“Positano, the most beautiful place on earth. Every where your eye turns you find beauty, the air is warm and calm, scented by flowers. She’ll make you climb up and down a million steps but she’s worth every single one. She’s quiet at night and she glows, she’ll serenade you through her winding streets. She wins best dressed in Italy.”
Our Covid Project…
Spring Break 2020
That time we rode the train to Pompeii like lost puppies and got picked up by the most beautiful Italian woman with a cigarette in her hand who drove us to her home and welcomed us with cappuccinos and croissants. She taught us how to make pasta from scratch and fill raviolis with ricotta and how to correctly make pesto and a lasagne with bechamel. The language barrier was no more, we communicated with smiles and laughs and devoured our delicious meal together with wine and finished off the afternoon with homemade limoncello. This was the most beautiful and authentic Italian experience and I will treasure it forever.
Over a year later as I look back, these treasured memories of being “stuck” at home will forever be cherished. The Lord kept us safe, sane and healthy, knitted us tighter as a family and made us appreciate life in a deeper way.
Here’s a little of our Easter celebration with family. I made and Italian lunch, lemon risotto, chicken parmigiana and caprese. Molto Bene.
Spring is among us and its lovely but not perfect. With flowers also comes that awful pollen, you gotta take the good and the bad. That’s how I feel right now, lots of good but little things that remind me this is a fallen world with broken people of whom I feel the most broken. I’m reminded daily that I’m not perfect, I don’t have it all together, but all I can do is try my best, that’s enough, and that in itself is perfect.
Currently I’m grateful for family and friends and being able to gather and celebrate birthdays and Easter. I’m grateful for modern science, vaccines and essential workers. I’m grateful that I’m a few weeks away from completing my first semester at TWU and so far I have A’s in all my classes. I’m grateful I have a husband who helps out so much and has made this possible for me.
I am however struggling to find gratefulness in certain aspects of life. I’m struggling with being patient and showing empathy. We’re also in the middle of soccer season so our weekends are consumed with practice and games and its tiring for all of us and it makes us hungry and cranky. Maybe that’s it, we’re all just hangry. I’m in a funk about myself and I just feel off, I dunno…
But overall Spring is good. We’ve transformed our backyard, or should I say Fred transformed our yard and I just want to be out there all day! He did lots of landscaping, planted some new plants and started new garden boxes, I’m eager to see it all take root. We did buy four magnolia trees and those are so ugly right now they look like their dying, I told you… gotta take the good and bad! Hoping they turn green again because we were really excited about planting magnolia trees and they were pricey too, but right now it looks like a tree with shriveled up dollar bills for leaves.
Looking ahead…
There’s talk of an anniversary getaway this June nothing booked yet but we’re talking about it and exploring our options. We will most likely not be traveling as a family this summer but maybe we’ll do some fun day trips. I’m registered for summer and fall classes so I will be taking another full round of courses. Ya’ll pray for me, I’m taking a Math class and I just can’t even… So ready to hang by the pool and drink coconut water. I think I want to work on a few rooms in the house too so I’m brewing up ideas for that too.
Well, that’s about it, I hope your Spring is warm and sweet with scent of jasmine and grilled meat.
I had been waiting for the day when we’d walk through the gardens at the Dallas Arboretum and marvel at the blooming flowers in the Spring. And today we did but it was not the day I had in mind. These boys, man... Talk about raining on my parade. They wanted to leave the second we got there, I got hit with snarky comments left and right, one even shouted at me when I asked for one family picture, this kid never shouts! After dragging them through the pretty tulips we went to grab food and I don’t mean like McDonald’s, we went to Eataly a nice place, and even let them pick a special dessert and instead of “thanks” I get a, “that’s all I get? I wanted the big one!” By the time we got back in time for soccer practice I was defeated and in tears. I sent them off and stayed in the car and cried while I ate lemon cookies from Eataly and sulked as I thought of their ungratefulness and how they ruined my day I had looked forward to all winter. And as I watched them run from the car, the Lord gently tapped me on the shoulder and I instantly saw myself in my children. How many times does the Lord place good things in my life and I act worse than my children with zero gratitude and a slight “that’s all I get?” attitude, when the Lord has given me EVERYTHING, Jesus, salvation, freedom and he still loves me!! Today we remember Jesus being nailed on the cross for our sins, we didn’t deserve it we’re ungrateful sinful brats and he still died for us and loves and longs for us to draw near to him he makes us a new creation. Hallelujah! I ended the night with a hot bath but before that I went in the boys room gave them each huge hugs and apologized for not being more patient. Tomorrow is a new day.
My goal in designing our bedroom was to create a peaceful retreat where I could go in and escape and just lay down and breathe, ya know?
I gathered some of my favorite comforts like linen pillow cases. We hung up curtains and macrame plant hangers that make a sweet subtle statement and bring some green into the space. Our walls are pretty bare but I like the empty calmness of it, especially when I’m sitting on the accent chairs reading or bird watching while I look out to the backyard trees. So peaceful.
I did, on a whim, decide to hang up my hats as a display over our bed, again, interesting but not too busy and filled the wall nicely. I don’t know if thats what I want forever but it work for now.
My favorites… For Christmas about 2 years ago, Fred bought me a hand woven Turkish blanket from Odd Bird, an amazing textile company that actually started in Denton. The pattern is beautiful and I love snuggling up with it to take a nap.
One of the most recent additions was a coffee station on the dresser. Fred got me a Keurig so that I can brew myself a quick tea or coffee in the bedroom. I love how minimal it is and how it gives the bedroom a resort feeling.
Future Plans. I would love to paint an accent wall where the hats are hanging, maybe this summer I’ll bust out the brushes and my painting pants. Our linen comforter is also a queen size but we make it work in our King size bed, I just love it so much I keep putting off buying a new one and they can get expensive! I’d love to add some wall scones as side lamps too. Some day probably years from now I’d love to take the carpet out and add flooring and nice rug.
Also let me be totally honest with you. My bedroom looks that tidy about 50% of the time… The other 50% of the time there is baskets of clean laundry galore that stare me in the face and keep harassing me. So rude.
This Galentine’s was hosted two years! Brought such sweet memories of times we could gather inside and near each other with out the worries of Covid! Praying for more of those days in the future.
Let’s talk about light fixtures! Light fixtures can really transform a room, that’s why that was one of the first things we changed out in our house. Thankfully we bought a house that was only about two years old so it was very updated, meaning we got to spend extra funds on fun stuff not redoing kitchen or floors, etc! When we were in the market to purchase we were first looking into older homes that needed way more work but I’m so grateful we found this house that was much newer but still felt like a blank canvas I could transform and make our own.
I knew for the main hallway I wanted three lights that hung consecutively from the front door to the entrance of the main living area/kitchen/dining. I thought it would make a great entrance statement that would lead your eye to our main windows in the living room where you can see the beautiful trees! To achieve that effect we did remove the fan in the living room which I felt made made it feel too busy once we had all the light fixtures installed. I tend to always be cold so taking out the fan was not a hard decision.
For the living room we added a simple yet stylish ceiling pendant from IKEA. It only came in gold and even though I liked it, we decided it to spray paint it black in order to have it kind of match the hallway lanterns.
I chose the hallway lanterns from World Market because they were felt traditional yet modern and they were reasonably priced! I also feel like these can go with many decor styles! I read every single review on their website and it helped that people had posted pictures of what they looked like in their home! So I decided to go for them when they had a 20% off sale all light fixtures! Two of the three did arrive broken, exchanging them at the store was annoying but a breeze.
The light fixtures for the kitchen are also from World Market. For the kitchen I wanted something less traditional and more fun, sorta boho but still stylish. I went with these Basketweave Bamboo Pendants that I felt brought texture and airiness into the kitchen and gave it so much character!
Our kitchen came with three simple hanging light fixtures, pretty basic builder grade so I knew I wanted to change them out right away! Also our old house didn’t have light fixtures in the kitchen so it was fun getting to add some in our new home!
We ended up covering one of the middle lights because the bamboo pendants were large enough to only need two and I like the symmetry the pair created. Also! We kept the original light fixture and put the basket pendant over it. Genius, right? We painted the silver poles with flat white spray paint and actually made the installation even easier as apposed to connecting new cords.
I’m so glad the light fixtures in these areas were one of the first things we changed in our home because it really helped us slowly implement the color scheme and overall style we we’re going for. The total cost of this project was about $380 (thank you stimulus check.) Fred and my father-in-law did and amazing job installing them so that also saved us money! Now I’m itching to add light fixtures to other rooms in the house!!!
Happy New Year Friends! We spent the morning putting away our Christmas decorations. It was so much fun getting to decorate a new home, in other ways it was challenging. In our old home I knew exactly what worked where but this time I had to figure out what worked for this house. Even though the layout is very similar to our old home there’s little things here and there that i’m figuring out!
Like I had a hard time styling our mantle! I think I re-did it like 3 times before I actuallly decided to leave it. Our old mantle didn’t have that kind of seat that sticks out and it kept feeling bleh until I added a little more to the bottom with some fire logs and some Ikea vases and I think it just balanced it out a bit better. At some point there was a banner across the mantle mirror, I had all the stockings to one side, I had a garland with candle pillars, there was no side frame, but at the end I was pleased with our sweet mantle, balanced and displaying some my favorite thrifted brass pieces.
We stuck to a pretty neutral color scheme, black, white green and added creamy burlap accents to bring a little bit of warmth! I tied some wire burlapy ribbon to our light pendants that hang in our main hallway and it just added a soft traditional sweetness to the hallway that always made me smile when I walked by.
One of my ultimate favorite things that I got to do with this new home is add wreathes to all our windows! I’ve always loved homes with wreathes on windows whether they’re inside or outside I LOVE wreaths on windows! So ended up snagging some of those cheap Michaels ones on Black Friday for like $2-3 each, the plan was to add bows to them with the same ribbon I used for the pendants but I never got around to it. Instead I did add those battery operated lights that you can set on a timer, Costco had a great deal on them like a 4 pack for $10! So every day around 5pm, one by one every wreath would start to turn on and twinkle bright until about 11pm.
Im grateful for the season of Christmas we got to share in this home, now that everything is put away it’s clear and calm and for these winter months my goal is to cozy up and drink lots of tea until spring makes its debut!
Let’s rewind to a warm September Saturday. Our whole life’s were neatly packed and taped up in boxes ready to call a new place home. Friends gave of their time to help us move, humbly and grateful we fed them donuts and pizza. I filled our car with our houseplants from the tiniest to the biggest and promised them new sunny windows. We were greeted by the the sweetest letter from the previous owners while the boys rushed to run wild in their new backyard. The neatly packed boxes slowly unraveled into chaos, room by room we slowly began to fill the corners of our new house with warmth, love and new memories.
I’m always down for a fiesta and this Cinco de Mayo we got our fiesta on at home. Fred made his famous margaritas, we bought over priced carne asada from the carniceria, heated up the grill, busted out the loteria and danced to mariachi music! We ended the celebration with smoke bombs left over from 4th of July last year. It was a blast breaking the mundane of our everyday quarantined life.
A fun simple way to celebrate love and friendship with littles!
Bake cupcakes.
Buy candy.
Let them go crazy.
This is from May 2019! Strawberry picking at Pecan Creek Strawberry Farm is currently closed due to Covid-19 but is open for drive-thru pick up!
A few weeks ago some friends invited us to go strawberry picking at a local farm. Yes, a local farm! only 20 minutes north of us, and here this California girl thought strawberry fields only existed in California… Wrong! Noah my very Texas boy insisted on wearing his denim farmer overalls and we headed to the farm!
Pecan Creek Strawberry Farm in Pilot Point is a gem! They open their farm to the public Saturdays and Wednesdays. You pay $3 for a red bucket to put your picked strawberries in and then they charge you per pound you pick! You can pick as many or as little as you’d like! Best part is you get to keep your bucket and the next time you go don’t have to pay for one just your strawberries!
There's something special about picking your own fruit, searching for the perfect red berry and plucking it from the ground. While I love gardening, it was nice going to a farm where someone else has already done all the work and you get to eat the fruit of their labor, see what I did there?
Our fresh strawberries turned into the yummiest Berry Crumble we devoured for dessert! I’ve included the recipe for you! Its super simple and delicious!
Prep time:
