Bye Bye Baby

My girl is a babe no longer. Yesterday she officially turned two years old, and while it makes my heart break just a little, I'm so in love (most of the time) with this age that I don't miss the days of nursing and bottles and swaddling too much.

 

*More photos and a sampling of who this feisty girl is at 2 years old to come, but in the meantime I wanted to share this funny picture. We told her it was her birthday when we she woke up, but since we had already celebrated earlier in the month we didn't have anything planned for yesterday. All day she was sad and weepy because there were no "happy birday cake" and no"happy birday pressens". Poor funny girl.

Days 1 & 2

Day 1: peace

Day 2: skyline

Lately

A bit of what we've been up to  in the last week or so:

Too much crafting. I can't seem to focus on one project for very long.

 

A little project featuring words from OUR SONG, inspired by THIS.

Easter. I tried to straighten C's hair only to discover a million cowlicks on the top of her head. Hence the crazy hair. It reminds me very much of this guy.

 

Time with family. My sister in law is in town (hooray!) and has brought her two kids along. Little J is only a couple of months younger than C and watching them together is like overdosing on cuteness. Cousin B is three years older but she is a champ at tolerating C's need to hug and annoy her. Loving it.

Spring cleaning. My list is too long. Like, literally a couple hundred things to do. I'm chipping away at it slowly, but I keep getting distracted by all of the crafts I'd rather do (see above).

Playdates. Lately whenever I tell C we are going to get in the car she instantly asks me for Jenny and June. I love it.

Thrifting. As long as I'm dropping off stuff at Goodwill from spring cleaning, I might as well take a peek at what they have, right?

Brand new baby Minnetonkas for $2! I. Die.

Growing. Our little garden is thriving. My Early Girl tomato bush already has 8 to 10 little green tomatoes on it, and the beans, corn, zucchini and okra are looking great too!

Trying to entertain a certain fussy toddler who, as it turns out, is cutting four teeth at the same time. I would be fussy too.

 

Lovey for sweet June

C's little friend June (daughter of my dear friend Jenny) turned one last month. I finally finished her quilt (which was meant to be a gift for Jenny's baby shower!) I have to say in spite of the many, MANY issues (corners not meeting up properly, the scrappy nature of the piecing, etc) I really loved this quilt. It was a hard one to give away but I can think of no little girl I'd rather gift it to.  I hand quilted this while I watched the first two seasons of Downton Abbey and this will not be the last time I do it! It lends such a charm to a quilt and was much easier than I thought it would be.

These colors just make me so happy! Almost all of the fabrics are Denise Schmidt prints.

Close up of the hand quilting.

I hand stitched the binding on to match.

Close up of the back.

It's a smallish quilt, somewhere between a baby size and a doll size. I'm calling it a carseat quilt...just the right size for snuggling while on a long drive.

Happy Birthday Ba'june!

A little artsy, a little fartsy.

I'm sprucing up the master bedroom. Or re-doing it. Or just doing it for the first time really. Whatevs.

I bought two of these bamboo frames from goodwill for 6 bucks a pop. As um, lovely as the prints are I decided to swap them out. I painted the frame gold with some Martha Stewart craft paint, painted the mat black to cover up the faded green bits, pulled out a bit of map from an old atlas and called it good. Except that since this is going in our room I decided to pick a map with personal meaning for Gary.

 

A sweet little heart over Scotland, where he spent two years teaching and serving for our church.

What about you? Anyone else working on a neglected space in their home? Have you whipped up any art lately?

The best compromise is the one where I win.

Guys, today was epic. Like, better than the day I got married epic (kidding...probably.) Today I found THE rug. The one that has been haunting my dreams. It's perfect, I want to marry it, and maybe I will. I think that you can do that in Alabama or something.

On a run to my favorite home decorator fabric outlet place to pick up curtain ring clips (locals let me know if you want my source...only $2.99 for 7 rings!!) Gary was lecturing me about how he doesn't want to spend much more of our tax refund on rugs. I already bought an ENORMOUS 9'6" x 13' wool rug for our living room, and a smaller version of it for C's room, plus we need some runners for the hall, a rug for our bedroom, then some day the office will get a dhurrie and when we end up having another bambino the nursery will need one...the point is that I'm on a rug buying kick.

C's rug came today! The same thing in a larger size is going in the living room.

I would never go back to carpet though. Let me go on record; I would rather walk on bare laminate flooring for the rest of my life than have wall to wall carpet again. But we were super ready for a few area rugs. I'd given up on finding the perfect wool ikat in a predominantly rusty red print in just the right size and within my budget. At the store Gary was trying to convince me that we need to cut our spending and just compromise with a synthetic rug from the store we were in (great fabrics at this place, but very questionable floor coverings). I almost threw up on him. However, I'm also a reasonable person and a good wife so I told him I would find something synthetic (gross, that word gives me the hives!) IF he would let me run into Home Goods across the street and "just take a look at what they have...just in case."

Then the heavens opened and the choirs of angels started belting out all kinds of hosannas. They were all super excited for me when I saw this looker:

It's exactly what I want. In wool. In a very generous 7'x9' size. In the exact rusty red tones WITH a bonus grey accent worked throughout. I think maybe the rug gods designed it just for me.

But it was a little over our budget (by like, a hundred bucks which is a pretty significant amount when you're already on a budget.) Good thing I have the best husband and that he was gifted with an eye for good design when I point it out to him. And also maybe he was placated because I encouraged him to buy a bunch of new clothes. Distraction is the greatest weapon in my arsenal. Well, that and my knockers.

A Letter to my Oldest Friend

Amber is my oldest friend. I've known Amber since before I can remember. She was always the cool older girl that I wanted to be. I was furiously jealous that she already had a sister. We shared barbies, made houses for our littlest pet shop animals with jenga blocks, stayed up eating whopper malt balls during sleepovers (remember that time I threw them up in your hair in the middle of the night? Sorry about that.) We had crushes on John Smith and Thomas from Disney's Pocahontas. She let me wear her clothes. We ate lunch together (remember peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches that your mom would serve on the little tin trays with roosters on them?) and played with her mom's collection of scarves and elephant figures. She was the best.

I am completely sure this was taken immediately after my mom told me it was time to go home.

Over the years we drifted apart until one chance encounter in a Bath and Body Works brought us back together. I believe, to my very core, that it was divine intervention made her randomly stop at a store in a part of town she almost never went to. She was and is still the cool older girl. I'm still jealous that she already has a sister. She is still beautiful and kind and good.

 

She introduced me to First Friday and Pita Jungle. She was with me the night I met my future husband, I've seen her married, she was one of my bridesmaids, and I've watched her become a mother. We've got some good history.

Dear Amber, 
     Thank you. Thank you for being who you are and for loving me for who I am. Thank you for being a force of good in my life. I don't know if I've ever told you, but you rescued me. You taught me to love myself and convinced me that I was interesting and worth spending time with. I think that you were key in me being ready to meet Gary in so many ways. Thank you for sitting next to Mark that night so that I ended up with the weirdo who pointed out our twin moles. For that alone I can never thank you enough.
      I love the light and peace you exude; even when you talk about being frazzled all I can see is a woman who moves slowly, speaks softly and loves fully. You are still the girl I want to be. It brings me such joy to see our girls play together (or rather, to see Ivy tolerate C...I'm sure the playing will come soon enough!) I can't wait to see you again, but for now, I just want you to know that I love you my friend.
     Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

12 In 2012: February and March

So I know I'm a bit behind on February's post for my 12 In 2012 goals but I'm just going to roll it into this post as well. I'm pretty sure you don't mind.

For March we decided to go on a trip without family where the destination would also not be to visit family. Sounds like no big deal I'm sure, but people we have not been on a vacation of any kind with just the two of us SINCE OUR HONEYMOON!! What the what??! I'm not even sure how that happens. And in all of the (very modest) vacations we have taken in the last 5 years, only one of those was without family members! We love our family and all, but we were itchin' for a chance to get away just the two of us.

So. When I heard that one of my very favorite bands was playing in Tucson this weekend AND we got our tax refund, we figured there was no better time to head off for a little mini trip. It really is a shame that they were playing in Tucson though...Gary aptly described it as the New Jersey of Arizona. It's gross. It's dusty. It has the most ridiculous traffic I've ever seen, especially considering that it's neither a large city nor a very cosmopolitan one.

Since this post is getting awfully wordy, I'll just flood the rest with pictures. (Please excuse me for posting crappy phone pics, but I didn't want to lug around the DSLR.)

View from our room...surprisingly lovely.

We had to move out of our first hotel room because there were a ton of BEES in the bedroom!! Good ol' Tucson.

Dinner at Pita Jungle...one of our all time fav eateries.

Fun. There are no words for how amazing these guys are live. Nate Russ was incredible way back when he was in the Format, but I think he has really come into his own with this new group. There is such joy in Fun's music and the acoustics and sound balancing in the Rialto was the BEST I've ever heard in a concert. Un. Real.

After the show we were so pooped that we crashed in our (unbelievably uncomfortable) sleep number bed and fell asleep while watching tv and eating pringles. Don't judge.

The next morning. Gary has a music hangover.

Breakfast: my first ever eggs benny...delicious!

The last thing we did before heading home--a couple's mani/pedi date!

I got the gel/shellac treatment on my nails and toes and this stuff in INCREDIBLE! I think it may literally be bulletproof.

Teddy Grahams = premium road trip snacks.

***Did you guess how I fulfilled February's 12 in 2012? Ahem, my hair is no longer blonde! I went dark brown with auburn tones. I reaaaalllly wanted to go full red but after trying samples against my skin tone my stylist helped me see that I basically look like a chubby clown with true red.***