April 30, 2011

royal wedding

I so enjoyed the royal wedding. I set my DVR that night but I turned on the TV right before I went to bed and got hooked. All of a sudden I wanted to watch it live and I managed to stay awake until Kate and William rode away in the carriage. Kate looked so beautiful in her dress. I loved the the simplicity and modesty of it while still looking exquisite. Could not believe she did her own make-up! I also loved the way she had her sister as her maid of honor and the little ones as bridesmaids. The church service brought back so many memories too as it was similar to the service we had in the Episcopal church I grew up in. One cute story I heard on TV about when Kate was deciding which college she would attend. She had her college picked out and her mom asked her “don't you want to go to the college Prince William is attending”. She eventually decided to take her mom's advice. Crazy that they then met there and ended up marrying. I bet her mom was pretty shocked when her advice turned out to be so right!
image: here

April 28, 2011

handprint easter lamb

My favorite Easter treat.....Noah making me a Handprint Easter Lamb! A perfect craft for little ones. You can find the how-to here.
via: Britt

April 20, 2011

cardboard box birthday party



This is one of the most unique and fun ideas I have seen for a birthday party from Hello Lucky. It is really perfect too, as we all know one of the favorite things toddlers like to do is play in empty cardboard boxes. The mom got the inspiration for this party when she saw her twin boys playing in a Huggies box. I thought about this mom being inspired when next coming across this great quote via Marvelous Kiddo.

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
- Chuck Close
via: makingitlovely

April 18, 2011

britt 8 months & boys

No, haha we still don't know the sex {despite the title}. It is still a surprise and we will know the answer in one short month! I just wanted to mention a great blog post by Cup of Jo about having a boy. She wrote a really honest post on how when she found out she was pregnant she secretly wanted a girl {for all the usual reasons, dressing them, doing girly things together etc.} Then when she had a boy how overwhelmed she was with love for her son Toby and how much he has opened up her eyes to all things boy. I loved this post so much because it is something no one talks about and it seems like every woman that is pregnant wants a girl. With Brittany already having a boy and knowing everyone is thinking you are going to be disappointed if you have another boy it was the perfect expression of what it is really like when you actually have your sweet baby, boy or girl. Brittany being so sick this time also brought out the fact that having a healthy baby is not so easy sometimes. I also know several woman who are struggling with infertility and let me tell you they remind me that getting pregnant and having a baby of any sex will be the happiest day of their life! There is another factor in wanting a certain sex I don't think a lot of woman consider. Just because you have a girl doesn't mean she is going to be just like you and like what you like or be a girly girl. I know this because I have raised 2 daughters. The differences that your children have are where you learn all kinds of interesting things that you would have never known if they were just like you. So go read Joanna's entire blog post here. You will love it!

April 16, 2011

obsessing

I need to frame this and put in on my desk so I can stare at this and remember it when I start obsessing about negative stuff.
via: petitesunday

April 10, 2011

blog print

Yup! funniest thing ever.
via: etsy

April 7, 2011

birth matters

I was just reading an interesting interview in Babble with the author of Birth Matters on "why America has such a weird birth culture." Ina May Gaskin is renown as "the mother of authentic midwifery" and her practice is noted for it's low rates of intervention, morbidity and mortality. In her book she explains why birth matters not just to women and babies but society as a whole. One statistic that had me completely aghast was that a woman giving birth today has a greater chance of dying then her mother did! This and the fact that the cesarean section rate is between 30 and 40% is crazy. The other fact that is so weird is that almost everyone is induced now. I had to be induced with my oldest daughter and it was so much more painful then the natural birth I had with my son. The other thing I don't get is why everyone is induced when they are just a week late. It wasn't that way when I had my children and the babies were fine. My middle daughter was 3 weeks late and the sky didn't fall down! It now seems like women getting to their due date is so extremely stressful and they demand to have their babies immediately. Most doctors are of no help either as they facilitate these practices for their own reasons. I don't know when things changed so much but the direction we are heading is not healthy for babies or moms and the statistics prove this out. This is an important and insightful book that all women who are pregnant or plan to have a child anytime in the future should read.

April 2, 2011

adore home

Loved so many of the spaces featured in the beautiful Australian online magazine Adore Home. You can see it all here.