love

this guy

four years ago i walked down the aisle in a poofy white dress. i met a cute guy in a suit. we said some pretty hardcore things to each other....

and here we are...

and i am still head over heels...

happy four years to my love!

too cute

this hat is a hoot...

LOVE THIS!!!!

This print is amazing!

cookie decorating

some pictures from cookie decorating at our house...

harry didn't have any left to show you..

tattoo's on my mind

i pretty much know that i am going to get a new tattoo after this little boy decides to be born... and i am almost sure of what i want... like 90%... it's going to be a line from this amazing hymn...

but there is always the chance that i will change my mind and get some other lovely thing... i am fairly certain this won't be the last bit of ink i acquire, so it isn't like "this or nothing"...

dusty and i are almost completely in sync about getting the same thing, though...

oh how pretty

is it wrong that i spend the time while harry is napping to look at pretty things on etsy???

like this...

want a moby?

i know i do!
here is a chance to win one at the b keeps us honest.

wednesday never seemed so good...

a few pictures from the past couple of days...

my anthropologie christmas list

Santa, I've been good all year...

hey, a girl can dream, right??

baby it's cold outside...

good way to end the week

saturday was a very cold and wet day. stephen spent the morning working on the house, so harry and i made our escape and ran some errands. the afternoon contained a lot of football watching, napping, and tea drinking.

stephen ducked out of the house early in the evening to watch a game at a friend's house, which left harry and i to find our own entertainment. dusty came to play. this led to cookie eating and firetrucks. (with white christmas on in the background)

*sunday will thus be spent lounging, eating, napping and the like..

PS... this is the state of my largeness at 23 weeks 2 days and counting... i am going to be HUGE!

phantom

source

last night my hubby and i saw phantom of the opera at the DPAC.
it was beautiful, magical and amazing. there is just something about a play that the movie cannot replace.
what a great start to the holiday season...

december already???

last week felt like a whirlwind: sick baby, sick daddy, a major holiday, shopping overwhelmingness, tree buying, furniture painting, and lots and lots of football.

let's start with the fact that poor harry had a fever from thursday morning until sunday morning. that meant very little sleep for my poor little household. he is still coughing a bit, but the worst part is over. i am just glad that traveling plans got cancelled BEFORE he was at his worst. stephen was feeling a bit under the weather, but was pretty much fine after friday...

turkey day was spent with my mom, little brother, and sister. it was very low key. yet we still managed to cook enough for 12... i have no idea how that happened.

after much thought, dusty and i decided that the hassle of getting up and fighting crowds was not worth the small things that we would be hunting. so, we slept in friday. however, we woke up to my husband calling to inform us that he had decided to head out early to check things out. he came home with the gift that i had chosen for my SIL (i have her name this year) and a new tv for us.... YAY! i have really wanted another tv in the house since i will probably be much more home bound in the months to come, and basketball season is one of stephen's favorites.

i have an amazing hubby... (whose birthday just so happens to be today... but that is another post all together).

the rest of the weekend was pretty much spent on the couch... or in the bedroom watching tv.

harry's fever breaking was enough reason to celebrate and get our christmas tree. we headed over to trosa's tree lot at southpoint. it only took two days to get it decorated after getting it home and realizing that we didn't have any white lights.

i am really looking forward to a week with no sick kids or major shopping days. although, i really miss dusty being here all the time. i even went to goodwill by myself yesterday... which would have been a lot worse if i didn't come home with this sweet stroller for $20... that's right. i am stoked.

lately

hank came home last night. stupid dog thought it was a game. now he pretends we're besties. we aren't yet.

all day today harry made me replay the same yo gabba gabba episode so that he could sing along with them. he even went as far as to pull out his yo gabba gabba guitar and pretend to play. silly baby.

i have a ton of things that are running through my head... to do lists mostly...

but maybe in the very near future i will be able to nail down some time to get one or two things done.

it's been a while

this has been quite a weekend.

saturday morning started out (extra early- i might add) with sniffles and sneezes coming out of my little guy. that led to coffee at starbucks due to smaller crowds and needing to get out of the house.

when we got home, both stephen and i had our hands full of various cups and the kid.

as soon as we opened the door, hank took a running start towards the road. he made a quick detour and ended up in the woods.

the next several hours were spent in the woods or waiting in the backyard to see if he showed up.

nope.

at noon stephen left for the app state game (kid in tow), and i stayed around the house just in case someone found the dog.

when stephen came back we took another ride around the neighborhood in the car calling "hank" at the top of our lungs (which might not be all that helpful anyhow... we aren't positive that he even knew his name)

we called it a night after that.

i did manage to make a quick trip to the local thrift shop... and came home with this cute thing for my little guy:

not bad for 5 bucks, eh?

i also decided i needed a change... bangs.

and this is the huge belly at 20 weeks

and here is the view from the top:

happy wednesday

are you serious?

personally, i like being by myself. i am a pretty introverted person and find that i am much happier at home with my family than with large groups (or even small groups really). my entire life, however, i have been jealous of and intrigued by those people who just draw others to them. in high school and college i watched from around the corner... and now i am ashamed to say i read their blogs daily and envy them...
but why?
if i only made myself look around and leave my shell once in a while, i would be able to see the strong, beautiful, creative women around me and really live life with them.
i was reading Proverbs 31 this morning, and i noticed that she never let herself get caught up in the things around her. she was so busy living the life that she was created for that she didn't have time for envying others. if i could only get over what i wasn't made for (but kinda want) i could be so much more of a wife, mother, daughter, neighbor, friend... the list is never ending.
i let myself use a personality type as a crutch. how pathetic is that?
i wasn't made the way i am to keep to myself all of the time. what kind of example will my children have? how could they "rise up and call me blessed" if i can't even see myself that way?
this is going to be hard. this is going to frustrating, exhausting and scary. but i fully believe that living the life i was made for will be the best blessing i could possibly receive other than salvation.

complete

i did it. i mean, i really did it.

i actually made my first quilt. i found a great tutorial here by the amazing rachel denbow.

granted mine doesn't technically look anything like hers, but the concept is the same: cut, sew, layer, quilt, bind.

notes for next quilt:

don't use light colored binding against dark colored fabric

measure 3x every time

spend more time placing and replacing strips

all in all, i'm pretty excited. this is going to be a christmas present for my nieces...

and, of course, thanks to stephen for keeping the kid happy while i spent all that time cutting and sewing.

weekend to do lists....

Stephen:

clean out backyard

rake

mow lawn

make dump trip(s)

work on my room!

play with the kid

Me:

clean....(that is a permanent list item)

finish various projects that are taking over the kitchen table

attack the mess that is my car

laundry

and hopefully there will be some time for painting a couple pieces of furniture that i have been putting off

just thinking about it makes my head hurt...

this is not a caffeine free kind of weekend...

change of scenery

my husband informed me that the text/background color combination wasn't ideal for his eyesight, so i changed it.... because i love him.

another reason i love thrift shops...

why, yes, those are some awesome leather boots in my size.

love it.

what was i thinking?

yesterday, i literally went into my stash of random fabric and decided to make a quilt. note: i have never made a quilt before and have no idea what i am doing. amazingly enough, the process has been relatively painless.

the top picture is the front, and the bottom picture is the front and a peak at the backing. like i said, we'll see how this actually turns out...

this is exactly why i need stephen to finish the sewing room soon...

and here is the little boy that is being very patient with me...