Now I just need to pick the one I'm using!

Alright, I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day, and I'm off to work on some new cards and prints that will be in the shop soon! Thanks for stopping by!

I have some fun news for you all today! A few weeks ago, my little Lemon Bean became a mommy!


She had two little sweet baby girls, who I've nicknamed Apricot and Blackberry :) But mostly I call them both fatty, haha! (Even though Blackberry is WAY bigger than Apricot. She's outgrown her like crazy!) They're little schnoodles, with a bit more emphasis on the poodle than schnauzer, since Lemon is half and half, but their daddy is a purebred toy poodle!

Then last week I was lucky enough to get a visit from my friend Toni. She flew in from Idaho to see me and while she was here we had a little fun!

She's an amazing photographer with a lot of experience photographing newborns and babies (go check out her blog to see!), so we decided to have a little puppy photoshoot! Prepare for picture (and cuteness!) overload...







They turned out so adorable, it's almost a little ridiculous. I just want to squeeze their little chubby faces so hard when I look at these!

She also helped me get some much needed decorating done in my house. Toni's a real go-getter, so she's great motivation for me haha. Now my house is cozy and all decked out for Christmas, and I'll be sharing that later this week :)

How's your Christmas prep going? Are the halls decked and carols playing in the background like it is here, or have you been putting it off? Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by!

My week has been totally off, and I woke up this morning barely realizing that it was Friday! It was a very pleasant surprise to say the least.

I realize that I haven't been very present around here this summer, but what can I say? I've been a very busy girl! We took some vacations, I threw a baby shower, and was just enjoying my summer in general. This little space got away from me pretty quickly, but I also realized pretty quickly that I missed it!

I've had several posts that I intended to write over this summer, and I still plan to, and I'm excited to start getting back to my writing. I guess since it's still pretty fresh in my mind, I'll share that baby shower I just mentioned!

Most of you know of my best friend Kayla. (I think I've mentioned her around here a time or two!) Well, she is going to have a little one soon, and I got to travel to Idaho to help throw her a baby shower. With the exception of my running late (which most of you are also aware of. I'm the worst with time management!) everything turned out great!






Since Kayla and her husband aren't finding out the sex of the baby, we went with a yellow and grey neutral theme. Those also happen to be the colors they are using for everything, including the nursery, so by using those colors for the shower, most everything they got fit into that color scheme! Whoop!

We also used pendants and birds for the decor. A little over-done maybe, but for good reason. They're stinking cute!




I decided to make sure I had a whole lot on my plate, and I went ahead and made the cake and cupcakes myself. This was a very d-i-y shower, which is definitely the best way to go when you're on a budget, but it doesn't make it any less stressful, that's for sure.




Everything turned out great though, and we all had such a good time! I didn't get pictures of them, but I also did a popcorn bar, with different flavorings and the most adorable chicken wire baskets to hold the popcorn. I got my inspiration for that here.

Also, now that the shower is over, I'm making the Pinterest board I created for it public, so if you need any great shower inspiration, you can check that out here!

Besides the fact that things could have ran a little smoother, (and there's no one to blame for that but me!) I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and most importantly, so was Kayla!

Throwing parties has got to be one of my most favorite things to do. I think my dream job would be to become an event planner! I would get to throw great parties, and be paid to do it! Maybe that's something I should pursue a little bit, hmm?

I hope you all have a fantastic rest of your Friday, and an even better weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

Day 8, Wednesday: A piece of advice you have for others. Anything at all.

Day 5, Sunday: Publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. What makes them great? Why do you love them? If you don't have blogger friends, talk about a real-life friend or even a family member

This one is pretty hard for me, because I'm still fairly new to blogging! I actually first started my blog in the fall of  2011, but I didn't get serious about writing and connecting with other bloggers until just a few months ago. So, I don't have a lot of actual blogger "friends," they're more like acquaintances.  

There are a few lovely ladies though, that I would like to recognize! First off, is my one actual blogger friend, who was also my friend in real life. She's been mentioned a few times around these parts (and even had a guest post) and she's pretty awesome! I'm talking about my friend Molly, from Mae Live Free. She's a vegan mommy of an adorable little girl, and she blogs about her life, living green, and raising a little one with the man she loves so much! I definitely think you all should check her out, if you haven't already. She likes to share (delicious) recipes, hair ideas, great photos, and lots of coffee talk! (smart lady!)

Then there are a couple others who, while maybe wouldn't fall under the "friend" category just yet, are pretty close! Lauren, of siddathornton, is so great! Her Sunday Currently is one of the first link-ups I've ever done, and she is just so sweet! She posts some pretty neat pictures, and we have a lot in common! Something tells me that we could have such a good time if we ever got to hang out in person. And Tina from Like Ordinary Life is just as awesome! I love reading about her running, and house projects (we both would like to sell our houses). So, yeah, I guess we have a lot in common too!

There are plenty of others who are always super sweet and nice when we chat, so I hope that my circle of blogging friends just continues to grow and grow!

And with that, it's off to bed for me!

I'm Molly Mae, the voice over at MaeLiveFree, and I'm pretty excited to offer up some grade-A embarrassing story over here today! Lucky for me, and you, it's a love story too. This guest appearance came about in competition (which is actually pretty typical of me and Amy, as are embarrassing stories really). When I recommended choice literature for her to read, and then noticed that she was as unmotivated to read it as I was I said, "Hey, let's say whoever finishes first does a post for the other?" She agreed.

Amy and I go a long way back! We met on my second day of school in Marsing, that little town in Idaho she loves, when we were ten year olds. She was my first best friend in that new school. Then my nemesis, and back and forth it went all the way to graduation. We were pretty similar, both oldest siblings, both loved reading and singing cheesy pop music, both highly opinionated, both royal pains I'm sure as well... We could have been a great pair of friends if we didn't insist on butting heads, and when we were, we were. For some reason though, we couldn't resist a little competition. During the times we got along we had a lot of fun, like at our 8th grade basketball season end party (it's still weird that I ever played basketball) when we were in this weird and apparently hilarious competition of offensive and non-sensical words with Cera and Danielle at a Chinese restaurant. We've also witnessed some embarrassing moments of each other's.  Like me tripping up the stairs at the basketball game we went to at the same party, and tearing my shin up. Or when Amy forgot the words to her solo at one of our Christmas concerts... In the spirit of our history, and her penchants for sharing embarrassing stories here that's what I want to share with you (her awesome readers) today.

On June 7, 2009, I met this random stranger of a guy on facebook (Myspace was losing steam). He sent me a friend request and I accepted just so I could look at his private profile and write him off as a creep...and instead my curiosity was piqued. I thought there was a really good chance that I could love him. Crazy, I know. Especially considering I had just broken off my engagement with my high school sweetheart. Even more so because I had decided that I was really thrilled at the prospect of self-exploration. I told my mom maybe the DAY BEFORE that I would never date someone I met on the internet...then he showed up. It was the worst timing for romance too! My dad had just moved out, and my great grandma was in bad shape with dementia in a nursing home. But for some reason I felt so compelled to know this guy, so I called him out, and messaged him saying that we could be friends as long as he actually wanted to socialize. He thought my initiative was charming and eloquent, so we started talking, via message and text, and I knew I was in trouble! We texted almost non-stop for two days, he stayed up late to talk to me while I stayed up for 64 hours straight in the nursing home leading up to my grandma's passing. Then we decided to meet. He drove 26 miles to pick me up for our first date (I didn't have a car or license at 19!) and when I let him in the door my heart hit the roof. I KNEW that he was my life from that moment on, it was like I'd been hit by a speeding train, and that he had a specific gravitational pull that affected only me. It was the craziest. When we got in his truck he said I smelled delicious and I giggled because my perfume was DKNY Be Delicious.


Fast forward through half a day spent at his apartment just talking like old friends and watching a movie...I meet his roomate, and then his best friend and his girlfriend. The two latter, this fella, and myself decide to go out to his favorite sushi restaurant for dinner. I'm equal parts excited and mortified. I had always wanted to try sushi, but I wasn't the biggest fan of seafood. So off we went in his truck, onto the freeway, when he realized he forgot his wallet. His best friend laughed and remarked on how common that was, and we exited to go back and get it. We arrive at the sushi restaurant and the gentlemen proceed to do the ordering, they know what's good, I trust them. The sushi arrives and we share 4 rolls. Thing to note: I've never REALLY used chopsticks before, so they give me a lesson. I managed to grab a piece of the Spicy Hawaiian roll and bring it to my mouth. Everyone is talking and carrying on, and I'm trying to figure out how to eat it without looking gross or stupid because it's huge! I decide to bite off half of it and the whole thing starts crumbling like a old house being demolished. My mouth is full, and I'm helpless, and suddenly all eyes are on me... I quickly bring my free hand up to cover my mouth and attempt to chew and push the rest into my mouth while they are looking at me: one smugly, one laughing, and one acting like nothing is happening. The latter being my date thank God, he doesn't seem like I've embarrassed him. The good news is that it was delicious, and also that it wasn't the last date like I feared.

We were pretty much inseparable after that first date, I practically lived at his apartment at least half of the week until I did move in, in October. Somewhere in that still-dating-and-not-yet-one-hundred-percent-comfortable stage we were out at KFC eating lunch, those bowls with mashed potatoes, corn, chicken, cheese, and gravy AKA failure piles in a sadness bowl (forgive the strong language, but watch it, do it). We were sitting in a booth, facing each other, and talking about something that I was apparently excited about and I had set my plastic spork down in the bowl to talk with my hands. Are you starting to see the danger here? No, read on...at some point my hand started to come down, hovering somewhere above the spork for a split second (imagine this scene in slow motion, it's best) before coming down and scattering flinging the heck out of mashed potatoes all over me, my face, the table, and probably across the restaurant, but none on my laughing boyfriend. Some guys might have up and run out on a girl then, or grabbed me and got me out of there fast, but he didn't. If I hadn't already known he was the one, I would have learned it then.

As if those two ugly faced, slobby food scenarios weren't bad enough, things like this happen with me all the time...dipping my hair in farina, slopping coffee all over my face and chest, dropping a glob of ketchup on my swaddled nursing newborn, etc. Even today! After spending 10 minutes hand grinding coffee beans for my aeropress coffee, I set out to remove the bottom canister of the hand grinder and dropped the grounds all over the floor. This time my now husband was covered in my shame as well, standing a little too close when it happened.

I'm lucky to have such a soul to witness my awkward encounters though, and reminded of this everyday. He wrote in his wedding vows that it wasn't despite things like me flinging mashed potatoes in my face that he loved me, but because of them. If that's not a victory for the grace challenged like myself, then I don't know what is.


Thanks for having me here! Maybe I'll see you around my corner of the internet sometime. ;)