let’s recap this month:
posted a photo of how I put the inside of my cabinet doors to work
our second nugget came!
i knew before I was pregnant that I reallyyy wanted to invest in at least one nugget when my baby was young because I loved that I could pick the colors that matched my decor, I loved that the covers were washable, and I loved how versatile the pieces were. when kk was tinyyy, it was great for tummy time on our tile, then it was great for kk to practice sitting up. now (when kk’s almost 9 months), kk loves playing on them, scooting on them, crawling over them, and pulling herself up on them. (and us parents loveeee sitting on them, laying on them, and leaning on them anytime we’re on the floor.) best money spent ever.
kk’s favorite things right now besides her nuggets and her lovevery subscription? her name puzzle, her wooden activity cube, this teether, her books (this post explains more), and her basket of balls. we literally took a basket and put all sorts of balls in it (like this, this, this, this, this, and this) and she’s obsessed. feeling them, pulling them out, dumping the basket, crawling after the balls, watching them roll, shaking them, mouthing them, etc etc etc. really this is how she independently plays while I make dinner, etc.
we do a toy rotation and i’m obsessed, especially because I wanted her play area to be incorporated into our main areas of the home, as opposed to a separate room. and while I’m highly interested in the topics of independent play, toy rotation, the montessori approach, etc. it’s not an area I teach about. I love learning about these topics from these accounts:
filled kk’s bookshelf with books about love, family, kisses, and kindness
see this post for links to our monthly list of books, as well as the white paint I used on our bookshelf so that it better matched our home.
listed the three things I use to help remember traditions and special celebrations
like here’s how you can create your own yearly tasks + expenses list (and made a free printable template for ya to help - and to thank you for being here!)
and, and! speaking of, here’s our february list of routines, tasks, expenses, chores, traditions, whatever.
wrote the six ways our weekly ritual of Grill and Chill really help our weekday dinners, our marriage, and the amount of joy in our life. (i’m serious.)
three random things that were really helpful postpartum.
here’s my full list of things I loved postpartum.
discovered the wonderful combo of a puzzle and an audiobook (and maybe a glass of wine) in the evenings
motherhood has me fallen back in love with podcasts and audiobooks. here’s my full post on everything I do to help prioritize reading in my life.
i love my puzzle board. while the drawers are nice since one of my poodles loves to eat loose puzzle pieces, I reallyyyy like that I can safely move my puzzle to another room when I need to convert the room to a floral studio. (see my dining-ish room highlight on my instagram for how I convert it in, like, seven minutes.)
mr. valentine brought KK a basket with a few goodies for valentine’s day!
side note: we had such a lovely valentine’s day. even though the storm that caused texas to ice over and lose its mind was getting going. here’s our list of valentine’s traditions.
shared a photo of what I made my candy-loving boyfriend (now husband) for our first Valentine’s Day (or second? I can’t remember) when we were babies in college. the gift still sits in our home.
had brett create a Wall O Hooks on an unused, blank wall by our front door, perfect for our family to grow over the next decade. i’m SO in love with how we made a small tweak to make this space really work for us. we did six of these guys: two rows of three strips. perfect for alllll the things that come with a family (and guests): bags, swim towels, pool bags, my swim bag, sports bags, sports equipment, school things, jackets, more bags, leashes, purses, hats, brett’s gardening belt, my baby sling, backpacks, our hiking backpack, etc etc etc. i say make your home work for you. and i also say when in doubt, add a hook.
showed how I store our seasonal goodies and things we use for holiday traditions.
side note: I don’t do a lot of seasonal decor, admittedly. here’s what we prioritize instead.
thennnn we had a whole week in texas where temperatures plummeted, our power was inconsistent, and our water shut-off. roads were impassable, grocery stores were unavailable (and, in the limited hours that they were available, hundreds of people stood in line, hoping to not only get in, but also hoping that whatever they needed would still be in stock since deliveries weren’t happening.) and for a few days, the roads were so bad (my subaru was better than most, but still struggled in our hilly neighborhood), and people in my neighborhood were desperate for water, for formula, for diapers, for pet food, for food. i had just made sure we had a few extras of things important to us in january - it was almost harrowing to realize had I not done a little bit of basic prep in our home just three weeks prior, we’d be boiling snow and begging for diapers like our neighbors.
here’s a full list of things we keep in our home for both minor inconveniences and major disasters. you’ll see that a lot of things we keep on hand for minor, day-to-day inconveniences end up also being really handy in a disaster. (like, that extra formula and pet food we keep on hand so that I don’t have to go run out and get them after a long day when I’m tired? i could’ve hugged Past Haley that icy tundra of a week.)
if nothing else, please keep a few gallons of water on hand. i only had twelve gallons at the time (which brett thought was overkill), and we blew through ten gallons, since even once our water came back on, we were on a boil notice for a bit. I keep trying to replenish our stash, but water still is limited to find here a week later. add a gallon or two to your cart on your next few grocery store runs.
other things worth noting: extra bag of dog food, extra baby stuff, these great lanterns, and disposable plates/utensils. having sandwich stuff on hand for our weekly Sandwich Night and having our Snack Dinner Saturday stuff also came in handy.
shared what I do when I don’t feel like what’s on the menu plan
posted my first home tour! a very particular home tour. a home tour of how we store and display our books. (the post also talks about how I use The List - read the post to know what this means - to help decorate so that my home is cohesive and a place I absolutely love, no matter our season in life and no matter our square footage or budget.)
I wrote about my Easter baskets + how we celebrate Easter. I got our baskets ready, as I buy most things (if not everything) online…and because I’m entering a season of quite a few weddings.
spoiler: I don’t really do anything Easter-themed in the baskets - it’s instead a few things we were probably going to buy anyway, and these things get us excited for Texas summer. Brett and I also get baskets because we’ll be at the pool/beach with KK and her siblings…and because Momma deserves a few things so that she feels good at the pool/beach.
anddd perfect timing because we decided awhile back that we wanted to make an annual family vacation to a Texas beach. and so that also inspired me to make our Easter basket to play into this. because happiness is found in experiences, but also the anticipation of the experiences. so, a fun summer-themed gift basket in april it is!
and because the swimsuit I ordered KK is rainbow, I decided the rest of her basket should be rainbow-themed. like, I found her a super cute pink coverup (in a size wayyyy too big in the hopes it lasts a hot minute), a white hat, white water shoes, sunglasses that kind of look like mine, these rainbow shakers for my girl who loves things that both roll and make noise, and this toy for my zipper-loving girl. hoping to find a good book about colors or rainbows to add to the basket, too.
here’s the DIY version of the shakers that inspired me - I just preferred to support a small shop instead since I have zero craft supplies on hand and was trying to avoid a Hobby Lobby trip
ALSO. i’m bursting with excitement to say I booked our first annual trip this past week. I’m so hoping we love the place I booked enough to return to it year after year, but I’m also willing to keep trying new places until we land on that place. i don’t know, something about booking this big-for-us annual tradition as a new-ish family of three felt so special and significant. this trip is like our Grill and Chill - something that I can’t wait to continue as we add more kids into the mix. cue the happy tears.
i know I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but my yearly tasks + expenses list helps me remember things like book beach trip and plan + order easter basket things. this list is the only way I remember alllll the boring adulting, home-owning things I need to do AND the special traditions I’d like to maintain.
similarly, i’m loving this book on family rituals
my birthday is march 23. here’s how I celebrate my birthday.
I wrote this post because I wanted to share a few ways you can also create a birthday you love as an adult (and also if you’re surrounded by small children). and i want my kids to grow up and know that their mom loved her daily life, but she also loved holidays, traditions, and birthdays. and because life is short. and i want mine peppered with joyful rituals and intentional celebrations.
wrote a big organization blogpost: how to make your home work for you (and what organizational tools I loved when we lived in our 600 sq ft apartment), how to make poorly-used closets work better for you, how I organize my taxes for my business, how we organize our first aid/medicine goodies, how we organize alllllll those adulting/life papers, how I organize gift wrap, etc. etc. etc. (also bonus: how we kicked our paper towel habit.)
and six reasons why we love a weekly sandwich night (and why I kinda love dinner themes)
here’s your reminder from your dear friend haley to book those nagging appointments. (even better, do what I do and add those appointments to your yearly tasks + expenses list.) in the month of february, we got the oil changed on both of our cars, got the dogs annual vaccinations, ordered heartworm preventative for the year, both saw the dentist, and I finallyyyy got contacts again after ten years.* I moved KK to the amazing pediatrician right outside our neighborhood (I did like our other pediatrician, but going forward I couldn’t keep driving thirty minutes one-way as I’m looking at my calendar of more weddings…and more kids), I scheduled our windows to get professionally cleaned, and I booked the appointment to renew my license. Woooo, it feels so good! (Okay, not good. It’s all dull. But it feels so much better than to have it nag. I consider it some of the best self-care.)
*I had Lasik surgery ten-ish years ago with the warning that it wouldn’t be permanent. And ten years later, I finally need light contacts. (I swear I had a baby and my eyesight worsened.) And, before I had Lasik, my prescription was a NEGATIVE NINE. So I’m thrilled that after ten everloving years, I need a light negative two contact.
Also. I love love love my glasses. So I’m ordering a second pair in this updated prescription, and adding my older (but decently strong) pair to our evacuation bag. (See the bottom of this post about our pre-packed suitcase.)
loved loved loved what we watched this month.
yes, we watched some schitt’s creek and arrested development and sex and the city when we needed some comfort shows.
but! my sister gave us the brilliant idea to watch old 30 for 30 episodes on our espn+ app. (we currently have netflix and the disney plus package, which includes espn+.) we watched three 30 for 30 episodes and i can’t recommend the order we did it enough. ready?
the celtics/lakers 30 for 30
the pistons/bad boys 30 for 30
the fab 5 30 for 30
then! we watched the michael jordan documentary “the last dance” on netflix. and having those first 30 for 30s as background knowledge made this documentary SO much more interesting and the interviews so much more entertaining.
also, in january and the beginning of february we watched the crown for the first time. with subtitles - this was the key for me. we LOVED it. i googled so many things.
talked on Instagram again that I miss most DMs
because while DMs can be fulfilling, they take a lot of time and energy. and now that KK is here, my top priorities are taking care of her, taking care of myself, taking care of my husband/marriage, taking care of my home, and taking care of my business. so the limited time I spend on Instagram, I now like to dedicate to creating and sharing valuable content with the hopes that 1) it answers most questions you have and 2) it becomes a resource you can easily access in the future.
and while I miss most DMs (and a lot of tags), please know I so appreciate your for being here, and I thank you for being understanding.
and while we live on Brett’s income, any income I bring in (from weddings or from Instagram/Amazon) goes straight towards our financial goals, so even if I don’t see them, know that I really appreciate your tags and you sharing my account!
if you ever want to send a question (or kindness!), please feel free to shoot me an email. (i’m working on creating a newsletter so that this is even easier.)
I do also try to respond to comments left on photos in my instagram feed. except for that week Texas iced over…I missed all those questions.
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