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Holiday Gift Shopping With Walmart+

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Walmart. The opinions and text are all mine. Thank you for supporting the brands my family loves!

A few months ago, we began shopping using Walmart+, a different kind of membership with many amazing benefits, including free delivery from your store on orders $35+ (restrictions apply), member prices on fuel, and mobile scan & go in stores. And, Walmart+ just launched a new nation-wide benefit: Walmart+ free shipping, no order minimum on items from Walmart.com (excludes freight/oversized & Marketplace items)!  During the Christmas season, expenses and activities add up quickly, and I appreciate any time and money savings I can get! Using Walmart+ can save you up to 2.5 hours per week (savings based on 3 store trips per week and excludes time spent on shopping online – $35 minimum, restrictions apply) and $68 per month (savings based on 2 deliveries per week vs. non-member $7.95 fee – $35 minimum, restrictions apply) with their free delivery from your store benefit.

We’re Moving to Austin! (Plus, a House Tour)

Surprise! We are re-building our house and moving to Austin! It has been a crazy year-and-a-half since Sasha’s boss told him we needed to relocate to Austin just weeks before moving into the house we had been building for two years (in December 2018). There have been so many ups and downs and changes to our various plans, and despite some things still being uncertain, it finally feels like the right time to share this news! We won’t be moving until December at the earliest given that Google (Sasha’s employer) announced a work-from-home plan through October at the earliest, but we’ll be heading to Austin more often in the next few months to check on house progress, and I didn’t want to keep hiding these visits.

How Organized Life Design Helped My Sanity

I am typically a very Type-A person, and I love being organized; however, sometimes things spiral out of control and so long as they’re ‘out of sight,’ then they can become ‘out of mind.’ Emi’s nursery was once our guest room – a room that literally was used maybe twice in the four years we had been in the house. So the drawers in the dresser and the closet became the catch-all for all of the ‘stuff’ that didn’t have a home (just yet). Wedding albums, gifts, gift bags, party supplies, stationery, etc. It was all piled into the drawers or closet in a complete cluster. When I got pregnant, I knew that I needed to clear it out to prepare for Emilia. The task was so overwhelming to me, so I contacted Meggie of Organized Life Design to come and help. Meggie showed up with her notepad and a bag full of useful tools and got to work. We first tackled organizing the drawers and closet – we recycled, trashed and saved everything that was in the guest room. It was shocking how much needed to get tossed. After we had things grouped, we put them into storage containers then went to the room where all of the stuff was going – the playroom closet, which was largely empty at that point (except for media equipment). Meggie told me what things I needed to buy and build (which Sasha did!). I had it all setup for her next visit. During this visit, we filled things from the guest room into the newly structured playroom closet. The transformation is unreal from one closet to the next (see below!). I am obsessed. Meggie also cleared out all of the under cabinet space in the playroom and bookshelves (again, lots of tossing!), then tackled my desk drawers.

I don’t know about y’all, but organized spaces are so good for my soul! Ha. I walk into the playroom to look at the storage situation about five times a day – I’m not kidding. I made Sasha go in on Saturday after a refresh and wanted him to tell me his favorite parts. He thinks I’m nuts!

I loved working with Meggie because she taught me organization tips that I used for Emi’s closet (details here) – one of those “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” benefits. Also, just having someone come to the house to force you to go through your junk is very helpful. I shouldn’t have waited to need to organize because I was pregnant to have gone through the closet and drawers.  Meggie was practical in her approach on what to keep and what to toss. Sometimes you need someone without emotional attachment to items to say, “I get that you want to keep all of the extra X, Y, Z from your wedding, but really, let’s just keep one and recycle the rest.” Right?

Lastly, Meggie is like an energizer bunny. She is very petite, but has so much positive energy – I loved having her come over to make a seemingly horrible project become fun. I highly, highly recommend you reach out to Meggie if you’re in need of organization help! You can follow her on Instagram here.

The Eskridge’s ‘At Home’ Family Session

Breaking news: It’s snowing in Texas. Literally everyone is freaking out, including me! Poor Sasha. This is what he hears from February until well, today: “Ugh, Houston is so hot!” “I am so sweaty – I can’t wait until winter!” “When is it going to get cold?” And then, 46 degree days arrive and I’m all: “THIS IS MISERABLE! I NEED TO GO TO THE BEACH!” Ha.

I digress. Back to the topic at hand: The Eskridge family.


After my clients and I agree upon a date for their family session, I send them a document with photos of a few favorite locations across Houston and have them pick where they want their photos taken. A lot of the time, people choose the same spots – which really is fine, since being familiar with an area is very advantageous with photography. However, on occasion, I’ll have clients who want something a bit different (which is so exciting!). This year, I had two families who didn’t want the typical “green space” photos. One opted for an all-white studio (can’t wait to share some of these!) and the other, Monica of Paper Flour Ink (whom I’ve talked about on here quite a bit recently), who suggested we do them at her house. Well, I’ve been to her insanelystunninginteriordesigngoals house before and was totally into this idea.

Their front yard is gorgeous. The courtyard is gorgeous. The backyard is gorgeous. The recently renovated pool is gorgeous. The fining room is gorgeous. And last, but certainly not least: The Eskridges are gorgeous. And there you have it – a winning combination for family photos. Keep on scrolling to understand exactly what I’m talking about!

Isla’s New Butterfly Bedding

I have recently shared tons of photos of sweet Emilia’s nursery on Instagram and here on the blog, which may be the reason I’ve had people email and direct message me asking for details about Isla’s bedroom. Truth be told, I don’t share a lot of photos in her room, but that’s due to two big reasons: 1) Despite how bright the photos may look below (super, super high ISO used), Isla’s bedroom has by far the least amount of natural light in the whole house due to a covered patio being right outside her window. This makes it less than ideal for photos. 2) When we moved Isla into a big bed (this Land of Nod one!), it was around the time we bought our new lot to begin the house building process (a very, very long one!). I didn’t want to spend a lot of time and effort re-vamping Isla’s nursery into a big girl room, knowing that I’d redo it when we moved house (already have grand plans for this!). So we basically kept everything the same, just moved her crib and glider into Emi’s nursery. Alas, most of the items from her room are those from her nursery (post with now-cringeworthy photos here).

I had purchased white bedding from Target last year during the transition, but it was very dirty by now, so yesterday, we put this new butterfly bedding on her bed as a temporary refresh! She was ecstatic about this $37.99 purchase! Ha.

So here you go, a few photos of Isla’s bedroom, pre-‘big-girl-ification’ next year! I love all of the memories that have been made in this space – it’s going to be hard to leave the house we got engaged in and brought our two girls home to from the hospital (more like three, because Milly came here from the hospital too!).