buddha belly

i haven't snuck in a picture of the little cutie lately, so here's one taken a week or two ago, completely naked except for the diaper. check out that belly!! love it, so perfectly round and cute - really, the only point in life that you can get away with such a belly is as a baby and toddler!! i still can't believe she is only in the 15th percentile on weight...

cutting a rug

with a new home comes lots of spaces to fill, including floors. while i love colorful rugs, and love how they can really pull everything together in a room and establish a cohesive look, i also (a) tend to be picky, and (b) can hardly afford the very expensive price tag that usually accompanies a rug of a decent size. what's a girl with champagne taste and a beer budget to do??

to my great surprise, i've had a ton of luck with two rugs in our new home. the first is a rug for our kitchen. we have a pretty good size kitchen with white cabinetry, rubbed bronze hardware and accents, and mocha (read medium brown) walls. i found some fabulous golden and cream toile fabric that my very talented mother turned into draperies for the very large windows overlooking the dining area. while i realize brown and yellow doesn't sound too visually appealing, i really like the combination. i figured that i would have a terrible time trying to find a rug that incorporated both colors, but imagine my surprise when i stumbled upon this beauty on pottery barn's website:


here's a close-up:


what was the best part?? it was on sale!! and even greater?? my local pottery barn here in louisville had one in stock so i didn't have to order it online and incur shipping expenses!!

the second rug i lucked onto today through a fellow blogger. i love when i learn of great products, sales, etc. through the various blogs that i read, and i was definitely not disappointed with little green notebook's post today about a collection of martha stewart rugs over at overstock. i have been searching for yet another rug, approximately 4' x 6', to go in our master bath. we have a very pretty, light shade of blue (with the slightest hint of turquoise) on our master bedroom and bathroom walls. what isn't so pretty is the vast expanse of the white ceramic tile floor in the bathroom. so you can imagine my happiness to discover this beautiful rug, which i think will fit perfectly in the space and cover the not so attractive floor:


and again, it was a steal! plus, overstock charges $2.95 shipping on your entire order. where else are you going to have a rug shipped to you for less than $5?!?!

pictures to come, i promise!

how stinkin' cute

seriously, folks, she has done it again....just when i thought nothing could be much cuter than those cupcake pops, bakerella has topped herself once again in honor of father's day. check out these cuties....


looks like scrumptious little hamburgers and french fries, no?? think again...the "buns" are cupcake tops and bottoms, the "patty" is a rich brownie, and the "fries" are cookies. seriously, she has more creativity in her pinkie finger than 10 people combined!

if i won the lottery....

...or had one of these growing in our backyard...


i would totally buy out everything i could find in anthropologie, starting with all of their cute dresses. feast your eyes on these beauties...


(really, how great is a dress with pockets??)


(love the color, reminds me of the deepest color of the bay next to Providenciales in Turks & Caicos, where we went on our honeymoon.)


(i have been on a major yellow kick here lately, though I'm not exactly sure why.)

Sigh....

so fresh and so clean

when you have a lunch extravaganza that results in this:



tub time inevitably follows:

just a swingin'

we had some gorgeous weather here in ky today ...

our new house came complete with a slide/swing set and we replaced one of the old swings with a girly pink toddler swing (thanks mimi and grandpops!). alexandra enjoyed some hang time in her new swing - i could not seem to get a good picture of her smiling, for some reason. she alternated between looking relaxed and enjoying the breeze, and kicking her feet madly and laughing her little head off....oh, how i love that sound!





**please ignore the ugly, bare, sorry looking fence behind the swing set - we plan on covering it with lovely wisteria to cover up all the drab!**

we followed alexandra's swing time with a walk around the neighborhood. we really do love our new neighborhood (i promise there will be pictures of the new house in future posts!), and our neighbors are so friendly. pearl had a particularly good time on our walk - she met some new friendly dogs and got a lot of love from one family who told us they had just lost their first dog, a lab that looked just like our pearl, in february. seriously, the wife was almost in tears looking at pearl and called pearl by her old dog's name a couple of times. it was very sweet. after all of that exercise and attention, pearl was wiped out.



i love how she is looking straight into the camera in that second picture as if to say, "seriously, mom, get that damn camera out of my face!" (oh, and you can see a glimpse of one of our new great room chairs in the first photograph).

i think both my girls will sleep well tonight ... (wait, i just jinxed myself, better go knock on wood).

shut up - that's dj tanner?!?!

i have no shame ... i'll admit that back in the 90's, i did watch full house, religiously i might add. as a kid and pre-teen, i loved every aspect of that show (except for bob saget). i even had a wee crush on uncle jesse (hey, john stamos still looks good). i stumbled upon one of the old shows the other day and found myself cringing at the terrible writing - what was i thinking??

at any rate, i was on yahoo this morning and stumbled upon this picture of candace cameron bure aka dj tanner, and was taken aback at the great picture.



i think she is about my age, and i remember always following dj's storylines. looks like she has done pretty well for herself in the years since the show, and i think she looks far better (and healthier) than the olsen twins with their gaunt frames and bag lady wardrobes.

birthday bonanza

so the next whirlwind events in our little household after alexandra's actual birthday were the closings on our old home in st. matthews and our new home out in prospect (two days apart), followed by alexandra's first birthday party. a word of advice for all of you out there - never, ever, plan two closings, a child's birthday party, and moving from one home to a new home in less than a week - not smart!!

we had alexandra's party admist boxes and packing material - thank goodness we were surrounded by family who didn't mind all the mess! i tried to decorate the best i could, given the boxes and the fact that our home had been stripped to the bare essentials. i was up till 1am (!!) the night before the party, baking the infamous cupcake pops made famous by bakerella, as well as alexandra's birthday cake. how my friday nights have changed over the course of a few years!! i was happy to do it, though - alexandra's personal cake turned out so cute (even if she didn't really tear into the cake itself, i could have just set out a tub of icing and she would have been content). it looked like a very large cupcake - the cake tin came from williams sonoma. the cakepops weren't nearly as pretty as bakerella's and they were a lot more work than i anticipated, but they were a huge hit with our guests.

one of the best aspects of the day was the fact that my sister rachel and her boyfriend, jeff, were able to make it for the party - we weren't sure that they would be able to so that really made the day complete.

enjoy the pictures of the birthday girl! please ignore my face in the one where she is getting ready to blow out her candle (well, not really - she is only 1 after all). i don't know what came over me, but as we were singing happy birthday, i found myself overwhelmed with emotion. how could my little girl be 1 already?? i'm such a sap!