It’s a Girl!

We’re having a little girl! A LITTLE GIRL! Bring on the dresses, tights, pigtails and teenage hormonal rage! As you can see, I couldn’t help myself and bought this darling Imoga cross stitch dress for the little one on Gilt (they have a children’s section, sohelpmegod), but I PROMISE to keep my little girl clothing expenditures in check.

(HAHAHAAAAAAAAA. Ha.)

We are so incredibly thrilled to be given the chance to raise both a boy and a girl, and when we told Wito the exciting news, he clasped his hands together and exclaimed, “Oh, a girl! I’ve always wanted something soft to sleep with!” Cue heart explosion. He is going to be such a wonderful big brother.

Oh! And! We got the house and will be moving in three weeks. Hooray! There is much to do before we move in, so the remainder of January will be a bit crazy. D is spending his evenings and weekends at the new place, and it is going to be a race against time to get our changes complete before moving day. I’ve been trying to document the renovations with photos, though, so hopefully I can post some of the small improvements we are making to bring this 60s modern back to her original glory.

In the meantime, please feel free to bestow upon me your best baby girl-rearing advice. We’ve been solely about the penis ’round here for the past three years, so any and all advice is welcome!

Color Me Happy

We are this close to finding out about our new home. THIS CLOSE. See my forefinger and thumb pressed so closely together and my squeezed shut pirate-looking eye?

D has been swamped with nothing but realtor, owner and contractor meetings for the past week or so. SO MANY NEGOTIATIONS. And guess what, y’all? WE’RE NOT EVEN BUYING THE HOUSE. This is all for a rental! A totally rad 60’s modern rental that is begging for our tender loving care, that is.

(I must confess, though. We have made a shit ton of requests of the owner, but it looks like he just might honor all of them. New stainless appliances! New window coverings! New plumbing fixtures! New kitchen countertops! Man, it PAYS to be hitched to an interior designer, is all I’m sayin’.)

In order to keep my mind from spinning out of control, I just spent the past two hours creating this.

What’s that, you ask? Well, DUHHHHH, it’s your favorite color combinations from this week’s post! I mean, HELLO PEOPLE. Obviously, this image is crucial to all of our lives! I bet you’re now wondering how you even lived without it. You can thank me later.

Now, go forth and create new outfits and home accessory enhancements.

(I obviously will do ANYTHING to keep from over-thinking this whole house situation.)

Father of the Year

A perfect surprise on a rainy Friday evening. Have a wonderful weekend!

Because you are on the edge of your seats…

photo lovingly borrowed from Deb

The Cheesecake Marbled Brownies I made for the bake sale this past weekend were a hit. Thank you to the lovely Holly, who not only also shares an intense addiction to white noise machines (we realized this while rooming together at the Broad Summit), but gives fantastic bake sale advice.

(Currently enjoying the Quiet Noise iPhone app, by the way. I highly recommend the air conditioner sound.)

Did I mention that when it comes to bake sale recipes, I’m set for the next 60 years? Thanks to you and you and you, the next time I need to bake something, I am going to use random.org to pick a recipe from your comments.

However, my baking did not end at the marbled brownies. No sirree. When I popped those babies in the oven, I realized I had 80% of the chocolate chips remaining, so I made these chocolate chip cookies. (All before 7:30 am on a Saturday. I am baker, hear me ROAR.)

So good, so good, so good. In fact, there are crumbs all over my laptop as I type this. You might want to make some this very minute.

Picturing Plumeria

Planning my wedding was a little stressful.

Wait, I know what you are thinking. What wedding planning process ISN’T a little stressful? It’s the nature of the beast! I’m sure most brides-to-be have experienced that familiar bottom lip quiver at some point during the process. (Or full-out bridezilla rage…you know who you are.)

My wedding, which was supposed to be a very intimate affair in another country, blew up in my face about 5 months before it was supposed to happen. Chicka chicka BOOM. Suddenly I had no calendar date, no venue, no caterers, and wasn’t even sure if our amazing photographer would still be available.

Like I said, planning my wedding was a little stressful.

I had to start at square one. D and I still wanted a destination wedding, but how were we going to make that happen in such a short time? We dreamed of eloping to Europe, but ultimately couldn’t stand the thought of our immediate family not being there to celebrate with us. And then it hit me like a gigantic coconut in the face. Hawaii.

Several holed up days of internet research, phone calls and faxes later, I booked a lovely hotel on the Big Island.

Those five months flew by, and before I knew it, I was on a plane across the Pacific. Upon arriving on the Big Island, I marveled at the landscape filled with huge lava rocks, but was surprised to see such a difference once I reached the hotel’s grounds. It was absolutely lush. Bright green grass, intensely-colored flowers, the lava rocks mingling with the deep blue ocean. I was in heaven.

I’m pretty sure I was doing pirouettes around the lobby when I got my first whiff of plumeria. To say that it was completely intoxicating would be an understatement, and I couldn’t get enough. Luckily, the lei I received upon arrival at the hotel was made entirely from the flowers. For the rest of the trip, I filled our room with the scent of plumeria leis, and that scent now embodies one of the most wonderful weeks of my life.

There are only a few scents that immediately trigger a walk down memory lane – Opium (the fragrance my mother wore during my childhood), my great-grandmother’s Thanksgiving dressing cooking in the oven, and the smell of a middle school friend’s older sister’s car (a strangely heady mixture of Jasmine stick incense and cigarette smoke). After our wedding trip to Hawaii, plumeria became one of my elite.

From our intimate ceremony,

To the toasts made afterward.

The sweet scent of plumeria lets me hop in my time travel machine and subtract 5 years.

To one of the happiest moments in my life.

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