Well, it’s official. We have finally made it to our new home in North Carolina! This is not to say that our work is done, but I can finally breathe a sigh of relief that all of the major To Do Items have been ticked off – nearly everything we own is on a boat and Mr. Dressed, Willie and Finn and I are tucked into our temporary rental, ready to explore our surroundings.
When I was in college, one of my roommates was convinced the lyrics to Elton John’s classic “Tiny Dancer” were about Tony Danza. Who’s The Boss himself. As in, “Hold me closer Tony Danza.” I remember dissolving into fits of giggles when I heard this, which commenced the Quote Board, that hung on the back of our door our entire senior year and soon became filled with things that only we would understand.
I am a self-proclaimed Etsy stalker. That is, should I find myself with a minute to myself, I almost always flip over to Etsy to browse vintage wares, swoon over wish lists, or discover new shops. One shop has come on my radar again and again, owing to their amazing vintage inspired designs and bevy of beautiful prints: Hearts and Found. You may have seen them popping up on my various Lust Lists, but the thing holding me back from taking the plunge has always been narrowing it down to just one dress and just one print!
There are definitely good and bad things about traveling. The Bad: The chaos, the stress, the constant motion and never feeling settled. The Good: the excitement, the journey, the feeling that something new is waiting around every corner. I’ve also found, at the crossroads of good and evil, sits My Suitcase. True, there’s only so much it can hold, and I had to tearfully part from about 80% of my wardrobe. But the positive thing is that, each morning is a bit like Christmas when I open it up, Pulp Fuction style, and stare at the glowing contents within…
We are successfully transitioning into our lives here in the US. In truth, we still feel a bit as though we’re on vacation, as we’re visiting family in San Diego for the week and are in the all-too-familiar whirlwind of dinners out, meeting up with long-lost friends, and tripping over our many suitcases. All the makings of a good holiday.
As many of you know if you follow my Instagram, The Dressed Family has successfully moved to the States this week! It was a bit of a grueling trip (made ever-so-less grueling by the fact that I had squirreled away my air miles for the last year and wrangled us a Business Class Upgrade. I shall never be satisfied with flying cattle class again). However, we are now safely on US soil, complete with our loyal pets who survived their own overseas adventure with aplomb, and are all slowly recovering from our jet lag.
Well, that day that we’ve been prepping for and planning for is finally upon us. I don’t think there’s any way to really describe the enormity of moving across the world. The stress and chaos. The plans you make to visit all of your favorite beaches that hold your favorite memories (that never seems to happen). The way you try to savor each moment with the people you’re leaving behind (that somehow is over far too quickly). All the while trying to figure out which parts of your life to weed out – what to pack, what not to pack? What…
I can hardly believe it, but this week a large army of moving men and women descended upon our home and, in two days, packed our entire life into a shipping container, save for a few suitcases stuffed to the gills with vintage and a LOT of brains. It’s a bit crazy to watch your life go into boxes and be coded and logged as a quantifiable sum. Or, more to the point, to watch that quantifiable sum steadily increase in numbers of boxes marked “clothes” and “shoes”… I can’t say there wasn’t more than a few raised eyebrows when…
I know a lot of people have a slight aversion to yellow – for some reason, it’s the dress that’s passed by or the paint color not chosen. I couldn’t disagree more. Yellow is and will forever be my happy color. The day always takes on a sunnier hue when I wear it and this pinstriped party frock in particular is her very own sunburst.
Moving across the world (and having that moving date bear down menacingly on you) naturally comes with a lot of lasts and a lot of goodbyes. Dinners and coffees with friends usually end nowadays with the knowledge that we may not see them again for a very long time. We find ourselves really savoring our favorite restaurants and bidding a quiet farewell to our favorite beaches, knowing that no matter how many times we say that we’ll be back one last time before we go, it’s just not realistic that we’ll get to it all. Time is relentlessly ticking down to…