Only after I held my own baby girl in my arms did I realize what an impossible job we share now. I’m not sure if I can ever express just how much I love/adore/appreciate/heart you but I do. I love you with all my love and am so happy to call you my mom. Even though I have to share you with a stinky brother :)

Love,
Cha Cha

Ten Things about my mom…

1. We have rhyming names (Taryne and Eryn)

2. She’s the only person I ever want to clean my teeth. 

3. She can’t sit still when her favorite song is playing.

4. She’s nice to everyone she meets.

5. She gives those she loves crazy/ridiculous nicknames (i.e. “Cha Cha”)

6. She always used to tell me growing up that all she ever expected from me was to “do my best.”

7. Her and my dad gave me and my brother the best childhood EVERRR.

8. She can cook her ass off.

9. She can craft her ass off. 

10. I can’t live without her.

Love. Love. Kiss. Kiss.

So instead of jealously scrolling through somebody else’s trips and vacays I started going through our old photo archives and caught up on our last big trip. Back in September of 2011 Alex and I visited the Canary Islands (Tenerife to be exact) and Barcelona, Spain. It was a 3 week long trip packed with lots of beaches (with various colored sands), locals noms, and epic hikes. Below are two collages I put together. The first of our time in Tenerife!

I had been to Gran Canaria once before, although I was just a wee tot, but neither Alex nor I really knew what to expect of Tenerife. We were greeted with warm weather, UVs my skin wasn’t prepared for (this place is like right on the equator), lots of Spanish inspired foods, blue blue blue ocean waters, and soooo many British tourists ;o

Next up, Barcelona. I visited Barcelona with my roommate Becca when we studied abroad together in 2004. I instantly fell in love with this Catalonian city at first glance and was blown away with all the new sites, sounds, and the shopping DEAR GOD THE SHOPPING! On our return I was so excited to show Alex this vibrant city full of so much spirit and energy. Together we ate our way through Barcelona, walked so many miles upon miles through all its quirky neighborhoods, went swimming in our underwear when we forgot our swimsuits, and went on an amazing food tour where we ate all the tapas and pintxos our little hearts desired. It’s also where I adopted the nickname “Pintxo” for Alex. Pronounced “Peen-cho.”

One of the best things we did in Barcelona was paying the money and waiting in the long line to enter La Sagrada Familia. It was the most mind-blowing architectural structure either one of us have ever entered. All the colors, all the height, all the grandeur. There’s simply no other cathedral quite like it in this world.

And while we’re on the topic of great things happening in Barcelona, let’s not forget our fashion show in the H&M dressing room…

One day we’ll travel again, until then I’m going to snuggle my little nugget named Olive who thinks passport stamps are overrated.

Alert: Tomorrow we go for her 6 month checkup. I’m excited to see what she weighs and how tall she is, I’m not excited for when they give her shots and make me cry all the tears.

I’ve created some graphics to hit home just how much fun we’re having with Olive’s food journey. We love discovering her favorites and least favorites. She has likes and dislikes (duh), but still something I think is SO COOL. We created a mini human, and just like all other humans, she’s going to have her own little personality.

First and foremost…

This is muy importante! Okay, not really. But I’m on a constant mission to have only cute things. True story. There are millions of products out there that will make your baby’s food journey visually appealing for the both of you. We have this and this and this and love them all.

My sister-in-law gifted me this fantastic book for Christmas this past year. I read it and fully intended on making ALL of Olive’s baby food so I could control exactly what was going into her body, down to every mouthful. Welp, that didn’t exactly happen. I do make some of her baby food, but only about 25% and that’s probably being very generous. When I’m not mushing and mashing and squirting milk directly from my boob into Olive’s mashed avocado (this has happened on more than one occasion), I buy baby food pouches. I buy them because I kind of love their package design (I’m a designer. Deal with it) and they usually boast being organic and I love that on the ingredients list I will find no more than 5, totally pronounceable words. We like this brand, this brand, and this brand.

Despite us always joking that Olive is a chunk (I mean, she’s in the 50th percentile for every stat, hardly qualifies her as the Michelin Man), she doesn’t like every food and sometimes she’s downright uninterested in eating. The kid is always more interested in what’s on the table around her rather than the food at hand. The crinkly pouches of food and her sippy cup filled with water are always cooler than a spoonful of zucchini.

Olive has become so aware of both her older sister and big brother these days. She’s always reaching for them and smiling when they walk by. Unfortunately, neither one of them wants anything to do with her. I punish them by sometimes forgetting to feed Rocco. KIDDING.

What is Olive having for dinner tonight you ask? zucchini, banana, and amaranth. Thanks to this baby food journey I’m also learning new words/foods.

When we first learned I had a little olive in my tummy, long before we found out that she was in fact going to be named Olive, I had decided that if it was a girl I wanted to have a vintage mermaid theme. And if it was a boy I wanted robots to be the main attraction.

Then 20 weeks came along and IT WAS A GIRL. YAY.

And my dream of having a vintage mermaid abode for my lil precious turned into her nursery comprising of mostly “under the sea/mermaid” theme but also “cute things.” There was no way I could turn down this little, yellow fox our friend bought us on etsy.com. Or some of the other toys and mementos from my childhood that I knew had to be part of her room.

Her room is bright, colorful, vintage, and ALL THINGS CUTE. And you can imagine how stoked I was when it was featured on Apartment Therapy!!! My main inspiration was this nursery, a nursery one of my favorite bloggers put together for her little girl. This blogger blogs primarily about nursery design and puts together nursery mood boards on the regular for me too “ooh” and “ahhh” over every few days. Too bad I didn’t come across these two mermaid inspired mood boards until just a few weeks ago. They would have been the perfect resource for me.

In any case, I’m super excited to have Olive’s room grow with her as she becomes a big kiddo and beyond. I find things I would love to have in her room daily and have been working on refurbishing the very dollhouse my mom made for me. I’ve painted it, wall papered the walls, and am slowly filling it with vintage dollhouse furniture. Hopefully she’s a responsible kiddo that takes care of it and appreciates all the hard work and MONEY I’ve put into it so far!

Are you listening Olive? Play nice!!!

Olive Jane board by Eryn. See more Minted birth announcements

I found that Minted was having a Birth Announcement Challenge and figured I should definitely participate. Because HELLO, I live for this stuff. psst, when I embedded the code above the mood board became all smushed. Below is what it is supposed to look like :)

I of course used Olive and her personality and her super cute nursery as my inspiration as I was putting this together. Olive owns the mermaid print, slumbers every night in her white jenny lind crib, and is all aristocraty in her Silver Cross Pram.

For rules and to enter yourself go here!

Here is a gif about Olive’s favorite TV show GIRLS. It’s not exactly age appropriate but she’s far from forming memories, so we’ll just continue to watch Hannah Horvath trot around Brooklyn nakedly.

And here’s one about mustaches. Olive has no interest in facial hair…but I do. Along with the rest of the internet.

Many more gifs to come because they’re like so much fun.

With a name like Olive the girl needed her own custom stationery. And if you give a kid their own custom stationery they’re gonna also ask for their own custom stamp. Naturally.

My mom is the craftiest of all crafty grandmas. Every time I see her she’s showing off some new art project she’s dreamed up in her craft room. I’m in love with the OliveGrams she made for us a few weeks ago.

And then you guys are already well aware of the custom stamp I commissioned Leonora of YellowHeartArt to make for us.

Together they’re perfect and I can’t wait to send OliveGrams to all our favorite people.

Alex bought me a way cute necklace that got delivered today to our front doorstep. I asked what the occasion was and he told me how proud he was of me for the job I’m doing raising Olive and for all the work I’ve done trying to get our photog business off the ground.

Thank you.

Most days I just feel like I’m not doing enough. Well I should say…not doing enough of the right stuff. Life is all about making decisions. And in this case I’m wondering if I’m making the right decisions on how I should spend my time each day I’m home. 

Should I spend my time emailing this guy about this gig that doesn’t pay well but could offer some good business exposer? 

OR 

Should I spend my time designing another flyer that I can pass out to people that are more than likely just throwing it away. THEY BETTER AT LEAST RECYCLE IT.

How do I small business?

When I was in art school I took an oil painting class. I loved it. Most of it at least, one time I was cleaning my glass palette with a razor blade that my professor handed me with one instruction, “Don’t cut yourself.” You can guess what happened next…oh the horror. 

I loved getting into the groove of a painting, I just hated all the setup and cleanup. And I really hated sitting in my dorm room, clear on the other side of campus, wondering if I should go into the studio to work on whatever painting it was I was working on that week. Odds are I’d be able to finish it in time if I didn’t go in on the weekends to make little dabs here and little dobs there. But the point was it made me feel better to go in and go through the process of being a good student and being a better painter.

That’s kind of how I feel these days with this whole small business thang. Even if I go and sit at my computer and send off emails that probably won’t get responded to and design flyers and headers and business cards that probably won’t make that much of a difference it feels good just to be there, sitting there trying to make something happen. Rather than sitting on the sofa with Olive dreaming up epic to do lists.

Oh the thinking of the to do lists.

How do I small business?

Every time we pick up Olive these days we feel our backs slowly breaking. This kid, she be gaining weight STEADILY. Which is great.

Things that weigh just as much as Olive:

1) A bag of bricks

2) A cubic yard of wet cement

3) An apartment

She’s currently rounding out her first week of solid foods. We were going to wait until she was 6 months old but we instead made it to 5.5 months. Ya see, we’d be drinking things and eating things and she’d start yelling and reaching for whatever it was. She totally let us know she was ready. The first time she ate rice cereal she ate it like she had been eating it her entire life.

Like a boss.

My days aren’t nearly as scheduled as they were a mere month ago. They consist of naps (sometimes for both me and Olive), me checking my email, Olive crying that she’s bored, Saci letting me know that she too is bored, and just hopefully doing some of the stuff that is required to get a small business off the ground.

I’m not making huge paychecks right now. BUT I’m making like ginormous happiness paychecks that I cash in on daily and everybody around me is probably a wee bit happier because of that too. Also, it’s spring in Austin and I have a happy baby girl who now eats solids.

photo credit goes to first time parents Chris and Subina Garyet. That’s me and Olive enjoying their new bundle Ashni!!