Bringing the blog back?

Hi there...it's only been 9 months.  Oops.

Several people have asked me when/if I was going to post again.  I never intentionally meant to stop blogging, it just kind of happened. And boy, has a lot happened since last October.

We've done the working day-to-day life. We've traveled to a few fun places visiting friends and family. Seen people get married and have babies...the usual.The first half of 2015 has been a great one so far.

The biggest news since the last blog post, which you probably already know from social media, is that we are pregnant(!!!) and expecting to meet our new little one sometime in the next month.

We are so thrilled. In the beginning of my pregnancy I was very anxious because of our previous miscarriage. I was tempted to keep things to myself and not ever post about it....I was inhibiting my excitement "just in case" something happened. But I eventually realized I don't need to be fearful, learning to trust God more and more.  And it has been FUN to share my love for this little one with the people around us and enjoy each day we are given with him/her so far. We pray for many more!

Most people think we are crazy for not finding out the gender. I thought it would be kind of hard to wait, but it has been SO MUCH fun and totally doable.  Putting together the nursery I wanted to make a gender-neutral, kid-friendly space, but also one that wasn't totally themed & gimmicky. Basically I wanted it to still flow with the rest of our house and be able to return back to guestroom some day.
This was the room pre-nursery as our main guest room:

Now: The walls we painted an almost-white, lighter shade of blue. The crib we got from Craigslist. The rocker, bookshelf, and dresser are from Ikea. The geometric curtains and mirror were already hanging in the room before.

The rug is from Land of Nod and might be my favorite thing in the nursery. The picture doesn't do it justice, it's the perfect blend of colors that is fun and goes with everything. 

The bear hug and fox den prints are from here, antler and feather prints are from here, flower photo by me.

Poster from a show of one of our favorite bands (that we happened to go see while pregnant).

A different, bigger house project we did this year was renovating our kitchen nook. 

This is what it looked like when we first bought the house, except no furniture and the color was actually more of a lime green:

I knew I never wanted to keep a second table in there since we have a large dining room. We also needed a little more storage space in our kitchen. Prior to re-doing it, it felt mostly like wasted space. 

Now:

David built the cabinet boxes custom-sized to what we wanted (counter depth on the fridge side, and narrower on the opposite side). He also stained some 2x4s for the top (in the distant future when we re-do the whole kitchen we will carry over the new counter tops here). The doors we ordered online. The gorgeous raw-edge open shelving up top was done by a local guy where my parents live for an insane deal. 

We have a coffee/tea bar on one side, and an adult bar and wine fridge on the other side.

I'm SO happy with how it turned out.

David and I also just celebrated our 5th anniversary. Because of sweet friends, we got to spend a few days at the beach for a free stay and it was wonderful. It continues to be true that I love him more and more every year.

Maybe next time I check-in here we'll be introducing our new family member! We appreciate any prayers for us for health, safety, and peace during this time.