Americans love a good holiday. So much so that we will celebrate another country’s! I personally just love a good cultural experience;) Since we have tacos weekly, I embrace Cinco de Mayo with good music, bright colors, and a good helping of tacos! If you are gathering with friends this Friday, here’s an easy way to feed a crowd and liven up your usual table set up…
I was going to rule out recipe posts here, but I keep getting requests for meal ideas that we feed our big family. So occasionally I will share one, but typically it’s nothing out of the ordinary! My little ones get to request their dinner of choice on their birthday, and Gabriel has requested Stromboli the last few years. It yields a large quantity, is too easy to make, and will become an instant favorite! This recipe was adapted from my dear friend’s mother. She introduced me to Stromboli years ago, and we have made it ever since. Also, do you think there is such a thing as non-awkward making good photos? I’ll keep practicing, promise.
Gabe surprised me with tickets to see Ben Folds perform with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Ben Folds music was the soundtrack of our dating years and the first dance song at our wedding. We were counting down the days for months to see him live, and guess who got called into jury duty the same date? I almost cancelled the sitter, but held out on the hope he would get off in time. Fighting for time in our marriage is more challenging now than ever, but it always is worth jumping the hurdles. Gabe made it back just in time for us to jet to the city, and we let the music take us back to the start.
Anyways, here are a few weekend style looks I posted on instagram from recent nights, and I thought it would be fun to do more splurge vs. save posts. Let me know if these are helpful at all… VIEW FULL POST
Our home is a very open layout which makes its smaller square footage feel much larger. Our living room faces the dining area and has very high ceilings. We spend the majority of our time in the living, dining, and patio areas and we have been itching to pull this room together! We’ve had some pieces fall apart over wear and tear so it was time to hunt for replacements. (Here is what the current living room set up looks like.) I look forward to sharing the finished result, but for today here is the process and progress we currently have for the room…
Last week, we traveled to the Smokies for a family vacation with the gang. We have camped in the Smokies before, but had no idea how much the area had to offer. We teamed up with TN Vacation to film a series of commercials that were both filmed and aired the same day! This was kind of a way we got to speed date all the sites in East Tennessee. I wanted to share the mini commercials below, the sites we visited, and some of the behind the scenes photos! They were all filmed and aired the same day! It was quite an experience!
I recently was asked to share “more transparency as to how we actually run the blog,” since it was hard to imagine how I could do so with little ones. So how about an update on how we are keeping things running here? The short answer I give to these kinds of questions is usually “well I don’t sleep a whole ton.” But as you can guess there is much more to it than that, so I will go a little deeper today. I know time management and balance are things I am always learning, so this topic can hopefully help some of you also trying to juggle multiple jobs or situations in your life.
Veronica turned six this past week and before we headed to Tennessee we had a little birthday celebration with her aunts and uncles, nanna and papa, and a few of her little friends. Veronica has always been our very happy, imaginative, colorful, and bright little wildflower so it came to no surprise she wanted a “rainbow unicorn mermaid” birthday. I couldn’t quite pull off the triple theme but I’d say we got the rainbow part down;)
I loved celebrating this day with her. I just want to remember her eagerness to decorate, how she babbled all about her party to Zelie (and made her a special guest), and how much she flashed her toothy grin with those freckly cheeks all day long. Here are a few pics from the day…
