selly's outdoor living area

I love designing outdoor spaces, which is kind of odd when you think about it, because I'm what you would call indoorsy. This probably stems from my propensity to sunburn, my total lack of athletic ability, and my distaste of being dirty. All of that to say though: give me a gorgeous patio, great weather, and a cold cocktail, and I AM THERE.

That's why I was super jazzed when Selly contacted me via the blog and asked if I could help her design an outdoor space for her family. They just moved from a teeny tiny apartment in Philadelphia to this gorgeous house in the 'burbs, a whopping 3 times bigger than their old place.

And it came with THIS.

Oh my gosh, this deck. It's the deck of my dreams. Modern and new and spacious. And that view. The stuff of dreams.

Henry's Knight Birthday Party

My sweet Henry man turned 4 this weekend. He requested a Knight birthday party (not to be confused with a night birthday party. Very different things) and I was happy to oblige. This was a fun one to put together. Pretty photos now; details at the end.

hallelujah! holy sh*t, where's the tylenol

This was supposed to be a cute home tour post to share all of our fun Christmas decorations around our house. A little snapshot of the vintage items we've collected over the years and the stories behind them. As I was editing the final photos, this happened.

Yep. It's as bad as it looks. These are the shattered remains of 31 years of ornaments. Two little boys were found staring at me, mouths gaping, unable to move. I'm not sure which of them gave the tree the fatal push, but down it came.

And this was me:

After removing the boys from he minefield, I ugly cried for about 15 minutes, then put on my big girl shoes and cleaned for an hour.

Sweep / vacuum / cry / sweep / vacuum / cry / sweep / vacuum / cry. Repeat.

I'm obviously devastated at the loss of all of our ornaments. I know they are just material things, and things don't really matter, but as we all know ornaments are delicate little orbs that carry the memories of those that gave them to us, special trips, life milestones. 90% of those are now gone and my heart is heavy.

What remains is a random shoe box amount of ornaments (mostly the ugly ones, because they were at the back of the tree...of course).

Silver lining - both of the ornaments with my babies' teeny tiny hand prints from each of their first Christmases survived. I think God knew I would fall apart if I lost those.

Thankfully I have some wonderful friends who sent words of encouragement. I even had donut and ornament deliveries at my house throughout the day, which did me a world of good.

As my friend Kristin said, we can rebuild! I've always wanted one of those gorgeous color coordinated trees that you see in magazines. Here's my chance.

So I press on. Since all of the photos were edited and ready to go, I'll go ahead and share them. I considered making them into a slide show set to Sarah McLachlan's I Will Remember You, but decided that would be a bit melodramatic, even for me.

Rest in peace, Lenney ornaments.

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woodland creatures birthday party: the maxwell man turns 1

woodland creatures birthday party: the maxwell man turns 1

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow my baby turned 1. Some sort of time warp, I guess.

Much as I tried to keep things simple and low-key, I friggin LOVE to throw parties. So as the day of the party approached, I kept adding little handmade projects here and there. It's a disease.

Here are all of the sweet little details that made up Max's Woodland Creatures 1st birthday party.

DIY tassel garland

Does the Internet really need another tassel garland tutorial?

Yes. Yes it does.

Why? Because of the gross misuse of the terms "lengthwise" and "widthwise" on the Internet. I'm here to help you, friends.

Max's first birthday party was this past weekend. I can't wait to share all of the fun details with you, but that's going to take a minute (read: a week) to pull together. In the meantime, I wanted to give you a sneak peak with this little tutorial.

I've seen these cute tassel garlands all over Pinterest and Instagram for the last few months. I thought they must have to be somewhat difficult to make since everyone was buying them instead of making them.

Nope, not hard at all. You just need a little bit of time and hopefully a glass of wine. These are perfect for party decorations, holiday decorations, and kid's room decor. Here's the step by step guide.

green chile and chipotle tortilla roll ups recipe

You know those amazing recipes from childhood that you just know by heart? The kind that aren't written down anywhere but are etched deeply into your brain? This is one of those.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has made these tortilla roll ups. Some folks call these "pinwheels." They are a fantastic party appetizer. A real crowd pleaser. And they are sooooooo simple and take just a few ingredients.

I of course couldn't leave well enough alone, though, so I added a special spicy ingredient.

game day chili

This past weekend we hosted a little football watching party. Only, TCU wasn't playing (we figured out that morning...after putting all 4 of us in our TCU gear. Oh well). Also, we forgot to actually watch football. Instead, we watched these two: 

And these three. They are best friends. It's like Harry, Ron, and Hermione only with less magic and more tantrums.

Didn't matter to me one bit. Football is more of a good excuse to socialize rather than something I actually want to pay attention to. I had a lot of mouths to feed: Henry and his two best buds plus Max and his best bud plus their moms plus the hubs plus me. I whipped up a big o'l pot of game day chili for the occasion. This recipe can serve 12 hungry adults. Or 11 adults and one giant beast baby.

Jump to the end for the short version of the recipe. Or read along because it's more fun that way.

how to throw an awesome super hero party

After a month or so of prep, the big party went down this weekend. And I do mean big. At the end of the day, we had almost 40 people attend. I think I was trying to make up for the moderately pitiful 2nd birthday party Henry had last year. We were slightly homeless, staying with friends, until we closed on our current house...the day after Henry's 2nd birthday. We had a teeny tiny "party" which consisted of one guest and an ugly homemade cake with a plastic fire truck on it.

So this year, I went BIG.

I also have a pretty well known hatred for Party City, so I wanted to include as many handmade touches as possible. Mostly, because I have fun doing it. Also because it tends to be WAY cheaper.

Here's how it went down.