Snapshots & My Thoughts by Ailee Petrovic
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Twenty-Seven

Today, I am turning 27. I honestly feel like my 21st birthday was just two or three years ago, not six! Every year on my birthday, I reflect on my favorite moments from the previous year and make goals for the next. With the birth of Isla last year, I must say that it’s been my favorite yet (and that was by far the best moment). I definitely feel much older, but that is probably to be expected when you become a mother. I am cursing myself for ever entering a tanning bed, and am now venturing into the world of anti-wrinkle creams and heavy duty sunscreens. All fountain-of-youth suggestions welcome!

Apart from newly formed eye wrinkles (let’s call them smile lines for the sake of my birthday), I have had so many amazing moments during my 27th year, some of which include:

Celebrating my birthday party last year at Canopy with a number of our closest friends and familyenhance (9)

Going on a mother-daughter trip to Washington, DC to learn calligraphy from our wedding calligrapher and getting to explore the city together (posts here and here)enhance (14)

Taking a girls trip to San Francisco (post here) enhance (18)

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Week in Review

Week in Review

This past weekend, we hosted a wedding shower at our house for two of our close friends, Scott and Amanda. We tested the capacity of ‘The Manor,’ and had 67 people eating, drinking, laughing and taking polaroids (or Instax Minis, to be precise). Sasha and I had such a good time, and seriously cannot wait for their wedding in New Orleans in just a few months. I’ll share a handful of photos later this week – although it’s hard to play photographer when you’re busy being a host! I’m glad I got some photos taken before the party started. I did share one of my favorite pictures below – Amanda’s two adorable nieces came, and they love the photos. You’ll see the ‘World’s Best Selfies’ below!

The shower was by far the biggest highlight of the week, and getting ready for it took up most of the week. There were a few other fun moments, including:

  • Meeting two sweet friends for lunch at Adair Kitchen and getting one of my favorite meals in the city – their black bean quinoa burger (it’s heavenly)
  • Getting our new ficus lyrata set up – we ordered it from Houston Interior Plants and love it
  • Ordering a British passport for Isla
  • More mushed berry finger painting with Isla, as her aunts commissioned pieces of their own
  • Hanging up lights in our backyard (well, Sasha did) – we ordered these ones from Amazon and love them!
  • Taking Isla to the park with her cousins and swinging for the first time!
  • Receiving packages from one of my best friends, Sophee, and from Kendra Scott – details on what was inside will be shared tomorrow!
  • Catching up with one of my closest high school friends, Joy (who owns the amazing jewelry company, Priya) over lunch at Zoe’s Kitchen
  • Receiving my two new wedding bands, as the tiny pave ones I had kept losing diamonds!
  • Discovering that Isla is obsessed with Plum Organics squeezable purees – we are doing baby led weaning, but want to make sure Isla practices eating from a spoon too! She is obsessed with the Greek yogurt, spinach and raspberry flavor
  • A playdate with McKenzie and Sasha’s mom on Friday – we had Isla time, then enjoyed lunch together at the house
  • Getting pampered on Saturday morning with a mimosa and blowout (something I need every day!)
  • Buying at least 7 outfit options for the shower, then wearing something I already owned (how often does this have to happen for me to learn?)

A definite low point was spending hours on the phone with Apple to fix my iPhoto – where I store all photos. Yikes. I was extremely cranky last night while this was happening!

What were your highlights this week? IslaDSC_0033Isla2

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Week in Review

Week in Review

Finally – sunshine in Houston! I can barely believe it – the past few days have been unbelievably beautiful, which is much-needed after a month of overcast skies. Given the change in temperature, Sasha and I spent much of the weekend outdoors, getting the house ready for the wedding shower that we’re hosting next weekend. Sasha is amazing, and he drilled holes and hung strung lights (six sets of these ones!) in our backyard for many hours on Sunday. I took care of well-overdue re-planting (all the plants I planted in the spring died) in our front entryway (see photo below!).

Some of the other highlights from this week include:

  • Catching up with two of my favorite co-workers over dinner at True Food Kitchen
  • Meeting with Amy of Eco Modern Concierge to discuss an organization project
  • Receiving the final pieces of Amanda’s wedding invitations – cannot wait to put it all together (and share details!)
  • Recording a vlog that I’ll share with you in a few weeks
  • Receiving the world’s cutest Janie and Jack outfit (that red bow!) from Jenny of Jenny Journey – the girl has style, let’s be honest here!
  • Taking photographs for Feather Thread – a fashion blog that is launching in February (two more sneak peek photos below!)
  • Wandering around Over the Top Linen and ordering the cutest runners and table cloths for the wedding shower
  • Having my older sister over for dinner on Saturday and playing gin rummy (and winning for the first time in ages) – we drank this Chandon sparkling red that we bought in Napa and it’s seriously my favorite drink of all time
  • Eating my favorite salad – the Insalata Fiorucci from The Original Carabbas on Voss – not once, but twice (food heaven)
  • Having both my dad and Sasha’s dad over to play with Isla and snapping cute moments of her with her granddads
  • Allowing Isla to nap in my arms once or twice, as she has a cold and needs extra mom-loving (so I tell myself)
  • Branching out into new foods, like broccoli, prunes and (sob!) chicken – Sasha insists, while I want her to be a vegetarian! I’ll pay someone to find research that giving babies meat is bad!

How was your week? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

 

Lastly, congratulations to Courtney Carlton, who won the ‘Best Baby Items on Etsy‘ giveaway! Thank you to everyone who entered. I hope you order some of these items today! You won’t regret it!

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Personal

Week in Review

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!

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Décor

How do you design?

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).

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[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’:

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