Desert Queen

Switching things up here for a sec. These photos are actually from September 2017, but I never posted them here, and I just recently found them again on an old hard drive and was reminded how much I liked this shoot. The dress was a 70’s wedding dress I found at Goodwill, the belt borrowed from my mom, and the hat borrowed from a local vintage/secondhand shop, Urban X Change. I needed some new images for my wedding photography portfolio (and just wanted to stretch my legs a bit creatively), so I pulled over along the side of the road near a perfect Joshua Tree grove and spent an hour drinking in the delicious evening light and playing around in a fancy dress in the desert.

Making messes and memories

Thank you Vanity Fair® Napkins for sponsoring this post. Take on everyday messes with Vanity Fair® Extra Absorbent Napkins!

Growing up, on special occasions like a birthday, my Dad would make “Daddy’s Special Pancakes” or DSP’s.  They were always Swedish Crepes, and he would fling them to us from the pan, across the island, and we’d try to catch them on our plates. I still love making DSP’s (though I guess if I make them, they’re MSP’s right?), but for Jack’s little birthday morning we just went with the old classic stack of fluffy buttermilk pancakes. I haven’t yet introduced him to the joys of chocolate chip pancakes, we’ll save that for a later birthday. The amount of sugar he got in the syrup alone was more than enough for a boy of only two.  But oooh boy, you’re gonna be excited about chocolate chip pancakes one day. And blueberry ones too (or booburies as he calls them right now).

Jack was a huge fan of pancakes, and he kept asking me to do “mo’ snow, mama!” with the powdered sugar.  Making a pancake breakfast with a toddler, though, holy cow, talk about a sticky mess. I think I used like ten Vanity Fair® Extra Absorbent Napkins just to clean up spilled syrup and pancake batter by the time the morning was over. Normal napkins die a horrible death at the hands of a toddler, so the paper-towel thickness and toughness of the Vanity Fair® Extra Absorbent Napkins is perfect for our mealtimes, and a welcome break from having to wash a bajillion dish towels a day.

Vanity Fair® Extra Absorbent Napkins  are “made for life’s unexpected mealtime surprises” but really, with a two year old, mealtime surprises and messes are anything but unexpected.  Even if my kid doesn’t eat his food, it’s still all over the place.  

Trying to avoid a messy life with a kid is a fool’s errand, and the antithesis to learning and fun in my opinion. Having lots of clean-up is the name of the game, but the memories and the joy will be the lasting impression, at least for them. I’ll probably remember all the cleaning up I did, though I’m sure the giggles will overshadow the cleaning when I look back on days like this.

I can’t believe my little baby is such a kid now.  He’s chattering up a storm all the time, loves reading books, and will sit and play creatively with legos while I drink my morning coffee now, which is a godsend.  Just watching him sit on the counter and nom on pancakes like a grown up boy was such a surprising moment. It’s so weird how the time flies by and also moves slower than molasses.  The first 18 months were the hardest of my life, but now that he’s playing and talking, I’ve found my groove in the mother role. I know there are a lot more messes to be made, a lot more tears to cry, a lot more tantrums to be thrown, but I’m looking forward to this next year as he grows into a bigger kid.  And hopefully those sticky messes like this one will come along with fun, happy memories that make the hard days worth it.

Boho Bathroom Update

Our bathroom is super tiny, so I don’t post a lot about it. It’s hard to photograph, and it’s the room in the house that changes least often, so there’s not a lot of new things to share about it. but I’ve made some little changes since my last bathroom update post which was like 5 years ago!

I took out the old built in medicine cabinet mirror above the sink and put in this round brass mirror from Target. It was only $50 and I love how it instantly elevated the space. We lost a little bit of storage, but honestly that medicine cabinet was so small it was barely worth it. I also added the Pothos hanging plant to the corner (the concrete hanging pot is also a Target find). One of my favorite recent additions is the Moon Phases wall hanging from Vida and Luz! So perfect in here, I love how it looks on the dark wall. I also got the white Mudcloth shower curtain from Target and I love how it adds some interest, but doesn’t make the space feel smaller.

The reclaimed wood hook wall and handpainted herringbone wall are both from my original restyle of this space from when we first moved in, and I still love them both!