these wooden dip dyed spoons. it would make a great hostess gift or add some spunk to your kitchen. you can always use some lovely wooden spoons to stir some cookie batter or sautéed vegetables in a pan without scratching it!
so, i’ve been collaborating with a dear friend of mine around an upcoming event and she found this artist that i am currently obsessed with!!! i totally want a map made for us! how cool is this? such a beautiful piece of work…it’s a great conversation starter and just gorgeous to look at!
i’ve been obsessed lately with striped napkins. yes. black and white striped napkins like these. i love the look and they add such a great pop of fun to your table. it’s a great way to contrast against any bright color you choose to accent your table with.
i adore this jcrew factory necklace. it’s the perfect statement piece. it is neutral but impactful to any outfit. it’s great with a v-neck sweater, scoop neck t-shirt, over a classic button up, the possibilities are endless to snazzy up any outfit.
what a romantic birdcage. i envision this piece at a spring/summer bridal/bebe shower or as a gorgeous centerpiece for any fete at our house! it can be seasonal too, such as, for a christmas party…you can fill the inside with red berries and pine branches to give oomph to your holiday table decor! the possibilities are endless and this cage can definitely be used year round to elevate any presentation for your home.
this wire script is fantastic. it’s a perfect adornment to any room. especially a foyer, a great greeting for anyone to walk into! it’s simple, delicate, and inviting.
i find this gold dot pillow to be a perfect accent to any couch out there! it will add that pop needed to brighten up any room. it’s modern and sophisticated and will add pizazz to any sofa that needs a pick me up.
well, there you go. a few of my favorite things right now! i hope you were a wee bit inspired and delighted! happy shopping lovies!
we were so excited to have bought our house this past april. i love being a homeowner. i love being able to decorate, do whatever we want, jump up and down on the floor with no worries of neighbors down below. we love having a huge backyard. we love having more space. there are so many positive things with having your own house.
along with that, it’s a lot of work! with it being an older home, aesthetically, it was not to our tastes. we knew, when buying the house, that we would remodel the inside and then some. not my idea…it’s all hc’s grand scheming.
anyhoo, with all this, we are tackling one room at a time. it’s going to be a long process that’s going to take a lot of my patience! as our neighbor put it, you have your whole life to renovate and when you’re done…you will start again with the first room you remodeled!
the first room we took on was originally going to be olive’s room. hc started to renovate it when we decided to switch up the girl’s room. we decided, since grace was only with us, maybe, every other weekend at most, that olive should have the bigger room. after much debating, we concluded that it made more sense. so, grace’s room was the first to be finished!
[grace’s room…the before]
[grace’s room…after!]
hc repainted the room. he, first, redid the ceiling and then the walls. we then went to the home depot and grace picked out the green paint color to match her room {she did a great job selecting a perfect match}! hc redid all the trim {all the wood was an oakey color…blah!}, replaced all the outlets, replaced the closet doors, bedroom door, and added new hardware. he took out the windows, cleaned it inside and out, and repainted the entire frame.
the pencil drawings are from a very talented friend. i commissioned her to do the drawings…she loves, loves robots and i love, love her work. so, she created three very cool pieces of art! amaze. i cherish these drawings…so delighted to own such beautiful work.
the ferris wheel is a wonderful vintage piece. a couple years ago, hc, grace, and i took a trip to iowa to visit antique archaeology, one of our favorite shows! we were in awe over the shop…there were so many cool items! we perused the whole place up and down, fascinated by all the vintage objects. when i walked into the shop, the first thing that caught my eye was the ferris wheel. i loved it! well, so did grace. soooo, the lovely rusty piece came home with us and ended up in grace’s room!
her chair, lamp, shag rug, bed, and bedding are from ikea. the bookcase is vintage. her bedside shelf is from the container store. we bought the curtains at target and had them hemmed by hc’s mom. the pillows in her room are actually from our wedding!
grace’s room is fun and bright. i love how it turned out…of course it’s great, my wonderful hubby worked so hard on it!
june just flew by. oh my. so many good things that went on during that month!
we celebrated father’s day. we met up with so many of our friends. we had lots of visitors to our new house. our dear friends go married. baby olive had some wonderful milestones.
i loved june for it’s warm weather and fun filled days. olive and i spent many morning and afternoons together hanging out. i love being with my baby girl. i love going on walks with her. i love making her laugh. she is so sweet and serious. i love watching her grow but yet i want her to slow her roll! don’t grow up too fast!
i can’t believe june is over already. summer don’t fly by too fast. i love having you around.
below are a few snapshots of this past wonderful month. i hope y’all had a lovely june. enjoy my lovies!
[playing with her indestructible book // daddy feeding her]
[ffffpppttt]
[play/learning time]
[travis and olive being so cute]
[grilling]
[baptism dress…her baptism was really at the end of may but i had to include this beautiful photo of our baby girl]
[doing baby yoga]
[love her! nordstrom baby peter pan collar shirt + ruffled grey pants]
[sleepy time // one of her favorite toys]
[auntie missy feeding olive]
[yummy toes]
[taco night]
[cute cousins…olive loved being held by reagan like this]
[she was really tired and leaned over to sleep…baby yoga]
[vanilla bean ice cream with hazelnut chocolate wafers…yum!]
it was our second bridal shower that summer and it was hosted at dick and jane’s house {held outside in their backyard}. It was sooooo freakin’ hot that day! upper 90’s, sticky, hot, sunny, and humid. you did. not. stop. sweating, even when you sat very, very still. when our guests were arriving, i didn’t even give hugs…i waved at them. um, yeah. no touching when it’s that gross outside.
being engaged was definitely an amazing time in our lives. oh, i could relive these moments over and over. i loved all the joyous, celebratory, fun memories with all our friends and family. i always say it and i’ll say it again…our engagement and our wedding was like a dream come true. i loved every second of it! but i tend to really revel in a lot of things…i am so appreciative of all good things in life!
i absolutely love this picture of us. we were, obviously, being super silly gals in this photo. we love entertaining ourselves by being incredibly goofy when we take pictures. it makes for great laughs when you look back at them. i mean, c’mon. you can only take so many portraits, then you need to get creative to capture some fond, fun memories 😉
[oh! have some cake my dear!]
[p.s. i was so darn tan and skinny…those were the days!]
well, lovies…create some great memories today! i hope every has a fabulous day and weekend!
our fourth of july was very low key. a lot of relaxing and hanging out together. hc had yummy dinner plans and he even baked a pound cake for dessert! how awesome was that?!
when i arrived home, hc started whipping up some good eats {such an awesome hubby}. i was hungry {as usual…this nursing state makes me voracious}! we sat down for dinner and stated what we are grateful for {we do this every time we eat}, then filled our bellies up with some good grub. thank you hc for always making a delicious meal.
[olive had navy and white star shorts on buuutttttt she had an accident in them 🙁 therefore she didn’t have them on]
[a delicious dinner by hc // winner winner chicken dinner]
after dinner, i cleaned up and hc, olive, and grace went for a walk. once they were back, we started making our desserts. grace sliced up the strawberries, i pulled out all the toppings and plates, and we gathered around to assemble our treats!
[anthroplogie bowls]
[grace slicing strawberries for our desserts]
[my red, white, and blue peacock festive dessert!]
[i love to pout]
after dessert, hc and grace went out to the backyard to look for fireworks. hc actually caught a firefly! one of our summer to do’s! there weren’t many out there but we got one! we still have all summer to catch more!
i tried to keep baby olive up for some fireworks but she was tired. pooped. so, no fireworks for this little one. she went to bed!
[trying to stay of for fireworks]
after some quality time together, some festive desserts, and slightly catching a glimpse of the fireworks behind our trees, we were dunzo. that pretty much summed up our happy fourth of july!
my famille and i got together during the holiday weekend to get into some festive fun. we were able to check off another fun summer activity: going to a carnival!!
there were so many fests going on but we decided on the lisle summer fest, eyes in the sky. they had a lot of fun stuff going on there – kitschy shopping, greasy food, cheesy kid fun, & a carnival! we parked at benet academy and we were bussed in…it is so much easier than driving to the festival to find parking, it was a quick bus ride there!
once we got there, food was in order! actually beer was our first go to…unfortunately, the beer selection was subpar. hello?! where was the craft beer section?! after getting our libations, we trekked over to the food section. of course hc and the bro in law insisted on walking the entire area and then decide on what to eat. they had to assess all the options…oh goodness. once we walked the food section, we all split up and bought our entree of choice. holy cow! it was so freakin’ expensive! that’s a festival for y’all. a monopoly of vendors that hike up their prices for a quick, lucrative profit. hmph.
[god bless america]
[i don’t want milk…i want my toesies]
[italian ice]
[this picture cracks me up…it was so bright, they couldn’t keep their eyes open! bennett screamed, “i can’t see!!!!”.]
while we were eating our food in the picnic area {funnel cake anyone? yes, please}, tommy the hawk flew by in a golf cart. the kids went nuts! a slew of kids started running after him. it was hilarious. reagan and bennett went running towards him too. tommy the hawk started to throw out rolled towels! the kids went crazy, running back and forth so they could catch a towel! i ran out with the boys to encourage and help them. as tommy the hawk directed the kids to where he was going to throw the towel, he spotted me standing there…i knew he was going to throw the towel towards me! he had the kids run across the grass again to where i was standing, he threw the towel directly at me! it totally bounced off my hands and some dude totally swiped it from me when it bounced onto the grass! darn it!
they also handed out stickers and eventually, reagan caught a towel! woo! i’m so glad he did! reagan soooo wanted a picture with him so i got them to stand next to him and i snapped a photo! bennett was so nervous! he wasn’t completely scared but completely questioned the large, furry, human sized animal in front of him! that is why his eyes are closed. he didn’t want to directly look at him! lol.
[bennett was a bit afraid…but he did well…except for fearfully closing his eyes]
as we hung out at the fest, they started to blow up the hot air balloons! it was so cool to see. only at lisle fest is the only time i ever see hot air balloons…even as a kid! it never gets old.
after the eating, drinking, shopping, watching kiddie entertainment, we finally dragged ourselves into the carnival area. this festival was a money pit! oh em gee…everything was so expensive! i bought tickets so grace could possibly go on rides. we walked through the gaming area, the boys totally loved this part. they participated in how fast you can throw a ball and won blow up baseball bats…of course they chose the cubs!
grace played the game where you throw the balls and try to win a gold fish. wha wha. no goldfish but the girl definitely went on some crazy looking rides! she loves roller coasters and such. um, not me nor hc! we won’t go on such contraptions!
[auntie thuy always doting on olive]
[grace excited and ready to ride this scary machine]
[olive and daddy]
[bye bye carnival]
after a lot of fun, and it was really a lot of fun, we were spent {literally} and ready to go. it was a great time outside in the beautiful weather, i loved eating the greasy festival food, we had such fun with the famille, i enjoyed watching the kids having a wonderful time, and i am absolutely loving summer.
hc and i were able to check off one of our summer activities: looking at classic cars on a cruise night. it was a wonderful, warm, summer day. earlier in the morning, we had a great brunch with friends and later that evening, we wanted to do something summer fun!
we looked up several options available and decided to check out the lombard cruise night {we definitely want to check out other town’s cruise nights, we have all summer!}. right when we got there, it started to rain…hard. we sat in the car {watching 007} until the rain stopped.
we got out and started walking towards all the classic cars. we cruised up and down the street and ogled all the fun vehicles. lombard’s cruise night was much smaller than we thought! we’ve done cruise nights at other towns before, so this one was tiny to us.
there were a few cars that hc really liked. unfortunately, i don’t remember the names of any of them {haha} 😉 i only took pictures of them 🙂 so, go ahead and figure them out!
[i scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream]
after we checked out all the cars, i insisted on ice cream! you can’t go to a cruise night {or any outdoor summer activity} and not get ice cream to eat outside! there was a band playing by the ice cream shop, so we bought our ice cream cones, sat on a ledge, conversed with each other, and listened to the live music.
bonus part? olive was suppose to go with us but my parent’s insisted on watching her so we kinda had an impromptu date night {even though it was just a few short hours!}.
we really enjoyed ourselves and can’t wait to check more fun stuff off our summer list! oh, warm weather…please stay awhile!
on july 4th, 1776, we declared our independence from the british empire aaaannnddd it’s been a non-stop party ever since! 😉
i hope everyone out there eats a lot of carnival foods, cotton candy, funnel cake, ice cream, & watches a whole bunch of fireworks! hey, it’s america…we always over indulge!
[olive and i in our festive, holiday attire!]
[carter’s star chambray dress and nordstrom’s flower headband]
happy 4th of july lovies! i love celebrating america’s birthday. let’s revel in our freedom and everyone please be safe {drinky drinky + home fireworks = you’ll shoot your eye out, so be careful, darn it!}!
i’m reminiscent over this picture right now because i am totally missing vegas…a lot. for the past several years, matt, johann, hc, and i have traveled to vegas every summer for a mini vacay. matt and johann go every year because matt’s sister, liz, lives there with her husband josh and their daughter stella.
we go to relax, visit, and do a lot of shopping. we are not gamblers {although every time we go, hc must put some money into the wheel of fortune}, we love vegas for it’s craziness, kitschy nature, amaze people watching, luxurious hotels, fabulous pools, delicious food, 24 hour availability, and fantastic night life. we love to lounge, eat, drink, get a tan, and entertain ourselves with the crazy peeps that come to vegas. hello…the outfits people wear are the best!
matt and johann are such great travel partners. we do our own thing, we meet up when we want to, we don’t adhere to a strict schedule, we all love to shop…we are on the same page on our idea of how to vacay. it’s perfect harmony.
unfortunately, why i am a bit poo pooh about it right now is because this year it wasn’t in our cards to go. with a baby and a new house {a lot of renovating}, vegas didn’t fit into the budget. well, it could have but not the best idea when it came to our finances and being smart about it {i’ll blame hc for being responsible :)}.
so, here i am…gazing at this picture, wishing we were in vegas with them right now.
this pic was taken at the pepper mill…a cheesy 24 hour restaurant. ya gotta love the fake neon lights, plastic flowers, and the fire pit lounge/bar they have inside, where hats are not allowed {dress code}! whaaaat?! people are in flippin’ tanks tops and flip flops!
[i apologize for the fuzziness…it’s a picture of a picture :)]
anyhoo, i love vegas and i love going with these two wonderful people. it’s our tradition. here’s to next year’s trip! fer shizzle.
the oakbrook land of nod celebrated their 10th anniversary!
i was really excited to attend. i had received their email and the party looked like so much fun! they had balloons, a face painter, a photo booth, a children’s folk singer, and they had set up a whole bunch of teepee’s, tents, and blankets all over the grass in the front of their store. a perfect spot for kids to play in & lots of activities to entertain the kiddos.
we started the afternoon with some lunch at cpk. we put olive in a highchair {first time at a restaurant!} and she was quite content for a bit. i fed her some carrots and cauliflower. reagan was completely entertaining her and then she was liiiiiike, ok…i want my momma. she whimpered and whimpered, so i picked the cutie up to calm her down. i was able to wolf a bit of food down before we headed out to do some shopping before heading over to land of nod.
[reagan enjoying his sundae]
[auntie/godmother kim playing with miss olive]
we decided to hit a few stores kid’s stores before lon. it’s been awhile since i’ve purchased some cute clothes for miss olive! i bought a bunch of stuff at gapbaby, h&m, and carter’s.
of course, we stopped at starbucks for a pick me up drink! the boys got matching cake pops to nosh on.
[never without a starbucks run]
[cake pop twinsies]
[they had a children’s folk singer entertaining the crowds]
[holding on to her lon carrot rattle]
olive and i participated in the photo booth. it was delightful and fun. look at her face…so chunky and cute.
we also ran into our friends lan, pete, and avery! we were able to hang out with them during our afternoon of fun. small world, but then we ran into our friends larissa and thai and their family of three! a sunny day and a land of nod event brings out everyone!
[photo booth fun]
[avery having a blast with the campfire props]
the boys waited in line with auntie thuy to get their face painted. it was quite the popular spot! the line was so long but thuy and the boys waited oh so patiently to get their faces painted! reagan chose spidey man and bennett chose mario brothers. they loved it! it was so adorbs, after they had their faces painted, they looked so happy staring at themselves in the mirror. i love kids. so wonderful and innocent.
[reagan getting spiderman]
[mario brother]
[aren’t they so cute?!]
[i honestly didn’t know where to look at first…then we got it! isn’t she just the most adorable baby in the world?!]
[ending the afternoon fun with yummy goodness]
after an hour or so at the land of nod, we went to macy’s because the bro in law wanted to shop around. kim and i were a bit hungry, so we headed downstairs to the food court to grab a snack. well, a snack turned into more food and lots of desserts and a very full belly {there goes dinner!}!
we had such a great day lazily lounging around, shopping a whole bunch of stores, and participating in the l.o.n. party! it was such a fantastic afternoon with my lovely family! a much needed relaxing afternoon at a beautiful shopping center with my famille.
