Monday, May 15, 2017

Mother's Day Weekend 2017

It was a pretty solid Mother's Day weekend around here.

We kicked off the weekend with an impromptu date night to one of our favorite restaurants, Good Food on Montford. Normally Matt isn't a small plates kind of guy but this restaurant is the exception for him because the steamed bun is OUT of this world delicious. After dinner we weren't completely confident the kids would be asleep yet so we walked down the street to a bar for a few more cocktails.

Later we arrived home to quite possibly the best surprise of all time -- Ms. Jamie had done all of the kids' laundry. So yeah, Mother's Day weekend was off to a pretty spectacular start.

On Saturday Caroline and I attended Camille's 3rd birthday party!

The party was hosted in the craft room at Michaels and was so dang adorable.

After getting the kids to bed Matt and I grilled burgers and shared a bottle of champagne on our back deck late into the night. I can't wait to share this new burger recipe with y'all (coming Friday) -- omg, unreal and ridiculously easy.

The next morning I LOL'd so hard when I stumbled into the kitchen for coffee and found an Us Weekly sitting out with my Mother's Day cards. Smut magazines are totally a guilty pleasure of mine but I rarely purchase them so I was ridiculously pumped about my new reading material. Oh, and Matt surprised me with a spa day at the Ritz. Several of my girlfriends got the same gift from their husbands too so we could spa together. Well played, husbands!

Gifts from my babies!

Thomas: shorts // shoes | Caroline: dress // bow // shoes

We went out for breakfast to one of my very, very, very favorite breakfast spots, Zada Janes.

The Booker T's East Side Hasher is my second favorite breakfast (to the Early Girl Benny in Asheville) and although it looks incredibly simple, it's impossible to recreate exactly.

The rest of the day was absolutely beautiful so we spent a ton of time outside playing, Matt finished cleaning out the garage (my car fits now!!!!!) and I worked on a project for Caroline's room.

Finally, I would be remiss not wrap up this post by saying how dang lucky I am to be the mama to my two amazing little people!

Previous Mother's Days: 2016 2015 2014: too busy recovering from birth

Friday, May 12, 2017

Five on Friday!

Happy Friday!

one. Cue the mommy guilt -- my first work trip with my new job fell over "Muffins with Mom" this week at daycare. So on my way back into town I scooped the kiddos up from school and took them out for ice cream with "extra extra sprinkles." They were pretty pumped and forgave me for missing the event!

two. My new Scout Tote arrived just in time for my girl's beach trip next week! Isn't she pretty?! I am a huge fan of Scout bags and their new summer collection prints are so cute. These totes hold SO much and are super durable -- perfect for the beach! You can find the full collection here!

three. Yesterday was Caroline's three year check up! I was a tad bit worried she would be scared during the doctor's visit but that absolutely was not the case. She arrived fully prepared with her doctor's kit and had the best time giving both Thomas and her pediatrician a full check up! Caroline checked out completely healthy (ALL THE PRAISE FOR HEALTHY). Thomas on the other hand...not so much. Thank goodness we were running too late to take Thomas to daycare before Caroline's early appointment because our sweet doctor agreed to peek into his ears and immediately diagnosed him with a nasty ear infection in the ear his tube has already fallen out of.

four. Here's to hoping this little trick of logging our doses on the bottle will help us keep up with Thomas's medication! And this one is a full 10 days -- eep!

five. We are having the exterior of our house painted -- grey! Or gray? Anyway, I couldn't be more excited! The last decade of bird holes weren't patched correctly in the stucco and the paint wasn't matched to the house so there are literally little patches of different shades of grey alllllll over the house. But not for much longer! The painter is really on me to pick a color and I caaaaaaaaan't! So I polled the internet and y'all apparently couldn't decide either because the votes came in dead even for the lightest and darkest color!

Also, this is the house color I am obsessed with. I reached out to the owner but she wasn't sure what the color was so I'm on a mission to match ours as close as possible!

Happy weekend y'all. I'll be sitting in my driveway staring at my paint swatches...

Monday, May 8, 2017

Home Tour: Breakfast Nook + Laundry Room

Our breakfast nook is one of the spaces I really, really, really love in our new home. Granted, most of the time we share our beautiful new table with a couple loads of laundry, but I love having a place to sit down together in the kitchen.

Here is what we were working with originally...

The breakfast nook came with a minor challenge -- the side door (which we use often) opens up almost to the middle of the eating area, so we knew our options for dining tables would be limited. We also got two contractor opinions and both informed us that the door couldn't be flipped to the other side and it also couldn't be changed to swing outward given the existing framing. Down the road we would love to change the side door to two french doors that swing out but that is definitely wayyyyyy down the wish list. One day!

So the changes to the nook/kitchen included refinishing the hardwoods, painting the walls, removing the old blinds, replacing the rusted return vents and buying a new dining table! We originally had planned to replace the light fixture but after everything else was put together we didn't hate it as much. So it will be the last fixture to replace...because woah, you should see the others throughout the house.

After searching high and low I fell in love with the French Urn Pedestal Dining Table from Restoration Hardware but LOL'd at the price and found this incredible dupe (on sale and used a 20% off coupon). And we were able to recycle our old dining chairs. We get SO many compliments on this table. SO MANY. And I've already comfortably seated 6 girls around this table for lunch too. It's perfect.

I can't decide if I'm going to add roman shades or leave the windows sans treatments. I really love the amount of light that floods into our kitchen space and am worried by adding shades we would block some of it. I also don't know if it would look weird to add roman shades to the windows and leave the doors bare?

Our laundry room is right off our kitchen so since we're already here I thought I'd share the improvements to this space too...

This room had the loveliest wine wallpaper border that pained me to remove. But too many people thought it looked like tractors so we sighed and ripped it off and painted the walls Sea Salt. We also purchased a new washer/dryer. We loved our washer/dryer set in our old home so much that we ended up purchasing the exact same set again for our new laundry room.