That was unexpected

Well, hello there strangers!  I woke up this morning and realized I hadn't blogged in 3 weeks.  I honestly haven't even thought much about this little space lately, and that's not to say I don't still love my blog and blogging, I've just had so much else going on.  With a cross county move coming up in less than 6 weeks (cue freak out!) I can't promise I won't drop off the face of the planet again, but I'll try my best not to.  I want to blog about everything that's been happening but for now we'll start with a brief recap of the highlights and I'll try to get around to filling in the details soon.

Ran into Akili Smith, former quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals, while picking up some take out at Dave & Busters.

I hosted my Jamberry launch party and was completely blown away by all of the support I received.

This amazing #stateoftheheart necklace from Lisa Leonard Designs arrived in the mail.

This amazing "kid" I use to nanny made his national TV debut on The Late Show with David Letterman.

I received another fabulous fix from Stitch Fix.

I returned to CrossFit.  My initial going with Jamberry was to earn enough money to pay for a crossfit membership.  Wouldn't you know that the same day I earned the pay check that would allow me to return to the gym the same day a friend here posted something about CrossFit Hillcrest.  Until that moment, I hadn't found a box here that really drew me in, but the second I started reading on the CFHC page, I knew it was the place for me.  I have not been disappointed. 

Jason's brother and sister-in-law came out to visit for a week and this is the only photo we have together.  Their dad came down for Father's Day weekend and we played tourist at the USS Midway.

I participated in my first Relay for Life.

We went to the San Diego County Fair.

Elevate Blog Conference

I sat down a dozen times this week to write a recap of my very first blog conference and every single time I just stared at a blank screen, overcome by thoughts and emotions.  I still don't have the perfect words but since the recap link up is today I feel the need to put something down here.

First, I have to start by giving a shout out to Jen {Delightful Deets} and Summer {Munchie's Momma}.  They poured their hearts and souls into putting this conference together and it showed in all of the beautiful details and fun events of the day.  I cannot imagine a better planned conference, they have set the bar high for any conference I attend in the future!

 

The conference was held at the Newport Dunes Waterfront Resort and the grounds were absolutely stunning, although, this is basically what all of California looks like all of the time.  We ate our meals in the courtyard and I could not have been placed at a table with more incredible women.  The conversations we had were so encouraging and uplifting and non stop!

Through out the day, in addition to eating, we made some crafts, won some prizes (well, I didn't but some luck ladies did) and listened to a couple of incredible speakers!  Desiree from The 36th Avenue spoke about finding and creating your own road.  We live in a world where, especially with social media,  it can be hard to find your unique voice and she encouraged each of us to do just that.  Stephanie who writes at Life Created and Chrissy of Let Me See You Sparkle (who I was so excited to meet) shared lots of good photography tips while Cara from MaskCara made sure we know how to apply make up to look our best in photos.  We also received some fantastic general blogging advice from Ashely of Little Miss Momma and Alissa of Diary of an Addict.

The highlight of the day for me was hearing Lisa Leonard's story of devotion and perseverance (you can read part of it here).  She had 5 simple things to share with us that resonated deeply with me.

Be Loving

Be Yourself

Be Brave

Be Careful

Be Persistent  

 

I'm so grateful to have met her and gotten to know her.

She also provided me with my favorite take home of the day.  This gorgeous necklace.  You can find more of her pretty jewelry here.  She just launched a "State of the Heart" collection that is so perfect for us military spouses, I've already pre-ordered mine.

The other highlight for me was sharing the day with Kara and Katie.  I'm constantly amazed by the relationships that have come out of this little blog.  I'm so glad to call these ladies friends!

We also found our friend, Melyssa, who is the brains behind Bloggers Giving Back!

After spending the day with these ladies, I understand why some of them travel from far away and continue to attend year after year.  I'm terribly sad that I won't be here next year but, who knows, maybe I'll be one of those people that flies out to Cali to spend the weekend surrounded by beautiful women who understand this whole blogging thing.

I do have a few regrets; coming home with way too many of my own business cards, I so badly wish I had had the time to meet and network with more of these ladies, and not taking a photo with Ashley of Lil Blue Boo.  We bonded instantly over our questionable choices in blog names and she was so fun to be around all day.

Overall, the Elevate conference was everything I had hoped my first conference would be and more, way more.  I'm so glad to have been able to grow relationships that had previously begun and create new ones at the same time.  I'm already itching for my next conference.  Any suggestions?

30 Days of Thankfulness {Day6}

Each day this month (except weekends) I'm joining up with Katie to share with you the many things I am thankful for. I'd love to hear what you're thankful for.

Day 6: Today I'm grateful for my loving, caring, supportive, and understanding husband.

Not only did I leave him alone all day Saturday for our milspouse blogger lunch date but I also ditched him on Friday night for some quality girl time with my friend, Kara.

There is a local craft fair held in this area called Queen Bee Market.  Kara said it best when she said it was like Etsy in real life.  Vendors were set up selling all variety of goods that you'd find on Etsy.  In conjunction with this craft fair, the ladies of Elevate Blog Conference hosted a Girls Night Out event.

The $10 ticket price covered our entry into the craft fair, provided us with lots of fantastic discounts & free gifts at many of the vendors and include all the fun girls night out activities.  The GNO area included stations where you could make your own peppermint sugar scrub, paint your nails, get make up tips, and have a skin consultation.  They also provided snacks and lemonade.  The highlight for me was the guest speaker, Ashley from the Shine Project.  She gave a wonderful little speech about inner beauty and how to be a better (and more beautiful) person.  Her heart of service really spoke to me.

 

Ashley speaking to the group.

 After our make up consultations.  I wish you could see the lashes this lady put on me, they were out of this world long and curly!

 

Yummy snacks.

 We both left at the end of the night with some pretty great "swag" (the urban dictionary definition of this word is hilarious!).

 

Postcards from Zoe Clothing Company

Bag of buttons and a giant book mark from Vintage Soul Designs

Earrings from LovePray Jewelry

Bee Keychain from Cinnamon Sticks

Necklace from Junk Art Gypsyz.

 

I also picked up a baby shower gift from So Cuties and a Christmas gift from another vendor.  We enjoyed our girls night out!

30 Days of Thankfulness {Day 4}

Each day this month (except weekends) I'm joining up with Katie to share with you the many things I am thankful for.  I'd love to hear what you're thankful for.  Won't you join us?

Day 4:
I'm thankful to know, and have the support of, this blogging community. 

This weekend, I met up with some of my favorite local milspouse bloggers for the second time.  We gathered at South Coast Winery in Temecula, participated in a short tasting, then had lunch.  Nicole nailed her description of our relationship.  I feel like I've known these women forever (although we've only hung out twice) and their support and encouragement means the world to me.  I think it helps that we know a bit about each other from reading the other's blogs and then we also have that special connection that I believe is unique to military spouses.

Just like our first meet up, we had a fabulous day, the conversation was easy and the food and wine were delicious.

 

The girls making wine tasting selections.

 

I'm not a wine drinker but there was one wine here that I could have finished a glass of, it was so smooth.  Maybe I should have paid attention to what it was.

 

Emily & Katie

 

The grounds at the winery were gorgeous.  A perfect wedding location.

 

Emily, Kara, me, Nicole, and Katie.



 

I cannot say enough about these ladies.  They're amazing!  We're already planning our next get together in December and we're always looking for more awesome milspouse bloggers to join in our fun.  If you're interested in the details of our next "blate", just shoot one of us an email, we'd love to have you join us!

New Friends!

When you move every 3 years (or less), making new friends each time can be a daunting task.  It's not as easy as when you were 5 and you can walk up to a girl, say "Your shoes are pretty.  Want to be my friend?", and skip off together to the playground (I saw this happen once at vacation Bible school).  Luckily for me, Katie from Going Coastal took some of the stress out of friend making here in San Diego.  She rounded up a bunch of military spouse bloggers who are all relatively new to the area and organized a super fun brunch at Crepes and Corks.

I had a delicious chicken pesto crepe.  Everyone else ordered something sweet so I'll have to go back and try a sweet one next time.

We sat around chatting for two hours and probably would have sat there longer if our parking meters hadn't expired. (our server was definitely not a photographer!)

Nicole {Adventures of a Semper Fi Family}

Kara {Ramblings of a Marine Wife}

Me

Katie {Going Coastal}

Emily {Just the Stew of Us}

We're making plans to expand our group and meet up again next month and I'm already looking forward to it!

Social media new direction?

Over the past 3 years I've built a little corner of the social media world to be my own, mostly calling it "BleuDressNJapan".  Since I will obviously be leaving Japan shortly, that name is no longer going to apply to me.  (I must admit someone warned me about this years ago and I might have just brushed off the thought.  Now I realize that may not have been the best idea, I was just so excited to be living in Japan.)  I'm able to just drop the "NJapan" in some arenas but not others (the person who claimed @BleuDress on Twitter has NEVER tweeted...GRRRRR), so I'm trying to decide how to best remedy this situation.  We're moving to California, so I thought about changing Japan to Cali but that would just be a temporary solution as we don't intend on staying in California forever.

Along with that issue is this little blog of mine.  I'm still in love with the "BleuDress" branding but since Jason will be separating from the Army I'd like to remove the "Dress Blues" portion of my title, I just don't know what to replace it with, if anything!  He's going to be staying in the Reserves so leaving it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world but the Army will no longer be such a large influence in our lives and thus, this blog.  Although, if I'm honest with myself and you all, this blog hasn't seen much discussion of the Army.  I think in the beginning it was just a place I fit in and felt comfortable so it seemed like the perfect way to "label" my blog.  Recently I mostly blog about this blog has focused on traveling but that is going to come to a screeching halt when we ETS (Expiration Term of Service, or get out of the Army) and Jason is in school and I'm working full time so that doesn't seem like a great option.  I enjoy photography and cooking but I don't know how much time I'm going to have for those hobbies once we move.  I guess what I'm saying is I just don't know where I want to go with this site.  I love blogging and since we'll still be living far from family, I'd like to keep it going, I just don't know which direction to take it.  I'm in much need of a makeover here but I don't want to commit to anything until I've decided where I'm going with my blog.  

I like alliteration and word play.  Rhyming is always easy to remember.  I've considered

BleuDress Threads

Elements of a BleuDress

BleuDress Buzz

BleuDress Address

BleuDress Blog

BleuDress Confess

BleuDress Press

BleuDress Express

BleuDress Profess

Blah, I don't love any of them...ha ha, how about BleuDress Blah?  No, that's probably not the best idea.  I'm hopeful that something will just come to me and click.  I want something that I'm excited about and can get behind with some passion.

Okinawa {part 1}

I'm skipping today's prompt to bring you part one of our most recent vacation recap.  4 days after Jason finished his command we boarded a plane for Okinawa.  Of course my husband made friends with/entertained the child across the aisle from us.  She just thought he was HYSTERICAL!

If you've been following this blog for a while you may remember that when we first received orders for Japan that they were originally for Okinawa.  I spent months researching the island life only to have our orders changed to Camp Zama at the last minute.  At the time, I was devastated, I had my heart set on exploring Okinawa.  Now, I'm certain that God knew what he was doing (as he always does) and I'm where I'm supposed to be but I've been dreaming of visiting Oki since we first thought we were going to live there.  We were only able to spend a week there and there was no time to do everything I had on my original Okinawa to do list so I chose my top two and settle for 5 days of glorious beach bumming...or so I planned.

Our first 3 nights in Oki were spent in the cabins on Torii Beach which is on the teeny tiny Army base there.  The cabins were nothing to write home about, I didn't even take a single photo of them.

There weren't any utensils so I had to eat my breakfast with chopsticks.

The very first thing I wanted to do when I arrived in Okinawa was get a pedicure.  The salon here sucks and I haven't ever bothered to attempt a pedi off base but I've heard that there is a place in Oki that has the-best-pedicures-EVER so I had to go.

Jason was less than thrilled with the idea but he loves me so he went along.

They give you this huge book full of design options and paint them on with acrylic paint.  I'm normally a solid color kinda gal but when in Oki, right?  I couldn't choose just one so I randomly opened the book and pointed.  I was pretty happy with my selection.

The second thing I wanted to do was make sea salt.  We headed up the road and were greeted with this gorgeous view.

The salt making process is pretty much what you'd expect, boil salt water until the water evaporates and you're left with salt.

At the end we both went home with little jars of sea salt that we made ourselves.  Strangely enough, they actually both had very different flavors.  Perhaps "flavor" is the wrong word...maybe "intensity" is better.  Jason's had a much stronger flavor than mine did.  I can't wait to cook with it!

 After a pedi and salt making, we bee-lined for the beach and stayed there for a couple days.

Jason mostly snorkeled (you can kind of see him in the photo above, he's the tiny black speck in the water) while I hung out with this guy and a good book.

We did venture out to one of the other military bases to check out their giant PX and eat some Chili's and we also had dinner at American Village one night.

I also got to have dinner with Kara, one of my favorite bloggers/friends!  Her and I were stationed in Missouri at the same time but didn't know each other, now we're both living in Japan (although different islands) and we're both heading to the same area when we leave here around the same time.  I'm glad to have met her (and her adorable children).

3 year blogiversary!

I cannot believe I've been occupying this tiny chunk of cyber space for 3 years!  I'm so grateful to have this little space to record my life now more than ever.  I recently lost my external hard drive and by lost I mean it CRASHED!  I just heard it's going to cost a whopping $1600 to recover the data, which at this time, is not a viable option.  So for now, I'll try not to dwell on the loss and instead rejoice that I have most of the important events recorded here!  I decided to look back over the last 3 year and share some favorite posts.

Your top 5 {based on the number of views}

A little bit of everything

20...no...18 questions

52 photos in 52 weeks

Fertility Festival

All cooked out

Most talked about {based on number of comments}

All things Japanese giveaway

100 Followers

My 1st BlogHop

PCS part 1 is over

Earthquake

My top 5 {based on memories I never want to forget}

NOLA

Fun day in Missouri

Read or Write

I cannot make this stuff up

A wise woman


Thank you all for being loyal readers and supporting my journey!  LOVE!