What We've Been Up To...

Here are just a few shots of some of my everyday Emma.

Cruising in her sweet ride.

Miss Priss playing with Mommy's "makeups".

Another masterpiece.

My poor little one is pretty sick right now with a cold and we are going for a fun trip to see Dr. Tsai tomorrow morning (wish us luck). She is such a strong girl and with every raspy word out of her mouth my heart just breaks. Even though she is going through a lot right now she still has a smile on her face. I can always count on her to be my little ray of sunshine.

* On a side note, we had our appointment with our high risk doctor today and we got the stamp of approval that we have been praying for. Austin is growing perfectly and impressing us more and more with every visit. This is the first time that we have left the doctor's office without a huge knot in our stomachs and we are so thankful that our boy is healthy. Thank you so much for all of your calls, prayers and words of encouragement. We appreciate them more than we could ever express.

(Eventual) Weekend Poject

To say my craft closet has gotten away from me is a massive understatement. There is absolutely no method to the madness and if I plan on making April my month of sitting behind the sewing machine (as big as a whale) and sewing as many projects for Austin and Emma as I can, I better develop a plan of action now. I am a fabric junkie and figured sorting through my heaps of different prints was a great place to start the new organization system.

This is my inspiration for the project.

I would love my closet to read more as a "design center", if you will. Ridiculous, I know. I can think of nothing more inspiring than opening those doors and seeing all my fabrics neatly hung and ready to be used. Plus, I think that when they are actually hung up I will be able to see that I don't need to buy PLAID FABRICS in EVERY COLOR POSSIBLE just because they are 50% off at Joann's. Or do I...


Beautiful isn't it? I am still going back and forth on which colors to use on the shelving or back wall. I'm thinking I might paint the walls in a honeysuckle (it is the color of 2011, or so I've been told) and paint the shelves a crisp white. I might even be silly enough to make two large bulletin boards to look like wallpapered panels for the inside of the closet doors. I can tack up my projects and anything else that is exclusively MINE on the doors. I think this is a project that I will tackle after I have Austin because I have a feeling I am going to be extremely particular about it and it could save Brandon lots of eye rolls when I start micromanaging. He has been great with all the projects I have asked him to do lately and I would hate to kill our streak with asking for an entire weekend's worth of work to decorate my pink craft closet. We all have our limits.

I think a simple closet rod and a few hangers will be a great starting point.

Here is my before. Talk about rock bottom. How embarrassing. At least there is nowhere to go but up!

inspiration photos from here.

New Drapes

Bad pictures but a "TA-DA!" nonetheless. We are absolutely in love with them and so pleased that they did exactly what we hoped for in the family room. It already feels infintely more cozy and with the bamboo shades on order I can hardly wait to see my windows finished. My fingers are crossed that the shades will fit and that Emma will cut us a break and keep her sticky fingers away from the curtains' perfect ivory finish. So far, so good!

Lazy Sunday

Aunt Sandra

My Aunt Sandra spent last week at my parents' house and we were lucky enough to get to hang out with her for a couple of days. Emma had a great time bossing her around and talking her ear off. She could not believe how much more of a big girl Emma was and gave her the old Gonzales stamp of approval!

You have to understand, seeing as how she is my mother's sister, she is part of the wild bunch of women that I am lucky enough to have in my family. They have a certain way of making everything really, really fun and I was so happy to see her and my Mom laughing and catching up.

Emma's expression cracks me up!


Emma most definitely has LOTS of Gonzales in her and I absolutely love it!

FINALLY

We are now the proud owners of curtains for our family room! I feel like I am going to sleep so much more soundly tonight knowing they are going to be put up this weekend.

This year has already been so much more about "doing" than last year and I want to keep riding this wave of motivation as long as I can. Our beautiful little house with so much potential is finally going to start taking shape and I couldn't be happier. This is what it's all about, anyways.

Chewy Bars

I had been wanting to make chewy granola bars for quite awhile because I can't think of anything better than grabbing one while I'm heading out the door on a busy morning. I used this recipe as more of a guide to making them because I didn't exactly measure anything but the flour and sugar (which I substituted for half brown sugar). I also used an 8" round pan because it's all I had, but I definitely recommend making them a little thinner to make cutting them easier.

If you ever get the chance to whip up a batch let me know what ingredients you used because I have already started brainstorming ways to make them better. Enjoy!

P.S. Emma won't go near them. I'm not giving up, though!

Chilly Mornings

On the way to the grocery store this morning I was thrilled that she didn't mind posing for a quick picture. Since I hadn't been to the grocery store in OVER A MONTH (good grief), we loaded up with lots of healthy snacks and new, exciting foods for the Bug to try. She was a riot, as usual, as she waved to everyone in the store and kept trying to lick the lemons in our basket. I think we finally understand what "pretend eat" means and she kept the unwashed produce a safe distance from her mouth for the rest of the shopping trip. I just love this little girl.

Best Friends

Pillows, Check!

It's amazing how much I can get done when I pry myself out of the bed after Emma has fallen asleep. The pillows seemed ridiculously easy to make this time and I feel a little silly that I put them off for so long.



I pretty much had this song on repeat the entire time I was making the pillows. I think it is one of the sweetest songs ever written and I hope it gets overused at weddings a million times over. I know I would have used it if we weren't already married. Good job, Train. Love, love, love it.

Breakfast

After requesting papas, jogurt, wapples, peeckles and macroniandcheez, we had no choice but to settle on a plate full of baby pancakes. All's well that ends well.

Weekend Progress

Emma's bed is officially finished! Brandon finished the weekend long project of spray painting Emma's bed (in the rain) and it looks absolutely fantastic! Now if I can just get it together and sew up the pillows and finish all the final special touches, we are totally in business.



Crossing our fingers for a long, uninterrupted nights sleep for our girl in her new room tonight. Wish us luck!

A little pizza on a relaxing Saturday never hurt anyone.

Best friends.

Dance Party

By far, today was one of my favorite days being a parent. Emma actually sat me down and we had a tea party. Our first ever real life tea party with teacups, saucers, cake, the whole shebang. She orchestrated the whole party and even invited, baby Mickey, Tinkerbelle, and Snow White. I was totally in awe of how incredible her imagination is.

And then to finish the night with my all-time favorite Emma dance party? I had my cell phone playing some tunes on my belly for Austin to dance to, when all of a sudden the beat got hold of my girl and she could hardly control herself. This is definitely a night that I am glad Brandon got me a nifty Flip camcorder for Christmas. I still need to research a little more about different settings on it (ie. learn how to aim at the subject), but I was able to whip it out in no time and capture some of her great moves. And that arabesque? I see lots of tutus in our future!

The song we are listening to is Listzomania by Phoenix. They are new to me (old to the rest of the world, I'm sure) and I just can't get enough of them.

Dr. Emma plays peek-a-boo

After my extensive morning checkup, it turns out that my hair, eyes and feet are very sick. I needed 4 shots. The good news is that I have never felt better!





I am so happy that she loves her new room as much as I do. I can't wait to watch her grow up and eventually make her own changes to fit her big personality. Even though I would like her to stay my little princess forever, I am secretly excited for the day when she slaps a big Led Zeppelin poster on her gorgeous walls. Or better yet, maps of cities she loves, homecoming mums, flags from countries we've visited and magazine cut outs of Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin Timberlake. They will still be pretty popular in about fifteen years, right? Talk about my dream room circa 1999-2006.

Bedhead and Breakfast

The other morning Emma was determined to help me cook breakfast, no matter how much longer it would take me to make scrambled eggs and toast with jelly. So I naturally caved and let her supervise the entire process. After gobbling up two eggs and a slice of toast I'd say she was pretty pleased with her work. It was actually really fun for me as well because I don't think I have ever seen her so proud of herself. She was concentrating so hard on cracking the eggs "in a gently way" and stirring ever so softly that it completely melted my heart. Maybe tomorrow she can help me make pancakes!