Insta Friday

Welcome to my first ever Insta Friday post. Chance, you can stop pestering me about it now, thank you very much. Because I'm going to rock this. This week has been, well, take a look for yourself and insert your own adjective.

Road tripping it back home from Denver. I think Vincent's happy to have gotten a haircut during the trip. Check out the before we took during the trip out: 

Still cute, but maybe a little too furry. 

You talkin' to me?! You talkin' to me? Our table centerpiece gives us lip during dinner.

Vincent's school pictures. Yeah, this could be submitted to Awkward Family Pictures. Oh my. Even though they're expensive, we're going to buy one for prosperity. 

A little better but still very sad. The background is his room teacher's arm. Nice. In his defence, Vincent was sick.  Obviously he's a cute baby. See earlier picture. 

Mama got an iPhone 4GS. FaceTime here I come!

I started decorating for Christmas this week. I still haven't finished. Hopefully I'll be done before the 25th. No promises. Vincent still refuses to help.

Pretty, right? It cheers me up!

Until it doesn't. Then I write snarky, bad things on my chalkboard mug. 

And drink wine over lunch. Oh the perks of working from home. 

You'd think I'd stay in a great mood between the Christmas decorations, getting a new iPhone, AND receiving a pile of cute jeans, slacks, and tops from my sister Melissa. Clothes that fit!

She also put in this sexy bra. Bow chicka wow wow! And since I just quit nursing, I was more than happy to welcome back underwire. And sexy.

I mean, just look at how happy these girls are. At work even. (Who's thinking maybe she shouldn't drink wine? )

My husband has been bringing home flowers when he grocery shops. I'm pretty sure they're not on the list, but I love them.

When I don't work, I sometimes shop. Make that window shop. Who thinks I should buy these boots? Victoria Secret's. $89. 

The table piece is going to eat all the stars. Oh no!

What a monkey

We tossed around several ideas for Vincent's first Halloween, among them: cowboy, the little baby from Adam's family, an ewok, and a squirrel. We finally landed on him being a monkey because, well, he does kind of have monkey feature with that crazy hair and big ears. I love my child. I really do. :)

Little pumpkin

Last weekend we ventured to a pumpkin patch at a local cider mill. Although the day was pretty warm, we didn't let that spoil our fun and first ever pumpkin patchy goodness! We found our way through a corn maze (which pales in comparison to the one I went to in Colorado a few years ago; not only was the maze super easy but the corn was all dead and see throughy), and then we picked our way through the pumpkin patch. And you can't have baby's first pumpkin patch visit without the requisite sit-next-to-a-pumpkin picture!

Twins

A little Photobooth fun. Oh, how I love Macs!

Foyer for ya

I can't help myself, but how clever is my post title? Look at me trying to be witty. Now for a test: try saying "foyer for ya" five times real fast. Ohhhh! Hard, ain't it? Now onto our regularly scheduled programming... My new house (I've lived here a year and it's still new to me) has a grand foyer. I love it! Jonathan thinks it's a big ole waste of space, but I like that upon walking into the house you don't immediately walk into the living room. Walking into a foyer always makes an impression on me. That said, my foyer wasn't making much of an impression on anyone. All it had were stacks of unread baby, yoga, travel, and decorating magazines (see where my interests lie?) and place to catch the keys. It needed something! So I shopped around the house. So this makeover is free as the bird that Vincent likes to unintentionally give his parents. Six months and he already has attitude! The table is actually an old Target desk (it has a hutch that now lives in the basement).

Progress pictures:

Here's what we have: That big stack of magazine (needs to go!), a purple latern (I have these in all colors, and thought it would provide a pop of color; it got the axe in the end); a delightful candle that a friend gave me from a local bath shop (it's lit to give some ambiance. ommmm); dahlias cut from my yard and placed in a Shatto milk jug (glad I saved that!); a basket from Pier 1 to hold the Flip camera, keys, and other things; and a fleur de lis place card holder turned picture holder from Nell Hills.

Here I added a stack of books to give some dimension and height, a tray, and a photo box. (Pardon the shake. Still getting used to my camera settings and how to take pictures...)

Getting closer...I swiped the quilted runner my sister made from our dining room table for some added texture. Hmm. Still looks a little too blocky. 

Soak in all that fun quilted goodness. But it still isn't right...

Enter and smaller tray to hold mail, keys, sunglasses, and whatnot (just for you sis!); I also swiped the G from my mantel that my sister gave me years ago, and I removed the basket. Not too bad, huh? What made it difficult is that the table sits along a half wall that overlooks the stair well to our basement. I didn't want anything that stood higher than the ledge.

Who doesn't love a big initial?

and a pretty collection of flowers, books, and a candle?

It's an end result that I'm actually pretty darn happy with. But you should have read the text to my sister as it was in progress.

Want to accomplish

I always have a running want-to-accomplish list in the back of my dusty brain. Here's my top 10 house want-to-dos. Maybe publishing them here will be a spark of inspiration!

1. Find more frames at garage sales and on Etsy to spray paint as part of my wall collage in my foyer. I'm doing all black frames since my walls are the color of putty and white makes the putty look garish.

2. Create art for some frames. I want to do a mix of signs, pictures, and meaningful things. Hopefully it won't become the Museum O Vincent. But could you blame me?

3. Possibly repaint the white desk in the foyer that I'm currently using as a foyer table. I'm thinking black, but maybe I should be more bold and do something unexpected. Like navy blue or tea?

4. Spray paint some wooden airplanes that were Jonathan's when he was a boy and hang them from the ceiling in Vincent's room. He's starting to be more aware so I think he'd like having something to look at over his changing table. I'm just going to paint them white to go with his furniture.

5. Make some signs to go in Vincent's room. Right now he only has his "I love you to the moon and back" print that I made him. His nursery is so boring, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. And anymore I realized I hate rooms that are too themed. I want his room to be eclectic.

6. Sew couch pillow covers.

7. Sew curtains for the dining room.

8. Shop around for some new things to put on the mantel.

9. DIY things to put in the mantel apothecary jar.

10. Organize the pantry.

Food snooze

I've always heard how exciting it can be to give your kid their first foods. Makes sense. Food can be quite yummy and fun. But I wasn't in any rush to give Vincent food. His ped recommended waiting until 6 months and if we wanted to try anything earlier we could do rice cereal. Rice cereal=FAIL! We tried it a few times starting at 5 months, but when it made him gag so bad he puked, I threw in the towel. Or the spoon in this case. If he wasn't ready, I wasn't going to push it. I hate cleaning up puke more than I like feeding him food. So we waited until 6 months when we could give him something that didn't taste like sweet cardboard (sweet because it's mixed with breastmilk...and yes, we tasted it...don't judge).

Vincent turns 6 months this Wednesday, so we figured it was close enough. We broke out some sweet potatoes. Yum yum. Er, or not. Vincent still isn't too interested in food yet. And he still managed to gag. We'll keep trying. Just offering a couple spoonful until he can master the art of eating. I guess we should have known he wouldn't be fond of food. He's only eating 4 or 5 ounces of milk at a time. He's just not an eater. Yet.

But hey, I did get some cute pics out of it. Look at all that yummy cuteness! I think he's more fascinated with the camera than the spoon.