Peek-a-boo...Rob Style

I just had to share these two pics that crack me up. Rob started doing this with Finn and oh my, it makes him giggle like nothing else. Actually we discovered yesterday that he giggles like crazy too when I wail my arms around really quickly. That's a story for another day. I'll just say it involves our new rug that has already been through a lot, lol. Le sigh.

But anyway, one day I was in our bathroom and I see Finn's head appear from the top of the door frame and then the middle and then the bottom. Giggling like crazy and me trying to guess where he'd come out next. Love this kid. And I so admire the creative games his daddy comes up with.

Peek-a-boo!

I'm in the process of figuring out Finn's costume for his first Halloween. We looked around this weekend and I couldn't find one I wanted to commit to, so I guess I'm going the DIY route. Hoping I can pull it off, but I think it'll be easy enough even with my lack of sewing skills.

It's kind of funny how DIY costumes seem to be more favored now. I remember when I was a kid I just wanted a store bought costume so bad, but my mom was ahead of the game with that DIY spirit and I'll never forget being wrapped in red construction paper with a pointy hat. Yep, I was the one and only crayola crayon walking the streets that night!

Target + Clearance Items = Happy Day

I know I'm not alone in the Target-love department. And I know I can't be the only one that scours through the end caps looking for clearance items. Those red stickers are like a breath of fresh air.

I've found a number of really awesome deals in the clearance section at Target. I found these poufs last year on sale for $23 a piece, originally $80 a piece. Never, never, never would've paid that, but $23 and incredibly functional? I'll take two. We use them practically every day and they also second as Jack's snuggle buddies.

Searching through those clearance end caps doesn't always come out fruitful, but some days I catch a real winner. Recently I landed on two really great scores. 

I found this tray marked down to $13 from $20. Not a huge difference, but it's a really beautiful tray, well constructed. I thought it would be perfect for our ottoman in our family room since there isn't an end table on the opposite side of our sectional. Now there's a place for a drink, a book, whatever.

Young House Love shout out!

And my happiest find was this $34.99 Threshold rug marked down to $10. I had to double check the sticker on this one.

Black and white striped. Perfect for our galley kitchen. (which I have tons of love planned on putting into it, but one penny at a time) It's machine washable so I can just throw it in the wash when needed. Our feet will be happy with this purchase for all the dishes and bottle washing that goes down in here.

Anyone else find some great deals at Target? What's your best one? Finding these items feels like a little blessing from God. I know it may seem trivial for God to care about a rug or anything, but I do believe He's a part of the little joys as well as the big ones.

Bathroom progress is still progressing. I've painted the bottom paneling, and now it's time to paint the walls and the ceiling a fresh coat of white. I also purchased a not-so-conventional light fixture for over the sink. Very anxious to get it all pulled together. I'm ready to have our bathroom out of the chaos phase, but it's getting there.

Happy Friday everyone! I'm ready to spend the weekend with my man and this cutie... 

His cuteness seriously pains my heart sometimes, lol. He's starting to step around lately while verrry lightly holding on to something. I sense a walking baby may be upon us soon. :)

Love to you all!

Finnstagram

It's been a while since I've shared some of my photos from Instagram on here (previous posts here and here). These are all photos taken on my phone and uploaded/edited on an app called Instagram. I wouldn't say that Instagram was the only reason I wanted an iPhone, but it was really like 85% of it. Yeah, I like it a lot to say the least. An easy but artistic way to capture some of our day to day? Yep, sign me up. And I've also printed a number of these through Picplum...have some on my desk and others in frames at home.

I could say a million things about each photo, but I'll let them speak for themselves. Our sweet boy.

West Elm Is Here!

It finally happened, west elm has come to town. 

Oh happy day. 

I think I may have mentioned this before, but the ironic thing is that even though I've fancied this store for quite a while, I had yet to own a single thing from them. I guess I dream/window shop prettty often and I have plans for what to purchase from them. But did I actually have anything physically in my home from west elm? Nope. But in the end I did get a little something to commemorate them by.

The store is set up like a showroom. All their stock of stuff is in an off site storage area just a golf cart ride away. This is especially nice because I plan on purchasing a rug from them one day and how nice it'll be to just buy it, pick it up and take it home as opposed to paying extra for shipping and having to patiently wait.

The prices for west elm are sometimes high and then sometimes reasonable. From what I've seen online, they always have a sale going on. Whether in dining, living room, curtains, lighting, pillows, etc. If you sign up for their emails (they send at least one a day) you can get I think a 10-15% discount. I also get emails saying they miss me and then give a 15% off discount. Sweet of them, huh?

We got to the store later in the day, but we did get to see these cute little cookies.

Finn was a trooper during the trip. I plopped him down on this bed to take his pic and he just made himself at home.

Really at home... :)

I took a picture of this lamp for my friend. It looked a lot bigger online and yeah, that price isn't my price range at all, but it's pretty to look at. And as Voldemort says to Harry after he comes back to life, I can touch you nowww! Yay! (not yay for Harry of course)

Speaking of lamps, remember my new one I bought from HomeGoods? It's very similar to this one, yet I only paid $50 for it. But then there's a floor lamp here that I've been looking at for a while and it's huge and going for the same price. For a design job I assisted with, I was able to get a number of discounts that brought the lamp down to $115. Not bad for a huge sturdy floor lamp in my opinion. :)

I'm really crushing on these boxwood topiaries right now. Like I want to put them all over my house, but I'll probably just start with our fireplace mantle. One day.

A little celebratory picture when our trip concluded...

Here's my purchase from the trip. A cute little rocking bird. Only $12 after a 15% discount. 

So again, whether it's for inspiration, little purchases, or specific splurges, west elm is one of my faves. Maybe I'll get a job there one day and then get that employee discount. Think they'd let me work there for about an hour a week? I'd take that. :)

Happy new week everyone!

For the Love of Hospitality

Just stopping by for a quick Saturday post. I don't normally re-post on here, but I was so wonderfully challenged by a post from one of my favorite blogs the other day regarding having guests in your home and hospitality that I wanted to share for anyone interested. It's still resonating with me.

When They Leave - by Ashley Ann {Under The Sycamore}

Sometimes we'll have people over and I'll find myself sitting on the couch having a conversation and at the same time wishing our glass door would miraculously clean off the smudges from Jack's nose. But it's not about how the house looks when we have guests over, it's about the conversation, the connecting. Did they feel at home, loved, appreciated? It takes the pressure of cleaning perfection off and it challenges me once again to remember what's important. My mind can get thrown off track sometimes (more often than not, I'm thinking about a thousand things at once) so I'm liking this perspective.

This also reminded me how much Rob and I love to open our home and have people over. Our time has been limited lately, but I have a few ideas for some get-togethers. They may or may not involve some fall crafting. It's gonna happen this year!

Master Bath Mini-Reno Mini-Progress

Let me first say that there are no pretty "after" pictures to look at in this post. Nope, we're just not there yet. We're in that lovely chaos stage where everything is quite. a. mess. A hot one. 

I left off where I had removed the cabinet on this wall leaving us with 4 holes to patch...

So I patched those up real quick...just needs some sanding and some texture (all of our walls are covered in that orange peel texture) and then it'll be ready to paint, well kind of.

Speaking of paint! Again, here is the main paint inspiration pic that shows what I had in my head...

So I started to paint some of the white on the top portion and you can really see the difference of the previous off-white color and the new white in the below few pics. I also played with some samples for the bottom paneling. The gray colors I was going back and forth on were Benjamin Moore's Moonshine and Gray Horse. What's funny is I had painted Moonshine on there a few days ago and I was like definite no. So then I got the next darker shade which was Gray Horse. Once I got Gray Horse on the wall, I realized Moonshine was the one.

Here's a close up, Moonshine on the bottom right. You can see Gray Horse on the left. I realized I wanted to keep it light and airy because the tile is so dark and a little gloomy. When looking through my fan deck, I landed on these colors because they have the slightest hints of green in them (the green in Gray Horse stands out a lot to me) and I liked how that would complement the tile that we're not looking to smash down just yet. Please note the lighting in here is terrible, so these pictures all cast a yellowy tint. The lighting is a huge thing I'm excited to update to freshen this place up.

I'm liking how that white is going to freshen these walls and ceiling up. 

Some progress was made on the mirror side as well. Here's where we left off, Rob has pulled off the glued off-centered mirror.

He then scraped off the loose paint/glue...

And then I patched the holes...they need another round of patching though because of the depth of these holes. I know it's hard to tell but there were literally 10-15 holes in this area. Some anchors were actually in the wall and then painted over. ?????????

Here's a good shot of the full chaos. Pretty, right? :)

So what's next? I'm going to buy a can on Moonshine so we can officially say goodbye to that green paneling. The mirror area and the other areas that have been spackled need to be sanded and then retexturized. We also need to figure out how to move the light fixture opening over a smidge so it's centered and then patch the previous opening. Then after allllll that, I'll paint the walls with a fresh coat of white and lots more.

But for now, we'll live with this chaos. Plenty more updates to come.

My friend and I visited our newly opened West Elm yesterday, I'll be posting pics from that soon. Happy Friday!