lunch break

...the beginning of a wonderful friendship

...me and Project Life.

I guess, all along, I really do scrapbook like this. It's just a little more organized and you know I love me some organization. And itty-bitty details. And calendars. And stamps. Oh, I'm all over this.

Block Party project life kit pages from Studio Calico:

...christmas-a-gram

...we spent Christmas Eve at...the kid's gym. We believe Santa is a big fan of physical fitness:

Please note, Santa does not wrap presents with kraft paper and twine. He wraps it in paper the kids will recognize and love...elmo and Charlie Brown:

We got the initial coming downstairs reaction on video versus still camera, but this face from Clara pretty much sums it up:

She was even happier when she was required to taste-test momma's mint merengues at 8 a.m.:

Charlie spent a lot of the morning doing this - passing presents to Clara for her to open. Even his own. Sweet boy:

He still is pretty excited about anything that has the Thomas logo on it, but especially loved this set that came with the choo choo named Charlie (yeah, Santa didn't even realize that. Go Santa!)

Every princess needs a princess coupe:

We then headed over the river and through the woods (that really is true now) to go to gamma and poppy's and then on to our auntie's house.

A little break for some technology cuddling:

I hope you and yours had a day just as special as ours.

...merry christmas

...from our family to yours:

And my envelopes (blurry, to protect the identity of my Christmas card list), which may result in hand surgery in the new year:

...it's a party

My mom has not been well. It's been hard to muster the holiday spirit over the last few weeks. To feel merry without feeling phony. But I have two kids, one who is totally enamored with the guy with the white beard and all he encompasses and the other who calls him dada and screams.

Ken tries not to take it personally.

We also have a lot of new friends, who we wanted to meet each other. And we have old friends we wanted to have out to our new house.

So we decided to throw a party. Well, I should say I decided to throw a party and Ken was like, "OK," and then was forced to act as the personal assistant for a very demanding boss (me) the week before. I didn't see him roll his eyes once. What a guy.

(Idea for the easiest Christmas craft ever from poppytalk)

There were friends we have known for 15 years, friends from our time in Oklahoma, friends from Baltimore, and our newest friends, all together. Everyone has children age three and under, and there were three pregnant ladies, so there was lots of talk of labor, epidurals, and potty training. You just can't get away from it. It's where we are now. Fast forward 15 years and I imagine it will be talk of tuition and the inevitable empty nest. I just hope it's the same group of friends.

And these two little peanuts had quite the evening with their godmothers.

...i was born in newtown, connecticut

I was young when we moved. Too young to remember much. Probably my fondest memory is our neighbor, Ray, and his introduction to Sesame Street. I have the revolutionary-war era horseshoe that was tilled up out of our yard in Newtown resting on our mantle in Maryland today.

I wish those were the only things I associated with Newtown. I wish Newtown was only known as the birthplace of Laura Kurz, C-List Scrapbooking Celebrity. I wish you could put your child on a bus, drop them off at a front door of their school, their school, and know they were safe.

...and I'm back

...start here

...(the title of this post reminds me a little bit of one of Charlie's favorite commands: "Sit down!")

Start Here is a new class being taught by my friend Lisa over at 2peas. She asked me to contribute and I made one of my favorite pages, perhaps ever, for the class. But you have to sign up to see it. OK, I'll give you a little sneak:

If you would like a chance to win a spot in the class, leave a comment with your 2peas username before midnight EST on Wednesday, December 19!

...big tour of the little house - where the magic happens

...my office, naturally. ;)

In the spirit of we didn't want to have any rooms that weren't used on a daily basis, our guest room is also doubling as my office/scrapbook room.

It is perfect.

It's tucked away at the back of the house, so when I am working from home and a sitter is here with the kids, they kind of forget that I'm here. And it's awesome to sit at my desk and watch them run across the backyard.

Like every bedroom, it also has a huge walk-in closet where I keep a lot of my scrapbook stuff (I had extra shelves installed) and I also keep my printer in there.

Map from here. Gray pillows are IKEA. Coral are West Elm. Ikat one from here. And you can just pretend there's a pretty upholstered headboard behind the bed.

Fake plant from IKEA. I pretty much hate fake plants, but man this looks so real I've almost accidentally watered it a few times. Picture of my grandmother in the back, topiary that my mom painted, and wood block from Carron.

It was hard to get a good picture of my desk because there's really not a time in the day when the light isn't pouring in. I had to get a big monitor for one of my new jobs, but it's nice because I can just push it back when I'm scrapbooking.

My desk is vintage Pottery Barn. Most of our furniture is vintage Pottery Barn, because we bought it back when we were young and could actually spend money on things like furniture. Baskets are from IKEA. I keep old Studio Calico boxes under my desk for layout storage until they get filed in albums. And you can imagine some pretty window treatments, too.

Kind of like pinterest, but on my wall:

I have no idea where that clippy thing is from but it's awesome. Rolodex from here. Cart is vintage Pottery Barn too (it has baskets on it that hold my paper and the drawers hold things like stamp pads and thread).

And...that is where the magic happens. :)

...big tour of the little house

...coming to you in segments. Starting from the beginning.

Our Broadmoor house was built in 1945. When we started talking about moving, the only thing that got seven-months-pregnant me excited was new construction. No random holes in the floor of the basement filled with sand (sure, it might be where the sump pump once was...or where they put the bad children), no metal shower stalls, no wondering about the electric behind your walls.

We found a town we liked.

We found a lot we liked.

Itty-bitty-widdle baby Charlie is standing about 75 yards in front of where our porch is now.

And then it was time to find a house. We quickly learned that building up was less expensive than building out. I have always loved cape cods, but a lot of the modern cape plans have master bedrooms on the first floor. Which not only makes the house wide, but I also liked the idea of having our bedroom upstairs where the kids would be.

We didn't want a big house. We wanted a house that we would use every room, every day. We wanted an open living area with few walls. We knew we didn't need any formal spaces and that we needed lots of closets since we have a high water table and a basement wasn't an option.

I looked at approximately 3,289 plans. No joke. I still remember the night I was sitting at our kitchen table on Broadmoor and found this:

Look familiar?

You might notice that we flipped the plan. Having the garage on the left worked better for our driveway and, if you must know, our septic system.

We made more changes to the plan - most notably closing off the "dining room" to make a playroom for the kids (which will probably be Ken's office in the future when the kids move up to the bonus room, which is now Ken's office). We added a mudroom off the garage. We made a lot of those doors pocket doors. We bumped out the whole back of the house by two feet and added a screen porch off the eating area.

And we got to this:

Getting closer. We added windows, made the shower big. Huge, in fact. Moved the mudroom door. But the biggest thing was the change to the kitchen. The more I thought about it, the more I didn't like the layout of the kitchen. There was no window. I loved my window in my Broadmoor kitchen. And my beloved farmhouse sink would be totally hidden from view. And there was something about it that felt closed off. So we came up with this (what I call a modified-galley kitchen):

It was time to build a house.