king or queen?

So Nick and I have been casually shopping for a new mattress. We have had a sad history of not-so-quality mattresses in our time together. When we first got married, we were sleeping on Nick's double mattress from college. Then my parents upgraded to a king bed and gave us their (10 year old) queen mattress, which we've had for the last 3 years. We've tried to make it comfortable by adding two feather beds under our organic cotton sheets. But we still wake up with sore backs. We decided that this time around, when we are buying our own bed for the first time, we wanted to go with a natural mattress. We've shopped at a couple local natural mattress stores which further cemented our belief that we want to go with the most eco-friendly option possible. With all the chemicals, fire retardants, and other things that go into a typical mattress, we were pleased to see that the mattresses we tried out were chemical-free. 

We've settled on the exact mattress that we want to buy from European Sleep Works , except for one thing. We can't decide if we want to stay with our queen sized bed or upgrade to a (European) king. At the price of the mattress, it's not too much more to go with the king. If we get the king bed, we will have to buy all new bedding, rebuild our headboard, and it could end up looking really big in our average-sized bedroom. On the other hand, every time we've stayed in a hotel with a king bed, we've liked the size. Nick also pointed out that with our plan to eventually have more kids, our queen bed could get crowded pretty quickly... So what do you think??

a potato, some paint, and a fun wall

So, in order to make our windowless office an appealing place to work, I decided to give it a little makeover. The walls and sloped ceiling are white, so this was a blank canvas for me.  I had been contemplating putting wallpaper or something of the sort on the wall behind the desk. However, wallpaper is pricey and I'd never hung it before so I decided to  paint a fun pattern on the wall instead. I found this image  (via Vintage Revivals) of a stamped triangle pattern and decided to go for it. I have also read about people making stamps out of potatoes. Since Hayden was napping and I happened to have a couple of sweet potatoes on hand, I decided to give it a whirl. Here's my tips for stamping with a potato.

I like the imperfect blotchy look that the stamp created. If you want a perfectly formed shape with great coverage, I would not recommend using a potato as a stamp. Also, I did end up making a second stamp because my potato started to disintegrate and little pieces were breaking off in the paint. I used a sweet potato for one stamp and a regular potato for the other. I would recommend using a regular potato, as it seemed to hold up a little better to multiple dips in the paint. 

I decided to do two different colors of gray for my wall. All my "up" triangles are a dark gray (Peppercorn by Sherwin Williams) and all my "down" triangles are a light grey called Gentle Grey (from Ace Hardware). 

I like that the light grey is almost transparent in some spots and really visible in other areas. It definitely makes you take a second look at the pattern.  Here's the wall, all finished with the desk back in place. The TV is not my favorite but it's one of the few things that Nick requested for our house. Who I am to deny a request, when he really lets me have free rein decorating the house?!

I'll be sharing more shots of the office and  some of the other projects that I did to get it ready for this WAHM!

anthropologie tag sale

Anthropologie is by far my favorite store to shop. I love their clothes, home goods, candles, and furniture. Anthropologie opened in our city last year so I can walk there from our house instead of driving 20 minutes to get to the closest one... Our bank account thanks me for that.  Even though they tend to be pretty pricy, I saw this morning that they are having their summer tag sale with tons of items on sale in store and online. Of course, I couldn't help but peruse their sale section and I found so many cute items that are reasonably priced.  Here's a few items that I currently love: 

Happy Summer Weekend and Happy Shopping, my friends! 

some big changes for our little family

No,  I'm not pregnant with number 2! However, we do have some exciting news that impacts our family. As you may know, I am a special education teacher. While I really enjoy my job, it takes me away from Hayden for most of the day. I would typically leave the house by 6:45 am and return with him at 4 pm. With Hayden's early bedtime of 6 - 6:30, I was lucky if I got a full two hours with him each day. My heart was so heavy leaving my baby each day. (Although I will say that we found the most amazing babysitter!)  So we started to explore other options to see if it was possible for me to stay home with Hayden, at least part time. 

Somehow, things worked out in our favor- better than we could have imagined! I received two job offers, both for part time work. Both of them are telecommuting jobs that are super  flexible (as in I could work at 2 am if I wanted to). One of the best things about both jobs is that they are still in the realm of special education. So I can continue with my career, but approach it in a way that is so much more conducive to having a young child. 

So, that's our big news! We are so excited for this new journey and feeling very blessed that things worked out so very well for our little family.  Both jobs start at the beginning of July and I'm taking this week to fix up our home office to make it a little more mama/baby friendly and inspirational. Stay tuned for those updates! 

10 months

It's hard to believe that we are only about 6 weeks away from celebrating Hayden's first birthday. This year has gone faster than any other year of my life. This month, Hayden has been a busy boy. He is officially crawling (frontwards) and climbing everything in sight. He can walk using a push toy or cruise around furniture. He loves to move and is getting speedy! Hayden also has 2 teeth now (both on the bottom). He is still teething like crazy so we have a feeling there may be more popping up soon! Hayden loves to play catch with Lucy or Mommy and Daddy. He loves to be in the kitchen with me while I'm cooking, trying to open drawers and cabinets. (Luckily, we child-proofed everything last month!) He chats all the time to himself and to us. The funniest thing to watch is that he figured out how to whisper this month and when he's crawling toward something or trying to stand, he whispers to himself, like giving himself a little pep talk. Hayden is eating everything we give him, but is definitely partial to yogurt, veggie burgers, dried mangos, and bread of any type. He is still nursing too, but has cut way back on that. His sleep is mostly good, but he has been a little iffy this month. We suspect a combination of  his new found love of standing is his crib singing and his poor little gums have played a role in his recent sleep habits. He is still the happiest little guy and always has a big smile for Mama and Dada!

father's day weekend

This Father's Day was fun because it was Nick's first. We had plans with our  extended families most of the weekend, but we were able to spend a nice morning together as just a family of three on Saturday. We packed a picnic lunch and headed out to do a short hike around a local lake. Hayden enjoyed the hike from his front pack vantage point and was especially interested in watching some turtles swim in the lake. His favorite part, of course, was lunch time. This kid loves his food! 

...And his Dada. It's been such an amazing year watching the relationship between Hayden and Nick grow stronger and stronger. Hayden is a mama's boy, but there's no denying that he's got an extra special place in his heart for Dada. Whenever Nick gets home from work, Hayden hears his keys in the door and he starts giggling like crazy and giving me this look like, "Can you believe it?! Dada is home!" Then he grins ear from ear and tries to launch himself into Daddy's arms. It's one of my favorite parts of the day, watching those two together.

 How very blessed I am to share my life with these two boys.

finally a little more kitchen progress

It's been oh about 6 months since the last time we did anything to our kitchen. What can I say? Big dreams, small budget, new baby, no time... Anyway, one thing that we did back when we were painting the cabinets was purchase hardware. We originally bought brushed nickel pulls with a simple curved shape. We purchased these specific pulls because they were cost effective and we liked that the shape mimicked the curve of our handles on the fridge and microwave. The color wasn't a big deal because we planned to spray paint the pulls to match the hinges. (We painted both with Rustoleum's Oil Rubbed Bronze.)

Anyway, we finished painting these pulls at the same time as the rest of the cabinetry. They just sat there in a bag in the garage for the last 6 months.  On Saturday evening, Hayden and I came home from church and Nick was installing all the drawer pulls. We got this cheap little template from Home Depot that Nick swears helped speed up the process.  We didn't have any handles on the drawers or doors, so Nick had to drill all new holes for them. 

Adding these pulls surprised us by making our kitchen look a whole lot closer to finished than before. Of course now that they are installed, I want to hurry up and get on with the rest of the kitchen (new counters, oven, backsplash, etc.) When you give a mouse a cookie... 

fun friday night

On Friday night, we headed back to our old stomping grounds of Oakland to enjoy "Friday Nights @ OMCA."  The Oakland Museum of California hosts Off the Grid Food Trucks every Friday night from 5-9 pm. There's music, tons of great food, drinks, and half price admission to the museum. We met our  favorite friends Erin and Tim at the museum and started the evening with some drinks. Hayden managed to casually dip his fist into a glass of red wine. Luckily, Nick licked his hand clean before Hayden had a chance to sample it. #parentsoftheyear. 

Between the five of us, we sampled some amazing food truck food, like Kamikaze fries, Asian tacos, lumpia, short ribs, and cuban sandwiches. And the creme brûlée truck. Yes. An entire truck dedicated to my favorite dessert. Ah-mazing. 

The music was loud and it was cute to watch little kids getting their groove on. Not so cute? Watching much older drunk ladies getting their groove on - sans kids. I'm joking; Hayden loved people watching, regardless of their age or level of intoxication.

Hayden was a trooper, but when we were still there 30 minutes past bed time, we decided to call it a night and head home. Luckily, we have plenty of Fridays to come back this summer and actually go inside the museum.