Category: Friday Favorites

Friday Favorites {03.22.24}

Our littlest baby is turning one next week. This snuck up on me like you wouldn’t believe. It feels like a minute ago he surprised us all coming three weeks early. It doesn’t feel possible that my last baby will officially not be a baby anymore in less than a week. It’s hard for me to adequately put into words how surreal that is for me.

But we’ll save birthday celebrations until then…and for now, I hope you guys have a great Friday and a fun weekend ahead!

This spring planter turned out just gorgeous. Better than I could have ever imagined or dreamt up. I’m completely obsessed with the dusty pinks, bright yellows, and mossy greens. It is absolutely STUNNING.

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Friday Favorites {03.08.24}

Happy, happy Friday, friends! This is our last weekend before spring sports and activities starts up. I’m itching to get out to the garden center and get some spring planters done at our house and clients’ houses, so they’ll be ready for Easter. Hope you all have a great weekend planned!

While baby Aidan was home sick earlier this week, we used the time to change out our decor to add some SPRING to our house.

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Friday Favorites {02.16.24}

I started to write this post early in the week. Since that point in time, you may have seen that there was a mass shooting in Kansas City at the Super Bowl parade celebration. Harrison & I were at the parade with my sister, her husband, and my niece. Many of our friends were at the parade and rally with our kids. Everyone that I know personally is ok. But 20+ people were injured in that shooting, eleven of them children, and at least one person lost their life.

We had the most fun celebrating our Chiefs, and another Super Bowl victory. It breaks my heart for what transpired after the rally – for the families hurt, the trauma that no doubt many of us will now deal with resulting from yet another senseless act of violence.

What had started as such a fun day that I will cherish forever turned into a somber reminder of what a broken country we live in. Whatever the events leading up to people pulling guns and firing into crowds, I quite frankly don’t care. I don’t particularly care if we blame mental health. Or the guns. Or any other number of things. Our country is so broken. And it makes me want to scream and cry all at the same time. It destroys me to have a child who was already waking up from nightmares about guns, and now to have this on top of it. That I can’t tell him that it’s going to get better. That this won’t be the type of world that he will live in forever.

And instead to have to reassure him he’s safe in our home…and in my mind to have to wonder how safe is he really when he leaves this home.

As I sit here with tears streaming down my face having to grapple with this issue yet again, and this time so close to home, I wish I could tie this up in a pretty bow. But I’m just completely broken up.

While I was already feeling overwhelmed before the events in KC just with too many balls in the air right now, I’ve now reached a point where I know I need a break. I need to step away for a week or so and try to re-center myself. To allow myself time to process, check a few things off my to-do list, and just right this ship.

So, I’m going to share some favorites from the happier times lately, because there are reasons to celebrate and smile, always. But I’m going to give myself a pause after today until I can process some things for myself.

I’m sorry for such a sad note, but I’m not one to pretend like everything is fine when it’s not. Take care of yourselves, friends, and hug your babies.

We are celebrating my favorite, number one guy this weekend! His birthday is on Monday, but our little family is celebrating him this weekend.

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Friday Favorites {11.03.23}

Holiday weeks always feel long to me. Even though the kids had school every day this week, there’s something about a mid-week holiday celebration that gets me all out of whack on my days. And this weekend we’re going to throw in daylight savings time just to round up the craziness! Maybe my kids will sleep in their extra hour on Sunday. šŸ™‚

We had a good and fun week, and can’t wait to share some of my favorites with YOU!

While the VERY cold weather meant that we had relatively few trick-or-treaters this year, we had SO MUCH FUN taking the boys out for Halloween. The neighborhood kids were running from door to door. And Harrison and Jonathan I’m pretty sure could have gone for another full block of houses…or two. But Mom and Dad were cold, so they had to resort to going back to the house to sort and sample their candy.

This post made me laugh out loud because I vividly remember my Dad having absolutely no recollection of who my fellow dance friends were even though he had been hearing about them and been around them for seven+ years.

The outcome of the Chiefs v Broncos game last weekend was definitely NOT a favorite. But having all of these little Chiefs fans keeping me company on the Chiefs couch, definitely was a favorite! Maybe they like cheering for the Chiefs because of the rise it gets out of their dad, but I’m not complaining either way.

I ran outside to take a picture of my fall mums before our nighttime temps started dipping down 20* the last few nights. Not sure they will survive that kind of cold spell, but I’m also ready for a gardening break for the winter.

That’s all for me this week! Hope you guys have a great weekend!

Friday Favorites {10.06.23}

Happy weekend, friends! Construction on the basement is in full swing over here. It is loud and messy, but already looks so different! I can’t wait for it to be done so we can use the space, and it’s only a week in….it’ll be worth it in the end.

I have a random handful of things that have brought me joy this week!

I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this actually being thing. But I am all in for the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce combo.

I’m in for the merch. I’m in for the Taylor watch. I’m in for the mash-ups of Taylor songs with Kelce dancing. I’m in for it.

….adding to my mug collection this October šŸ™‚

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Friday Favorites {09.22.23}

We made it through my first week back to work! It went really well. It doesn’t feel that different when Aidan’s grandparents are watching him right now. Certainly less daunting than doing the whole daycare transition, wondering how he naps, etc. Either way, we made it to the weekend!

Nathan’s mom gave us a lovely “date night” with just baby Aidan on Friday night, while she spoiled the big boys. And I think you’d say that they had a great time!

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Friday Favorites {09.15.23}

Today is hard. It’s my last day with baby Aidan on leave. My last day of maternity leave with my last baby. Today is just hard. I’ve been trying to soak all of his little babyness in this week, but I still feel the sadness at the idea that I won’t be there to see every minute of his life now.

So thankful for five and a half months with my little boy.

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Friday FALL Favorites {09.08.23}

I always seem to be in the minority around this time of year. I don’t wait excitedly for fall with bated breath, eager to get the latest seasonal drink at my local coffee shop. I don’t pull out all the fall decor starting September 1st at home. I think I’ve finally come to accept that it’s just not my season. There are beautiful things about it: the cooler weather, the changing leaves. There are things that I look forward to so much: going to the pumpkin patch, picking out Halloween costumes, our wedding anniversary, and chili simmering on the stove.

The changing of the seasons also brings a fresh perspective, at the very least. And in about two to three weeks, I’ll be particularly annoyed by the number of flies that seem to make their way into my house through doors left open by little hands. At that point, I will declare myself “over the heat” and ready for cooler temps of fall and a nice freeze to kill off the bugs. It happens every year that way like clockwork.

You all are full blown fall people, though. I know. I’ve asked before, and I’m in the minority.

I dip my toe into the fall pool around this time of year. There are just a few things that I just can barely seem to resist. And in a couple of weeks, I’ll be there with you in my oversized sweatshirt and joggers, and a cup of hot coffee in my hand.

I’ve picked up some of my favorite fall things for when I’m ready to fully embrace fall in a couple of weeks. šŸ™‚

Candles always feel like coziness and fall to me. And this is one of my favorites. I ordered a couple to have on hand a few weeks ago.

A few new fresh fall stems. I’m a bit of a stickler on fake flowers. They have to look really good and almost real for me to buy them. It’s the gardener in me. Both of these are from Hobby Lobby and met my faux floral standard. šŸ™‚ White berry stem + Blush pink berry stem

I brought in a handful of hydrangea stems to dry for fall decor. Put a little bit of water in the bottom of your vase, and let it naturally evaporate for gorgeous dried hydrangeas this fall.

And some pumpkin spice oatmilk for my afternoon decaf cold brew.

What are the things that make you feel like fall?

Friday Favorites {08.25.23}

Happy Friday! Iā€™m so looking forward to this weekend and the temperature going below 100* for a change. We have been MELTING all week. It’s so miserably hot here. If it’s going to be this hot, I should be by a beach!

We’re officially closing out our first full week of school here, and it’s gone so well so far!

My Mother’s Day gift arrived this week. I asked Nathan for this necklace with the boys’ silhouettes as a Mother’s Day gift this year, and I’m completely blown away and so in love with this delicate little necklace. I’ve only taken it off to shower and work out since it got here!

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Friday Favorites {08.11.23}

Iā€™ve thought a lot about this moment. Ever since Harrison was born, weā€™ve just been slogging (and mostly enjoying) these rather long days of parenting really young kids. The baby era, where theyā€™re so helpless and need you for EVERYTHING. The toddler era, where theyā€™re so drunk for power and control and think they know everything. And man, it feels like weā€™ve lived in a bunker for the past five years. Batten down the hatches. Slogging away at the day in and out of parenting littles. And Iā€™ve {{mostly}} Loved it. I love being these boysā€™ everything. And itā€™s also so utterly physically exhausting at the same time.

Iā€™m a bit in denial today. Iā€™ve obviously KNOWN for weeksā€¦monthsā€¦that this day was coming. But itā€™s surreal that itā€™s here. Today is the last day that Harrison and Jonathan will be at the same school together until Jonathan goes to Kindergarten. It really does feel like this is an end of an era (yes, that is a subtle nod to Ms. Swift). I canā€™t count the number of people that have told me that Kindergarten to high school graduation is like a blink, and then itā€™s over.

And it feels like in the past week, Iā€™ve poked my head out of my bunker, and Harrison has been called up to the big leagues. Like out of nowhere, the powers that be have decided heā€™s ready to really start to have his life shaped by other people: friends and teachers. And I feel like Iā€™ve been in the bunker for so long, that I was not mentally ready for that. For it to land on my lap like that this week. When it really hit me, as I cried to myself adding lunch money to his account for school.

So many of you have asked me if Iā€™m going to cry on his first day. And Iā€™m pretty sure now, thereā€™s no way Iā€™m walking out of that school without tears streaming down my face.

Letā€™s do a little Friday Favorites roundup.

I took this sweet boy Back to School shopping the other week. We went shopping for his new backpack and lunchbox. He picked out some new clothes, and we had lunch at a restaurant of his choosing. (He picked Panera, by the way.). When I said this reality of him starting Kindergarten came crashing down on me, I mean it. I had this realization that my days of just being able to pull him out of school for fun one-on-one time were coming to a close. So this one was extra special for me.

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