Winter Wish List

Christmas is just around the corner! In fact we have already started to decorate here at the Park Household. I can only decorate however when Emma is home as I got into A LOT of trouble decorating for Halloween without her!

Well... as we get closer my family continually asks me what I want for Christmas... Here are a few items on my wish list this year.

• Bubble Necklace. I'm loving the bubble necklace trend... trend being the keyword and while I adore the $100+ selections out there... I feel that for an item that I will likely not wear 5 years down the road I should go with a cheaper option like this beauty from Shop Design Spark. At only $34.99 it makes the statement I would want without breaking the bank. I also love that the necklace is white and would go with just about anything.

• Running Shoes... I figure that I better start to exercise at some point
• e-Series Case. I would love to get one of these great plastic cases to hold my xoom in. I think that this would be great for the pool, beach, or bath. The one below is from The Container Store and comes in three sizes ranging from $19.99 - $29.99.

• Tablet and Reader Stand. Also from The Container store is an acrylic stand for my zoom that I can use in the kitchen while cooking. Only $19.99

• Granada Rug. I love the Granada Rug from Ballard Design. I think that the blue would be perfect in my master bedroom and I've been wanting a rug in there for some time now. The rug is pricey at $649.00 but the site frequently offers 20% off.

• The Handbuilt Home. I really have the desire to hand make a piece of furniture. I think that it would be such an accomplishment and I would take such pride to point at something beautiful in my home and say... "I made that." I think that the perfect start would be Ana White's new book The Handbuilt Home. 

• Young House Love. Another book that I would love to get my hands on is the new book by John and Sherry Petersik. I love their blog and cannot wait to see what projects they have been secretly working on for their book.

• New drinking glasses. One thing that Matt HATES about me is that I constantly break glasses. I would say that on average I break one a week... sometimes more. When we registered for our wedding we registered for a ton of glasses knowing that they would get broken and we would need replacements... well a little under two years later we have gone from having 24 large drink glasses to FOUR!!! and I don't even want to get into the juice glass count... I'm Matt's Bull in a China Shop! Well I told my amazing Sister-in-Law about my little glass issue and she raved about the Picardie Glass Tumblers from William Sonoma. While they seem a little pricey at 6 for $30 for full size glasses... It would be worth it if they do not break so easy (Our last glasses were thin... sure Julie that's why you always break them)... Well Anne swears that she has dropped and banged around these THICK glasses and guess what... no breaking. Hope that I will have the same luck.

• Overlays. These lightweight composite pieces allow for a dramatic inexpensive transformation on furniture. While I would LOVE to get rid of our IKEA Malm dressers they still work great and I have other items that I would rather be spending money on at the moment. Also, in 5 years we are going to do a massive addition on our house which will create a new master bedroom and Matt wants to wait to buy expensive new furniture until that time... Well I guess I could settle with creating an expensive custom look with our existing IKEA furniture by using Overlay panels that have been all over the blogs in the last year. I mean look at the dresser below... You would never think IKEA!

• Dried Flower Arrangement. Sounds odd but this is something that I have wanted for three years now... Ever since The Nest Egg opened in Fairfax Corner and I saw their beautiful dried hydrangea flower arrangements. I LOVE having flowers in my house and typically buy them every two-three weeks for my sofa table. But they add up and I always thought that the dried flowers would be a more economic option. You pay a lot upfront but HELLO they last forever. I'm just NOT a fake flower person... I pretty much feel that there is never an appropriate time to have a fake flower except for perhaps a carnation or rose ball that is suspended 10 feet in the air above you and you would never know the difference... personal opinion though. Loving the arrangements from here. Maybe I could even be adventurous and try to make my own arrangement. You can buy bulk dried flowers from etsy

What are you wishing for this year?

Dare to DIY Top Submission

Earlier this week I shared the gold stenciled Christmas plates that I made and guess what... it was featured a a top three favorite submissions by Kim from Newly Woodwards!!!! So excited! 68 people linked up their projects and it is such an honor to be selected as one of the top DIY projects.

Please stop by Kim's great blog if you have never seen it! Kim also has a new little man in her life!

Hunter is 11 Weeks

How is it possible? Time is just flying by!!!

This week I've even started my ramp up to get back to work. I'm doing two days of only two hours but still it makes it a reality that I will be leaving Hunter soon. Next week it will be two days of four hours and just increase from there. By the new year I will be doing 8 hour days (While Hunter is still breast feeding 8 hours will be my max... it would be WAY too difficult to do my usual 11-12 hours).

ANYWAY... we had a very busy last few weeks. I even forgot to do our 10 week post!

In the last few weeks Hunter...

• Has started reaching for the mobile on his mamaRoo Swing. For about 30 minutes at a time Hunter will sit in his swing and just stare at his mobile, smile, coo (talk), bat at the mobile, and laugh. It is so much fun to watch him "interact with his monsters."
• Met his Grandma Pam for the first time. Matt's mom came to visit for Thanksgiving and it was so wonderful to see her with her only grandbaby! We hope that she will be able to come back in the spring and we plan to drive up to Michigan to see her in the summer. But until we can see her in person our weekly skype visits will have to suffice.
• Had his first Thanksgiving!
• Got his first cold. Poor little man currently has a very runny nose but he is still a happy little guy... when we are not sucking his boogies out. Even with his runny nose he has still managed to sleep for a 6 hour stretch the last two nights but not without some major work on our part. We raised (slightly) one end of his bed so that he doesn't lay flat and his nasal passages can drain. At night he gets baby vicks rub on his chest, nose sucked, a vicks plug in for is room, and the humidifier is running in his room.
• Is so alert. Hunter will just lay on my lap and look up at me and laugh. When I coo he will respond with a coo and when I make a face he will start to laugh. He is a mama's boy and we interact so much together.
• Had his longest stretch without his mommy. Hunter stayed with his daddy for 8 hours the other day while I helped with a wedding. By the end of the night I was exhausted, my feet hurt, and I missed my baby like crazy.

Thanksgiving

As I mentioned last week we hosted our very fist Thanksgiving at the Park Household and I would say that it was a success. Matt's mom and boyfriend Greg came into town from Michigan and my brother, sister-in-law, and their two children came from Savannah. It was so wonderful to be surrounded by family and friends. Total we had 11 adults and 4 children (counting Hunter).

Here are some photos of the fun!

A GREAT first Thanksgiving.

DIY Christmas Plates

I'm back for the second week of the "Dare to Do-It-Yourself" challenge hosted by Decor and the Dog, Maybe Matilda, Newly Woodwards, and Two Twenty One!

If you remember last week I shared my Thankful Tree as a part of the week one "be thankful" challenge.

This week the challenge is to entertain... We were tasked to "DIY something for your table. This could be something from last wee’s Thanksgiving table or a new Christmas look. Get creative and use things in new ways. Or go true DIY and make something totally new. Ideas include place mats, table runners, place cards or centerpieces."

So for this week I decided to get some additional use out of my Dollar Tree plates that we used for our Thanksgiving table...

So I do not have Christmas china and thought that I would try to make my own... I broke out my Silhouette Cameo to make a Christmas tree stencil, taped the stencil to my plates and filled in the design with a permanent marker.

Next I heated the plates in the oven on  350 so that they can be hand washed and set the table.

This project was SUPER Simple and I am so pleased with the results.

This project also shared on:
The Shabby Nest
The Haps
Centsational Girl