handmade: fabric letters and a blanket for mia

Alice June shares the same initials as my grandma, so I wanted them to show up somewhere in her nursery.

I'd planned to buy something but then I realized I could just make my own. These were super easy, fast and addictive to make. I drew my own letters (but you could easily print any font) and printed them out, cut the fabric, topstitched, and then stuffed them. I had some left over tape measure printed trim that I used to make hanging loops. Easy and cute.

Then I made a blanket for a friend's baby girl, Mia. I wanted something a little girly, but not overly so. A pretty Anna Maria Horner print flannel that mixes sweet pink with blues and greens, a white minky back, and dark pink rick rack trim.

manly cupcakes

This year for Josh's birthday I wanted to make manly cupcakes. The manliest of cupcakes. These are Guinness cake with Irish cream frosting. With plain silver cups that look downright stainless. Cue the Tool Time grunting.

The best thing about marrying someone a few years older than you is that they are always, from then on, older than you. If you ever get a little down about how quickly you're aging, just turn your head a little to the right, and just like that: someone even older than you.

Happy Birthday Josh.

{ anatomy of a bathroom } tile

We're tiling the floor of our upstairs bathroom. The bathroom I had *hoped* would be done while I was still pregnant so I didn't have to run downstairs in the middle of the night. Now Alice is 5 months old and being up in the middle of the night is old hat.

I like tiling. It's actually one of my favorite projects. There's a natural rhythm to work. Scrape out the mortar, lay some tiles, space them out, check occasionally to make sure the grid is still straight. Place a bunch of whole tiles at once, then some cut work, then back to whole tiles. It's satisfying. And at the end of the day there's a lot to look at, a big plus.

I usually gravitate toward neutrals so that I don't feel locked into a color palette, but this green was just too pretty. It is called Mr. Green Jeans, a medium leafy green with a lot of yellow in it and I love it.