EvY at HomE

I know it's way late to post one more Christmas thing but whatever. Alice's tree. The felt ornaments were made by my wonderful mother in-law. She's got mad skills. The nativity scene made it's way to her room too. To remind her of the meaning of the holiday.

Alice goes to bed pretty much at 7pm and sleeps if all elements are perfect, until about 7:30am. It's pretty nice having that extra special alone time from 7pm until our own bedtime at 11/midnight. Those hours in the evening when we're free of the baby and can watch whatever we want uninterrupted. Even reading is possible! I read a mom's blog post recently about how she felt bad when she realized she was counting down to bedtime. It was a very sweet post about how she had been trying to make efforts to savor every moment with her babies during the day but realized she was speed reading through the bedtime book to get the kids to sleep as soon as possible. Not exactly savoring. It was a nice reminder. Bedtime always sneaks up on me. I hardly ever need a clock because my abalone is a finely tuned human tick tock. At 9/10am, 12pm, 4pm, she's ready for a nap and at 7pm she's inconsolably fussy and the only cure is to get her in her room, pj her up, dim the lights,...

You know how there's something you keep wanting to do and you're looking for the right thing and then next thing you know it takes years? It's been that with the nightstands and well, the master bedroom in general. It's been in the plan since 2011 and then when we moved it was still pretty much the same . The bed finally arrived making the former nightstands that were a temporary solution about 7 years ago when we got married an even worse fit for the room and I'd been looking and looking for awhile for the right stands. These were a happy compromise. Once the bed was in place the size of whatever I was going to buy determined pretty much everything first. After that I wanted something that was in midcentury style, one drawer and one open shelf, dark wood, and pretty low to the ground where there wouldn't be much space under the dresser. I tried to find something actually vintage but after these guys went on sale, I just went for it.  We are happy with t...

Matt & I have been cleaning and organizing and embracing our "urge to purge" lately. It's a feeling that hits me where I'm more inclined to get rid of things I'm on the fence about. We've gone through almost every nook and cranny at home and the outdoor shed with this resolve. It usually happens around the beginning of the year when the concept of resolutions and being more organized and such is on people's minds. It's definitely on our mind. So the goals for the house for 2015 are: 1) install upper cabinets in the laundry room 2) paint the master bedroom 3) paint the living room 4) plant lots of greenery in the backyard 5) plant more veggies in the front yard 6) install some shade over the seating area in the backyard 7) replace the table behind the sofa for something with sliding doors 8) new nightstand and lighting combination for the master bedroom 9) build some shelving for the master bathroom 10) paint the master bathroom

Since we were spending Christmas Eve night at Matt's parent's house, we decided to open presents just the three of us on Christmas Eve in bed. It was cute. Matt gave me a necklace with an A on it which made me cry, I gave him a beanie, and we let Alice "open" one of her books.  I think that will be our new tradition: opening 1 present in bed as a family on Christmas Eve morning. Last year for Christmas Jill had laid out a tiny little stocking since I was pregnant. And this year, after she'd been working on it for months, Alice got her full sized stockings. I mean, nothing like grandmas right? They love like nobody does. Speaking of grandma, she got Alice this awesome jumperoo that she loves. Assembling it was one of the funniest things I've done, it was such a funny fail. Alice in Wonderland was of course, part of her gifts. She got dressed up for our family gathering with Matt's side of the family and enjoyed being held by everyone ...

In a few short months we will have a mobile child. She will spend a lot of her time just inches from the floors of our house. The very notion is keeping me up. Literally, its 3am, my household is asleep and I am madly looking up steam mops, vacuums, pet hair removal handheld vacuums, etc. etc. By and large Matt and I are very neat people. Organized, tidy, generally neat. But are we clean? I mean, sure, we do the occasional wipe downs and scrubs but as Alice is laying on the floor and touching things and playing with toys that touch things that end up IN HER MOUTH you become more concerned about health and safety. The rug in her room that stays closed most of the day gets lint and pet hair on it due to us tracking things from our shoes onto it from the rest of our house. Honestly, we don't vacuum as much as we should. Once weekly maybe. Should be every other day. I should wipe surfaces more often, I should return the concept of bleach to our home, I should hire a cleaning lady once ...

On Monday the 5th after changing the who knows how many poopy diapers and a phone call to Michelle: "This is the call in which I call you to talk about poop!" We deduced that our Alice might be just extra hungry lately which would explain the hard time we've had at bedtime and we think it's time for: SOLIDS. I mixed some quinoa rice cereal with breastmilk, got her naked except a diaper, put her in the high chair, gave Matt the camera and... Not a fan, I mean, it's her first time trying this different texture so I didn't expect much. She took a few confused swallows and we ended in another bath since most of it ended up ON her instead of IN her but it's the beginning of the new adventure known as food. Research is on overdrive at the moment. Pinning recipes, looking up baby-led weaning, buying gear for food making... its a whole new ballgame. A whole new year, a whole new us.

The only difference with our decor this year was that we added gold to our usual black and white and silver. I mixed metals and I liked it. I did procure an additional stocking for the newest member of our family but was unable to find her a suitable stocking pin so it stayed empty. I even tried bidding on one on ebay but lost. Next year I may just have to purchase three matching ones. I'd given my sister Mari one of our trees to use at her house since they didn't have one for their new home and that one had a bunch of gold ornaments so I used them on this tree instead. I did buy a few gold jewel ones from Ikea that were cute though, I mean, what's $5. West Elm sold these gold deco letters so I bought one for each of us to add to the tree. I did consider using these for the stocking but they're comically large next to the stockings. On the tree they're good. Our ornament this year was a picture frame that said 2014 and I put my favorite...