Hi there!

24/03/2019

Well hello! It’s been a very long while.

I stepped back from working on this blog because I didn’t know if I wanted it to be a blog about my life, or an actual real lifestyle blog with a real following, where I talk about products and babies and make shopping guides and do recipe posts etc etc.

Plus, I wanted to focus on my magazine, and trying to lock down some paying work. And I just didn’t feel like I had the energy for writing blog posts, and it felt like nobody was reading anyway.

But, after nearly a year away, I’ve started to miss it. Not as a way to connect with people, per se, but as a digital archive of my and my family’s life. I miss doing clothes posts for Alex’s wardrobe! I miss talking about plans for the house. I miss a lot about blogging that was just for me. So, I’m going to start doing it again. :) But first, a lot of updates, because an INSANE amount of stuff has happened since I last wrote.

First – I have a job! I’m a FT salaried graphic designer at a non-profit and it’s going really well and I dig the work I’m getting to do.

Second – I launched my magazine, Northerly. I could write a lot about this. But I will just say for now it’s at times super exciting and I love it, and it’s also extremely overwhelming and stressful, and I go back and forth on whether I want to continue it for much longer, or let it go on forever and just not care how much of a drain it can be. Because the creative satisfaction I get from it is extremely good. I’m in the process of putting out the fourth issue already, somehow. I do that in the little spaces between working a full time job, and being a mom.

Third – We sold our house! Still kind of weird how it came to be. We started getting the itch to look at a new house at the beginning of the summer, but never officially said “we’re house hunting” or “we’re going to sell our house.” I saw a house I liked, we got a realtor, and it just went fast and furious from there. We found an amazing house by Lake Harriet in July one afternoon and put on offer down that evening, and had it accepted two days later.

Fourth – There were things about it we felt we could improve, and being that it was actually pretty reasonably priced for its location, we decided to undertake a huuuge renovation project. So, that’s going on right now, and we’re living with my parents until the project wrapped up in July. And speaking of July deadlines….

Fifth – We’re having a baby! Another one! Not quite ready to reveal the sex but we’re very excited, and also stressing out a lot about everything coming together and our lives not being upended more than they absolutely have to be (with our house completely in shambles and our move-in date being the day before my due date). We’re hoping for a smooth-ish transition. Mostly we’re super stoked and we know we’ll figure out the rest. There’s not as much to figure out with a second baby, though. We already have the stroller, the car seat, the bed, most clothes… But it’ll still be new and great. Alex is very stoked to be a big brother and we can’t wait to be a family of four.

So, that’s all the big stuff I guess. We got these photos taken at the new house back in October and I have barely gotten to do anything with them. So I’ll share a few now. The photographer is Kadi Vail and she’s amazing!

(also, I briefly started wearing my hair down with bangs and I have since gone back to a plain ol’ top knot. It feels right).

Start Again

22/03/2017

I’ve been just, really bad at blogging lately. It’s odd, because I have the time, and the ideas, but I lack motivation. It’s not totally a bad thing, because our nights after Alex goes to sleep are spent together down in the basement, either playing board games, video games or catching up on John Oliver. So it’s been kinda ok. But I miss my blog. I have a small cache of other like-minded blogs I love and read and think Gosh, I gotta get moving. I have stuff I want to say, mood boards I want to make, envy to stir.

But on the darker side of things, I have been suffering big time from depression and anxiety, more than I ever have in my life. It’s paralyzing at times. That takes a lot of energy, and the other energy is taken up by taking care of a baby. I was thinking this morning about why I love reading lifestyle and design blogs so much, and I wonder if it’s for the same reason I love Skyrim… It’s an escape from my own imperfect life. I spend a lot of time making my house look cool, while my own appearance has suffered. But this is the first time in my life where I actually hate being depressed. I hate how much it curbs my enthusiasm and creativity. So, I’m gonna work on this blog, and in the meantime, I have a list of “Spring Resolutions” (because while I love New Year’s, isn’t the brand new promise of SPRING even more rejuvenating??)

Make Lists!
Cook dinner more!
Start a garden!
Organize the pantry!
Write Blogs!
Keep a journal!
Spend less time on Social Media!
Start running again!
…Or at least take more walks!

(Photos are my wedding bouquet, shot by Matt Lien)

Welcome To Your Life

01/11/2016

Friends, by now I’ve shared the news far and wide on social media (which is where 97% of you are reading this from anyway), but I had to make it blog official. Our beautiful little son, Alexander Richard Royce was born on Saturday October 29 at 6:58am. He was a whopping 10 pounds and is 22.5 inches long. That’s what happens when you’re 2 weeks overdue.

I had a long induction – 48 hours – until I was finally able to push, which took 48 minutes. I’ll take pride in these figures until my dying day. I love a good birth story and will share ours soon. For now, this is a simple way to say hello to Alex.

Entryway Revival

20/09/2016

I’ve had many projects around the house this summer, from finally organizing my office closet, to our child’s nursery. There’s also some smaller stuff, like redoing this area in my house that for lack of a better option gets the label of “entryway.” Our house is strangely laid out. The garage exits into the kitchen/kitchen nook area. I suppose you could call it a “mudroom”, but that would suggest it is its own entity, when really it’s just this big wide open space that we’ve never been totally sure how to use. I know – boo hoo, too much space in the house.

For most of the time living here, it’s sort of been our trash/recycling area. Alan had this old cedar chest which we put four small trash cans inside, and that became our recycling system. Once we went to single sort though (which was like, 4 years ago I wanna say) it made a little less sense, but by gum we stuck with it. Putting the Stendig calendar on the wall above it at least filled out the space with something interesting-looking. entryway-10 And we had a nice enough looking trash can and this plastic basket bag from Ikea to hold cardboard… All in all, it’s a lot of room to be taken up by garbage. I floated some ideas to Alan to convert this area into more of an “entryway” where we would move this bench under the window, dubbed the “shoe zoo”, to under the calendar. Because, it makes sense to have the place you put your shoes on be right by the door where you’re about to leave the house, right?

The bench originally acted as auxiliary seating for our tulip table, but mostly was just a place to dump stuff like the Sunday paper and shopping bags. Also, too many shoes (wherein Alan is the main culprit 99% of the time).

My other thought was that we would move our Eames hang-it-all from all the way across the room to next to the bench, where the big painting of dots resides currently. Because where you put your coat and where you put your shoes should be in the same place, and that place is next to the door, right??? That idea is on hold for now. But then I stumbled upon this random photo on my pinterest feed which called out to me because of the white walls and tulip table. We don’t have ANY house plants. We’ve had some aloe plants here and there but they died pretty quick. And I’ve always loved the look of Fiddle Leaf Figs in many a blogger’s home. Our house doesn’t have good light, and fortunately, they don’t need much. Just water and some brightness. The kitchen gets a lot of sunlight later in the day, which seemed perfect. So, I shopped for some sexy planters and found this one at West Elm that I thought fit in with the rest of the house nicely. entryway-15 I then went with Alan to our local garden store and I found this nice little plant for about $100. It’s an investment for sure for two people who have never successfully kept a plant alive. I’ve managed to keep it alive for almost a month so far though! I even bought a little watering can to go with the planter. entryway-16 entryway-14

As for trash solutions now, we consolidated everything into one can and put it by the fridge (which makes sense, to have the trash be nearer the area where we cook, and not have to walk all the way over there. The old cedar chest got a cleaning and became storage for games and Magic cards down in the basement.

♫ It’s been awhile ♫

03/02/2016

Hi!

January got kind of blog-light at the end there. What am I supposed to write about? How my diet and exercise goals have been falling a little short because I’m super busy with my job and literally there’s nothing new to report? Plus I spent the last week of the month totally zonked out with a bad cold that left me little energy to do anything other than to sit in the basement on my new gaming chair and play Halo 5 arena battles (it’s a ridiculous looking chair, but it’s also cute and comfortable).

The Twin Cities got pelted with a blizzard yesterday. It was a satisfying snowfall compared to what we’ve had to work with this season. It came fast and furious. 12 inches I believe. I got designs on some good blog #content coming up so do not fear about the radio silence.

For a shareable today, I became extremely basic this morning and lol’d at Chris Martin doing Car Karaoke with James Corden. Coldplay is powerfully uncool to like, so it’s pretty brave of me to still be a fan of them after all these years. Right?