tiny gardener

noah was really excited to help dad plant some flowers in the planters to decorate the front of the house.  he was too cute in those tiny gardening gloves.

love, laurie

crazy wildlife!

we looked out the kitchen window and were shocked to see a turkey running through our front yard last week one morning.  the very next morning, we looked out our side window and were shocked to see a fox taking a nap.  what on earth is going on with the wildlife around our house!

love, laurie

the view out our window

we love the tree that grows in our back yard directly outside our bedroom window.  it is especially colorful in the fall.  it has been so nice to see the beautiful colors of the leaves recently on the tree every day!

love, laurie

one year

we've officially lived in our new house for one year now and i can't believe how the past year has flown by.  i love this photo that ryan snapped of me holding noah standing in his bedroom doorway back when we did a walkthrough of our new house before we even had walls.

love, laurie

aurora borealis

my entire life i have wanted to see the northern lights.  i have always been fascinated with the aurora borealis and it's been one of those bucket list type things to see it.  i figured i never would because it's usually visible in places i don't travel, but low and behold, last night the northern lights gave a magical light show display right over our house.

it was late at night and i was in bed getting noah to sleep.  i was scrolling through facebook and saw person after person posting incredible photos of the aurora borealis over our area's skies.  i was beyond confused and told ryan to go look out the window to see if he could find anything.  at first he didn't see it and we figured we must have missed it.  then he went out on our back deck and found it.  we took turns looking at the sky from our back deck in our pajamas and quickly snapping photos on our phones before it was gone.  

it was absolutely beautiful!

love, laurie

thinking about somewhere tropical

i can't travel anywhere tropical, but i can think of a tropical location every time i walk out on my back deck and see these gorgeous flowers!

love, laurie

yard renovations!

when we moved into our new house in october, we didn't tackle our landscaping right away.  the only thing we had done was have a landscaping company come in to flatten our front yard, bring in top soil, and put down sod.  it looked beautiful and we knew we would have to tackle the sides and the backyard another time.  we didn't even do anything about our front flower bed and it has been sitting with just the landscaping fabric visible for too long.

during the month of august, our backyard has been a big construction project as the same landscaping company came back to excavate, fill, and level our steep property.  they even built two retaining walls in the back.  they finished it up with a layer of topsoil and gorgeous green sod all over the sides and backyard.  they also brought in beautiful rock to cover our front and side flower beds.

it has been quite a massive project that spanned over the course of 4 weeks.  they did an incredible job and we love the outcome.  

needless to say, noah was in his glory these past few weeks watching all of the heavy equipment up close and personal.  he also enjoyed helping us plant and move the flowers.

love, laurie

our big project of 2023

i couldn't let the year end without sharing about our big project of 2023 . . . 

WE MOVED INTO A NEW HOUSE (and what a crazy ride it has been)!

we really didn't have any plans to move out of our old house which we lived in and loved for over 13 years.  it was a small but cozy home that served us well and was perfect for us.  as noah grew over the past year, we started to feel cramped and knew we needed a bit more space to spread out (and more than just one teeny tiny bathroom).

back in the early spring we took a walk around one of our favorite developments in the area.  over the years, we have walked around it many times before and admired all of the lovely homes.  on this particular walk, we saw a new home being built and something about it caught our attention.

very long story short . . . we contacted the developer and found out that it was being built as a builder spec home.  we took a tour of it and something just clicked.  since it was so early in the building process the builder and developer allowed us to really make it our own.  the floor plan was set and couldn't be altered which was great because we like the layout a lot.  however, we got the opportunity to pick a majority of the finishes and make a lot of the decisions along the way since it was so early in the build.

we definitely should get our heads examined because it was a massive project to take on with our already insane lives and schedules.  it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up and truly a once in a lifetime one at that.

we spent the spring, summer, and fall of 2023 totally engulfed with home building/designing.  it was a crazy ride.

we put our old house up for sale in the fall and sold it very quickly for asking price.  (if you would have told me that when we moved into that house over 13 years ago, i would have never believed you.)

we moved into the new house in the end of october and closed on our old house in the end of november.

we've learned to never say never.  we said we would never move . . . we moved.  we said we would never build a home . . . we (sort of) did.  here we are, and hopefully here we will stay for a very long time.

this sweet photo is one that ryan snapped during one of our many walkthroughs and checkins with the builder and developer all the way back in may of me holding noah in his future bedroom.

so, there it is . . . our very, very big (thank god we didn't kill each other in the process) project of 2023.

love, laurie

leaf cleanup helper

noah is a big helper with leaf cleanup in the yard.  we bundled up and cuddled close recently to rake up a bunch of fallen leaves.  it's hard work supervising mama.

love, laurie

fall flowers

i always love seeing this plant bloom outside our kitchen window each august.  i also love how it turns from cream to pink as the fall goes on each year.  i couldn't resist snapping a photo when the weather was nice the other day.

love, laurie

spring flowers!

it was so nice to see these flowers popping up in our front flower bed right in time for easter.  i'm ready for consistent nice warm weather so that we can spend more time outside with noah!

love, laurie

baby boy's nursery

i originally composed this blog post weeks ago.  it's one of the posts that i prepped in advance before noah arrived, and i had it scheduled to post on his due date.  however, in a moment of shear stupidity i accidentally deleted it last week instead of posting it because i was distracted and sleep deprived.  (why the blogger platform doesn’t have a trash/recycle that you can pull accidentally-deleted posts out of is beyond my comprehension.)  you bet there were tears and some choice words because i spent a great deal of time on this post describing everything in the nursery and our process of putting the nursery together.  accidents like that happen, but they are especially annoying when you’re only a few days postpartum and in an emotional hormonal fog.

my brain is too far gone to possibly try to remember what i originally wrote or to recreate the post.  i did have the photos saved, but you’ll have to trust me that the original wording was much better than this quickly-recreated version . . .

the room in our house that became baby boy's nursery was originally our spare bedroom.  it was a spare bedroom for years, and then during the pandemic we turned it into a home gym.  when it came time to start preparing a nursery it was the only location we had in our tiny house, and the gym equipment was moved into the space that we use as our home office.

we started working on this room early in the spring, and were glad we did before we got busy with dance recital season and the hot summer.  we gave the ceiling a fresh cost of white paint and we painted the room a soft gray.  it’s actually the same color that we painted our home office years ago.

we loved how the white furniture looked against the grey walls.  we accented with pops of color and an animal/adventure theme.

we were happy that we were able to transform this room without spending much money at all.  we bought a lot of things on sale and repurposed what we could from home.

we bought the crib from target, the floating shelves and the bookshelf changing table combo from ikea, the bins and lamp from home sense, the rug and side table from at home, and the curtains from boscovs.

the dresser is something that we bought years ago from lowe's, and the picture frames were from around the house.

a friend gifted us the crib mattress since his children outgrew it, and the crib mobile was a gift from our baby shower.

the glider recliner is actually the very first baby purchase we made and we bought it before i was even pregnant.  it's so comfortable and we got it from home goods.  the laundry baskets came from home goods as well.

we decorated the shelves with my childhood kermit the frog, trinkets from around the house, momentos from our disney world trip, an ultrasound photo, and the letter board from our baby shower.

ryan did a ton of work on the tiny closet too.  he pulled out the old clothes hanging bar, painted the closet white, and built a custom-fit closet organizer to maximize storage space.

overall, we're really happy with the way the nursery turned out.  we know it will change over time, but i'm glad we have it documented how it looked when baby boy arrived.

love, laurie

hello, hydrangea!

we're thrilled to see several blooms on our hydrangea plant in our front yard.  this poor guy went through a lot of trauma getting dug up by the gas company last year and relocated, so we're happy to see some beautiful bright blue blooms this summer!  yay!

love, laurie

hello, irises!

so happy to see that our purple irises are blooming in our yard!  it's always so nice to see the vibrant purple color alongside the garage.  the purple ones always seems to bloom first, followed by the yellow ones. 

have a great weekend!  we're back to working dance recitals this weekend!

love, laurie

hearts in the yard

i remember my dad having a bleeding heart bush in the yard when i was growing up and i was always amazed that a plant could produce a heart-shaped flower.  i love having 3 bleeding heart plants in our yard now and every time i see them bloom they make me think of my dad.  

happy to see the pretty pink hearts in the yard this past week!

love, laurie

it looks like spring!

it always takes the flowers in our yard so much longer to bloom compared to the neighbors' yards around us.  we were so happy to finally see some color in the yard this week!  hello, beautiful flowers!  hello, spring!

love, laurie

september roses

we have had this tiny rose bush for a long time.  we moved it to the front yard and it got upset and turned into pathetic sticks with no leaves and no flowers.  we just recently moved it to the back yard and were shocked to see leaves and roses!  so glad it came back to life and gave us some flowers in september!

have a great weekend!

love, laurie

digging up the yard

the gas company decided that they needed to move everyone's gas meters from inside their homes to outside their homes.  it ended up being a huge project with everyone getting their yards dug up so that they could run new gas lines too.  after 11 hours and a lot of arguing with the gas company, we finally had our gas turned back on and the holes in our yard filled back in.  a huge thank you to ryan who then went and fixed our flower garden that they dug up!

love, laurie

hello, hydrangea!

after waiting for what seems like forever, we're so happy that our hydrangea is finally blooming!  yay!

love, laurie

hello, flowers!

it's so nice to finally see flowers blooming around our yard again!  the warmer temperatures have made everything bloom.  it's so nice to see all of the colors!

love, laurie