Big Brothers

Clark and Ike have some big news!

I shared our announcement on Instagram last week but figured I'd make it blog official for those of you who don't 'gram.

Clark and Ike are getting a baby sister and she's scheduled to join our family mid-August! We're all incredibly excited. 

Okay, Ike has no clue what's going on.  He's probably going to be angry with us again once he figures out what's going on.  He's still not so keen on Clark living with us. He tolerates Clark and is surprisingly patient with him, he just prefers when Clark is napping or visiting his grandparents.  

Clark is beyond excited.  He's setting things aside for baby sister to have (old sunglasses, shoes, toys etc).  He's telling everyone that "baby Sister in Mama's tummy".  We obviously held off on telling him until we were ready to tell the rest of the world. :) He does firmly state she will need to get her own bed though.  Looks like our plans for a crib to bed transition may be put on hold. 

Nate and I are super thankful to be adding to our family. We're also questioning our ability to handle a 3rd child (the dog is literally more work than the toddler). Our first hope is that she's healthy. Our second is that she takes after Nate.  Clark is 99.878% my mini.  Neither one us are equipped to deal with another Michelle.  I should be offended by this but I'm not.

I'm hoping to get back to blogging now that the first trimester exhaustion is starting to lift. We have a big basement project that we've completed along with some smaller side projects that have updated our now almost 10 year old home (how did that happen???).  There will also, obviously, be nursery planning and Summer adventures ahead.  Thanks for sticking with us!

Simple Curious George Birthday Party

I've never really understood time but even more so with a kid. Like somehow I turned 35 for the second time yesterday.  How does that work? Let's not talk about it.  Let's talk instead about how my kid is growing up too fast. He's already days shy of two and a half and I'm just now getting around to posting his Curious George themed second birthday party today.

The theme was fairly easy to decide on.  Clark is obsessed with "Ooo Ooo George" books.  He had a few handed down from cousins and he now knows where they are at in the library.  I personally think the monkey is kind of a brat. I mean he's always getting into trouble and then comes out a hero. What kind of lessons are we teaching here?  I digress.  

I also struggle with character stuff. (Yep, one of those Moms.)  I tried to balance Clark's love of George and my need for cute. I think we did okay.

It's easy to get caught up in the need to throw the MOST PINTEREST WORTHY PARTY EVER!  Luckily I have Nate to keep my crazy in check.  We decided to keep things simple and kept it to Clark's favorites: his favorite people, cake, cookies, pizza, and balloons.  Boom. Party complete.

To keep the party from screaming Curious George, I let George be the star of the desserts but went with polka dot plates and napkins. A "two" balloon paired with some primary colored balloons rounded out the decor.

We weren't running around like crazy (ahem, his first birthday party). I made the cake (with close supervision from my mother-in-law) and the cookies the day before.  (Clark is seriously still talking about these cookies.  He wants to have George cookies for every celebration. Halloween. Christmas. Valentine's Day. My birthday.) We ordered pizza for supper.  Easy peasy.

The house was filled with balloons.  They were literally EVERYWHERE.  The kids had a blast.  I mean, balloons. Cheapest entertainment ever.

Clark opened presents, sang himself happy birthday and went to town on his cake.  He's my favorite.

Also, I NEED to tell you all about my most favorite baby/toddler product ever.  See that cute outfit up there?  You know how you keep that outfit cute with cake and ice cream (besides removing said outfit)? These sleeved bibs!  We own like 5 of them. Okay, maybe 7 (1 in the diaper bag, 1 in the car). They are amazing. We've used them since we introduced solids and they are all still in great shape after multiple washings.  It's a shame they didn't have a George one!  But we do have a Nintendo one that is pretty amazing.

Sources:

New Kitchen Hardware

Can you believe that we started building our house ten years ago this coming May?  

A lot has changed in home decor trends in 10 years.  As a blogger (Can I even call myself that anymore? Maybe I'll just stick with "someone interested in home decor that shares too much on the internet"), it's hard to stay content with your home.  It's hard to stay happy with your almost 10 year old choices while "everyone else" is moving on to new builds/different homes, gutting their 3 year old kitchens, etc

Total first world issues? Am I right? (I'm right.)

Stepping away from blogging has given me some perspective on enjoying our home.  By not continuously tearing it apart, I've come to appreciate how nice our home really is.  It's provided the perfect backdrop to start our family and make some wonderful lovey-dovey memories.

But (there's always a but, isn't there?), where's the line of contentment versus calming those twitchy things in your head that say "FIX ME. MAKE ME PRETTY."?

After a fairly difficult morning potty training our toddler, I spent nap time sipping iced coffee staring at our kitchen and everything wrong with it. (Normal people do this, right?)  Ugg. The cabinets don't go to the ceiling.  Ugg, our granite has that weird 4" backsplash lip.  Uggg, our island is bar height instead of counter height. Uggg, the hardware.

After I finished my coffee, I gave myself a pep talk. 

So what do you like about your kitchen?  Well, I like that's white and I still do really like the black granite.  I'd totally do a subway tile backsplash again.  Our kitchen is a great size.  It's perfect for entertaining/meal prep.  Beings I picked all of this out almost 10 years ago (when I was 25 and had zero clue what I was doing), I actually did fairly decent.

What would be something easy to check off your "uggg" list from above that might calm your twitchy brain that doesn't involve a gut job (because that would be expensive/wasteful/dumb)? Hmmm.  The cabinet height and island are things that are fixable but not exactly easy.  Hardware! Hardware I can do! (Nate was on board as long as I did all of the work myself. Mainly because he thought I wouldn't do it. I'LL SHOW YOU, HUSBAND!)

I spent the rest of nap time searching for new hardware.  My options were slightly limited because I wanted to work with my existing hardware holes. (I was afraid filling/painting holes would look cheap and messy.)

I settled on these pulls for the doors.

And these pulls for the drawers.

After they arrived, I spent the next two weeks installing them.  My lack of patience and short attention span limited me to about 4 per night but I did it all myself. (I'm pretty sure Nate thought it would take me a year to complete.)

Making one fairly small change to update our elderly kitchen has given me fresh perspective. 

Now if only I can figure out how to keep it this clean.  I want to blame the toddler, husband and/or dog but I'm the one that spilled an entire pot of pasta across the room last night. #makingmemories

I hope I've encouraged some of you to take a fresh perspective on your home.  Room updates don't have to be dramatic to make a huge impact. What's a small change that you could make to your home?