Home Envy

I'm envious of this beautiful home! I love the mix of modern/contemporary and antique/vintage. Plus, how cute is the owner??







(Photos via here)

Baby Steps

Getting married opens the door to something, and it's nothing I ever really considered until I got married. Getting married means that if you get knocked up, it's not shameful. It's what's expected. Not that you should be ashamed either way, but you know what I mean. And it seems like once that door is opened, it's hard to close it.

I've always known I wanted children some day. I was a longtime babysitter, and during grad school, I nannied to pay my bills. I love kids, but nannying as an adult, particularly one who saw marriage and kids on the horizon, really altered how I feel about children. It made me not want to have them. So imagine my surprise when I got married and I started to think about babies. It didn't help that so very, very, very many bloggers that I read started getting pregnant/having babies, too. And while I have cheered on all of those pregnancies (some more loudly than others) and it is fun to read about everyone going through their pregnancy and labor and parenting, it hasn't felt like something I really wanted to do. Yet, anyway.

Lately though, I can't seem to stop thinking about it. Let's be clear, it's incredibly inconvenient to have children now.

A. We don't own our own place yet, and we live in a small 1 bedroom apartment.
B. We like our freedom.
C. There are some things I'm not quite willing to give up yet.
D. I'd like to reach some more financial/personal goals before I start trying to get pregnant.
E. I'd like to reach some more professional goals before I start trying to get pregnant.

So what am I to do? Hitting 30 meant thinking about it pretty much all the time. I have no one to talk to about it, either. I'm too scared to bring it up with my friends that are parents. Well, some of them anyway. And A.P. is certainly not thinking about it. It is getting worse, too. The other day I almost blurted out the words, "I think I want to have a baby," even though I don't. It was almost impossible to control myself.

I know a lot is changing with me, hormonally anyway. Lord knows I've talked about the crying before. So, am I to assume this is another hormonal change? Or is this really something I want, but can't really do right now? Who knows? Have any of you struggled with this yet? Especially you newlyweds...I'm curious how you've handled/plan to handle the kids after marriage issue.

PS. I'm hoping that next week, I'll be back to blogging 5x a week. I'm still working some overtime, but not as much, and so my schedule is still all screwy. But I'm going to work on it this weekend. Fingers crossed.

Our Anniversary: The Details (Finally!)

Here's how we spent our anniversary. We actually kicked off the celebrating on Saturday night. We prepped for the big day by finally getting around to trying a new Italian pizzeria near our place called Ciao Napoli. It was delicious, and we'll for sure be heading back soon. We drank some good wine, ate some delicious pizza, and then we were stuffed.






Any and all plans on our actual anniversary were made by A.P. I flat out told him that I planned the wedding, so he could plan the anniversary. It only seemed fair. I had no idea what he had up his sleeve, but for some reason, I woke up on Sunday, and thought, "Man, it would be awesome if he was taking me for a massage." Guess what? He took us BOTH for massages! We went to the same place we went on our wedding day, Urban Oasis, which is by far my favorite place to go in Chicago even though it's hella expensive. We got hour long massages, and then after, had a steam shower, which was awesome.

After our massage, we came back to our place and chilled. I was happy A.P. scheduled a lot of down time in between all of the things we were doing. It made it a more relaxed day, which was necessary considering how exhausted I've been lately. After we relaxed for a while, we hopped in the car and started driving towards our next destination. I had no idea where we were going and didn't figure it out for a long, long time. Finally, after a bunch of guesses, I figured it out: Garfield Park Conservatory! I was so excited because I'd never been there, and have always wanted to go.

For those of you who don't know, I'm an avid gardener. With the exception of last year, I've always had a large, luscious container garden (sadly I've never been able to do more...until this year). Usually in the summer, you can find me on the back porch with the dog and the cat tending to my many, many plants. A.P. figured I'd get some inspiration for my garden this year, plus I could take lots of photos, which you all know is a hobby of mine. I started out taking a lot of photos with automatic settings on my camera, but eventually forced myself to go manual. Here are some of the better shots from the day:

Making a wish for another good year!

You have to excuse my immaturity with the next picture. I couldn't resist. It's actually two cacti, but when put together, it's one adult themed cactus!

Anybody know what the hell this thing is? We could not figure it out. This was the best picture I could take of it swimming/walking underwater. It looked like an alien, or the three-eyed fish in The Simpsons.

After spending a couple of hours at the Conservatory, we headed back home. A.P. had one more trick up his sleeve: a romantic dinner. Initially, he wanted to take me to the The Signature Room in the John Hancock building, which is on the 95th floor and boasts many spectacular views of Chicago. However, I just didn't feel like getting all fancied up, so he did some searching and found this new Moroccan restaurant by our place, so we checked that out. Neither one of had ever eaten real Moroccan food (I've eaten takes on Moroccan dishes, but never authentic Moroccan cuisine), so we were both pretty psyched. It was delicious, particularly this dish we had called Chicken Bastila. It is a pastry filled with chicken and other delicious things, and covered in powdered sugar and cinnamon, which sounds weird, but was SO delicious.


And that was it! A.P. really did a great job of planning everything. It was a wonderful, fun, relaxing day. I didn't do a lick of work either, which was REALLY nice. We didn't give each other gifts, but not on purpose. We've both been so busy we just haven't gotten to it. We're still planning on doing the traditional first year gift: paper. I actually know what I'm getting him, I just haven't had time to work on it at all. Better get going soon, huh?

Wedding Cake Eating: The Sequel

So, technically our anniversary was on the 27th of March, but we just got around to eating the top of the wedding cake last night. It was surprisingly good. My brother, who house sat for us when we were on our honeymoon, wrapped it and he actually did a really good job. He wrapped it twice in saran wrap, and then twice in foil. Nicely done, big bro!

On our wedding day, I defrosted it out of the freezer overnight, and then stuck it in the back of the fridge first thing in the morning. It's sat there until last night. I thought it would taste terrible, especially since we had a buttercream frosting on our cake (it was just a cutting cake...we had an awesome dessert buffet, remember?), but it was surprisingly okay. It didn't taste great, but it was sufficiently good to eat during a photo shoot, which I then made into a dorky stop-motion movie with my new laptop. Oh who am I kidding? I would have done this on my old laptop, too.

Anyway, here's the movie. Enjoy! Tomorrow we'll talk about how I can't bring myself to throw out the cake, so it's on the cake stand in the fridge re-wrapped in saran wrap. Yikes!

You Sew, Girl!

For Christmas last year, A.P. bought me a sewing machine. I wish I was kidding when I say that it's still sitting where the Christmas tree was and in its original box. It's been so long since I did any kind of sewing on a machine, or making of clothes in general that I really need a refresher course. So, I am planning on taking a class, but I have SO many classes to take in the upcoming months that the sewing keeps falling to the wayside. I have two Groupons I still have to use: one for guitar lessons at The Old Town School of Folk Music, and one for a photography boot camp (sidebar: I've been much, much better about talking photos using manual settings lately. I'm trying to be less lazy. It's just so easy to be lazy with digital cameras. Am I right, ladies?).

Still, I've been bookmarking some pretty, simple things I could make in the future, like this circle skirt made from a vintage sheet. Check it out:


Do any of you sew? What is a good starter project?

(Photo via Cut Out + Keep)