11 Unrelated and Basically Useless Things I Learned This Week

1. I learned that Ashley is to blame for the winter we’ve been having. Turns out when she decorates her mantel, nature reacts accordingly. She decorated it with lots of snowflakes; we had lots of snow. I propose that she now install one of these on her mantel:

…and also that she avoid decorating with, say, a bunch of squirrels. The last thing this world needs is more squirrels.

2. I learned that this chocolate mug cake is a fabulous way to lose your willpower to eat less like a slovenly pig and more like a girl who needs to fit into her pre-pregnancy pants unless she wants to endure the nightmare that is pants-shopping. It will enchant you with its two-minute start-to-finish siren song, despite all attempts to steer your boat past it, and then continue to lure you in by making you think how great it would be topped off with chocolate peanut butter ice cream.

Please pin from the original source

Before you know it, you will be in a chocolate coma and/or living Homer’s Odyssey and/or both. (We can all probably agree that the epic as a whole would have been significantly improved had chocolate peanut butter ice cream been at the ready. Homer, my man,—may I call you my man?— sometimes you just have to accept the fact that literary greatness only gets you so far.)

3. I learned that bouncing on an exercise ball while blogging is a good way to A) feel better about yourself after you eat a whole bunch of cake and ice cream, B) make your legs feel as though they are comprised of gelatinous sponges that have been run over by a dump truck, and C) feel better about your decision not to instead attempt this with your exercise ball:

source-ish

4. I learned that no matter how perfectly and snugly you put socks on a baby, said baby will devise a way to get them off again in no more than 18 seconds, and there is a distinct possibility that this time, at least one of the socks will be lost forever.

5. I learned that you can compensate for a baby’s lack of socks by placing a giant bow on her head. You know, for warmth.

6. I learned that peach floral wallpaper has been lurking beneath the wainscoting in our kitchen and that if I could travel back in time I would beg the previous owners not to slather the walls in river rock textured paint.

7. I learned that when your baby gets up at 6:30 AM on church day, you have no excuse to not actually blow-dry and straighten your hair for the first time in like a year. (I’m not exaggerating. I know, I make it a rule to Not Be Taken Seriously. But for real. Take me seriously this time.) You can lessen the gravity of this monumental event by making weird faces while your husband tries to capture it on film.

…and also by making faces that suggest you are about to eat your child.

8. I learned how to make my own social media icons using the tutorial I mentioned here. It was painless except for the fact that I basically have a better chance of recreating that ball maneuver from #3 than understanding html code. (But see the buttons up there? They work. Miraculously. Feel free to follow along if you don’t already!)

9. I learned that my baby is cute.

10. I learned that I already knew my baby was cute, and that I just wanted an excuse to include more pictures of her in my post.

11. I learned that when I write about chocolate peanut butter ice cream, I am basically required to also eat some so that I can accurately capture the full essence of what I’m describing. And then I end up freezing and pining for that oven, and then I get too hot and need to eat more ice cream, and it’s like “When You Give a Moose a Muffin” only less of a page-turner and higher in calories.

Hope you have a great weekend! :)

ps-I just added some more ads to my site and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know if anything annoying pops up like a video ad.

If You’d Asked Me

There’s a question that people like to ask, sometimes at an interview, sometimes in an icebreaker, sometimes just in casual conversation:

Where do you see yourself five years from now?

When presented with this query, I’d generally take the opportunity to be brilliantly vague and answer with something really deep and mind-blowing.*

*Or not deep or mind-blowing at all.

And if you’d asked me a year ago today what I’d be doing in just one year, I probably would’ve said something like “I’ll be teaching.”**

**Mind=blown.

But all of that changed a year ago tomorrow: it was the day we found out that I was pregnant. And suddenly the “year from now” future looked different than it did the day before.

As I mentioned in my announcement post, we hadn’t been planning a baby. We weren’t doing anything to avoid it, either, but our entire awareness of the possibility of pregnancy only began the day I took the test. That night, Rick and I stared at each other, trying to comprehend the news that was surreally settling over us, that little plus sign between us. Some people might call this careless, but we call it a blessing; a blessing that now only grows with every passing day. Literally. I mean, babies these days just seem to have a perpetual need to outgrow cute outfits.

So if you’d asked me a year ago today where I saw myself today, my answer wouldn’t have included anything about a sweet little face, warm sleepy snuggles, glad-to-see-you morning grins that melt my heart.

I wasn’t planning on soft fuzzy hair or midnight I need you tears or the heart explosion that it is to watch your husband fall in love with your daughter.

A thousand yesterdays ago I wasn’t planning any of that for my today, and I know well that I can’t say for certain that I have a thousand tomorrows to soak it all in. So today I am thankful for every little bit of this blessing that, just one year ago today, I didn’t see coming.

Does your today look like you thought it would?

“There are many plans in a man's heart, nevertheless the Lord's counsel--that will stand.” Proverbs 19:21

I’m being held hostage by a baby!

*Warning: if you don’t like things like babies and cuteness and sweetness, don’t read this post.*

Guess who decided to blog today? Yeah, Kenley is as surprised as you are.

But it goes without saying that when you and your heart are being held hostage by the most angelic doll of a baby you have ever seen, you neglect your blog for many, many weeks. And it’s totally okay.

You know what else is totally okay? A duck hat.

But come on! Who wants to blog when these rosy little cheeks are in the same house and just demanding to be smooched?

That little duck and her cheekers will be two months old in just one week. Where does time go? She doesn’t look like this anymore when she sleeps, a fact that already makes my new mommy heart ache.

But growing up also means we’ve now met her early baby smiles, which of course makes my mommy heart melt.

I am now actively resisting the urge to shamelessly drown you in a sea of my favorite Kenley pictures from her first 7.5 weeks of life.

I said I was actively resisting. I didn’t say I was succeeding. Hey, you were warned.

If you’re sitting there thinking that all I do is dress her up and take pictures all day, you’re of course totally wrong. I mean, right. Totally right.

You know what else is totally right? A bear suit.

Don’t pretend you weren’t thinking like the same exact thing.

So duck hats + cheekers + bear suits = I might be back to blogging, I might not.

Don’t question the math.

I do have projects I could share, sadly none of which involve a bear suit. But we’ll see. (We’ll see about sharing those projects, not we’ll see about creating a project that involves a bear suit. Although now that you mention it.)

I hope all 3.8 of you who are still visiting my slice of the Internet have been well! Again, don’t question the math.

:) Happy Thursday!

Introducing Miss Kenley

At 2:59pm on Saturday, October 12th, I became a mommy.

Kenley Grace made her big debut around 24 hours after we arrived at the hospital on Friday afternoon, and just two days before her due date of October 14th.

She ended up coming home on her due date, the day we’d marked “K-Day” ever since we picked out her name.

She weighed in at a healthy 7 pounds, 12 ounces and measured 22 inches long.

And she gave my mama the best birthday present ever. I think someday she’ll think it’s pretty cool to share a birthday with her Grammy.

The fact that she grew beneath my heart for nine months is an amazing miracle to me, and I’m completely overwhelmed with joy and gratitude that she is here and that she is healthy.

I just can’t believe this beautiful little girl is mine.

And although it doesn’t seem possible, I love her even more today than I did yesterday.

I’ll share her whole birth story someday, but right now, the product of that birth is sleeping snuggled up against my chest and all I want to do is love on her and memorize every little bit of her sweetness.

Yes, at 2:59pm on Saturday, October 12th, I became a mommy. And life now is better than it has ever, ever been.

Um, hello. {An absence explanation of sorts, but not really.}

Oh hey. Remember me? Nothing says “Happy Friday” like a blogger not blogging for five weeks and then randomly showing up on a random Friday to share random things, am I right?

Just go with it.

You’d think that with my long, unexplained absence I’d at least have the decency to have solved some global crisis or had my baby by now, but no such luck on either count. I’ll be 39 weeks on Monday and am obviously not at ALL anxious to meet this little girl. The fact that I’m not in labor, though, basically is a global crisis at this point and I honestly cry without cause or warning just thinking about the fact that she isn’t here yet, or because I can’t find a cami I need to wear, or because it’s 6:28 on a Thursday evening and really, there’s no better time to freeze in your tracks and begin sobbing. Rick looks on in utter bewilderment, marveling at The Strange and Mysterious Creature Known as Woman.

Seriously, though, maybe if she realized how cute she will look in these headbands that I made for her she would figure out that it is decidedly less cozy in my uterus than out and be all like, “Hey world, here I come”?

So if I haven’t been busy having a baby, then what exactly have I been doing for five weeks? Well, making headbands, for one. Adjusting to the start of the school year for another, and the fatigue that accompanies that. I’ll be working right up until the baby comes,which means a handful of my students past and present are freaked out by my belly and frequently ask what will happen if I go into labor at school. I think they expect the baby to spontaneously swan dive onto the floor in a pool of goo right in the middle of a lesson on personification. I told them to bring a mop. I am nothing if not supportive of their innermost fears and anxieties.

We’ve also had plenty of projects going on, but I just haven’t taken the time to blog about them. Take the nursery for example. Someday I will get around to sharing it. Like maybe when my baby goes to college. In case it’s that far away, here’s a peek at where we currently stand:

I’ve also been taking pictures. Of people. (Who knew that would be way more fun than taking pictures of projects and rooms?) It started with a random sisterly photo shoot to try out my new lens (fixed Nikon 50mm, f/1.8)…

…and turned into something that I actually love doing.

Taking a million photos of other peoples’ children has been helping take my mind off of the fact that a certain child I know isn’t here yet.

Aaaand I’m obviously still learning a lot, but it’s been tons of fun practicing on all of these willing participants, young and old alike.

So that’s me in a five-week nutshell. The next five-week nutshell will include something about a baby being born. And maybe a real global crisis, solved. And maybe a nursery reveal or an upstairs carpet reveal. (Carpeting=best decision ever for the upstairs.) What have you been up to for the past 5 weeks? I’ve tried to stay caught up on blogs but every time I open Bloglovin and it informs me that I have like half a million posts to read, I cry a little.

Oh wait. I was crying already.

Lessons from a Color-Blind Senior Citizen at the Paint Counter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You all know the drill: it’s time to pick a paint color. Cue the internal groan. Trudge to the stack of swatches. Tape a bajillion on the wall. Come back and visit them in every possible form of light. Compare one to the next. Repeat 85 times because it needs to be *perfect* and this is, you’re told by countless experts, how to do it. Hem and haw and refuse to make a decision for weeks because you don’t want to waste money—and, ironically, time—redoing it.The life of a person who cares what their house looks like, right?

And yet.

There I was, standing at the paint counter at ACE Hardware, waiting for my gallon of flat Simply White to be ready. An older gentleman approached the counter with a coupon for a free quart of paint, and, when asked what color he would like, he replied, “Brown.” I smiled a little to myself, finding humor in his oblivion to the thousands of Benjamin Moore color choices laid out in a rainbow behind me, a rainbow that had sucked me in even as a child, enchanting me with its fantastically immense variety of hues. Just “brown”? What was that? He obviously didn’t do what every “How to pick the perfect paint color” guide tells you to do.

The worker kindly showed him that rainbow of swatches, instructing him to pick out which specific brown he would like. A few seconds later, the man reappeared at the counter with his chosen swatch, at which point he was informed by the worker that the “brown” he had chosen was not, in fact, brown.

It was purple.

So back the man went with the worker, who selected a few brown swatches from which the man grabbed one, thus ending the quest for “brown” paint. It took him mere seconds.

As I stood there taking in the whole scene, I thought how freeing it would be to have that kind of contentment about a paint color. To simply walk up to the counter and ask for brown, without taping half a million swatches to the wall, without googling images of said brown, without needing the perfect brown to be called something like Mink or French Press. Just brown. And to even be content with it not being brown at all, but purple.

And then I thought, Benjamin Moore carries nearly 3,500 paint colors, not including the shades blended for annoying customers like me who ask for it mixed at 50% strength. And dear old Ben is just one of countless brands of paint, each with their own versions of Mink and French Press. At what point did we begin needing hundreds of thousands of choices for our wall colors? At what point did things stop being just brown and start being Chocolate Truffle and Timber and Autumn Dusk? At what point did I decide that it was okay for me to spend a whole lot more than mere seconds agonizing over decisions that don’t actually matter?

I walked away from the paint counter with my Simply White—because just regular off-the-shelf white was not acceptable; I had to have that extra ounce of black added to the gallon—and asked the Lord to not let me forget what I witnessed with the older gentleman. I prayed that I would have the same kind of contentment with the choices I make for our home, not constantly wanting to change or scrutinize or worry about them being “perfect.” I prayed for constant reminders that neither perfection nor happiness actually comes from the “perfect” color or chair or curtain fabric.  A fleeting feeling of perfection and happiness, maybe, but it doesn’t last. It’s not supposed to. This is just stuff of the world.

This is not to say that I’ve stopped caring what my house looks like. No, I have been blessed—and cursed—with a critical eye, and I doubt I will ever give up on trying to make our home beautiful. This house is a creative outlet and hobby for both me and Rick, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s not just a matter of “finding balance” with things like hobbies; it’s a matter of prioritizing. Because I can balance a 16 pound bag of cat food, two gallons of milk, four shopping bags of cereal, and my man-eating purse all while attempting to unlock the house door, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Something will always demand the brunt of my strength. And which of those things wins when they all go crashing to the ground?

See, I want to pick my just brown and move on with life. This goes for every house choice, not just paint. At the end of it all, I want to be able to say a lot more than, “Well, I sure did have some great-looking walls in my house after I painted them 42 times each, and I once spent a lot of marvelous days staring at pages and pages of fabric options.”

Because let’s face it. That’s lame.

The new drill: it’s time to pick a paint color. So I pick one. And am content with it. And learn how love and thankfulness and joy look with those walls as the backdrop.

And with that, “just brown”—yes, even “just brown”—can be perfect.

The “Erin & Ricky Should Get Married” Club {Sentimental Gallery Wall Update}

I was going through a folder of some sentimental gooey stuff the other day and re-discovered these clever notes that had been sent by some official members of the “Erin and Ricky Should Get Married” Club. I mean, by Erin and Bicky.

This club had precisely two official members. These two official members were six and seven respectively when the club was founded. These two official members also plotted to play chicken ice hockey at our wedding reception and went so far as to put their flip-flops in the freezer in preparation. This was, perhaps, in celebration of the fact that their club succeeded in its mission.

Today, those two club members are still our baby sisters but have since learned the difference between a “B” and an “R.” They also no longer take an active interest in frozen poultry athletics. But since their notes still make me smile, and turned out to be prophetic in a way, it only seemed fitting to scan and print them and make them a part of our bedroom gallery wall.

It’s especially fitting because tomorrow, June 28th, marks the five-year anniversary of Erin and Bicky being married.

Time flies when life together brings new jobs, new smiles, new places to live. Time flies when your husband is your best friend. Time flies when you find yourself, five years later, carrying the child that you created with the man who makes each day complete, and knowing that the moment you see him holding your daughter for the first time will be one of the best moments of your entire life.

So Happy 5th Anniversary, Rick. I love you! (And seriously--can I start calling you Bicky now? It has a certain ring to it.) ;)

Psst…you can see more specifics of our bedroom gallery wall here.