spring floral letterpress from Minna So
Mom you rock from SteelPetalPress
favorite mom by Author's Plaid Pants
mother's day flowers by JoyInspiration
you're amazing by doodlelove
Badass Mother by BSandRS
Mother's Day is just around the corner! Now that the cards are taken care of I need to figure out the gifts...
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Oh my gosh. How has 30 weeks come up so quickly! Am I really 30 weeks pregnant?! Geesh!!
The last five weeks have been pretty great. The second trimester transitioned to the third quite smoothly. Sure, I am feeling quite a bit more tired these days but overall I feel really good. Sometimes I catch a glimpse in mirror and think "seriously how is that me!" Sometimes I feel enormous and sometimes I feel really good... the outfit makes a big difference as does the angle of the view.
I have a very very active baby. There is some serious soccer and karate practice that does on in there. But as I approached the 30 week mark the movement started to be a little more like a yogi-to-be. The movement is comforting as I take it as a sign that all is going well in there. When the little one must hitting a growth spurt the movement can slow down, so on those days I gently squeeze/rub my belly to see if it will make him/her wake up... which it does! :)
There was also a point in the past couple of weeks where I had a few "oh my gosh there is a little person inside me!" type of moments. In the early months it still felt conceptual. Now I can feel little feet pushing back on my hand as it stretches out. Dan had his 'omg' moment when he added a couple cloth diapers to his amazon order. I look around our place and realize just how quickly we will be a totally different family. It is exciting and bizarre to see this transition in motion.
I still haven't had any aversions other than my usual dislikes. And I think overall I have been eating pretty normally. This last week I did get a little addicted to oreos and have had a major sweet tooth.
I have also still been able to work out and keep pretty active. This past weekend I welcomed week 30 with running a 5k with my husband. One of my goals at the start of the pregnancy was to run a race and I was a little worried that due to timing with the midwest seasons that I might not be able to fit this in. But I am still feeling pretty good so went for it. I am glad that Dan ran it with me and that we were running a low key neighborhood race instead of one of the crazy busy ones. It was an awesome little run and Dan kept me giggling through most of it. My goal for the next 10 weeks is to make sure I am doing prenatal yoga.
Now that we only have 10 weeks to go we really need to get moving on setting up that nursery and buying at least the minimum of baby gear!
{top image - 30 weeks; second row left to right - 15, 20, and 25 weeks}
]]>It was a community event with everyone (but me- for shame!) contributing. I loved that as community is such an important element in life. Did I mention these girls are talented? Colleen was the fantastic hostess opening up her home and making a delicious brunch (totally had to have two of the yummy ham and cheese sandwiches). Tina shared her mad paper skills by whipping up the cutest place cards and finding the perfect wrapping paper to fit in with the style I am planning for the nursery. Natalie made these delicious pear muffins (hopefully she shares this recipe...). Devon brought herbs (love) for favors in completely cute packaging. Ami was the photographer taking beautiful photos for us.
{Photos taken by Ami}
See what I mean about talented?
How can you not feel warm and fuzzy when people are messaging back and forth on completely personalized gifts, running around town for the perfect paper, taking up time on their weekends to prepare a delicious meal just to celebrate your baby? I feel lucky to have such amazing women in my life.
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Early on in this pregnancy, actually before even getting pregnant, we had decided to go the cloth diaper route. I am ridiculously excited to use the cute diapers and to next year at this time have a little one crawling around with a fluffy cloth diaper bum, a simple onesie, and babylegs!
I am over on totStuff, the tottini blog, sharing the factors that we discussed to decide on cloth over disposable. And there is a cloth diaper giveaway involved - even if you aren't in the market for cloth diapers it would make a great gift! So head over and check it out.
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Weekends go too fast. Always. This weekend we were busy...
I am so glad that there is finally an android instagram app. Finding it to be much more fun than the usual camera phone - my username is inthisinstance. All the above photos except for the last are instagram.
The last one is a self portrait using my favorite camera for my weekly bump pic (29 weeks!)... that bump is starting to occupy my weekend to do lists.
]]>For a one night stint we decided it had to be South Beach. Art Deco, the beach, palm trees... a perfect start to our travel adventure.
We had an awesome dinner out and pricey drinks (of the non-alcoholic variety for me) while listening to live music to celebrate Dan's birthday. It was a pretty great night. But the morning is when all the eye candy from the scenery had me in full on photo-taking mode. We had a perfectly lovely morning walk on the beach and Ocean Drive.
It was a fun little visit and I can say that would absolutely do an overnight layover again. In general I like more time to explore a place as you can barely scratch the surface in a one day visit but for the right spot it is a fun add on to a trip. My impression was that Miami is a great spot for this type of quick visit.
After our walk on the beach and brunch we were ready to get headed to Belize.
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Spring is such a great season. With everything coming to life it is the best motivator to get busy. Here are a few things I want to do this spring...
]]>Plant a spring container garden (herbs, radishes, lettuce...)
Read on the deck
Eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner outside (not necessarily all in the same day, but maybe)
Go to a nature/forest preserve for a hike
Make a strawberry tart
Go on a day trip or roadtrip
Plant flowers
Finish any lingering projects from winter
Send unexpected snail mail
I decided to try for a room that feels fresh, bright, airy, maybe a tiny bit modern, and not too baby-ish. For colors I am planning to go with gray, white, greens, and yellow.
As I very slowly collect items to go in the nursery, I try to think about if it fits in with the rest of our home; the rug that I purchased I was initially thinking about for a different room. I have been wanting an Eames-style rocking chair forever and am this close to clicking submit order for one. The sunshine print might a little youthful for say the living room (or maybe not) but I think it could have a place in a 'big kid' room just as easily as the baby's room.
I am still finding it hard to narrow down the accessories. For those I am going to try to wait until we get the furniture set up and have more of a sense of the room. And I have no ideas for the curtains! Those will probably be selected last. Initially I thought I would do a lot of DIY for the baby's room but my interest in crafting is pretty low right now so Etsy shall be my friend.
As of now the room is still a dumping ground of random boxes from our move a few months ago but I am starting to get anxious to get started on it!
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How is this time flying by so quickly? I hit the 25 week mark while on vacation in Belize. And this Saturday I will be 26 weeks - that means about 14 weeks left - yikes!
The past five weeks have been pretty good in pregnancy land. I was really nervous about the glucose screening as the last thing I want is an increased risk of developing diabetes and so it was a huge relief to get the call that it came out normal. I celebrated with a cookie in the airport as we waiting to take off for our vacation. The baby has been quite active for while and for the past five weeks it has consistently gotten much stronger and increasingly more frequent. You can now clearly see the baby movements - while reading on vacation the baby kicked my Kindle causing it to jump... already demanding attention!
The baby house is huge. Seriously, wish I was much taller with a longer torso! When I am sitting the bump goes up over my ribs. I have had some freak out moments about weight gain during this past month. While I am trying to roll with it and simply enjoy pregnancy the weight gain has been slow and steady from mid-way through the first trimester, causing a little anxiety about what I am going to end up at by 40 weeks. I completely get that it is what my body needs to do as I am eating healthy and still working out but that doesn't completely stop you from thinking "holy crap!" when seeing the numbers! Seeing myself in the photos from our trip stopped me in my tracks.
I feel so fortunate to have been able to take a babymoon. We absolutely loved our vacation in Belize. More on that soon. But the getaway together was just what we needed before getting started on all of the preparations we are going to need to start as the third trimester is now very close to knocking on my door!
{pics - 15 weeks, 20 weeks, 25 weeks}
]]>My course was dessert and I considered a variety of ideas until deciding on tartlettes and oreo truffles. I wanted to make single serving items and have dessert be a relaxed end to the evening. I would love to have done a fruit dessert but it is a bit too early for a really flavorful fresh spring fruit in the midwest. So instead picked lemon curd and chocolate truffle as the flavors for the truffles.
If you were to plan ahead (as in not decide the day before and then need to go buy tarlette pans and ingredients the day of) these are perfect for making ahead for low stress party prep. The dough can be made ahead and frozen or baked a couple days in advance. Both the lemon curd and chocolate ganache can be made ahead. So planned just right the day of all you need to do is fill & then chill the tartlettes. Easy peasy. But if you do make them the day of there are quite a few little steps with an half here and there for chilling something so start early!
The inspiration for the tartlettes come from the Miette cookbook. But I have had mixed results from the recipes in this book so the tartlettes came together from a variety of sources.
Now I can't wait until berry season to make some fresh fruit tartlettes. Yum. Also, can't wait to do another progressive dinner party - next time I will take my camera.
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