Butterfly Birthday Party: The Invites

Dear Em,
Just as promised...4 weeks ago, I'm going to recap your Butterfly Birthday party in a series of posts on Wednesdays. We'll continue with the invitations. These were my favorite birthday invitations yet, & I think that's because you had a hand in designing them.

I went to Etsy, my go-to site for birthday party invites. I typed "Butterfly Birthday Party Invitations" into the search bar. There was a huge selection to choose from. I narrowed it down to five or so of my favorites, & then I asked you which ones you liked.

At first you were all about color rather than design (you're always all about color). Once I explained to you that we could probably change the colors around, the invites from Lucky Plum Studio were your very favorites (& I think they had been mine too). They were almost perfect for you from the start. The invites were mostly pink, & the writing of your name would be in a sparkly gold (two of your favorite colors).

All we had to do was ask them if they could give us purple butterflies. Yenny was so wonderful to work with. We had beautiful butterflies in a mosaic of purple colors in no time. You were thrilled with the final result & glad that you had been a part of the process.

It was the perfect way to set the theme of the party. If only everything else had gone as beautifuly & easily!

I love you so,

Mommy

Front Door Makeover

Dear Em,
It's funny that I'm posting this now, because our Front Door makeover has been a long time in the making. The thought of it came at a time when I was mostly satisfied with updating the inside of our house & started looking at the outside. We had plans to put in a paver stone walkway (I can't tell you how many times I had almost fallen on my face walking through our crushed stone path in heels, & Daddy hated trying to shovel it in the winter), update our front door, update our shutters, & work on the landscaping. A couple years ago we put in a paver stone walkway. The next year I was hoping to tackle the door & shutters. I just wasn't sure how.

I looked at paint colors, thinking maybe a different color would make the door pop (& the green shutters have never been our taste). I studied door-shutter-house color combinations on every drive I went on, looking at all the other houses along the way. I made up my mind with different colors several times & then unmade it. Finally, I decided that we would forgo the paint altogether & just buy a new wood door. Except that I knew how much we hate to have to restain our back deck, & I wondered about the durability of wood doors. Since a fiberglass door could give us the wood look without any maintenance, I finally settled on a fiberglass door. I waited a month just to be sure & still liked the same door. So, I went into Home Depot to look into the process of ordering & installing our new door.

This was back in September. The front door was finally finished a few weeks ago. Sigh, it is a long story...

First, someone came to our home to do some measurements. While we had originally planned to just buy & install a front door, the gentleman doing the measurements explained that wasn't going to be possible. It seems that our door frame (which we had asked a handyman to fix years back...sigh) was rotted, & we would need a whole new door frame & sidelights (the panels on either side of the door) as well.

I took you with me to Home Depot to place the order. I thought it would just take a few moments, but I think we were there for over an hour. It seems that the sidelights we wanted couldn't be matched up with the door we wanted. The price went from reasonable to something five times what we had planned on (so much for updating the shutters as well). By the end, you were ready to go into meltdown mode. You had looked through every door & window catalogue in the doors & windows section of Home Depot by the time we finally ordered, not exactly what I wanted but, something I thought we could all be happy with. The order was placed with a rough timeline of our door being installed in about a month (mid October).

Though they came weeks after we had originally planned (begin of November), the day the installers came was an exciting day. You wanted so badly to talk to them & tell them about your whole life story, but you & I had to head off to work & school. We left Daddy, who was working from home, to oversee the project. Daddy called me later in the day to tell me that the installation was done, & I looked forward to coming home to see our new door.

It was when I got home that Daddy explained some of his concerns, & we realized why we would never order something from Home Depot that would need to be installed. While Home Depot was very friendly, had great customer service, & we loved the product we ordered from them, we were stuck with whatever installers they had contracted with. The installers had left us with holes throughout our screen door (apparently, they thought we no longer wanted our screen door & threw it in their truck), molding that showed gaps of bare sheetrock, & a constant draft coming from the door.

When I called Home Depot, I was livid. We had spent five times what I had originally budgeted for our new door....for this? I explained the problems. They were very understanding & supportive, but in the end they were sending out the same installers to fix the problem. So I made another appointment, & a week later the same installer came out. He told me that the holes in my screen were Home Depot's problem & that the bare sheet rock was really a fault of our house- not the installation itself. I was ready to cry. So, you mean that our new door is actually going to be much worse than our old door & it's our house's fault? In the end, he "fixed" the problem with the draft but said he didn't have any of the materials needed to fix anything else.

This left me with nothing else to do but make another appointment for the installers to come back a week later & fix everything else. A day before they were scheduled to come, I got a call that the appointment would have to be rescheduled after a certain part was delivered to our house. When I called Home Depot to figure out just what was going on this time, it was then I had learned that the installers must have broken the bottom piece of our door without telling us & the new piece being sent to our home was meant to replace it (which would explain why there was still a constant stream of air coming from under our door).

At this point I was beyond livid. I was afraid that if I tried to deal with anyone in relation to our door at this point, I was going to have a meltdown. So, the new piece to our door came in two weeks later, & I scheduled an appointment for the end of December for the installers to finally fix the installation. That's right, the end of December. It had been over three months that I had been working with Home Depot & the craptastic crew they contracted to install our door.

You & I were in North Carolina when the final install happened, but Daddy assured me everything had been fixed (except for the screen door, Home Depot has told us they will replace it but I still don't think I've calmed down enough to talk to anyone about it). When we came home, I looked at our "amazing" door & just felt sick to my stomach. Don't get me wrong the door itself looks great, but I swear the floor in front of our door is much colder than it ever was before we replaced our old door- which is funny because this door was supposed to be infinitely more energy efficient. If you look from the sides, I can still see bare pieces of sheet rock & feel cold air seeping through the sides of the frame.

I just can't bring myself to get upset about it or really even care about it anymore. So, a couple weeks ago, I put a fresh coat of paint on the molding around the door & called it a day. I guess it's just as done as it's going to get.

I feel like it's a really sad thing to see that there are people who have so little pride in their craftsmanship. It's disappointing we spent what I would consider a lot of money & received so much less than what we were promised. And that was just for a door. In a few years, we hope to remodel our kitchen. Just thinking about going through this type of situation with our whole kitchen is enough to make me drop to the floor and huddle in the fetal position. I know one thing, we won't be working with Home Depot.

Sometimes I wonder...was our old front door really that bad in the first place? Sigh.

I love you so,
Mommy

Family Room Makeover

Dear Em,
When I'm stressed, I take on projects. To most people, that seems kind of dumb. Why take on more when you're already stressed? Well, my life (our lives) has been filled with new uncertainties recently. I've been hearing the phrase "control the controllables" a lot lately. Except that still left really big things in my life that I'd recently totally lost control over. In the grand scheme of things, it's not a big darn deal. We're all healthy (that's what is really important. It was just enough stress to, you know, drive me crazy. Some people can just roll with it, but feeling totally out of control does not bode well for me & my Type-A personality.

So, I've developed some coping mechanisms. We do a lot of praying (we're always praying, but we tend to do a lot more focused praying in times like these & ask for prayers from our friends & family). If I can't control things, then we leave them in God's hands. And with the big things in God's hands, that doesn't leave very much in my hands. So, I control the controllables by taking on things I can control, like wedding shower projects for your Aunt Andrea (I can't wait to post more about these soon) & Valentine's projects with you (posted here, here, & here). But when those projects were finished, & I started working on little home improvements.

There are little things that I've been putting off updating forever, but now was the perfect time to get things done. Our first home improvement project of this year was a Family Room makeover. I made a deal with your Daddy. If he put you to bed every night for a week, I would work on the family room by myself. It gave me a project of my own to clear my head with, & ensured you would be taken care of without me having to stop mid project. So, while you giggled & snuggled with Daddy, I put on my design hat & rocked out to music & listened to audio books & tried to get my head straight.

Just for funsies, here is the family room when we first moved in five years ago.

Family Room: Way Before

Isn't it funny to see it that way? I forgot what it looked like back then until I stumbled upon that photo. The mattress on the floor is the spot your Daddy & I first slept in our house for a couple weeks while we worked on painting & putting in new carpet throughout the house. The yellow paint color was one of the first things to go. With a baby on the way, I was thrilled to put my own mark on the Family Room.

Family Room: Before

Family Room: Before

Family Room: Before

Five years ago, we painted the room Valspar Lyndhurst Celadon Green, hung up our recent wedding photos, kept the curtain rods but changed the curtains, & filled the shelves with pictures & books. It's funny for me to see mostly cat toys, because back then we had just found out that I was pregnant & there was no little love to put the family in our Family Room.

I am an experienced house painter. With my Dad being in the Navy, we moved a lot, & that meant a lot of new house painting. What I am not experienced in is painting cabinets or shelving. Which is probably why when we moved into our house five years ago & painted our whole house, I decided the shelving in the family room looked fine without a fresh coat of paint. Really, the cabinets could have used a coat of paint back then, but after five years of family time (& the Family Room being the main space for you & your little friends), they looked disgusting. This one was of the biggest pushes for me to redo this room again, & this is what it looked like as I started out one Monday evening.

Family Room: Mid-Project

This time around, the changes are more subtle. While I repainted the whole room, the colors mostly stayed the same. I've added & changed things over the past couple years (an ottoman here, new curtains there, & some artwork everywhere), & this was the drive to put it all together.

Family Room: After

The whole room needed a fresh coat of paint. We all loved the color, but I wanted to go with more durable paint this time. Little hands & feet can really do a number on the walls. I went with Benjamin Moore paint this time. It's more pricey than our typical Valspar go-to, but I'm hoping it's worth it. I asked them to match the Valspar paint sample I had. The mixed paint came out a little bit lighter than I wanted at first, but after asking them to add some grey, it was perfect.

I got the curtains from West Elm a couple years ago, but finally got around to putting up a new curtain rod. The pillows I bought at Target. The cat, Joey, was our very first baby. That is his favorite spot to sit when you're not in the family room.

Family Room: After

I also wanted to update the artwork. When we first moved into the house, Daddy & I had just gotten married. I included lots of family pictures, but mostly the photos were recent wedding photos. Five years later, the Family Room was starting to feel a little too much like a shrine to our wedding. The Family Rules Canvas (found at One Kings Lane) is perfect for a Family Room. I also updated many of the photographs & frames in the room (frames from Michaels). We went with mostly beach pictures (being the beachbums we are, there was no shortage to choose from) & family photos. 

Family Room: After

Your kitchen set & toys have replaced the cat toys (they have a tiny basket in the living room). I bought a few bins to store toys in at HomeGoods. I couldn't believe how well they matched the Family Room colors. It gives the room a decorative way to store your toys that would otherwise fill our floors.

Family Room: After

I ordered an enlarged print of our Christmas Card photo as the big family photo in the room (although I'm kind of hoping we get a great family beach shot at your Aunt Andrea's wedding that may replace it).

Family Room: After

Family Room: After

Other than the toys, I wanted to a fun way display your mark as well. As we were looking for Valentine ideas, I came across a Valentine Tree that I thought would look perfect in our family room. First I traced the outline of tree foliage (is there another word for bush part of a tree?) in yellow marker on our middle cabinet doors & painted them in the same color as the Family Room walls.

Family Room: Mid-Project

Family Room: Mid-Project

Once the paint dried, it was time for your part. We covered your hands in beige paint we had leftover from some of the other rooms in our house. You put your hand prints in the middle of the tree foliage. I have to say, it was tough to get your hand prints down low & at that angle, but we did it.

Family Room: Mid-Project

Family Room: Mid-Project

Family Room: Mid-Project

While Daddy cleaned you off, I painted the trunks of the trees & did touch-ups where your fingers had wiggled a little too much- & where you accidentally grabbed part of the freshly painted white cabinet with your beige painty hand. We let it dry overnight. The next day, we covered your index fingers in red paint & used your fingerprints to make apples. I painted two hearts, one on each trunk, with your initials & the date & "J+B=E" to add a little more personalization. 

Family Room: After

Family Room: After

I love how your handprint trees came out. To me, it gives the room that little extra feeling of home & family & fun. After watching me work on the room for a week, I think you just loved being able to help with the Family Room makeover.

I also reorganized the shelves, which had started to look a little cluttered, & added new pictures & knickknacks & flowers.

Family Room: After

I can't even explain the sense of peace & accomplishment I feel when I walk into the room now. I know that overall, we just made little changes, but little changes made a big difference for me. Unfortunately for you & Daddy, my need for head-straightening projects didn't end there. Over the next few weeks, I'll be revealing a few other home improvement projects as well.

I love you so,

Mommy

a little bit of color & a little bit of sparkle

Dear Em,
While there are positive aspects of every season, winter is for sure my least favorite. I think that's because we spend so much of it cooped up inside. It's so grey & cold, & it gets dark before 5pm. I need fresh air. I need sunshine. I need color.

At least there are fun winter holidays to bring pops of color & a little bit of sparkle back into our lives. We mostly decorated for Valentine's Day a few weeks ago. I think it was the week after we took down the Christmas decorations & I couldn't take the dreariness anymore. This weekend, we added a few more things to our Valentine's Day decor. I love reusing what we have & adding a little something new each year.

First, we created a new door hang. I didn't start making them for the holidays until St. Patrick's Day last year. So, we didn't have one for Valentine's Day. Since you are four, this is your fifth Valentine's Day. We used five photos- one for each year that you've celebrated the holiday. To add a little bit of extra sparkle, I picked up some sparkly scrapbook paper & ribbon for the heart backgrounds.

I made three door hangs- one for Nonnie & Papi, one for Grandma & Papa, & one for us. Your Daddy's eyes lit up when I showed him the finished product. It's so fun to look at how you've grown & developed through the years in such a festive (& sparkly way).

Of course, we had to hold a mini photo shoot (it perhaps wasn't as mini as you would have liked) in order to have pictures from this year to choose from for our new door hanger (and let's just face it, I use any holiday as an excuse to stage a photo shoot). For that I borrowed a wicked fun idea from Hank & Hunt & made a floating heart backdrop for our Valentine's Day photo shoot. It was free for me to make, because I used leftover material from other crafts. I used a heart punch, paper (sparkly gold, sparkly pink, & red), clear fishing line, tape, & scissors.

It was time consuming. First you helped me punch out hearts. We punched out 120. Once you went to bed, I taped 20 pieces of 7 foot fishing line in straight lines across our dining room table. Then I taped six hearts, spaced evenly, to each piece of fishing line.

In the end, I kinda felt like it took forever to make, & those lines very easily get massively tangled (as I learned by carrying them upstairs to where we were taking the photos). But after taping them up, I loved the effect.

Plus, once we were done with our photo shoot, I cut each line in half & hung them up over your bed & our dining room table to add a little fun & whimsy to our existing decor.

In fact, the dining area looks so Fancy Nancy fancy, you decided to hold a tea party for your American Girl dolls, princesses, & baby dolls.

There were candles & real china plates for ambiance. There were cookies & cake to eat & pretend "pink chocolate milk" to drink. You even made sure that each girl had a magazine to read. You were the perfect tea party host. It was ridiculously adorable.

Mid-way through the tea party, you decided you needed a list of your guests with checkmarks to signify that they were there. You plopped yourself on the floor with a pen & paper & began sounding out their names & writing them down on your own. The first name on the left is Rapunzel (I think you confused your z's with your v's). I love how you sounded out Eral (Ariel). It took you a few tries to write your best friend Savanna's name, & you were so proud of yourself once you did. I was over the moon proud of you too. We've been doing a lot of rainbow writing, but other than you writing your name on your own, we haven't done much independent sounding out & writing.

I can't believe how much you're growing & learning & developing. You amaze me every day. We may have hung up decorations for Valentine's day, but I think it's truly you who brings a little bit of color & a little bit of sparkle to our home each & every day.

I love you so,

Mommy

Big-Girl Garden Room Reveal: Star Gazing

Dear Em,

* This is part of a five post room reveal. For more peaks into the room, see also Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: The Bed, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Dressing Up, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Your Book Nook, & love letters. *

No matter what camera I used (& I tried three) I just couldn't get a shot of the starry sky you can see from your bed. Nope, your room doesn't have a retractable roof. While that would be kinda cool, our house is nowhere near that technologically advanced.

I've always loved stargazing. Growing up, I had glow in the dark star stickers hanging all over my ceiling. I loved drifting off to sleep while gazing at my very own starry sky. The daytime was another story. The star stickers were a little of an eye sore during the light of day.

I wanted you to have your own starry sky without the daytime eyesore. When I was six months pregnant with you, I bought some glow in the dark paint & star stencils from the craft store. Is the image of me six months pregnant, standing on a stool, painting the ceiling a little ridiculous? The glow in the dark paint is barely visible during the day (it shows as a really pale yellow) but glows bright after you turn off the lights at night.

I loved tucking you in your nursery each night. Right before I switched off the lights, I would ask you if you were ready for your stars.

I wanted you to still have that for your big-girl room. I wanted you to have stars to make wishes on & coax you into sweet dreams. So, the last thing I did was stencil some stars on your ceiling. And I mean it was THE VERY LAST THING. You were actually laying in your bed (because it was bedtime) while I stood on your bed & quickly stenciled.

Now as I tell you "I love you so" one last time after I tuck you in, I know you'll be stargazing once I switch off the lights & shut your bedroom door.

Sigh, maybe I'll do a little stenciling in my room too.

I love you so,
Mommy

Big-Girl Garden Room Reveal: Your Book Nook

Dear Em,

* This is part of a five post room reveal. For more peaks into the room, see also Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: The Bed, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Dressing Up, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Star Gazing, & love letters. *

When I was a little girl, I longed for a book nook. One of my rooms had a window in an alcove, & I dreamed of a sweet little window seat in it. I would have read so many books in my quaint little book nook. Your papi worked on my room for months, & I forced a smile on my face when there was no window seat or book nook in my room reveal. I also never got the large weeping willow I wanted so badly so I could sit under it & read away my summer breaks. I was forced to go swimming in our pool instead. I know, it was a difficult childhood I lead.

Designing your big-girl room was my chance to finally give your room what I thought every little girl should have: a book nook.

Creating this book nook wasn't all sunshine & butterflies. I had a very specific plan for the shelves, & what you see is not what the plan entailed. Remember how I had bought these organizing cubes from Home Decorators Collection for a crazy amazing price? Well, I soon learned that they were a crazy amazing price because they were pieces of crap. I was in the middle of putting them together when I realized that not all of the right pieces needed to put the shelves together were even in the box. Then one piece completely fell apart & broke. No wonder they didn't even ask me to return them to the store. They just sent me a gift card for what I had paid (since I had bought them when they went on sale 5 months earlier). Luckily I can use the gift card at Home Depot, because I wasn't planning on buying anything else from their company.

That left me with no shelves, & have you noticed how expensive shelves are? Crazy expensive. I searched online for a replacement, but with the extra we spent on your bed I knew we couldn't afford to also splurge on shelving. That was it for me. Between the changes we had with your bedding & the disaster of the shelves, I'd had it. 

That's when I started to cry...over a bedroom design. I know. I'm not exactly proud, but that's what happened. In the middle of my tears & feeling bad for myself, I started an Etsy search. Etsy saved your room (& saved us a lot of money).

I found someone who was selling white-washed wooden crates that had been made into shelves. She didn't have as many as I wanted, but it gave me an idea. I ordered 12 unfinished, wooden crates from a wholesaler. They were more expensive than my original plan for shelves, but much cheaper than anything else I found. They also give the garden room the rustic vibe I was going for.

The crates were delivered disasembled. 12 crates= 60 sides. Your nonnie, cousin Michaela & I stained all 60 sides. I picked out a pink stain at Home Depot (well, I thought it was pink, it came out more purple) & a whitewash stain. It took what felt like forever to put two coats of stain on all 60 of the sides. Your nonnie & cousin Michaela will probably tell you I tortured them by making them stain in the garage in 100 degree heat. I just tried to smile, lie & say we were almost done, & bribe them with Dels Lemonaid. I'm sorry not to have pictures of us staining the 60 sides, but I'm pretty sure Nonnie & Michaela would have murdered me if I took out my camera.

Once the sides were stained, it was really easy for your daddy & I to put the crates together (they had pre-drilled holes). I was incredibly nervous about making the individual crates into shelves & anchoring them to the walls (like I said previously, I don't don't have a lot of confidence in our craftmanship), but that was actually pretty easy too.

I love the result, & it makes me smile to think we made this. We also finally have a spot to store a lot of your knick knacks, baby dolls, stuffed animals, & the library of books you've accumulated. 

We topped each shelf with purple flower prints that I found at Home Goods for a great deal. Michaela & I painted the frames pink to bring a little more of your two favorite colors, pink & purple, into the room.

While I was perusing Etsy for shelving ideas, I also came across bench ideas for the window seat. I found benches that were inexpensive, colorful, & rustic: just what I needed. I ordered your bench from Square Nail Furniture. I highly recommend this Etsy shop. They were so responsive. "Um, what if we made a bench this size by this size?" "No problem." "What if it was this size by this size." "No problem, but we'll charge you less." They let me customize the size (I needed it shorter & deeper) & the color (sunflower). I love the sturdiness of it. I love the rustic look of it. I love that there is an area for storage bins. I love that the shop refunded some of my money when they realized delivery would cost slightly less than what they had originally projected.

We added some throw pillows from Home Goods & Walmart (can you believe that Walmart had a better online selection of throw pillows than anyone else?), & we had created the window seat I always wanted.

We kept your yellow curtains from your old room & added some white sheers. I think they add a sunniness & match your bench so well.

To add a little more seating, we brought in your yellow rocking chair & your pink bunny chair from your nursery. Since "and they lived happily ever after," is one of your favorite lines from the books you read, the frame that we were given as a wedding present fits perfectly just above your bunny chair. I just added a happy picture of the three of us.

We also bought you a big, pink beanbag chair, personalized with your name on it. It was on-sale at Pottery Barn Kids. We figured it would be another comfy spot for you to read until your heart's content. 

And when the lights go out, the string lights we got from Target, give your room a little night-time magic.

There's one extra finishing touch that I put on your room to make your nights a little magical, & I'll tell you about it tomorrow.

Until then, you might find me sitting on your window seat, lost in a book & the beauty of what sits just outside your window.

I love you so,

Mommy

Big-Girl Garden Room Reveal: Dressing Up

Dear Em,

* This is part of a five post room reveal. For more peaks into the room, see also Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: The Bed, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Your Book Nook, Big Girl Garden Room Reveal: Star Gazing, & love letters. *

You've loved playing dress-up for a while now, but we never had a place to store all of your dress-up clothes in your old room. Since you were moving into a bigger, big-girl room, I wanted to create an area where dress-up fun can happen.

In one corner we have your dress-up rack from Ballard Designs. We bought it with a coupon. It was still pricey, but I love it. It has all the storage solutions your last rack does not, & it's sturdy enough to hold all of your dress-up things. You have a lot. Mostly past halloween costumes, hand-me-downs, & things bought after halloween for great prices.

You enjoy sitting at your vanity while you put on your costume jewelry. Someday the vanity can double as a desk. For now, a sense of whimsy is added with these butterflies your Nonnie found at Land of Nod. We used ceiling hooks & fishing line to hang them. They look like they're kind of fluttering around your garden room.

In the middle of your dress-up area is your dresser that holds your regular clothes. It goes with your bed from Pottery Barn. We had bought your first dresser from Babies R Us. It was not a cheap dresser, but it was made with cheap materials & promptly fell apart in less than a year. This dresser is sturdy & will last after continued use. We love it & how much it holds. The best part was that your dresser & bed were assembled upon delivery (even though we had gotten a special for free delivery). Do you know how happy that made your daddy? Have I told you how much we love Pottery Barn?

You're rocking on your "rocking lamb" which was a gift from your aunt Gina.

The wall is decorated with prints we bought when we traveled to Ireland & my grandma had framed before you were born. We used them in your nursery, & I wasn't ready to let them go yet. The definition of your name was a baby shower gift. The bright yellow & blue candle holders we've had but haven't displayed, & the cute blue owl we found at Home Goods (had I gone there first, I probably could have done your whole room from HomeGoods).

I bought a mason jar & silk flowers from Michaels to add to the garden theme.

Santa had put these letters (from Kohls for super cheap) in your Christmas stocking, but we hadn't had anyplace to put them. Now they hold pictures of us, your nonnie & papi, your grandma & grandpa, your aunts & uncles & you. I thought it was a fun way to display the people you love so dearly.

In the corner, by your closet, sits a blue chair that used to be my grandma's. Wasn't my grandma so fun to have a blue chair, & how perfectly does it fit in your garden room? The girl in pink on the circle of wood hanging on the wall is something your Nonnie made for me when I was a little girl. Great, right? The little Emma ornament was a gift to you from your Uncle Briant & Aunt ErinShea, the hope ornament we bought in Ireland, & the Angel ornament was my grandma's. I like to think she's watching over you while you sleep. I love having pieces of our different family members throughout your room.

One of my favorite pieces is the personalized TuTu Bow Holder I ordered from Etsy. It is so beautiful & fun. It combines two of myfavorite things: asthetics & function. As you can see, you have a whole lot of hair bows & this is such an amazing way to store them. 

Last but not least is your very favorite spot, your mirror. We often find you dancing around in front of it...no matter how you're dressed. It was off-white rather than white like the description suggested on Amazon, but that doesn't matter to you. You twirl & dance & giggle in front of it no matter what color it is. 

Lucky for me, your Nonnie painted beautiful vines & flowers throughout & now I'm OK with the color.

A fun spot for a fun girl...& boys...& everyone else who comes to play.

Tomorrow we'll look at the part of your room I would have most enjoyed at your age.

I love you so,

Mommy