Baby Favies

I love a good mood board. One snapshot of a bunch of different items that capture a style and a feeling of a room, an outfit, a season, pretty much anything.  They are a great resource on Pinterest, and will often give you a great snapshot of your personal taste and style when you come across one that sings for you.

A friend recently asked me about doing a post with my favorite baby Noa items, so I threw together a fancy (to me) white compilation. 

Compared to the things I liked/bought for Judah and Layla, my style has come light years. Not only is my taste level much more thoughtful, but the items I am choosing to buy are actually much more meaningful since I love each one so much. I have ended up spending much less on this baby (even factoring in hand-me-downs), and yet I find a lot more joy and quality in Noa's stash than I did by buying meh things in bulk before.

Of the 15 items pictured, I own about half already. Some are DIY-able by me and so I won't need to purchase, and some are just wishes. The majority are handmade or from small businesses, which--as a small, handmade, business owner myself--imparts another dose of love and thoughtfulness into the item as well.

Our Sweet Girl Print  / "hello i'm new here" Onesie / Leather Bow Set / Wooden Diaper Bag Tag /  Teething Rings / Mommy & Me Bracelet Set / Baby Lounge Leggings / Wiggle Snake Grasping Toy /  "Little Muffin" Onesie / Pink Moccasins / "Pretty Young Thing" Onesie / State Rattle / Earflap Hat /  Bandana Bib / Crochet & Wood Teether Toy

What are your favorites? Do you have any must-haves, or drool-inducers of your own in the wide world of new baby items that I need to know about?

IKEA cataLOVE

I feel like I have pretty well covered my passionate love for IKEA on this blog (and gushing over what a dream it was to work with them on the kids' room!) If you want to claim I am overstating it, I will fight you at a time and place of your choosing, but assuming you believe me, we can just move on.

When I was a kid, catalogues were heaven. From the huge tomes that were like 3 inches thick to just the weekly newspaper inserts (my brother and I would dive into the discarded parts of my parents' sunday editions screaming, "find the glossies! THE GLOSSIES!"), something about all the pretty things right there for our eyes to gobble up and dream of owning was slightly magical.

The internet put a stop to lots of that "can't see it anywhere else" charm of catalogues, but IKEA's yearly glossy volume still stands alone and apart for me as one I have to have in hard copy. Browsing it online is awesome, but flipping through the pages with my own greedy mitts and imagining I'm on my own personal Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler nighttime escapade in the store all by myself as I turn the pages is an experience apart. 

Another benefit of the hard copy: it's just so pretty that it can fully pull off coffee table art.  I declare it to be so.

IKEA just released their 2015 catalogue (get one sent to you), and I have already spent a good deal of time soaking up gorgeous Swedish inspiration, and the unique smell of the glossy pages themselves.  Nothing gets my nesting/makeover/productivity mojo popping like a ride through this bad boy.  Inspiration abounds!

Here are a few things that I can't get out of my head since seeing them in the 2015 catalogue:

We have no rooms left for a nursery, so I shouldn't EVEN be looking at these pages, but man the crib is speaking to me. It's saying "mama, come get me!"

This entire little melange makes me so happy. The textures, the colors, the STORAGE! 

Hear me now: THIS IS our next bed. 

Fun fact: my 5th grade Invention Convention project was a bed with drawers underneath which I dubbed "The Sleeper Keeper" (I guess IKEA's choice of "BRIMNES" works too). I didn't know this type of bed was already invented and thought I was the first one to solve that dilemma (forgive the 10-year-old for not knowing all of bedroom suits).

So this bed is a childhood dream realized with IKEA style and price. The storage possibilities with the 4 huge built in drawers underneath and the sneaky headboard shelves/ledge have me buzzing with giddiness. 

To celebrate their their 2015 catalogue launch IKEA Atlanta is giving away a $100 giftcard (which can be used in any of their stores). You can enter here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway    

 -Contest will run from August 1, 2014 – August 31, 2014

- Winner will be contacted via Twitter and prizes will be available on or before September 2, 2014

-follow along on twitter with the hashtag #IKEAcataLOVE

Therapeutic Dreams

Not long ago I had no style. That's not me being self-deprecating, I just literally had no style of my own. I had never given any thought to what elements or themes or looks from fashion/design I felt best expressed who I am. I would shop for a room or an outfit and just kind of wildly go, "I like that thing, and that other thing, and that one too," never considering if the things went well together or if they were a fitting reflection of what i found beautiful or functional.

Pinterest had a big hand in changing this. So did my snap decision to blog more of my life and MAKE more of my life. I had always liked my house. It was functional and nice and I had picked paint colors for every room based on which swatch was prettiest. What more could I want? But i started thinking in terms of, "does this space give me joy right now?" and quickly found out that, no, our house as it was didnt really make me joyful or inspired on any given day. 

At first I figured we'd just have to move. Start fresh. Then we spent .005 seconds looking into that and realized, LOL, we're not going anywhere because all of a sudden the house we bought in 2006 is worth nothing in 2009. Thanks a million, market. 

I'm so glad we didnt move and start from scratch though. A: because i would have been completely overwhelmed trying to build a style and house from scratch and B: I found out that it wasnt the house's job to be beautiful and reflect joy, but MY job to make it so. And that's what we started to do. Room by room and no interest-financing project by project, we've turned our blah little wood-veneered and khaki colored home into a bright, modern, quirky, fun space that LOOKS like us and that genuinely gives us joy to be in and to work on. Proof? the kitchen, my bathroom, the living room, the studio/office, the pantry, the dining nook, the hall, along with two areas i havent shown you yet because they arent finished.

I said Pinterest was a big part of this change. At first its biggest contribution was "UNNNNGH look at all these pretty rooms and houses, I love them all so much and they are better than mine and I NOW HATE OURS" and a whole lot of COVET.   A common pitfall of ye olde pins. But slowly and surely I was able to say things like, "okay i love that bohemian budoir as a photo, but honestly, that is not me and would be a tad ridiculous in my home." I started figuring out how to gather ideas that would both work in our style of home/stage of life/area of the country and which looked beautiful, joyful, and stylish to mine own eyes.

just a butt load of beauty.

One of the first rooms we got to sort of reinvent from scratch was Layla's nursery. I made no secret of the fact that I got 100% of the inspiration from a nursery tour I saw on Apartment Therapy. I found Apartment Therapy through pinterest and had been scouring their stunning kids room tours for ideas for Layla's. I was completely intimidated by everything I saw on this website. Most of these room-designers weren't actual professional designers...but, dayum, they were light years beyond anything I could slap together or think up. Every room they featured was a work of art to my design-deprived eyes, but Maeve's nursery tour put that inspirational fire in my gut to START PAINTING AND SEWING AND DOING AND MAKING NOWNOWNOW. And that is when you know you've hit inspirational paydirt.

Obviously many of the most beautiful elements of Layla's nursery were straight up copied from this gorgeous space. Since I could never make up a room design of my own that would be this fantastic, I figured copying the look and ideas would have to be my crutch. (And that's a lot of what style is anyway I think: copying from here and there--probably not as much as I did here-- and curating your own look, with a few lightning bolts of original inspiration along the way).

I am dying laughing as I type this because I just went and looked on the original Apartment Therapy Tour and remembered that I had written a comment on it; telling the room's owner how much I loved it and wanted to replicate it for my little girl. Here is what i said 3+ years ago:

hahaha, at least my honesty has not changed.  i'm insane and unoriginal, but at least i'll tell you loudly.

Fast forward 3 years. Lots of trial and error along the way as I learned my own style and started to implement it all around our home, one little makeover at a time. I noticed that, over time, I stopped relying as much on other room tours and Pinterest...I actually started to be able to piece things together on my own. I'm still NO DESIGNER: those evil geniuses who spew face-smackingly gorgeous ideas that you've never seen before from their every pore, but I have found my own groove. Enough of a groove that I even felt confident enough to reach out to IKEA and pitch a partnership with them...which, as you know, they were game for (but I sure wasn't confident to tell hardly anyone about that pitch until it was accepted!).

From the moment IKEA said yes, and the project of making over Judah and Layla's shared space became a reality, I about lost m'damn mind. Saying, "I've found my style! I am a confident interior design gazelle. Watch me prance!!!" is one thing, but having your #1 favorite company back you and say, "Hey , go do this with our name behind you and we're going to put it on the internet forever," is quite another. Crushing anxiety and pressure headaches anyone?

But what else could I do but go for it? I had a van full of furniture waiting for me to make it look good and nothing but a bunch of allen wrenches and my brains to make it happen. And, as you know, it very did happen. A pregnancy complete with horrifying morning sickness happened too--right in the middle of the project--but that's all in the past, and we can all laugh about it now without hardly gagging. 

When the project was over, the photographs taken and my presentation at an IKEA event complete, WHOOOOOSH, what a relief. IKEA was happy with the room, I was proud of what we had created, and the kids were living happily ever after inside of the room. 

On a wild whim I decided that maybe I had graduated from style-idiot bumbling around and copying the best of what I saw, to sort-of-not-clueless-possible-innovator. I decided to submit the room to Apartment Therapy. How cool would it be to go full circle from 100% consumer of their tours to an actual tour contributor!?!

I submitted my link and the pics and waited...and nothing ever happened. I really wasnt too bummed about it since I truly loved the room, and since Apartment Therapy was on such a pedestal in my mind that even my best work was probably not good enough.

So you can imagine the pants-pee that occurred when, completely unrelated to my submission (she said she never even saw it since they get TONS of submissions) I received this email from an AT editor:

I screamed. A lot. And loudly, and basically acted like a complete idiot psycho. 

And this past Friday, the tour went live: a Tour of the Room of My Design (capitalized for fancy), live on Apartment Therapy. Is this real life? And the orange squiggle is looking extra sexy to me all of a sudden.

and then i died of smiling.

I can now retire happily from designing, and blogging, and maybe breathing...just for a moment.

I was pumped at how many people said they were surprised by how much IKEA stuff made up the room. That had been a big goal of mine; to show how you can use IKEA products without it looking like an obviously-IKEA furnished room. I was NOT surprised by all the dumbwaiter love because it's such a  Swiss Family Robinson / Webster dream come true to many a grown up child. 

I expected Apartment Therapy commenters to all be pretty seasoned tour-viewers (with rare exceptions of insane noob comments like mine above) and that they would be a tough crowd to please, let alone impress. I was ready for feedback and critique on my choices and had thickened my skin and opened my brain-heart to use criticism for future good.

Even still, there was a small period of despair when some of the comments on the tour turned decidedly negative and kind of mean/judgmental to my eyes--and not even about the design so much as about our parenting choices. Some folks were loudly anti-TV in the room (understandable, but maybe not relevant in this post) and others were concerned about the safety of the kids in the bunks (not so much the loft though, weirdly). 

It was late Friday night when I saw these and it was hard not to feel pretty hurt. I am a salty gal, but in a horrible twist of fate, I am also really sensitive.  And I am not of the personality that could just remain silent. I replied to a few of the comments, trying really hard to remember that I represent not just my blog and IKEA in this forum, but also Jesus (in every forum, because duh). 

I didnt think I could feel sunnier about the tour than when it first posted, but I was surprised to find that the most meaningful compliments I received about the room didnt end up being about how pretty or cool it was (though truth: those made me soar), but rather how I responded with grace (and funny) to the negative commenters. THAT meant a lot, because it was 100% not me--I had to pray and revise, and pray some more, and then make Jesse talk me down, and then pray some more and then revise again and THEN post my replies.  I never expected an Apartment Therapy tour feature to provide a benchmark Jesus moment for me, but it so did. It was also a great reminder that as awesome as recognition feels, or a pretty room looks, people are more important, even the grumpy ones. 

I am at peace the no one cares more about the safety of my kids than Jesse and I do. Just because someone else might not choose to do a loft or a TV in their room doesnt mean it isn't a valid or right choice for us. How we parent our kids is between us and Jesus, and I feel more secure in that after going through that little spell.

Deep, spiritual detour aside, I am just so proud and happy with how everything turned out. If it wasn't glaringly obvious: An Apartment Therapy Tour was a dream--one I almost didn't even dare to dream--come true!  I absolutely have to thank yall for supporting me by reading, teaching me with your insightful comments and emails, and encouraging me through numerous dark times. I would have never pitched to IKEA if I didnt have a blog that I felt confident about, and that confidence comes from from yall.

I cannot think of a way to end this post that doesnt sound like an Oscars acceptance speech. So let's roll with it, Judah, and Layla, if you're reading this, I love you, and when did you learn to read? Thank you to the Academy, to my husband who is my best friend and #1 supporter, and most of all to my savior, Jesus Christ! Good night!

------------------------

there is a $100 Visa gift card up for grabs just for one of yall from the good folks at GE on the previous post...enter today!

the winner of the Big Mommy Bag giveaway was Laura W. who has been informed and is fist pumping and dancing around. thanks to everyone who entered!

in defense of the selfie.

if you tend to think a selfie is always a self-centered, vain, self-indulgent way to fish for superficial compliments, this might make you reconsider. sometimes it's an act of bravery. 

if the lie you hear is "i'm fat/ugly/old/gross, and i don't want anyone to look at me," then posing and posting a selfie might not be arrogance, but rather having to faith to stand up to that lie.

at 31 years old and therefore in neither the middle-aged, nor the adolescent stage of my life, i still manage to feel all the insecurities and self-hate talk that ALL the women in this video express. there are times when i will not go to an event or out of the house because i feel so unworthy of being looked at. that is a disgusting lie, and even though i feel like i am more secure in myself than a lot of people, blammo, there i am believing it and letting it dictate my life.

the main stigma on selfies is probably that they are overused by, or somehow only FOR "beautiful" people (i mean the mainstream, magazine-y definition of beautiful here).  so when someone posts one, i will find myself going, "oh she must think she looks hot/cute in this pic!" so judgey by me. i'm sure there are plenty of instances where a selfie is posted to shame others, to produce jealousy, envy or lust or just to feel the temporary high of being wanted and affirmed by comments or likes or weird emoji rebuses.

but before we shame every girl who ever turned the camera around and go-go-gadgeted her arm to new lengths to capture a selfie, maybe we should consider that this selfie is of a scared little girl--whatever her age--daring to believing that her face was created by the same creator and with the same care and pride with which he painted every sunrise and hung the stars (and, unfortunately, in some cases with which he made ducks' faces, it would seem).

i tried to think of a way i could write this post without actually including a selfie of my own in it. there's just not!! not if i really want to choose to be brave. to declare my worth. to kick the liar in the gonads.

a dozen quips about my imperfections have been intentionally left out here.

ARG okay, nope NO NO NO i cant let it slide. was SO close to publishing this, but no. it's a matter of principle now.  that picture above isnt a selfie from today...i still wasnt feeling confident/brave enough for that. so i picked one i had (and liked) from a few weeks ago (taken possibly at the exact moment of conception if my memory, calendar, and knowledge of sperm speed serve me)! 

no, i dont HAVE to post a selfie every day, and no matter what i look like; HOWEVER, when i thought about those middle school girls in the video, those moms, and really about my girl, i just couldn't let THIS POST be one where i hid and put upwhat i judged as a prettier version of myself. no no no. 

minutes ago:

layla, if you're reading this: i'm worth being seen. and so are you!

wherein my husband has children with another woman...for jesus

yall might be familiar with John Waller, the christian singer. 

a few months ago, one of our great friends, Dawn, who is a passionate advocate of adoption, and is also friends with John and was crucial in the production of the video, asked if Jesse and Layla could be a part of a project he was doing for his upcoming music video for his beautiful song about adoption and the heart of christ.

she said it was going to involve many real life families who have adopted (including hers...she and her hubby, Don--yes Don and Dawn--have 3 awesome adopted chilluns). i didnt think much of it. Jesse and Layla were gone the whole day and he told me about some of it when he got back, but i guess i thought he was probably making a bigger deal of his one little part in the video, especially since we havent adopted and children (so far) and i figured he was just a filler guy or something for the real stars.

and then a few days later he showed me the final cut (which just went public yesterday). ummm, so yeah they are sort of slightly prominent in the video just kind of. SERIOUSLY WATCH THIS:

you may recognize Jesse's flipping adorable "son" as Judah's real life BFF, Marc, who is Dawn's youngest son and who i just love to pieces because he is a beam of sunshine (and whose bday party this hilariousness occurred at).

okay so if it wasnt strange enough to see Jesse playing the loving husband to a (GORGEOUS!) woman i dont know, there he is being the dad of Judah's real life best buddy. and then just for funsies to blow my mind even harder, we throw in Layla as the adopted daughter in this fictional family.

i felt a little bit like i was having an out of body experience watching half of my family get swapped out!

Dawn told us that they had wanted a little girl who didnt physically resemble her "parents" in the the video so that it would be understood that the little girl with glasses who was adopted at the beginning of the video (who grows up to be Jesse's "wife" with glasses) had, in her married adulthood, adopted Marc and then also adopted a little girl as well.

despite being genetically 50% the same, the combo of Jesse and Layla fit the bill of "looking unrelated by blood." it also was perfect since they wanted the little girl to really run into the daddy's arms and getting a three year old to do this with a stranger would have been tough.

after i got over the initial bizzaro feeling that accompanies watching your spouse play house with someone else (how to spouses of actors do it?!?!),  i fell in love with the entire video. we have many close friends you have adopted (creightons, dockerys) or are adopting so this video and song are just such a beautiful picture for us of how we are ALL adopted by jesus and how much is heart is for earthly orphans as well.

the part with all the families toward the end are all real life adoptive families and that gets me every time. just tears for the heartbreak and the beauty and the jesus magic that is adoption.

a little director's cut bonus footage fact: Jesse told me the day of filming had been long and taken a toll on miss Layla's already miniscule attention span. so Dawn all day had promised Layla candy at the end if she behaved. so at that emotional climax of the video when Layla collapses into Jesse's arms and i am tearing up, i always start to laugh because Jesse divulged that in this loving embrace, my little mercenary is whispering into her daddy's ear, "you hab sweet tahts?" the piper must be paid.

after seeing the impact of the entire project, we feel so honored to have been even a teensy part of this beautiful song and the reminder of jesus' heart for all of us as his adopted children. rock on.

reWORDED

.

remember that time that i revealed my struggle with (aka hatred of) reading the bible?

it was over a month ago, and i thought i'd give a little update on how things are coming now that i'm putting real effort toward getting that lamp unto my freaking feet.

this may be shameful, but (yeah right, when has that ever stopped me from telling yall?) buying new things gets me excited for a new activity. maybe it shouldn't but it so does. having new running shorts  MAKES me more likely to work out. having a garlic press or a pastry cutter makes me want to cook.

in that same vein, the first thing i did after publishing that post and deciding to change my habits was order a new bible. this one specifically.

i like that its a new translation for me (NLT, a good mid-way point between the message's easy-to-read, paraphrasing and the NIV's more literal, yet sometimes harder to understand, interpretation), and i am liking it lots. i also like that there are no notes at the bottom (beyond VERY brief translation options sometimes). and i love that its small and zip-uppable so that if/when i put it in my purse, i dont find chapstick smears, dirt granules and squished raisins between pages when i pull her out again. and i like that the design is pretty cool (i mean, for a bible and all. i cant be too picky; i'm just grateful that my copy is 0% vellum).

the second thing i did was to take cindy's recommendation from the comments section and to buy Jen Hatmaker's book, A Modern Girl's Guide to Bible Study: A Refreshingly Unique Look at God's Word. jen hatmaker is a million percent hilarious (not something i say about chicks very often because i am stingy and insecure), and sold out to jesus. these are my prerequisites if you want me as your bible book customer.

while i waited for these gems to arrive on my doorstep from the dark heart of the amazon (seriously, they should get some domestic distribution centers, right?), i sat down with my hubface and talked about what we could do in our daily life to make spending time studying god's word more likely (since a lifetime of pretty much just NOT trying and waiting for the fire to light hadnt brought me far).

we landed on the super obvious, yet avoided-for-years, solution of waking up earlier. i confess: i make sleep an idol very often. for years...YEARS, yall, my husband has been waking up with the kids and letting me sleep for an extra 1-2 hours EVERY DAY. he is amazing in that way and knows that i legitimately need sleep more than he does. i feel like such a spoiled brat admitting that in public, but it's true, and while i've appreciated this SO much, this "extra" sleep had started to be a serious stumbling block to a lot of things in my life.

we started small though. the kids usually wake up around 7-7:30 (so jesse informed me). i get to work around 9. so formerly i would sleep until like 8:30 and leave (taking care of only myself...shame!) at the last possible moment. we decided to try both of us waking up at 7 every day for a week (regardless of when the kids woke up) just to see if i died of sleep-deprivation and to see how life felt after our trial run.

miraculously i lived. it was a close thing though.

actually not really. it was pretty easy and made it all the more ridiculous that i have been avoiding being a wearer-of-the-big-girl-panties for so long now. but dont be too impressed (as if you would) with my panties just yet...i made jesse a deal that he has to set the alarm, and then he, his beautiful self, has to wake me up personally, WITH iced coffee in hand. (i KNOW that he is too good for me, yall, but good luck convincing him). these were my demands.

so the entire first week we did exactly that. the first thing i learned: WHOA COFFEE! hoo boy, i usually drink coffee as like a dessert, and then only rarely. i get it now. drinking coffee in the morning = life. i can almost literally feel the first molecules of caffeine making contact with my brain and sending it into action. and i see that it is good.

study buddies!

the second thing i learned: jesus is on board for this.

how do i know? BOTH kids slept past 8 am every day that first week. jesse was GOBSMACKED (and i do NOT throw that word out lightly because it is very heavy). he says that not one child has ever slept past 8 for him, much less both of them for five days in a row! it really was amazing to hear this. call me the Nutty Confessor (please?), but i totally believe jesus did this to show me that reading his word is something he really wants from me

*it should be noted they have NOT done this again since...but they are made to stay quietly in their rooms until at least 7:30 so that we get at minimum a half hour alone with our bibles*

so i read the first few chapters of jen's (we first name tight like that) book sunday night before my first day of actual reading (jitters! i hope the teacher likes me...oh wait, he died for me and i am his child...i'm so in. yeah, nepotizz!). 

i love that she had a suggestion and example of a prayer to pray BEFORE opening the bible. to ask for guidance, revelation and protection from distraction. this is a very helpful exercise as it reminds me every day before i start that it's not ON ME to find something meaningful in god's word. it's in his hands to unfold exactly what he wants me to receive. that's a load off already and it changes my mindset of how i view a daily devotion from work i have to do to a blessing i am going to receive. straight up. 

she also strongly encouraged journaling. i have ALWAYS sucked at this, vowing to journal my life so my daughter can read about young-me one day, and i always make it no farther than 2 days. despite my dismal track record, i do love an excuse to buy cool school supplies so i scored a sweet graph-paper journal from target that makes my heart really happy. it has triangles and awesome all over it. it's the really well-bound kind that you can open all the way flat without breaking the spine. you dont have to feel the same, but i've just never been a big fan of spine-breaking, in general. 

first i went all the way through the book of james, and am now in the gospel of john. 

so here i am 6 weeks in. i'm still totally NOT that lady who talks about her bible like it's a secret lover. i'm not getting visions or stigmata and havent met a single seraphim (yet!). sometimes all i write on a journal page after a morning's reading is, "um....what???"

but it feels right. it feels like the beginning of a good work in me that he IS going to complete. so i keep showing up because jesus does too.

and, doy, bonus: life is a million times better when you get out in front of your day rather than hitting the ground reacting to it. i'm a better mom, wife, worker, crafter, runner, citizen, humanoid with my new, more disciplined routine.

standing ovation, please, for the 30 year old who learned to wake up at 7 am (movie contract pending for this gripping tale of heroism, in a world).

so my final verdict on this experiment-turned-habit? hold on to your hats, because it's the shock of the universe, and you wont hear this anywhere else, folks, because i am dropping a cutting edge truth-bomb: reading this bible is good for christians

blammo. *throws down mic*

dukes out

making room(s) volume one: and then everything was better

you guys remember my current sewing area, right?

as seen monday morning, 1.21.2013

it was never ideal. it was never something i was super proud of. it was something that had to happen for a moment in time. (one moment= 23 months, btw)

you may remember that we have a teensy 3-bedroom house. when layla stopped sleeping in our room around 4 months old i had to give up the "extra room" as my sewing room and make a (somewhat spectacular) nursery out of it for my little ladyface. 

this pushed the sewing area into our chronically unused dining area off the side of the kitchen. i took the table for my own, pushed it up against a wall, ditched the chairs, added pegboard and shelving for pure functionality and just resisted the urge to melt down in aesthetic horror. 

no matter what new shelving or storage i got for this area, it just was NOT going to look right or good.

what, your dining table doesnt look like this?

the view from the kitchen. pure culinary peace at every turn...um...no. (sometimes jesse models).

but it was a decidedly worth-it trade off to create what we felt was a magical nursery of perfection for our baby chick-a-dukes:

oh so magnificent. (full tour here)

but some things happened (marvelous, fantastical things) that allowed us on monday (MLK day...i had a dream too and mine and his both came true!) to take back the 3rd bedroom as sewing room, office space, studio extraordinaire and general creative refuge. and since i have had an utter style transformation of the brain since i "designed" my last sewing area, this one was able to hit a whole new level of function and beauty (credit where credit is due: i was almost 100% inspired by raechel's studio. she's my muse. #inspiRAEtion).

some of said things are a secret that i will have to keep quiet for now as they havent been finished or photographed, but one of the biggest things was securing an instant (note: dad is the one to hit up for money) loan from my parents to go forward with this project rather than saving up and waiting another few months. perhaps the room should be called the "Lee and Genia Vincent Center for Adults Who Dont Focus So Good and Thus Need a Special Work Room." 

i'll have a plaque commissioned for the door.

i made a trip to IKEA without jesse but WITH judah on monday 6 pm. this would turn out to be my magnum opus of all IKEA adventures. there was sweat, there was stress, there was even spilled elderberry juice that spelled like the inside of roadkill...but i prevailed.

okay so just to remind us all of my past sewing areas:

2009-2010 in the 3rd bedroom. this makes my brain try to crawl right out of my head.

2011-2012 in the dining area...looking better and more organized than it ever really was.

and now, are you ready for how it looks now? i mean, seriously...gird up your loins, because they might leak:

OMG this is a big deal. i just want to make sure you are emotionally prepared for this moment.

do you think i am building it up too much and it is going to disappoint?



 IT'S NOT!!!

TA-EFFING-DA!

even after spending hours in this room last night making it look this way (reorganizing and stowing bits and bobs) i am having an intense emotional reaction looking at this weird MC Escher bendy panoramic shot of the room. getting choked up over a sewing room...what have i become?!?

obviously the shell of the room is still very layla's nursery-esque. but you know? it kind of works as a creativity-flowing sort of decor. i do plan to at least repaint some day, but let's just pause and take in how much better, brighter, bigger and ballsier the room itself looks

i mean...which seems like a better area for NOT having a lobotomy?

SO much table top space for cutting, prepping, dreaming.

all the sewing little knick-knacks stowed away in their places and only pretty things visible among the gorgeous white space of the VIKA table system (this whole combo was $250).

plenty of room at the window table for jesse to use as his office for planning worship, writing sermons, doing quiet time, etc (his chair was out of stock but is coming soon)

a chunk of floor space for bigger projects that require me to spread out lots of fabric.

more under table space if i need to add another fabric drawer set (fabric is my love language)

and there is even enough space along the other 2 walls for the ironing board and for a kids craft area if they ever prove themselves worthy of the arts (jk...but seriously: fools are messy and distracted right now).

those drawers not being pushed in for the picture is really irking me. but, oh mercy, they hold ALL THE THINGS!! and one white drawer and a few red ones are still empty.

the bigger stuff is stowed in the closet to the left (with a knob that escaped my oil rubbed bronze conversion).

dont you just want to roll around on those glossy white table tops of perfection?

AHHHHHHHHHHH. i'm so buzzed on this room.

but trying to move on...if you are a clever bird this transformation leaves some questions. some spatial reasoning quandaries.  alas, i will have to leave you puzzling because the hour is not yet nigh. soon though.

for now let's all just pause in reverence to chaos redeemed and clarity recaptured.

and we saw that it was good. amen.



*and for all the worries that layla is roaming the streets, take heart! here is where she landed.*

competinspiration & fashion

i might be a little competitive.

this is a good thing (30% of the time, at least). when it's not making me bawl my eyes out after my country lost the tug of war on field day (nonfiction. sorry, france, i should have captained you better in all my 11 year old glory) it can turn inspiration into DOING.

i mostly do things that i am inspired by because they are awesome and i want a slice of the awesome myself ("oh, that looks fun, let's try that!"). but sometimes, just sometimes, i am additionally inspired to try to be AS awesome as the inspirer ("hey that seems cool. look i'm cool too! me too, me too!"). this is possibly not a winning trait. (but i am hoping transparent self-awareness is?)

in the last year i have been bananas inspired by my friend raechel (who, you may remember started as my #1 blog crush). homemaking, cooking, fashion, sewing, parenting...the girl can really do it all and make it look easy. i have slowly but surely tried to adopt some of her ways and it really has made my life feel more HD (awww, she brings out the color in my life). i've found it's not so much being amazing or superwoman( though she is), but rather an attitude and a lifestyl; not to mention plenty of room to just be a sloppy mess who sits on the couch for 4 hours some nights. grace.

jesse and i got to spend this past weekend with raechel and ryan. during raechel and my portion of the race she asked me to join her in a 1000 lunges in may challenge.

now the challenge is in no way intended to be me vs. her. it's us versus the cellulite, doing it together for added accountability.

but you better believe when she texted me last night to tell me she had logged 53 (which was demoted to 26 due to a technicality), my competitive juices were flowing. also, i had forgotten about the endeavor so this was enough to get me going.

and then she mentioned that she had already prepared all of her blog posts for the week (since we had just discussed how good it feels to be on top of your blogging schedule), and i was all, "nuh-UH! i am jealous. i have been such a blogging slackeur lately. me too me too!"

so decided in my brainspace that i would rev back up my blogging machine and shoot for 4 posts this week.

sadly, i cant find my memory card which has new and blog-worthy pics on it, so i had to go into the annals. i found a fun "what i wore" fashiony picture hat didnt get posted when i first showed off my new "being a grownup" look a few weeks ago, and since i wore this outfit again last week, it's recent enough to count for "what i wore wednesday."

aaaaaand naturally this is the exact same post that raechel wrote today (i mean, really! just darling). so i just look like a crazy person straight up copying her. NOTE: the competition part of me does NOT tangle with raechel in the "looking cute in clothes" arena. she is undefeated there, and i assure you i want to part of a head to head match up. i'll just keep trying to outlunge her and get my bloggy ducks in a row like she has.

so here we go:

i'm pretty sure if raechel and i both wore the outfits from our posts today while we were together people would think we were taking a break from rehearsing for our roles as rizzo and sandy in a local stage production of "grease." which is fitting because i am always using song and dance to get raechel to smoke and have premarital sex.

jacket: nordstrom (juniors dept...shame!)

shirt: loft (sold out, but on ebay here)

bracelet: noonday collection (SUCH a cool company)

pants: american eagle

earrings: poppy chain boutique

sunglasses: american eagle

sandals: american eagle last year.

nail polish: essie in chinchilly

so there you have it: a blog post, a little overshare re: my psyche, and an outfit. gotta go lunge it out now.

dis-pinterested?

i am finally, and with much trepidation, wading into the shallow end of pinterest. tons of people i know having been falling in love with it recently, and i am late on the train. i discovered this brilliant website (where you can take all that you find good and wonder-inducing from all over the internet and show it off in one place) a few months ago through my friend merran and have been popping back occasionally since then to gawk over her and her sister's boards.

i was also super excited to hear that a reader (and now half-marathon training buddy!) had pinned layla's name art to one of her boards. so one of my projects was living on a board, but i didnt even have any of my own to show off projects that inspire me. so i started last week. i dabbled.

my sparse beginnings

i didnt want to make the full jump and start curating my own boards because i was scared it would kind of consume me. i already have a bad tendency to lose hours at a time down interwebby rabbit holes, and pinterest seems like the mack-daddy-mother of all warrens.

i was also afraid that this little hobby would become a stronghold for lots of things that i fight against in myself on a daily basis: stuff-worship, consumerism, superficiality, and retail medication. i dont want this to be a constant, colorful barrage screaming at me, "you need more/better/different/shiner stuff!" and i definitely dont need to be wasting my own time spending hours actively making myself shallower.

slippery....veeeeeery slippery.

like how do i gather drool-worthy ideas that i want to have in my one-day dream house without starting to hate the little starter home that is currently keeping the rain (and mega-moths if the massive thwunkcs i hear against our windows at night are any indication) off of our heads.

so i need to know your best tips and tricks for pinterest. who to follow? how to categorize?

i also, and more importantly, would like to know how you keep from losing hours at a time on here and becoming a vapid, belongings-crazed meta-junkie. can i just pin jesus to one of my boards and count that as "staying centered?" have any of you had to have an inter-pin-tion (i heart me) with yourself already and swear it off?