Summer Katie

sweater: target   tee: shade clothing  shorts: borrowed  sandals: target  necklace: pink rust

Hello to my favorite, overly worn summer sandals. 
I wrote a very similar post this time last year about how I used to be offended when Chris called me Summer Katie and implied that I'm much happier and more fun in the summer.  But he is definitely right. 
This summer will be quite different than others though.  But I'm pretty sure summer Katie plus mom Katie is going to be a good combination.
Happy Summer break!!  
and to start off summer break one of you has the chance to win $200!  

I had the pleasure of working with Datevitation back in January and gave Chris one of their customized coupon books.   Datevitation has over 350 different options to make a perfect gift for spouses, parents or kids.  This would be a great Father's Day present too!  And you can take $10 off your first order using code: LAUREN10.  

Now for the giveaway! Enter below for your chance to win $200!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Life doesn't always go according to pinterest

sweater, maternity jeans, wedges: target    necklace: groopdealz 

Well I'm sure this is no new news to any of you, but sometimes in life and especially the blog world it's easy to assume that things are always organized, happy and in place for others.  We all know this isn't true but I think it's important to share those non-perfect moments. 
This weekend we started the first phase of getting our nursery ready.  We had to move Chris' home office down to the basement.  This room wasn't just an office, but has been our "extra" room, which just means lots of crap that's been there for too long. 
Chris did the big furniture a few weekends ago and what was left was just piles of random stuff to sort through.  Oh and cobwebs, dust and all sorts of lovely things. 
I got back from running some errands on Saturday morning and he had already done a majority of the work with bags full of garbage and less piles left.  To which I failed to say how happy I was that he started the process while I was gone. 

A few words exchanged and miscommunicated.  Along with a brief conversation about a large shelf on the middle of the wall.  Chris wanted to just leave it there because "we can just put stuff for the baby on there anyway, right?" To which I was too dramatically surprised that he thought it was a good idea to plan all our furniture and decorating around a shelf that was already there.  
I ended up sitting on the floor, sorting through piles in tears.  A few tears may have been justified, but the 20 minutes of tears I'm blaming on pregnancy hormones. 
A few apologies exchanged and things were completely okay.  But let's just say it didn't match up in my mind with this great, exciting and tender starting of our nursery. This moment was far from "instagram" or "pinterest" worthy but this is real life.  
I was thinking about it a lot more the day after and realize I have all these expectations for these exciting things that are coming: registering, preparing the nursery, organizing multiple things in our house, projects and others.  To which I blame part of it on pinterest, blogs and other unrealistic expectations.  Yes, they will be exciting, but yes they will come with their stress, miscommunications and emotions and I'm sure a large amount of them won't get done.    Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to try to do a lot of them, but I don't want my expectations and planning to get in the way of what we are really excited about and that is our sweet baby girl that is coming in July, who be happy and loved regardless of what projects or things I have completed.