Sorry I've been kind of absent the last few days. I'm off work this week and have been doing some home projects and enjoying the beautiful (but hot) weather outside.

Today is a big day in our household - it's my husband's 50th birthday and our 25th wedding anniversary! We're not doing anything super big as we are planning on a big trip next June to coincide with our son's high school graduation.

However, MIL wanted to take us to a new barbecue place as my hubby absolutely LOVES ribs. This is a very casual restaurant, in fact many of the people there were in jeans or cutoff jeans and t-shirts. But that's not quite my style for dinner out so I wore my green silk casual dress (great in the heat), mixed metals with gold metallic flats but silver metallic laser-cut belt, and the new clutch that I did not use for Kristin's wedding. I like how this outfit is a dressier version of casual and still extremely comfortable. I also took my denim jacket in case the A/C was blasting but I didn't need it.

So what do you think? How are the colours and proportions together? As always, all comments/suggestions welcome.

Dress: Tommy Hilfiger (thrifted)
Belt: thrifted
Shoes: Enzo Angiolini
Handbag: Sterling Shoes

ETA: Here's a picture of my hubby and mother-in-law sitting in our yard after we got back from dinner, just relaxing. The blue tete-a-tete seat hubby is sitting on was one my father-in-law made about 30 years ago. It fell into some disrepair but my son wanted it from the family home when my MIL came to live with us. So on Monday and Tuesday, my MIL and I scraped the old brick red paint off (what was left of it), sanded it all down, repaired the slats that were loose and gave it one huge cleaning. Then we painted it this vivid blue colour to give it a new life. It's pretty comfy and it's full of memories.

The other project my MIL and I worked on this week was the stained glass window. This window came from a 100+ year old farmhouse that was being demolished that my husband and I came across on a vacation out of Province a few years ago. We were sad to see this old home being torn down and were horrified when we saw the demolition crew throwing these beautiful old windows into a dumpster. We asked the crew if we could have the last one and we drove home 3000 km with it on my knee. DH built the frame for it earlier this year and my MIL and I painted it, mounted the window and installed a small solar powered LED light above it so that it will be softly lit at night. We just have the finials to mount on the top of the posts tomorrow and it's done.

I've added a picture of my red lily which is finally blooming and the Welcome to My Garden sign that was in my MIL's garden and which she brought to our house.