Baby Henry's Shower.

Back in January, we hosted a couple's baby shower for my best friend, Lauren, and her husband, Jacob.  I figured I better recap the shower now because baby Henry will be here in just a couple of weeks!   

I've known both Lauren and Jacob since elementary school.  Not only are they are the best looking couple of all time, they are also the sweetest people ever.  I am so thankful that throughout the years Lauren and I have remained close friends.  I remember thinking it was the end of the world when I moved to Houston for law school and she stayed in Austin for law school.  Little did we know then Lauren would end up in San Diego.  (But hey, we won't ever complain about going out there to visit them!)  Regardless of the physical distance between us, Lauren has always been there for me and I am forever grateful for our friendship.  We've shared so many important occasions together (we were both the maid of honor in each others' weddings), so I can't wait for the arrival of their sweet baby boy!          

 This picture is from the baby shower the day after the couple's shower.

Lauren and Jacob still have lots of friends and family in Texas (and beyond) who wanted to help them celebrate.  So we decided to have a couple's shower on a Friday evening when they were in town.  Because it was a couple's shower, I didn't want baby blue everywhere.  Instead, I copied Henry's nursery scheme and went with a gray, navy, and orange theme.

Here are some of the details:  

And it's not a party without food and drinks.  We also had fajitas, but those aren't as pretty as the desserts!  Lauren picked the peanut butter, banana, and caramel cake from Carrie Made the Cake.  And not surprisingly, it was delish! 

To jazz up the place cards, I used the back of the invitation, which was orange and white chevron, and used double-stick tape to attach a small strip to the bottom of the plain white card. 

We kept the party favors simple and wrapped up decorated shortbread cookies from Paulie's.

In addition to the usual soft drinks, beer, and wine, we had margarita punch to go with the fajitas.  I kept the punch non-alcoholic and just left the tequila and Cointreau off to the side for people to add as much or as little as they wanted.   

And no shower recap is complete without a baby bump picture.  So for good measure, here's a shot of Lauren's cute baby bump!  (And I got totally shown up -- Lauren is in 3 inch heels, while I opted for flats.)  

It was so fun to be able to shower my two of my favorite people.  I can't wait to meet sweet baby Henry. 
  

Ikea Finds.

When we moved to our apartment, we knew we would have to get a few things for storage.  For starters, our kitchen had no pantry.  Ikea's Besta cabinet ended up being the perfect size for the space and worked really well with the kitchen cabinets.

Thankfully, Riley and Zoey "helped" with the assembling.

Voila!  After a little assembling (and getting the dogs out of the way), we now have a new pantry!  It's excellent because it doesn't cover up the light switch on the wall and still gives us some space for our trashcan. 

There's also enough room on the other side for a little hook to hold my apron.  It's nice because it's almost hidden over there.

In case you're curious about the inside of the pantry, it's nothing too exciting. 

Here's a shot of the cabinets in the kitchen so you can see what we're working with.  The one from Ikea goes perfectly! 

Those of you with an eagle eye may have spied a new rug in the kitchen.  I picked up this ikat rug from Urban Outfitters, which works well in there (and didn't break the bank).  Our kitchen has slate tile in it and I hated the way it felt on my feet.  So I wanted something that would cover most of the floor.  I think the dogs are also happier with something a little softer to beg from when we are in the kitchen.   

In addition to the pantry, Ikea also came through for some shoe storage.  The master closet in our old home had amazing built-ins that were perfect for shoes.  Not surprisingly, the closet in our apartment does not.  We had the perfect little space in our new closet though for some shoe storage.  The Billy bookcase from Ikea with some additional shelves just happened to fit perfectly!  I still have to store some of my shoes under my clothes and poor Justin doesn't even get a shelf, but he's ok with that.   

For those of you following along with our house hunt, we went to see 2 homes today in our favorite neighborhood.  One was out of our budget, but we wanted to see it anyway for comparison purposes.  Thankfully, the bedrooms were oddly laid out upstairs so we didn't fall in love with it (but the first floor was perfection).  The other house was pretty decent, but was built about 20 years ago and we would definitely need to do some renovations (i.e., new kitchen, new bathroom).  Property Brothers, anyone?  It totally gives us something to think about though.  The inventory has been super low here, but our realtor thinks things will pick up in the next month.  We are keeping our fingers crossed!  I am tired driving through the neighborhood yelling "come on people, sell your house!"   

Last but not least, in the last week, I've come across 2 amazing Craigslist finds.  One of them starts with a "camp" and ends with an "aign."  I will be back with pictures!

Hope y'all had a wonderful weekend! 

Thank you.

I looked recently and noticed I had 500 followers!  Whoa!  It's hard to believe that this little (often neglected) blog has that many followers.  I remember when I first started the blog, my mom and occasionally Justin were the only readers.

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When I first started blogging, it was a way for me to catalog the updates to our new house at the time.  Little did I know then I would still be blogging several years later and would be documenting the sale of that home and our journey to find a new one.  I hope you continue stick around!     

I thought this would be a good time to tell you guys how thankful I am that you read this blog and for your sweet comments and emails.  It's so wonderful to have such a great community of bloggers to share big (and little) news with.  I really appreciate your encouragement and support!  Thank you, thank you, thank you!    

Ikea Lamp.

Oddly enough, our living room doesn't have any overhead lighting.  Of course part of me is tempted to pull one of my chandeliers out of storage, but the part of me with common sense knows that we should just make do with some well placed lamps. 

Our mantra for things we buy for the apartment is functional and inexpensive since it's only temporary, which means Ikea is usually the best bet.  We came across the Januari floor lamp for a whopping $16.99.  I believe it also comes in black and an ugly greeny-brass color. 

I wasn't digging any of the colors, but I knew it wasn't anything a little spray paint couldn't fix.  So we picked up the white one along with some spray paint.  For reference, I ended up using the one on right, which was called "Brass."  Thankfully, unlike the Ikea brass, it didn't have gross green undertones.  The gold was pretty, but just too bright and gold (go figure). 

After some quick spray painting at my mom's house (since we don't have a great place to paint here at the apartment), the lamp looks 20 times better.  The shade is also from Ikea.

Easy peasy! The brass is much better than the white would have been.  And depending on where it goes in the new house, I know it can be easily spray painted again.  I'll be back with some more great finds from Ikea that seem to have been made for our apartment!

Hope y'all had a great weekend.  We had absolutely beautiful weather here -- I almost felt like we were in San Diego.  We looked at a couple of houses, but nothing we fell in love with.  The hunt continues!        

Wallpaper Crush.

My first time to see (and fully appreciate) David Hick's Hexagon wallpaper was probably when I came across this image.  How gorgeous and bold is this wallpaper?  I can't seem to get it out of my mind recently.  I particularly love it in a powder room, but frankly, I would love it just about anywhere! 

(photo: here)

(photo: here)

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And even Sarah Richardson approves:

(photo: here)

Pretty fabulous, right?  I really like it when it's paired with more traditional elements.  Is there anything decor-related you just can't get out of your head (or am I the only one that needs to get a life)?