instagram photo strip bunting.

I love my instagrams.  But they stay on my phone.  I've printed out some of them using PostalPix before but wanted to come up a way to display a whole bunch in a smaller space.  I got to thinking that photostrips would be way fun!   And they definitely were the right way to go!

 I started making a template in photoshop but I got frustrated that it was taking so long.  So I turned to  my friend google and found these awesome templates from Blush and Jelly. She just happened to post these the very day I was making mine!  It was fate! Plus, I'm not gonna lie I love that people share their talents so my projects are so much easier!

Using her awesome templates I made ten strips of photos.  Then in photoshop I opened a new 5x7 document and lined up my strips.  I resized each strip a little bit bigger and fit 5 strips on my 5x7 template.  If you need help with math that means I made 2 5x7's.  I'm so glad I made them a little bit bigger because the pictures are way smaller than I imagined.  But I like the itty bitty-ness of them!  Since I was headed to costco I uploaded my two 5x7's to their photo site so I could pick them up there.  A 5x7 at Costco is 39 cents.  So for just about a dollar I was able to make a photostrip bunting!

Once I unloaded all my groceries from Costco I cut my 5x7's into strips using a paper trimmer.  Then using bakers twine and some clips I already had I hung them up on a window I have propped in our front entryway.  I stop and look just about every time  I walk by because its such a fun way to display our memories from this summer so far!  

Mothers day written on just a regular day.

I can hardly believe that a year + has gone by in my life. The extra months since Mothers Day have flown by filled with the business of summer.  I haven't sat down at a computer for more than 2 minutes in those months.   But here I am being the working girl for the weekend and staring at the screen trying to remember my feelings and thoughts from that day.  I know there were specific things I wanted to say.  I wanted to tell you how I was okay with Mothers Day this year.  And that I finally feel okay with the fact that I am not going to be pregnant ever again.  Somewhere in the blur of the last year I became okay.

I know there is so much more to say. But I still can't get myself to write it all down.  This peace in my heart is really so new to me that I don't know how I feel about it,  how to share it with you yet.  And maybe that is why I have let the months go by without telling you.  Because I still don't know how.

So for now I'm going to oversimplify it.  I want you to know...

Infertility is hard.  So hard.  The years and years of  hard kind of hard.  And if you are going through any kind of it I'm sorry. I know its hard to believe someone when they tell you its going to be okay.

 So can you trust someone that has been there?  Someone that knows a little bit of how you feel?  Cuz I do.  And its going to be okay.

Promise.

A whole lot of this...

I've been doing a whole lot of this.  And I'll be doing a whole bunch more of this for the next couple of weeks.  Sigh.  

When we were in California last week the Kennedy's met us at Doheney Beach to give us some surf lessons.  Just so you know, April is just as nice as she seems and her family is rad.  Thanks guys for the fun day!!  

I am a rock star and got up on my first try surfing.  The second time I fell.  And busted up my knee.  I kept going and got up another time or two.  Then I hobbled home :(

The good news is that its just a really bad strain.  So after a couple of weeks of rest and ice and ibuprofin I should be on my way to better than new.  The other good news is I now have an excuse to lay by the pool all day!  And depending on how I am feeling at the moment, {right now its bad news!} this means I have get to start eating clean again.  No more ice cream for me!

So my view isn't going to change much for the next few days.  Good thing I have the Olympics to keep me company and an awesome husband to take care of me!  

{eh and also hence the blogging ;) }

#bestbirthdayever!

That little girl turned 5 last week, so to give her the #bestbirthdayever we surprised her with a trip to Disneyland!  It was so, so SO much fun and a birthday we will always remember.  Some highlights of our trip were Cars Land, totally worth the longest wait ever, and watching Ivy absolutely FREAK OUT meeting her favorite princesses at Ariel's Grotto.  But the absolute best time was being able to spend 4 whole days in a row, together as a family.  That is super rare for us, like once in a blue moon for us, and we loved every second.    

From Scratch.

From scratch.  I could eat the whole thing.  

Happy Sunday!