A lovely save the date

My sweet friend Alaina and her beau, Matt, are tying the knot in October, and I got to design her save the dates over the weekend. As always, it was such a treat to get all the lovely juices flowing. Congratulations Alaina and Matt! Thanks so much for letting me be a part of it.

The trick to avoiding a sore throat

You know how sometimes, right before bed, you get that tickle in your throat. That ominous, terrible tickle that whispers in your ear "You are gonna wake up in the morning with a soar throat, sucker." It's the worst. I used to fall victim to this every single time. Tickle - sleep - wake - soar throat. Ugh! But when I married Ty he introduced me to the handiest little trick. When that soar-throat tickle rears its ugly head, you throw on a scarf right before bed and sleep like that. Easy peasy.

It sounds a little silly, but truly it works. I was a skeptic but gave it a try when Ty tipped me off a few years ago, and it's now my go-to every time I think a soar throat is looming. Next time you feel you are at the mercy of impending sickness, give it a go. Sometimes it takes a few nights straight of wearing it, but it's heaven sent I tell you. I'd add a scarf to my sleep wardrobe any day to avoid a sore throat.

Momiform: stripes on stripes

I promise not to post momiforms back to back on the regular, but this dress is on sale right now! I didn't want you to miss it! It's just that good. 

I grabbed this little number at Old Navy yesterday and gave it a test run today down at the Provo birthday celebration. It passed with flying colors. I love this dress because it is stretchy, comfy, modest, AND nursing friendly to boot. The quadruple whammy. Plus, it's not too tight, if you know what I mean. It has that perfect little hug while still giving you enough bag that you don't have to have a supermodel body to feel comfortable in it.

Wrap: Solly Baby

Dress: Old Navy

Shoes: Birkenstock

Mama uniform

I wanted to call this series "Momiform" -- as in "mom uniform" smooshed into one word. But when I ran the idea by Ty, he said he would never, ever, in a million years, have put together that "momiform" was the words mom and uniform. So. Crash and burn. I settled on mama uniform instead.

Ever since Everett came along, I am much more selective about the clothes I put on my bod in the morning. Function takes the cake these days. Goodbye heels. See you later non-nursing-friendly tops. And so long anything that isn't drool and spit-up friendly. Dry-clean only? Don't be ridiculous. So I wanted to post mama-friendly outfits that consist of more than jammies, as I am sure there are a lot of mamas out there in my same shoes.

Everett is like a spit-up fountain lately, and eats every few hours, so I need to dress accordingly. My top in nice and flowy for easy nursing; plus, I got it for a quarter, so completely spit-up friendly. The jeans are already white, so no issue there. I got synthetic-upper Birks so they are wipe-wipe-wipeable. Thank goodness. And in an effort to catch as much spit-up as possible (and avoid as many wardrobe changes as possible), I stick a bibdana on Everett every chance I get.

Top: Thrifted - Liz Lange Maternity (similar)
Jeans: Old Target - Mossimo (similar)
Shoes: Birkenstocks
Baby bibdana: Milk Barn

No more rocking

And just like that, my baby boy no longer wants me to rock him to sleep.

We used to have this system; swaddle the baby, pick up the baby, put the pacifier in, and rock the baby to sleep. Boom. Worked like a charm. But a few days ago, mid sequence, Everett started arching his back like crazy. "Put me down!" he seemed to say. And so I did. Into the crib he went. And after a few minutes he was sound asleep. What the?! Babies do this? On their own? Babies just decide when they don't need you to rock them to sleep anymore? This is bananas.

All the books I read said things like "don't rock your baby to sleep / let your baby nurse to sleep / hold your baby until he is sound asleep because he will want to do it forever!" So I of course thought it was up to me. But no friends. No. I'm sure every baby is different. But this baby? This baby just weaned himself from rocking. And I'm not gonna lie, it makes my heart sink a little.

I remember I used to dream of this day. "One day he won't need me to go to sleep!" I thought. And it was such a liberating thought. But now that it's here, it's like "Wait...wait...you sure you don't want me to rock you to sleep? It's really nice...?" But he's sure. I've been trying it intermittently just to be sure sure he knows what he's doing, with no success.

So there we go. "Snuggle that baby while you can!" all the mamas told me. And I did. But it still feels too short. And I know he's only 5 months old. And I know I still have months of nursing and having him keen to hang out on my lap and want to be carried around by me. But it just made me realize. One at a time all of those things are going to disappear. Poof. So, lesson learned. I will snuggle that baby all I can while I can.

Next adventure? Getting rid of that swaddle. Wish me luck.

A wedding invite for Monday

I just finished designing a wedding invite for a sweet couple in California, and can I tell you it was SUCH a treat to design up something all lovely and wedding-y. It felt good to just put all the pretty out on some paper as I put together a bunch of options for the couple to choose from. Sadly, the one above didn't make the cut. But, it was definitely my favorite of the bunch. If Ty and I ever get married again, you can expect this invite in the mail.

For the record, this is the one the couple actually chose. I really liked this one too.

A bannister makeover

I seriously considered titling this post "When your dog chews the crap out of your banister and you don't want to shell out $100 for a new one" but thought it was too long. That is exactly what this is about though.

Hank has always been an amazing dog. Since we got him at 6 weeks old, he was a little angel. House trained super quickly. Never jumped on people. Rarely barked. And, to top it all off, never chewed on anything but his toys. Which was a miracle, since labs are voracious chewers. But then, one day. One terribly, sad, notorious day a couple years ago. Ty and I left for work and we had unknowingly shut all of Hanks toys in our bedroom. We got home to a destroyed bannister and a puppy who, for months, treated all the wood trim in our house as his personal noshing ground. THE WORST!

Long story short, a lot of painting and trim replacing later, Hank has finally seemed to cool it. Thank goodness. But rather than shelling out $100+ for a new bannister (cause there are SO many other things I would rather spend $100 on), I decided to just make-shift fix it this weekend.

I should say right up front that I am 100% NOT a perfectionist. Most of the time I go for good enough and call it a day, and this project definitely fits into that category. So if you have also had your bannister chewed to smithereens and need a not-perfect fix, this is the one for you.

The bannister was in SUPER rough shape. I started by removing it from our wall and dragging it into the garage.

Then I sanded it like crazy with this Black and Decker Mouse sander. There were hugely deep pock marks from Hank's teeth all up and down the length of the wood, along with severely disfigured areas where he chewed for what I am sure was hours.

Even after a good amount of sanding, it still had some pretty rough spots. I thought about whipping out the wood putty, but that seemed like WAY too much effort, so I just sanded the best I could, pretending that large chunks of the bannister weren't supposed to be there anyway / were supposed to be totally disfigured.

Once all the sanding was finished, I gave the whole thing a nice coat of one-coat-coverage black, glossy Valspar paint (inspired by this bannister), which made a huge difference. The dark color hid a lot of the lurking imperfections, as you can see in that before and after shot up there. (NOTE: I LOVE one-coat-coverage paint. If you're never used it, do it. It works like a dream.)

Then I brought it back inside, hung that bad boy up, and bam! Good as new. ish. If nothing else, it's about 1 million times better than it was before AND it only cost me $10 in paint. Plus I kind of love how the new color plays off the shelf and frame at the top of the stairs. Now, just promise me you won't look too closely if you ever come over and we'll call this a raving success.