we bought a house
I alluded to this in a post last week, but we bought a new house a few weeks ago. It’s kind of a long story . . . but the short of it is that Mark and I bought an investment property in Austin, Texas about 10 years ago (a city we love) and finally decided it was too hard to manage from across the country. We sold it, and then needed to buy another property to avoid capital gains taxes (bla bla bla first world problems), so we suddenly found ourselves with a major deadline to buy a . . .
DIY passport photos: the best way to take passport photos of small children
All six of us have expired passports, and I have a trip planned to Ethiopia, so it seemed logical to go ahead and renew all the passports at once. This meant trying to get decent passport photos for all six of us. This has not been an easy task in the past. The kids are squirmy squirmy squirmy and many passport photo shops won’t even take passport photos of children. Not to mention, it’s ridiculously pricey for a small little photo. At about $15 a pop in these . . .
spring fever: simple and easy may day baskets {dailybuzz 9×9}
Our backyard bougainvillea is blooming and taking over, and I thought I would use some cuttings to share one of my favorite spring traditions. When I was a little girl, my sisters and I would always make May Day baskets to pass around the neighborhood. My kids and I did a little trial run making some baskets, and they are already talking about doing it again on May 1st. I am a self-confessed non-crafter, and this is a very simple, cheap and easy project that kids can complete . . .
operation “get rid of half of our belongings” underway
For the last couple months, I’ve been in a bit of a funk about our house. It seems like my level of contentment about our house ebbs and flows, and every so often I find myself feeling very claustrophobic and ready to move to a prairie in Idaho or something. As the kids are getting bigger, the house is feeling smaller . . . and it wasn’t exactly big to begin with. Our mid-century house is just over 1300 square feet, and I apologize in advance if that seems huge to anyone . . .
cute, cheap photo invitations for slacker moms
Confession: I nearly dropped the ball on Kembe and India’s birthday this year. I don’t know what it is about October, but it always creeps up on me. There is something about the end of summer, the new school routine, and the weather that still feels like it’s August that always leaves me SHOCKED when October rolls around. So on the last day of September, I looked at the calendar and had a little moment of panic that it was one week until the twin’s birthday and I hadn’t planned . . .