Ethan Allen

The last two weeks have been a complete blur. I am obsessed with the holiday season (Thanksgiving through New Years Eve), but it’s definitely exhausting. I think we averaged three guests per day to the house during the last seven days (not exaggerating), and I loved it. Most visitors were family and friends who were in town for the holidays, and I am so thankful that I got to catch up with them. Sasha’s sister lives in San Francisco (works for Google and has the coolest job ever), and she has been in Texas (between Houston and Austin) for the past month and I’m pretty depressed that she left for California yesterday. It was so nice to have her in the same city as us again!

A few highlights from the previous week include:

Going to the Texas vs. Arkansas bowl game, although we definitely got our butts kicked…
Watching Isla pull herself up on the couches, chairs, crib, people, etc. – she’s on the move! This also means naptime is a nightmare, and she stands up all the time then cries for you to help her sit back down… so there have been a ton of naps in our arms recently
Meeting one of my sweet friends, Sydney, for lunch at Bistro Menil (it’s delicious – updated my Best of Houston: Restaurants & Coffee post!) and then strolling through the Menil Collection afterwards
Eating lunch at Tiny Boxwoods with Sasha and Isla – their beet burger is the best ever (as is their white wine mojito!)
Ordering invitations and envelopes for a couple shower that I’m co-hosting at our house in a few weeks (and doing lots and lots of planning!)
‘Baking’ even more delicious treats from the raw, vegan cookbook Mara bought me (there goes any weight-loss resolutions!)
Cooking dinner for my little sister, Jill, who is at med school in Houston – we haven’t had her over by herself yet, and she’s been in the same city as us for over a year and a half!
Buying a new bed and nightstands! More details about that here
Catching up with my friend, Andrew – one of my favorite people in the world – and hearing about his amazing new business venture (which I will definitely be sharing details of when it launches!)

In other news: Isla turned 7 months old on Sunday. Cue repetitive (but true) time flies comment! You can see Isla’s month-by-month photos here: one, two, three, four, and six. I skipped the five month update due to the Isla’s First Christmas with Carter’s series (but did snap photos!). I love this age so much. She is definitely a momma’s girl right now – if she starts to cry when someone else holds her, she reaches out to me and looks at me desperately, which melts my heart. Her favorite things include bath time with Tata, playing with Belle’s tail and collar (see photo below), sweet potatoes and avocado, standing up, crawling at a scary rapid speed, sitting up, going on runs with me in the morning, playing with the other kids at the Lifetime Fitness daycare (she squeals when older kids come up to her!), reading Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes, One Ted Falls Out of Bed: A Counting Story and Goodnight, I Love You, playing with her new Hape bike and walker, when we do stupid dances, and chewing on absolutely everything. She is now sleeping from 6:30pm-5:30am, then feeds and goes back to sleep for another hour or so. I was up past midnight every night for the last week, so I haven’t really gotten to enjoy the whole ‘sleeping through the night’ experience, but plan on changing that soon! Isla is not keen on eating purees, keeping her shoes on, when I try to pick her boogers or wash her face, being awake past 6:30pm, sitting still, and missing out on fun (serious case of nap-time FOMO). She is very high-energy, and I love her.

What were the highlights of your week? Happy Monday!

Yesterday, Sasha finally caved and bought something we’ve been talking about for months: a new king bed. He recently agreed to redo our bedroom, which is the only room in the house which didn’t get redone when we moved in together after our wedding. After months of pinning dream rooms and even publishing this dedicated master bedroom post, we embarked on the redesign process by buying the Isabel king bed from Ethan Allen (this is it, but we ordered it without the nail heads and with the diamond tufts). I am super excited.

For some reason, this room has caused me the most mental anguish – other rooms in the house were no-brainers when designing and decorating them. Perhaps it’s due to the small amount of time I have in the day to plan! So the other night I sat down on the computer, opened up Photoshop, and created our new bedroom – bed, nightstands, dresser, couch, desk, etc. Fortunately for Sasha, I like our current rug (and well, that’s about all).

[are you following along on Pinterest?]

After playing around with different pieces of furniture, I rearranged everything multiple times. In order to create out playroom, we recently moved the futon and my small desk into our large-and-previously barren room. Once the bed and nightstands arrive (we went for these ones), and we move the room around, we’ll decide if the futon needs to go back to the playroom. I definitely want a reading nook (à la this photo), so we’ll keep the floral chair we have in the room for now and add an accent table and perhaps snatch up a new chair if I see one for a good price at Home Goods (they sometimes have the best ones!). I am looking at different grays for the walls and thinking about even having an accent wall of some sort. Decisions, decisions.

So here we go, our new room ‘plan’:

Week in Review

How do you design?