with Bertha and Erin and I swear I knew I was going to live there with my family someday. It is beautiful. Not a lot of traffic, the homes are so unique and everyone in the neighborhood takes such pride in their homes. There are trees everywhere, a beautiful park... it is in a great school district and about 2 minutes from all of the places we go to: Giant, LA Fitness, Route 30 and still only minutes from Lancaster city. This house is literally 6ish minutes from the house we live in now. We had our inspections on the new house today and they went good so that's more stress we can hopefully move forward from and then itll be a matter of packing. I have no idea where to start. Its weird, we don't have a lot of furniture but we have a lot of stuff. I hate moving. I hate packing. I am just trying to remember its so worth it because we will be moving into our beautiful, new, FOREVER home.
Yes, forever home. This home has been made to be "old people friendly" lol. There is a full bathroom on the first floor and also a bedroom. So we can grow old there. Some other details: 3 bedrooms and a full bathroom on the second floor, one bedroom has a door leading to a balcony.. the master has a pretty nice size closet. All of the bedrooms are a great size. The coat closet on the first floor by the front door has an adorable door that has book shelves built into it.. there is also a beautiful fireplace on the first floor and we love the kitchen.. they are leaving a beautiful refrigerator and they added new cupboards not long ago. The washer and dryer are in the basement which we will also finish someday. The whole house was painted so we don't have to worry about painting anything for awhile. One of the first things we are going to do because well, it sucks and is expensive is convert the current oil heat to gas. This can be expensive but luckily I have family members who can install the furnace for us so that will save some money and in the long run it will be SO worth it, the gas will cut our heat bills in half. Another thing I love about the house is the backyard. There is a really pretty sunroom which leads to a patio and a really nice size yard. Not too big, not too small.
I am so excited. I love the house more and more everytime we see it. I keep dreaming up everything I want to do to make it OUR house. Please keep your fingers crossed for us that all continues to go smoothly.

 

I cant wait to have a chalkboard wall in my kitchen!

 

 

Some living room color ideas:

 

I think dark gray on the bottom half of the walls and light on the top

for the dining room

 

I love the look of pink and blue for Tori's room.. cotton candy!

Mill Creek Manor

I first moved out of my parents house when I was 19. I had just finished my first year of college at HACC York and was accepted to Millersville. I wanted so desperately to move out of York so Millersville was the only place I applied, I figured it was just far enough that I would be satisfied and that I could actually convince my parents to go along with it.

Me, my best friend Bertha and our friend Lindsay moved into the apartment. Eventually Lindsay moved out and our friend Erin moved in. We had SO much fun. The apartment was a 3 bedroom townhouse about 5 minutes off campus. We had a garage which we obviously used as a party room and we had college kids everywhere around us. A bunch of my future sorority sisters lived in the same complex, and we had good looking college guys living in both apartments on either side of us haha every girls dream. We lived SO poor LOL. None of us had a lot of money so we got creative with furniture.. we got our kitchen table and chairs and tv stand all from an auction that my dad took me to. The stuff was SO old but it served the purpose. At some point in our apartment we only had a tv stand and tv in our living room LOL so me and Bertha used to "camp out" for dinner on the floors. Then when Christmas came we got fancy and had not only the tv and tv stand but a Christmas tree too LOL. Oh wait until you hear where we got our couch... One day a couple of the guys were taking out their trash and called us and said "Hey guys theres a couch at the dumpster! Do you want it? We will bring it over!" bahahahaha. Yes, we had a couch from the dumpster in our living room. Who knows what the couch had seen or where it had been.. but there it was.. covered in sheets... sitting in our living room. LOL. When Dan and I first started dating I lived at that apartment and he told me he thought it was messier than his frat house he lived in at college LOL. I am NOT a fan of taking out the trash so I will be the first to admit it stayed in a pile in the corner of our kitchen for a long time.. eventually one of us would get mad/annoyed enough that we would take it to the dumpster. We were one of the firsts out of our friends to have our own place so our house was ALWAYS the party place. IT WAS AMAZING. We had Halloween parties there, st patricks day parties there, birthday partys.. Friday parties.. Saturday parties lol. What a sense of freedom. I must say, although times got crazy.. it was such a learning experience and gave me some of my absolute best memories from my life. I am so, so glad I experienced living with girlfriends/on my own before moving in with a guy or anything.

A random night at our house...

 



 

The infamous Christmas tree..

 

My 21st birthday party....

 

A crazy night at the Village.. our Wednesday night spot

 

Another night at the village for the roomies...

Clothing swap

I LOVE clothing. Seriously, I am obsessed with fashion. I can look at anyone and instantly dress them in my head. Top to bottom. What sort of outfits would best fit their body shape, accessorize, how to wear their hair.. and after a short convo, whether or not that look matches their personality/lifestyle.
My girlfriend Courtney invited a bunch of us ladies to her house for a clothing swap a couple of weeks ago. She said find things you don't really want/need anymore that are still in good shape and bring them over.. We can all go through the clothes and pretty much trade them. At first this might not sound like it would be quite as successful as what it actually is. When you really go through clothing that you don't wear anymore and it just taking up space you will be surprised how much of it varies in size... in style, etc.. and just how much clothing you have that you really don't wear anymore and is just taking up space. I ended up taking a couple of dresses over and a couple of tops. Everything was in great shape.. my one dress I love but I have worn it about a million times (from my honeymoon)so I was just over it at this point.. another dress I also loved, was pink and lacey (I wore it to the Diffenderfer rehearsal dinner) but had shrunk a little so it was officially too short for this mom's liking.
Anyways, so I get there and there are 7 of us total with major body size differences. A chick who is 5'10.. a couple of C cup chests, a couple of A cups, a couple of chicks with tiny waists and so on but I couldn't get over how many options there were for EVERYONE. Legit everyone there left with at least 1 full bag of new clothes that were in great shape and cost NOTHING. I left with 2 new sweater dresses, 1 pair of black dress pants, a new purse, 2 short sleeved dress tops (perfect for work), a hoodie, a new bottle of dry shampoo (that someone bought and ended up not liking the smell) and 3 dressy sweaters (perfect for work).
Anything that was not chosen by someone got put back in a pile and taken to the Salvation Army.
I cannot stress how amazing this clothing swap was! I cant wait to do it again. I think we have decided to do it again for Spring in a couple of months.

Girlfriends + Wine + Clothing = <3

Some of my fav summer 2014 looks:

Plan vs Reality

Inspired by a fellow blogging mom, I decided to blog today about the same thing she did. The topic was where she thought her life would be in 5/10 years based on her high school self and then where the reality actually was. So my "then" would be when I was 18. My ":now" is today, 26.5 years old.

Then (5 year plan):
I would be graduated college and living in a big city. I would have had a super awesome job, working public relations for some awesome celebrity who paid me lots of money and bought me lots of nice things. Everyone would want to know what I was wearing, where in the world the said celebrity and myself are going to next and what gorg celebrity Id be dating. What can I say? There is little more I love than the feeling of being busy, travelling, fashion and getting my picture taken hahaha. Public relations for a celebrity would be the perfect fit. I also always thought Id live in a big city because NO ONE in my family leaves York lol. I thought New York would be the perfect location. I do not think of serious relationships. I date around. I don't get too attached. I will not commit my life to a guy until I am 30.

Reality (5 year plan would have taken me to 23 years old):
I would be living in a bigger city than York, but not New York lol. Lancaster city. Turns out the half hour difference from there to York was exactly the amount of space I needed. I sell real estate full time. I have a job where I make my own hours, can dress up, get to interact with people, help people and be my own boss. Those things all happen to be my new most important things I need in a job. I am engaged to be married. To a teacher. A super nice, low key, sweet guy who doesn't take my crap and pushes me to do things and experience things I never thought I would. I cant wait to get married. Take note: my 18 year old self would have seen me as a mother before a wife, that's how NOT into marriage I was lol.

Then (10 year plan)
Lets be honest. My 18 year old self did NOT think that far into the future.

Reality (It has only been 8 years not 10, but you get the picture).
I work in the real estate industry. I love what I do. I am a mother to my beautiful 1 year old daughter. I am happily married. I like to workout and do it regularly. I still love all things fashion and celebrity. We live in the city but are buying a house outside of the city to raise our children. Yes I said children.. and no I am not pregnant. I just dream of our growing family and am excited to give Tori a sibling. Someday lol. Its weird that I live such an "ordinary" life but somehow, its EXTRAORDINARY. I think when I was younger I was so anti the "typical" life because I didn't understand what it meant. I thought it meant losing myself. I didn't understand that it didn't mean I was boring or that somehow I was too good to lead this sort of life. I am not defined by my life, I am defined by who I am. Yes, I am a dedicated wife, yes, I am a mom who plays on the floor with her baby and goes grocery shopping and to the library. I also am loud, and wild... and laugh all the time. And sassy. And weird. I like to be adventurous. I like to experience life WITH my family. I like to build memories WITH my family. The life I have now is so, so much more than I ever knew it could be. I am so lucky and blessed!

Tori turns one!

My baby girl is a big one year old! We had the best day celebrating. In the morning I finished up all of the last minute party things. A few people cancelled on us due to the possible snow (ugh, don't get me started).. and I took a minute to take in the fact that my baby is one. There were tears, obviously. Once the car was loaded we headed to the community building. We only had a half hour to set up because frankly I wasn't paying as much as they wanted for a full hour and I figured with enough people we would get it taken care of and I was right. Basically all of our immediate family came early to help out. There were streamers, a banner, fun table clothes and little "centerpieces" (no picture ugh), cupcakes, rice krispie treat party favors, lots of food, balloons... and Tori had a LOT of presents. Girlfriend got a bunch of clothes which is awesome because we didn't really have any spring/summer clothes for her yet and then she got a couple of really cool toys that she likes. A couple people also very generously put money in Tori's bank account. We didn't end up opening the gifts at the party because right now there aren't many kiddos in our lives (lets go people, make babies!) so I figured 40 adults didn't really want to watch her open 100 gifts lol. And then.. cupcake time. Baby girl LOVED her cupcake. I really didn't know if she would totally dig into it or if she would be confused and well.. she dug right in. I swear at some point she actually tried to fit the whole cupcake into her mouth in one bite lol!! It was freaking adorable and hilarious. She had pink in her hair, all over her face, her clothes.. lol. Then there was a lot of Tori following Izzy around.. Tori pushing the baby stroller around.. Tori pushing the chairs around. She is really into using anything she can as a walker. Baby girl fell asleep right when we got home and slept for a good 2 hours lol. Party time wore her out.

I am so thankful to our friends and family who have celebrated Tori's bday with us. Whether it was coming to her party, sending a card, texting, a fbook message.. I appreciate it so much. One of the best things ever is seeing people you love love your child.