Five things that are making me happy on this lovely Friday.

We got an offer on our house in Nashville last night! Nothing is guaranteed at this point, but it is a good sign regardless.


These boots arrived in the mail yesterday. Thank you for the birthday money, Nana dearest!

They are going to work well with the fall/winter look I am sure I will be rocking 97% of time until the baby arrives: large top, leggings, and scarf. Maternity wear is so damn comfortable, I love it.


Joanna Gaines, the co-host of the HGTV show Fixer Upper, is my new spirit animal. I have been watching an ungodly amount of HGTV with my mother-in-law over the past few weeks, and I am OBSESSED with this chick's style.

She does a sort of farm chic look, which I normally do not like, but she pulls it off like a boss.

White, gray, blue, and hardwood. My decorating mantra. I'm crossing my fingers for exposed beams in our next house SO HARD.

I'm promising myself that we're going to get as much work done as possible in our new house before the baby arrives, because I know that once she arrives all decorating will come to a screeching halt for awhile. (Hoping so hard that we are in a new house before she arrives! I love my inlaws, but don't want to bring my newborn home to their basement.)

But seriously, I'm loving every single house that she decorates. And she manages to juggle mothering four little kids. And her outfits are always on point.


This vegetable noodler (that's what I call it anyways) that my mother-in-law gave me for my birthday. I made zucchini noodles with shrimp and tomatoes tossed in pesto the other night and it was amazeballs. I want to try beets next. I'm about to noodle every vegetable in the kitchen, for serious.


My baby bump. I love love my baby belly, and good thing, because it is growing crazy fast.

Birthday Baby Bump

I turned 28 on Wednesday. And while 28 is a bit intimidating as I can no longer claim to be in my mid-twenties, I am happy with where I am right now. I am married to my best friend, back in North Carolina surrounded by friends and family, and creating my new favorite human with my magical baby making belly.

My standard birthday dinner is sushi and martinis, but considering both are off limits at the moment, we did fondue instead. It was delicious and super fun. We did the full on four course meal: cheese, salad, oil, and chocolate. Nom nom nom.

I'll be 24 weeks tomorrow and feeling quite pregnant. I swear, my belly gets bigger every day. My app says that my uterus is now the size of a soccer ball (it starts out the size of a large lemon). My constant state of being is either hungry, sleepy, or both. I often have to get back up out of bed to make myself a second dinner because I will suddenly be absolutely starving and breakfast is just too far away.

I'm feeling her little kicks every day. Lee felt her kick for the first time a couple nights ago, which was cool. It's a strange feeling, knowing that it's a tiny human inside my belly that's squirming all around and kicking me from the inside out. With every kick, I get more and more excited to meet her, this tiny human that is going to change me and my life forever.

Only 113(ish) more days until she arrives! It seems so soon and yet so far away. We have a lot to do before then like sell our Nashville house, buy a house here, move out of my in-laws' basement, and acquire all the many many things that it apparently takes to successfully care for a newborn. Seriously guys, ohmygod. My sister-in-law (aka mother of two wee ones) took me to Babies"R"Us to help me register for baby crap and whoa. I don't know how the human race survived with women having babies in caves for so long as apparently newborns and toddlers require approximately 734 various plastic items to survive in the world. It's bonkers.

Living in the Parents' Basement

We survived made the big move on Sunday and are now residing in my in-laws' basement. Our house is on the market and the first showing was today.

The move was bittersweet, it was the first house we ever owned. It was also the first place we lived together as "real" adults. Previously we were in the same small town where we both did our undergrad, he was in grad school and I was working full time. It never felt like we were official adults. We were still renting, partying constantly, and living like college students.

After we moved to Nashville for his job, we bought our first home, adopted Sir Poindexter, launched our careers, and found out that we are going to be parents. I came to know inch, every nook and cranny of that house. I could walk through it confidently at night with no lights on (and pray I didn't step on a painful dog toy). It was starting to really feel like ours, and I could picture us raising our babies there.

But here we are, starting over again. On the hunt for a new house that we can be settled into before the baby comes in December. Trying to decide whether to prioritize vintage charm and location or square footage and a backyard. It's a daunting, yet exciting task for sure.

We spent our Saturday watching HGTV, house hunting online, and playing countless rounds of Settlers of Catan. Marvelously relaxing.