Madewell-If The Name Fits, Keep It.

Alright, I know I am eons behind joining the Madewell gang but fear not, I am here to stay. I have to start with that awkward moment when your very own blog convinces you that you simply must own a pair of their jeans. For quite some time now Jenilee and I have had very similar style and tend to own similar pieces or even some of exact same ones. Even this past Friday we met for a quick lunch and showed up in the exact same button up shirt. Please tell me this happens to some of you out there with sisters/friends/moms. Lucky for us we always get a kick out of it.

Anyways, I’m back from my tangent now-Jenilee posted about her very first pair of Madewell jeans in this post recently and it was then that I knew I also had to learn what the hype was about. I hopped on the site and decided that I would start with a pair on sale because as you know we both love a good deal and they happened to have some I liked. I was messaging Jenilee about the sizing and which I should order since the brand is new to me and she suggested get true to size and the tall inseam since the taller fit her. However, they didn’t have my waist size in tall so I took it upon myself to try the taller too. I agree 100% that they are true to size maybe even run a tad bigger than Gap/Express. As you can see the tall would have been perfect and the taller is just a little long. I don’t mind rolling up some jeans or having a little extra length so these are here to stay.

After chatting with her and trying the size for myself I am so thankful that they offer not only one but two versions of tall. As we like to say I am a small tall and Jenilee is a tall, and they are to my knowledge the first company that offers this perfect option. You won’t hear from us on the #MakeMyTallSize campaign Madewell. So to wrap up the sizing if you’re looking at the chart, trust them. It is spot on and it is incredible.

And if you’re wondering, yes I did go down a rabbit hole when I was on my search for jeans which is where this sweater comes into play. The sweater for me was a gamble-will the sleeves be too short? Will I size up to add sleeve length and gain too much room within the waist? I read some of the reviews and it said that it runs a tad big but I decided I would still go with a Large knowing I wanted it to be a bit flowy but not too big. And again, i am so pleased with my size. On their site they have two views for each item so you can see it on someone shorter/taller/smaller/bigger-I loved that! I love that Express has also started doing this too.

I also want to mention that I ran into a small roadbump during the ordering process with Madewell. I went to place my order and Apple Pay popped up after I entered my address and everything and asked if I wanted to use that. So the lazy in me said yes please and saved me from manually adding my credit card. From there I never got a confirmation email and started to panic two days later. I contacted them with as much information as possible and after short time they got back to me.

Friends, let me tell you-this is the best customer service I have had in some time. Not only did she take the time to look up my order and confirm it she went into detail about what happened (My Apple Pay is linked to an old email that got spammed and everything went there once I chose Apple Pay and then switched the address to my parents rather than mine). Who knew? Not me. I was so thankful she took the time not only to answer my Madewell related question but to explain Apple Pay to me as well which is completely not her responsibility. Totally unrelated to this post I just really wanted to give my praise where it is deserved.

Jenilee got this yummy blue sweater last year and still finds herself grabbing for it fairly often. We both work in a corporate setting during the day and tend to be frozen all winter so for her any sweater that she can layer for warmth is a sweater she wants to own. I myself love this sweater but unfortunately turtleneck life is not for me. I really wish I could tolerate them but I find myself feeling trapped and tugging at it all day-anyone else out there with this issue?

This was both of our first weekend here in what feels like ages so we decided to have some fun. We got in some great weekend workouts, played some basketball, watched movies, spent time with family, listened to a great sermon at church and just got some general odds and ends wrapped up. One of the best highlights of our weekend was trying a new martini Saturday night. When the weather starts to shift our plans shift along with it. We start to transition into nights in rather than nights out enjoying the weather. With that being said, sometimes we have to get creative with what we do here in the cold Wisconsin winters. Whether it’s watching a new moving, trying a new recipe, playing games with friends or mixing up a new drink.

This particular weekend we went with the drink option and tried the most delicious chocolate Martinis. We always think more about presentation if friends are coming over so we dipped the rim of the glasses in chocolate and then mixed together 360 Chocolate Vodka and some Five Farms Irish Cream and they were delicious! We aren’t huge martini ladies here but these might just change that! All of our friends agreed and they were the highlight of the night!

I hope you all had as wonderful of a weekend as we did and have been able to get in some of your favorite fall activities. I would love suggestions on other sites that you use that make your size or use a variety of model sizes! Drop a line and let us know what you’re loving right now!

Enjoy your Real Reel Below!

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Falling for Five Farms Irish Cream

We have mentioned in the past that one of our happy places is our Lake up north. Our family has been spent a lot of time up there throughout our entire lives and I am personally always filled with nostalgia immediately as the up north air fills my nose. This drive up was better than my friends and I could have imagined. I don’t think we went more than 20 minutes without someone mentioning the beauty of the fall leaves lining the back roads. We even pulled over at point to take it all in and snap a few pictures to share with family back home.

I was extremely excited to have some friends in tow this weekend as we haven’t had the opportunity to head up with friends very often. There has been a series of remodeling/family time, that has thwarted our efforts. We were all bummed that our camping trip got rained out but this was by no means considered less worthy especially since it was cranberry fest. A few of us got up there on Friday afternoon and snagged my grandma to head to one of our favorite local spots – Club 45. They have a pizza called house of Payne and it is out of this world. Once we finished we headed back to meet the rest of the crew, enjoy some craft beers and hit the hay.

I don’t know if its the weather changing or something else but we were all pretty exhausted throughout the weekend but we had a busy day planned and knew we needed to obtain some energy one way or another. So two pots of coffee in we started to move a little quicker. As we got dressed and checked the weather I thought we might want something a little extra to warm us up so I whipped out my Five Farms Irish Cream Liqueur and suddenly there was a line formed behind me. This stuff is GOOD. I am not typically a cream in my coffee type of gal but some things are worth pushing your comfort zone for.  

What made it even better is that we I got to enjoy it with my best friend, in my favorite place, overlooking the lake that I love. I love when drinks/scents/songs can take you back to a memory and I think going forward, drinking Five Farms will take me back to one of my many happy places. I digress.

The rest of the weekend was fantastic. We hit the road for Cranberry fest and none of us realized how big of a deal this was in Eagle River, WI. We rolled into town and we were all overwhelmed with the amount of traffic for this tiny Up North town. Once we got into the festival we procured some cranberry beer and began perusing all of the fun craft/vendor booths. We saw so many wonderful homemade goods and food items. The amount of dips we sampled was unreal! Some of us bought dip, cookies, crafts, etc. But I think my roommate won the day with a brand new pair of homemade wool mittens. If you have spent a winter in the Midwest you would understand why this is such a victory. With full stomachs and lots of fun behind us we headed home and hopped in the UTV to head back to my grandmas house to watch the Wisconsin Badgers and enjoy some brats (how Wisconsin of us).

The UTV ride back was a blast, as I took them off roading and it was muddy and quite the adventure! We got back and began speed puzzling and playing other various card games. This weekend really was the ideal laid back weekend filled with so much laughter and memories.

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I just need you to know I am not kidding when I say it made our morning more fun…

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New York Guide

Whew, this week is flying by after arriving back from New York late Monday night. This is my mom and my fourth year in a row visiting and I still haven’t even cracked the surface of everything there is to do and see. I know some of you have no interest in hearing about travel guides, so if that’s you either skip this post or just skim down to see any outfit pictures! I didn’t get the best shots, as we forgot between scurrying around but the weather was way warmer than we have experienced when visiting.

Friday

We flew in Friday morning, Milwaukee usually has reasonable nonstop flights and good flight times as well. We landed at 8:30 a.m. and took a cab to our hotel. We stayed at The Watson, which we found off Southwest’s hotel finder option. It is on 57th street in between 9th and 10th Avenue. We’ve stayed close to Central Park the last couple of years, as my mom usually wants to run at least once there during our trip.

We were pleasantly surprised to find out our room was ready, so we were able to unpack and settle in before we headed out for the day – that was clutch. We then found a spot for a breakfast sandwich, called Rex which was around the corner. It was super tiny so we took it to go and found a Starbucks so we could sit down and eat and get caffeinated. From there we did some scrolling through my Mom’s app she has to find tickets to shows. We had a couple in mind but ended up spontaneously grabbing tickets to see Golden Girls Live, because the tickets were so reasonable for later that night!

In the meantime, we grabbed tickets to a hop on hop off bus for an Uptown tour that basically took us from Times Square area up around the west side of Central Park into Harlem and looped back down the east side and all of the museums. It was a beautiful day to sit on top of the bus in the open air and very relaxing way to see a lot and take in a few fun facts from the tour guide on the bus.

We then went to a cute bar called The Ivy, which is near Columbus Circle and had drinks with Kelsey, one of Caitlin’s best friends from high school who moved to New York years ago. It was so much fun catching up with her and she took us over to this really cool rooftop called PHD which has views of Times Square.

We were having such a fun time with her that we ended up showing up to Golden Girls Live a little late but just in time for it to start. Be warned that they do not have a huge sign like other shows so pay attention if you’re navigating on your own, it’s just the address and a sign on the ground. This show was a hoot! It is a drag show version of Golden Girls and I loved it! They’ve been doing it for fifteen years together and they were all SO GOOD together. It was a Halloween special version and you could tell they just love to perform it. They had everyone laughing, and they impromptu would add little wisecracks which only made it better! Totally recommend it.

We grabbed sushi after the show, just up the road at a place called Ageha Sushi, which was good. From there, we called it a night because it had been such an early morning, but it was an awesome first day.

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Saturday

We had a slow start, but got up and went for a run through Central Park right away. That’s typically been a priority for our trips, as our mom is an avid runner. It’s a great way for us to spend time in the park and get some exercise! We grabbed coffee on the way back. Once we were showered and ready for the day, we headed over to 5th Avenue to brave the crowds and do some shopping! We wove in and out of stores and did some major trying on sessions. We came away with some good pieces, stay tuned to see them on here!

From there we were starving, so we headed over to grab an early dinner at Totto Ramen. My mom had never had ramen before, so it was fun to have it with her for the first time. There was  a crazy crowd waiting, but there are two shops there and people didn’t seem to realize you could go next door and not really wait. The only difference was chicken broth or pork broth. We were uncomfortably full after dinner, and went back to our hotel with the intention of cleaning up and heading back out. We ended up staying in for the night and watching a couple of movies on HBO, which was all good by me!

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Sunday

After our slower Saturday, we were ready to make the most of our Sunday. We headed down to Tribeca to meet up for brunch at Sarabeth’s with another friend who made the move to New York after college. Derek is my college roommate Stephanie’s younger brother and we had such a great time catching up with him! He was nice enough to walk us over to the High Line, and we walked past the “Friends” apartment building on our way. We hadn’t been up on the High Line before and it was definitely a cool stop to make, as descriptions hadn’t really done it justice for people who come from Wisconsin.

From there, we were pretty uncomfortable in the heat, as we didn’t bring appropriate stuff to wear. We ended up hopping in a cab to get over to Soho and we had to buy cheap tank tops from H&M to get through the rest of the day. We stopped in some stores but probably spent the bulk of our time in & Other Stories. I was semi-familiar with the brand but had never seen their stuff in person and we were all over it! Stayed tuned for more about them!

Once we had our fill of shopping we walked over towards Greenwich, which has such beautiful streets to just amble through. We found a happy hour advertising margaritas which sounded like the best idea ever in that heat and sat on their sidewalk seating drinking margs and eating some guacamole. We scrolled through the tickets app one more time but waited too long and no shows were intriguing enough to us to buy tickets.

From there we took the subway back to our hotel and got cleaned up. We had some wine and snacks and then decided to go get some pizza for a late dinner. We’ve eaten at a place near Times Square twice now, called Angelo’s Pizza. I think it’s pretty good pizza, especially for not leaving Times Square area. From there we called it a night.

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Monday

We slept in, and then ran in Central Park again, but this time we made it up and around the Reservoir which we hadn’t done yet. It was misting out but still beautiful to be in the park. We stopped and grabbed a yummy Bagel and Lox sandwich on our way back to our hotel at a hole in the wall called Lunch Box. From there we showered and packed up to check out of the hotel. We gave them our bags to hold for the afternoon and headed down to find a Nordstrom Rack. We usually try to stop there when we’re in New York because they have more of a large shoe size collection in the city.

We got off the subway at Union Square and were pleasantly surprised to see a fresh air market set up. We strolled through and then headed to the Rack, where we did have some luck finding shoes – stay tuned to see what we found there! We wanted to explore areas we hadn’t previously so we kept heading south from there and made our way to Katz’s Deli, which is pretty well known. Even though it was 2 p.m. at this point there was still a line out the door. We grabbed a pastrami Reuben to split and it was plenty big!

We were wanting cheesecake but Katz’s didn’t look like the answer so we walked down toward Nolita and found Eileen’s Special Cheesecake. Totally recommend this spot – they are mini round cheesecakes and completely delicious. We were walking a bit more and ended up back in the Soho shopping area but only stopped in one place. I realized we were going right past Dominique Ansel’s Bakery and mentioned it to my Mom. We had just enough time to stop in and grab an almond pastry to eat in the airport. We hopped on the subway to get back to the hotel and had our only creepy experience of an old man blatantly trying to take pictures of us.

We brushed that off and made it to the hotel where they had our transportation to the airport waiting for us, which happened to be a limo. It was a completely unexpected fun ending to our awesome girls trip! Plus on our flight home, I ended up getting the exit row for my mom and I, with the bonus inner seat that has no seat in front of it. Tall person victory!

I know I listed a lot of stuff, but if anyone has any questions about anything else New York related, I’d love to hear them and see if I can answer! We’d also love to hear your New York recommendations, sound off below!

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Bomb(er) Athleisure

Y’all it might be Monday, but I was blessed with the day off of work. Even if Columbus Day isn’t a good holiday to celebrate, I’m celebrating not being at work and coming home from New York today. I’ll be sharing more on our trip later this week, watch this space!

Caitlin ended up switching her plans due to the terrible weather forecasted and heading up north to stay at the cabin. Nothing like camping in the rain and mud and cold to get you down! Sometimes you have to cut your losses and change your plans. And now she will get to surprise our grandma with some quality time!

Does anyone else have leggings that are “workout” leggings but you feel like they’re too nice to actually sweat in? That’s how we feel about these Lululemon leggings. They feel too luxurious to ruin by sweating all over them. They definitely aren’t too nice to take with you ANYWHERE else though. Case in point, these leggings accompanied me last year to Iceland, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary. They are absolutely perfect for traveling purposes, when comfort is the name of the game but you’re still attempting to look put together.

We love the variety of color options they provide as well, and don’t be fooled by the short looking inseam, they are definitely long enough for my legs comfortably. We both have a love affair with the high waist panel as well. Is there anything more flattering than a high waist legging sucking you in while still being comfortable? For any non believers, these leggings definitely have smoothing power for helping your legs look their best!

We mentioned our love of bomber jackets in our fall jacket guide. If you missed it, check it out here for all of the best options. We’ve both built up our collection over the last couple of years, as these jackets are an easy grab for a casual but still chic look.

My jacket is of course, from Asos and is from the Glamorous Tall range. I adored the khaki color and when I got it, I loved how thick it was and I’ve been able to wear it as an actual jacket on a night out or also in Europe for sightseeing. I layered a Nike t-shirt underneath it I got from my friends in Portland.

Funny story, I was shopping at the Nike employee store and a guy walked past me and yelled Kobe, I smiled and had no idea what he was talking about but my husband started laughing because he realized I didn’t know that my t-shirt was from Kobe’s brand. Oops! I just liked the gold foil lettering. That was actually the same time I snagged my grey Nikes as well. Big feet tip: when you’re shopping for Nikes don’t get discouraged by lack of “female” options. Head to the mens section and size down 1.5 sizes and enjoy finding lots more options!

Caitlin’s jacket is also from Asos, and she was all about the burgundy rich color and the black collar and cuffs. Add in the quilting detail and she’s completely satisfied with her jacket. She paired it with a cami and her leopard print Keds, which are a subtle nod to the animal print trend this fall.

Real Reel – We had so much fun messing around in this mini park space. The picnic table is on rollers and we were having my husband push us while we sat on it. Check out our instagram stories to see footage of that! The below we like to call a series of little sister syndrome…

And sometimes things like this happen..


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Time to Camouflage your Athleisure

I can’t believe it’s the first week of October and I am leaving for New York tomorrow with my Mom! I have been looking forward to this trip, but really anytime I have an excuse to get back to New York you can count me in. This will be the fourth year in a row that I’ve made the trip in the fall and I’m nowhere near sick of it. There is just an indescribable allure to the city and I find it so exciting but surprisingly not intimidating.

We really don’t have much planned ahead for the weekend but we are meeting up with several friends we know who live in the city and we’re probably going to see Waitress on Broadway. We’ve looked at it every year in the past and we’re finally seeing it this time, can’t wait! I know our New York friends would disagree, but half the fun is conquering the subway system for us. We do SO much more walking than we typically do, so by the time we’re done for the day we have no problem sleeping through the sounds of the city.

Caitlin will be heading camping in the South Central part of the state. There are some wonderful hiking trails where they’re camping that will be perfect to catch some beautiful changing fall colors. Tall people everywhere, don’t sleep on this fold up chair, she takes with her wherever she goes. You will sit up at the appropriate height and not feel like you’re unfolding eight different ways like getting out of a normal sized folding chair.

Growing up as athletes, we are no strangers to a good pair of sweatpants. Anyone who knew me in high school or college can attest to that. The sweatpants of my high school and college years frankly were pretty sloppy and incomparable to today’s athleisure options. You’re telling me that we can now look put together but still be wearing the equivalent to pajamas in comfort level? And all the (tall) women rejoiced!

More and more of my old style sweatpants are disappearing either to be relegated to be worn solely in the comfort of my home or being donated or tossed. There was something to be said for wearing the oversize sweat look when I had my basketball shorts underneath so they would fit and not look bulky, but considering I rarely have basketball shorts on anymore they’re a somewhat antiquated option to choose.

Enter the jogger style, which we’re sure most of you are familiar with by now. Both sweats and joggers have the elastic pulled in ankle look but while the sweats look can be likened more to a harem pant bagginess, the jogger is cut closer to the leg and has a wide bottom cuff that lays flatter. It gives a sleeker look to the leg, instead of looking like a bag lady (even though sometimes we all want to have our days of looking like bag ladies thank you very much).

We’ve got two different options for you, one tall and the other not, but both are Caitlin’s. The pair I’m wearing are from Gap and are RIDICULOUSLY comfortable. There is some witchcraft in the fabric because they are so lightweight and soft. As you can tell for 6’4 they don’t quite reach my ankles, but they aren’t heavy enough weight to matter to me. I wouldn’t only worry about that if they were winter weight material, when I need my ankles covered. We both also own sweatshirts made from this exact material and are obsessed. I even ordered a second one once I had a chance to wear my first one!

Caitlin’s pair are from Express and she was smitten at first sight with them. Obviously the length was a major concern before she ordered them. (Express we are still waiting for you to be more tall inclusive). She figured she would try them out and could always return if they didn’t work. The length isn’t quite long enough to wear as pants, but because of the tight cuff, she can wear them pushed up as capri length. The rips add another layer of fun beyond your average jogger.

As for the t-shirts, Adidas is having a major moment. If you ask me they were just sitting quietly waiting for the right time to surface and now its like people everywhere live to wear their logo plastered across their chest. Caitlin is no exception in loving to throw on a high quality trefoil T to complete her athleisure look. My tank is from Asos’ tall line and is a great high neck tank to layer.

Joggers are another option beyond your basic leggings to grab. Sometimes they’re preferred, especially if you don’t feel like forcing tight leggings on as you’re headed to the movies to gorge yourself on popcorn. OK maybe that’s just us, but joggers are definitely more forgiving than leggings.

Tell us below, do you prefer joggers or leggings? What is your go to lounge wear?

And as usual when we’ve got them-your dose of Real Reel below

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