My Baby Changing Table Project

Back in November Jay and I went with our friends Dave and Alison to an Antique store near by to help them haul their new kitchen table back home. Now, really Jay does know that it is pretty difficult for me to just "visit" a massively huge antique store without finding something {and honestly he isn't much better - he really likes unique furniture and jokingly claims to be a decorator}.... Anyway, I was describing to Alison how I really didn't want Baby Girl's nursery to be super matchy-matchy, and right about that exact moment she spotted an old Dry Sink and we all fell in love. It is perfect for a changing table!

Here is the before pictures of the beauty in our garage:

Are you wondering why in the world i would ever want to change the color? ha!

In case you can't tell it was a hideous shade of teal... it was just screaming out to me to be painted and I loved every minute of fixing it up for the nursery.

After sanding it down, a coat of primer, and 3 coats of paint it looks much more suitable for Baby Girl Hawkins....

My sweet friend Rachel gave us her daughter's old changing table pad and it fit perfectly! Thanks Rachel :)

I also have something different in mind for the shelves. I found these pink tins at Target in the dollar section, but I think they are 1.)too small and 2.) make the whole table seem more like a gardening center or something along those lines. I might use the buckets to organize her closet? I want something more like baskets on these open shelves though... any suggestions? 

I used some left over paint, so the whole project just cost $68! I love that price way more than the options at Babies r' Us and I think it is something we could use later in a playroom as a bookshelf. 

More nursery projects to come as we prepare for little miss thing :) 

my prayer over you baby girl

"Above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips. Let your eyes look straight ahead, and fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; keep your feet from evil."                        Proverbs 4:23 - 27 

Sweet Baby Girl,

I pray this scripture over your life, and desire nothing more than for you to fix your eyes steadfastly on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith. I pray that you know what it means to guard your heart and that you experience the unmatchable love of your Father. Baby girl I promise that this love if far greater than anything else you will ever find. As your mama my prayer is that I am able to trust the Lords guidance as you grow and that with his mercy and unending grace I am able to be an example of the kind of life described in proverbs for you. I know too that when I am weak He is strong and when I fail, baby girl He will guide you. Look to Him.

Love, your mama

Breaking Baby News: Hello 3rd Trimester! {and a few other Baby Updates}

Can't believe I am 28 weeks Pregnant! Reality check for sure. Baby Girl will be here in 12 weeks or less. I keep telling myself I am ready, but then I get nervous... hopefully thats normal! God gave us this sweet baby, and I am so excited, but also a little anxious. Just being honest here. 

So here is a 28 week Belly Shot...

Not sure about the face, but pretty typical face for me to give Jay or so he tells me

Baby Girl better be getting big in there!

Our sweet friends Ian and Rachel sent us this precious baby gift in the mail this week...

 I am in love. Ian was one of Jay's roommates at Clemson, and he and his super talented wife Rachel {a.k.a The Nanny who Knits} live in Oregon. If you ever need a great idea for a baby shower gift or really any gift because she has some cute stuff for adults too then you need to check out her blog. Thanks again Ian and Rachel! 

Also... we hung this chandelier in the nursery. It makes my heart smile. 

And we ordered the crib... So glad to be checking things off the nursery list!

{I have different bedding... the monkeys are cute, but not quite what we had in mind}

One last thing.... Have y'all heard about these Information Blankets? So Neat! Every blanket purchased also sends one to a new Mama in Africa with information in their language about basic baby care. I can't imagine the idea of welcoming our little girl without the help of books or pediatricians or my computer to look up every single question. I think they are an awesome idea and a great reminder to mama's here to pray for other mama's around the world. 

Our Christmas Recap

Okay... so still playing catch up a little bit but enjoying looking back over our Christmas celebrations and travels!

I loved decorating our first house for Christmas this year! I didn't do a ton, but we did have trees on our front porch and I made this wreath for the front door...

I was really into light green with red and white this year, so a moss wreath was perfect, simple, and easy to make. ALSO, please take note that we now have a black front door, black storm door, and new lights. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to see these doors instead of the awful maroon {a.k.a. worst color ever or university of south carolina colors} door every day upon returning home. 

Here is a reminder of our old door... eww! 

Okay... back to Christmas...

Its hard to tell in this black, shapeless maternity dress, but I am 25 weeks prego with little miss thing in this photo. As much as we enjoyed our Christmas tree this year, I think I know a certain little girl who will be about 9 months old next Christmas that will like it even more. We discussed several times how our tree probably won't have many ornaments on the lower half next year :) 

I also got the awesome joy of planning our Chick-fil-A employee's Christmas party  again this year. I love our people so, so much and its always fun to get to cook / bake for them! My sweet Mama came up for the weekend to help me with everything and brought BBQ from our favorite carolina style BBQ {the only good kind of BBQ there is really} place in Greensboro. She was a huge, huge help and its always fun to be in the kitchen with mom. 

We snapped this photo at Chick-fil-A in our Santa Chair.

Here is a look at all our yummy food & desserts: 

 Our Menu included:

BBQ

BBQ Slaw

Greenbeans - cooked over several hours with chicken bouillon {p.s. use bouillon cubes in your green beans. trust me. they will be amazing}

Hashbrown Casserole - I am planning to make another hashbrown casserole this week  to take with us on our mountain weekend with Jay's family, so I will share the recipe. It is loved in our house, and 4 pans of it were consumed at the christmas  party.

Homemade Cornbread - another easy recipe I promise to share!  

White Wine cake - My mama's specialty! 

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Browned Butter Frosting - This frosting is so easy to make and really yummy! 

Sugar Cookies with this Cookie Glaze - they were a hit and the glaze looked great... you really should give this a try on some valentine cookies!

White Chocolate covered Pretzels

Brownies - you got to have chocolate!

Oreo / Peanutbutter No-Bake Dessert - Oh My! It was gone in 2.1 seconds. Seriously amazing. enough said. 

We also played the Gift exchange game where with the night before Christmas story {except I changed ours to the Night Before Christmas at Chick-fil-A of Waynesboro Story}. It is always a great way to do a gift exchange quickly without stealing gifts... i've always hated that part. 

The best gag gift was a frozen chicken! ha! 

I made these Sea Salt Caramels to give as Christmas gifts, and they were to die for. Make them today.

Happy Saturday everyone! Our goal is to get the Christmas tree down finally....

And I also am working on a couple of projects for Baby Girls nursery today. We may or may not be hanging a super cute, super girly chandelier in her room ;)

Our New York City Christmas Trip!

** A little preface: yes, i am WAYYYY behind on all that I wanted to document on our blog from the last month. I feel like I am still recovering from all that we crammed into a few short weeks in December - and baby girl isn't even here yet... man, I am going to have to step up my game to keep up with how fast life is about to speed up! ANYWAY, I still wanted to share our fun NYC trip... and I have a holiday recap and some new years goals to share in the coming days, so bear with me while I catch up with myself. This little blog just seems to get neglected at times in place of actually living in the day... anyone else ever feel that way? **
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About 3 weeks ago {before the holiday craziness} Jay and I traveled to NYC with our good friends Dave & Alison for a long weekend. We crammed in lots of eating, lots and lots of walking, and lots of fun!

Jay went to New York back in October on a "food tour" with several other Chick-fil-A operators after reading Danny Meyer's book about his restaurants. He is a specialist in great hospitality and some yummy food too. Jay took us to 2 of his restaurants and they were delicious.

The Shake Shack is seriously the best hamburger ever, and their peanut-butter milkshake was simply amazing. 

Lady Liberty herself at sunset

The Blanco's about to enjoy dinner in Little Italy 

We decided Bella would NOT like living in NYC one bit {lucky girl spent our weekend away with her grandma}, but she would actually probably love all the people / dogs / smells / walking that is Central Park

Sunday Morning in Central Park before we headed to church at Tim Keller's Church Redeemer Presbyterian -- it was awesome! 

Spider Man in broadway -- it was also amazing! 

whew, busy, busy, busy Times Square actually made us all very thankful for little old Waynesboro 

We saw the Rockettes' Christmas Spectacular! 

And we visited the 9-11 Memorial. It was very powerful and humbling to stand where the towers fell 10 years ago. They are still working on the Freedom Towers, and Museum, but there are two huge pools in the exact spots of the North & South Towers with the names engraved of all those who lost their lives. So, so many heros and such a great remembrance of the power of what it means to be an American. 

I loved this little tree that could! It was alive in the exact same spot between the towers and survived the whole attack, and it still alive. Such a symbol of hope for all of NYC.  

We had a wonderful, chilly, and fun-filled trip! Christmas is the best time to visit the big apple in my opinion :) 

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Okay - back to today... just because I love, love, love our Bella girl, and because today {Jan. 4th} is her "birthday" and because she was so dang cute {and pitiful} on Christmas in the sweater my mom made her wear I have to share the pictures....

What a sweet girl -- she is two today! We celebrated this morning with her favorite - a scrambled egg!

Now I am off to eat Chili, make these Cream Cheese Cookies from my sweet friend Heather's Blog, and pull for my Clemson Tigers in the Orange Bowl tonight! 

More yummy recipes and our Christmas recap to come... 

a little of what God is speaking to my heart this morning

I had one of those mornings this morning where I was reading a devotional book and the Lord said you need to get this, and really get it for your life. Not that I don't try to "get it" every morning, but I will be the first to admit that in this so-called busy & crazy life sometimes it goes in one ear and out the other and seems fairly irrelevant to my current day to day thoughts. Ok, now that I am being completely honest, brace yourselves because I am about to be even more honest with myself.

I read this quote from "Jesus Calling." The whole book is written as though God is speaking the words to His Children {so the I and Me and My are God}....

"Your needs and My riches are a perfect fit. I never meant for you to be self-sufficient. Instead, I designed you to need Me not only for daily bread, but also for fulfillment of deep yearnings. I carefully crafted your longings and feelings of incompleteness to point you to Me. Therefore, do not try to bury or deny these feelings. Beware also of trying to pacify these longings with lesser gods: people, possessions, power. 

Rejoice in your neediness, which enables you to find intimate completion in Me." 

This hit me like a ton of bricks this morning, and it still is i guess. Different areas of my little insignificant life keep coming to mind and i am overwhelmed all over again with a sense of that clarity in how needy and incomplete i am.

I have a feeling of loneliness at times with living in Waynesboro, Virginia away from all close family and with a husband who works a.l.o.t. I was covering up that lonely feeling by working a lot right beside him. Well now our lives are changing because God has given us a baby girl and i am preparing to stay home with her. My role in "work" has to change. This has been a h-u-g-e internal struggle for me. Just with knowing where to add significance and where to find fulfillment without even actually having our baby girl here yet.

I think the Lord knew what He as doing all along and knew that I needed this season of feeling worthless really in my weird and changing roles to see that God has given me this time and these feelings to point me back to him. I have felt this way all along, but it takes a huge change to make me stop and understand that God designed me to feel this way so that i would lean on him and into him for understanding and clarity and fulfillment and purpose. He created me and desires to be all things to me if I will allow him the room to do so.

He also desires to be my Father if I will allow him. Now, I don't think that the Lord took my sweet, and in my eyes perfect daddy at the age of 60 to simply teach me a lesson in seeing him as my source of completion, but I think that he does try desperately to speak into my heart and say "Katherine, My heart hurts when your heart hurts. I am sad when you can't have a conversation with your Dad, but I want you to have a conversation with me. And I want to guide you like your Dad did though so many decisions and changes. I want to love you even more than he was capable of doing and I am more proud of you than he was ever created to be. Just allow me into that space and rejoice in the fact that I can complete you."

It has taken me 2 1/2 years to even have this thought enter into my brain.

Lord, teach me what it looks like to see you as my father and to allow you to use my inadequacies and my desires to have a purpose in your kingdom and my desires for fulfillment to show me your perfectness and your love.

22 Week Belly Shot and a few pictures of our other baby

Jay and I went to get our Christmas Tree last night and were rushing to make it before it got dark {story of our lives....}, but we found the perfect tree and are loving having our first tree in the new home! This picture is really dark and was very rushed, but baby girl is getting bigger, and definitelty making mama hungrier!

On a side note, and just beacause I want to share how cute Bella was playing in the leaves, here is our other "baby" on Thanksgiving. We raked some leaves that day for sure. Remember thos beautiful red trees? Yup they lost all those leaves....and Bella girl had wayyyyy more fun messing up our piles than we did picking them up...

Hope y'all have a great weekend!

a few recent things from the kitchen

I have been doing some cooking and baking recently. Its amazing how much more enjoyable it is to be in the kitchen when Baby Girl isn't making me feel nauseous! {I've been feeling so, so much better for about 5 weeks now! whew!}

First of all I made these Orange Cranberry Muffins last week and they were easy & delicious. I don't know about you, but I love orange & cranberry together and recently I've been crazing anything cranberry... don't know if I should blame the baby or just normal holiday cravings? I forgot to take a picture, but definitely check out the above recipe!
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One of our all time favorite winter recipes is Taco Soup. My taco soup recipe was given to me at a wedding shower by my sweet childhood babysitter Trisha. She was like part of our family growing up, and is an amazing cook!

Taco Soup

3 Chicken Breasts, Cooked & Shredded (You can also use 1 lb lean ground beef)

1 Can Black Beans, undrained

1 Can Kidney Beans, undrained

1 Can Chili Beans, undrained

1 Can Yellow Corn

1 Small Yellow Onion, finely chopped 

1 Package Dry Taco Seasoning

1 Package Dry Ranch Dressing Mix 

Dump all ingredients into a crock pot (or dutch oven on the stove). Make sure you don't drain beans and use sauce as a base. Add 1 cup of water and stir to combine all ingredients. Leave to simmer in the crock pot all day, or cook 1 hour on the stove. Serve with cheddar cheese & tortilla chips. 

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And lastly, I made reindeer cookies! They were the perfect snack for our employees when we decorated Chick-fil-A for Christmas a couple Sundays ago. Oh man, they were so cute {while they lasted!}

I made peanut butter cookies {sugar cookies would have been yummy too!}. Roll cookie dough into balls, pinch 1 side, and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand {it to sort of makes a triangle}. Bake & cool only a couple minutes. Press brown M&M's for eyes, and red ones for a nose. Use mini chocolate covered pretzels for antlers. They turned out adorable & were easy-peasy!

Happy {quick & simple} Holiday Baking!

so much to be thankful for

"Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;

His love endures forever."

Psalm 118:1

Jay and I have so, so very much to be thankful for this year... like every year! Here is my short, and by no means inclusive, thankful list:

Jay - The most perfect husband for me. We have had another year of life together with lots of work and some challenges and lots to celebrate.

Our Sweet Baby Girl - what an unexpected blessing! Can't wait to meet her in April and to think about this time next year she will be here for her first Thanksgiving!

Family - we seriously have the best family. the best. period. so much love and support... thank you!

Our Chick-fil-A of Waynesboro Family - they are so fun and I am thankful that they care about our Restaurant and the influence that it has in our community. 

Bella - I know it sounds silly, but my sweet dog is such a great friend. She makes us laugh and is is pretty darn cute. 

A day of rest - Our Thanksgiving weekend (much like our sunday's - also something I am thankful for!) is such a great time to rest, and it is always so necessary for our crazy lives.

Jesus - our reason for hope and joy in this season and everyday of the year. Thankful for the freedom that I have to have a relationship with my Lord. 

Happy Thanksgiving friends & family!