Calvin's Playroom Reveal

This project has been a dream come true.  Our house has a loft space upstairs that we had previously used as a catch-all for everything we didn't have space for in our downstairs living room.  After Calvin was born, we starting spending time up there in the mornings (it's right outside his room), and he just loved it.  At the beginning of the pandemic, I started taking screenshots of spaces I loved and collecting art/items for what I deemed my "functional gallery wall."

I've always loved keeping Calvin's toys organized (here's my post from his first year of toys and organization), but this is was needed quickly as he got bigger and his toys got bigger.  Below are a whole bunch of photos and at the bottom of this post, I've linked everything I can think of from each little space.  If I missed something and you want a link (nothing is affiliate or sponsored - just want to share what I love) - just email or leave a comment!

Here's the BEFORE:

And the AFTER:

One of my favorite spaces is this little book nook area.  I love switching out the bookshelves in Calvin's room every month, and now I have another space to share seasonal favorites.  Plus, a festive felt ball garland is now my monthly go-to.

Looking back to the other side of the room, you can see the "functional gallery wall" on the left and my absolutely NOT Montessori-style toy storage.  While it's not perfect, everything has a space (so I can clean up in 5 minutes or less), it allows Calvin to make his own choices about what to play with, and it's off in the corner, so he grabs what he wants and comes back to the middle of the room to play.  You'll also see the door to our upstairs porch next to the organization, and Calvin loves playing out there with his toys (and looking at the garbage trucks and buses in the mornings).

And lastly, a close-up look of that gallery wall.  I'm still looking to add more to it, but for now, it's perfect.  I'm so happy with how much Calvin loves his dollhouse, and even though I haven't found any dolls for him yet (IKEA only sells the furniture for it haha), he LOVES putting his lovey sloth to bed in the little bed and play with him in there.  It has given him so many ideas for pretend, open-ended play.

Here are all the product links (mostly from Amazon, Target, and IKEA):

Gallery wall:

Dinosaur letterboard ||| Clothespin photo frame ||| Dollhouse ||| Dollhouse furniture ||| Rainbow yarn & wood sign ||| Custom woven wall hanging ||| Clock ||| Basketball hoop ||| Calvin map made by a neighbor

Nugget in Atlantis

Fire truck pillow

Pom pom pillow from Target dollar section

Train table hand-me-down from a neighbor (similar)

Calvin bench

Book nook:

Bookshelves (are spice racks!) ||| Floating circle shelves ||| Rainbow inauguration print ||| Set of 3 mini photo frames ||| Pom pom garland ||| Stuffed animal storage bean bag - yes, that striped thing is filled with stuffies!

Toy organization: 

Large circle shelving ||| Toy organizer

Five on Friday

Happy Friday, friends!  I hope everyone is having a great first week of May.  The weather in Charleston is beautiful, and it's almost my favorite couple weeks of the year: Confederate Jasmine season!  These little white blooms are absolutely gorgeous, and you know I'll be out taking a bunch of photos of/with it this weekend, especially when we're out adventuring with Mike's dad in town!

Books - I'm starting to search for those perfect poolside reads.  I love easy books to read during the summer that I can flip open while I'm at the beach or pool and that don't take all of my concentration.  In the past, it's been a lot of comedians' books like Bossypants and The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo.  This summer, I've been thinking about Talking As Fast As I Can and Sisters First. Anyone else have any suggestions - maybe something fiction?

Overalls - Anyone else want to jump on this bandwagon?  I have been debating it for a while, and honestly they look so comfy, especially the ankle pant-length ones.  Below are a few of my favorites!

Running - It's taken me about a year or so, but I've finally caught the running bug again.  The weather has just been so beautiful at night, and I finally downloaded some great music onto my phone that it makes for the perfect wind down after work.

Streaming Favorites - Anyone found any new shows they're loving on Netflix or Hulu?  I just watched John Mulaney's stand up on Netflix, and it's hysterical.  I tried to binge The Handmaid's Tale last Sunday, only for Hulu to tell me that they're only releasing two episodes each week.  What is up with that?!?!  Also, Arrested Development is coming back again... so excited!!  For now, let's be honest, until I get any new recommendations, I'm just over here watching The Office and 30 Rock again...

Weekending - Finally, looking ahead to the weekend, we're going to a friend's house for a Cinco de Mayo party, and I really want to make sour cream chicken enchiladas like the ones we had in Dallas, except I'm only finding about a million recipes that look... fine: here, here, and here.  Anyone ever tried making these at home and/or have a recipe to share?

28 Birthday Things

Happy Monday, y'all!  Today is a pretty good Monday for me because it's my birthday!  In the spirit of this (national) holiday, I thought I'd share 28 random facts about myself:

1 || I have the same birthday as Gwen Stefani, Ashlee Simpson, Tommy Lee, Seann William Scott, Kevin Richardson, and Dave Winfield (Baseball Hall of Famer).

2 || Snapchat and Instagram are my favorite social media channels... although I don't post to either nearly enough.

3 || I'm currently reading Amy Schumer's book.

4 || She taught me that it's okay to be an introvert, and I love her for it.

5 || I've only ever owned cats, and until Ruxin and Shadow, they were all named after baseball players.

6 || Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.

7 || Water, beer, and lattes are the only things I drink.

8 || I don't have a favorite color.

9 || Ask me if I've seen a certain movie?  There's about an 80% chance I haven't.

10 || However, ask me about 13 Going On 30 - I can quote any line #seenit100times #embarrassing

11 || I met my husband at my 21st birthday party in college.  If you asked me then which one he would be, I would have been very confused.... and probably wrong!

12 || I am an outlet shopper all the way.

13 || I've never missed a Baseball Hall of Fame Induction in my life.

14 || I always hated spicy food growing up, but now, the spicier the better.  Carolina Reaper, I'm coming for you!

15 || My teams: Yankees, Cubs, Panthers, and Eagles.

16 || My life bucket list: own a Wrangler, a pickup truck, visit every MLB stadium, and move South.

17 || Half of my life bucket list is now complete since I inherited a pickup from my uncle.

18 || I grew up in Rhode Island.

19 || I've only ever successfully completed two New Year's Resolutions: sending birthday cards to all friends and family last year and wearing makeup everyday this year.

20 || I've played golf since I was 5, and I'm a 3 handicap.

21 || This time last year, I had never seen a Star Wars movie, but now I'm seen the first six three times through, and we saw Episode VII three times in the theater.

22 || I have a killer sweet tooth.

23 || Manicures and pedicures are my favorite splurge.

24 || I hate when my nails are naked.

25 || I am always hungry.  If I say, "I'm full," I really just mean I'm tired of eating what I'm currently eating.

26 || I'm still driving the same car I had when I was 15 - Jeepy the Jeep Liberty (original, right?).

27 || Mike does 100% of the dishes in our house, and I do 100% of the laundry.  We split cooking about 50/50.

28 || I share my birthday with Mean Girls Day!

Full of Weekending

Truth be told, I meant to write this post last night (Monday) but proceeded to fall asleep on the couch, watching Mad Men at 10pm - whoops.  We spent Labor Day at The Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, walking 18 holes of golf.  It was the most beautiful day, but walking and carrying a bag, it is quite a workout at that course!  So, my weekend recap is a bit delayed... well, very delayed since it was a long weekend.

It actually turned into a four-day weekend for us with Hermine in town on Friday.  Luckily, my best friend Amanda who flew in to spend the weekend with us, got here on Thursday so she didn't have to deal with all that rain and wind.  We celebrated her arrival with manis, sushi at O-Ku, and drinks at The Cocktail Club.  If you are ever in Charleston, TCC has this amazing sweet and salty bacon fat popcorn that you HAVE to try!

After we shopped for all the hurricane essentials on Thursday (i.e. Pringles, Swedish Fish Oreos, bacon, and ice cream), we spent Friday lounging around the house - she made the most delicious French toast (recipe coming soon!) and we played a lot of Rummikub.  Fortunately, the storm was kind of a bust - nothing compared to the microburst earlier this year or the flooding last fall, so that was a relief.

Saturday was spent walking around all of our favorite downtown places: biscuits at HLB, coffee at Kudu (full list of favorite Charleston coffee shops also coming soon!), the Farmer's Market, King Street and City Market shopping, the Pineapple Fountain, and Rainbow Row.  After miles of walking, we definitely deserved a lazy afternoon at the pool, and I was so excited to start Amy Schumer's new book.  I'm not too far in yet, but it is amazing so far!

Amanda left on Sunday morning and that night, we hosted a fantasy football draft party.  I'm still trying to think of a good name for this year's team (here were my gems last year) because I really want to win our league trophy - I made it myself ;)

Like I mentioned at the top of this post, yesterday we headed out to Kiawah Island for my organization's annual volunteer appreciation tournament.  Ever since the tropical storm came through earlier in the weekend, the weather has been fantastic - sunny, low humidity, and barely 80 degrees.  Can we have this weather all year long??

That's it!  I'm linking up with Biana for Weekending today - I love long weekends because they mean shortened weeks PLUS my girl Macy will be here on Thursday for a fun-filled Charleston girls weekend - cannot wait to finally meet her IRL!

Recently...

Happy Friday, everyone!  How has another week flown by?  It's been another couple of weeks since I've posted anything about life in Charleston (how does this keep happening??), so here's a peek before the weekend...

Listening to: Recently by Dave Matthews Band.  Whenever I write these posts, I always start humming this song to myself.

Anticipating: a weekend of nothing who knows what!  The British Open is on, there's golf to be played, and tonight we're headed to the Riverdogs Baseball stadium, "The Joe," to watch the finals of the spring kickball season!

Missing: My girl.  Like I said in my last "currently" post, I had a little 12 year old visitor in town a week ago for girls golf camp.  It was so much fun to get to do "kid" things!  We saw Inside Out, went to the splash park, and toured Magnolia Gardens and the petting zoo.

Eating: Anything and everything.  While our visitor was here, we ate Ben and Jerry's twice (you need to try The Tonight Dough, if you haven't), finally tried the barbecue chicken nachos Mallory raves about at California Dreaming (the views of downtown are great, too!), and made tons of s'mores.

Lusting after: Ice Berry Polka Jamberry wraps!  I'm so excited to welcome Amanda to my sidebar!!  I hope y'all will check out some of the new Jamberry designs.  They now make tons of college wraps and even some for the UConn Huskies (1 and 2).

Reading: Gone Girl.  One of my colleagues let me borrow it, and I am so excited to finally jump on this bandwagon and see the movie after I read it!

Training for: the Glass Slipper Challenge!  This week, I signed up for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon and Mike and I signed up for the Enchanted 10k.  My two races together will be a total of 19.3 for the Glass Slipper Challenge medal.  I've got 6 months to train... I got this?

Book of the Month: The Art of American Whiskey

I got a good one from Blogging for Books this month, y'all.  I ordered The Art of American Whiskey by Noah Rothbaum right after our most recent trip to the Charleston distilleries.  From reading the title, I assumed that the book would be about the process of making whiskey and how that's changed throughout America's history.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that the book was more about the cultural history of whiskey and just as much about the branding and art that has gone into the labeling and advertising since the late 19th century.

Each chapter, based around a specific time period, featured a story about how whiskey went hand-in-hand with the history of those years.  At the turn of the century, railroad growth helped spread whiskey around the country, Prohibition seemed to be partially to blame for The Great Depression, and World War II forced those who were finally back in business to create extremely high proof liquors for explosives and rubber during the war.

I really enjoyed looking at the different labels and bottles from the period.  Each section also had a section with favorite cocktail recipes from the period; I really want to try Ward Eight, which was popular in the 1940s.

I learned a lot from the book and definitely suggest it as a life for your favorite whiskey lovers.

A Nice Little Place on the North Side

For this month's Blogging for Books read, I was sent George Will's A Nice Little Place on the North Side.  The book is all about Wrigley Field, the Chicago Cub's beloved ballpark.  As a baseball fan myself, I learned a lot from Will's stories and legends of the past 100 years of Wrigley history and was very impressed with Will's knowledge.  However, there were a couple aspects of the book that just didn't do it for me: the incessant metaphors and the unclear audience.

This book had more references and metaphors than anything I've ever read in my life.  Yes, Will eventually connected most of them to Wrigley, but it took a few pages.  There were an entire two pages comparing Wrigley Field to Miss Havisham as well as a half-page excerpt from Great Expectations.  Nick Carraway from The Great Gatsby made an appearance with another excerpt and some commentary as well as many definitions from The Oxford English Dictionary.

I feel like the best example of this book-A.D.D. is Will's first sentence after inserting a lengthy poem about three turn-of-the-century Chicago Cubs.  "The poem was written by a reporter with a presidential name, Franklin Pierce Adams, whose editor needed something to fill space."
      A. This is a history book, not a novel, why do I care that he has a presidential name?
      B. Who is the one really trying to fill space here?

I chose this book to learn more about the Cubs and baseball.  In my parents' home, we actually have seats from Wrigley, taken from the field when they replaced the seating in the 1980s.  We've also had two cats named after Cubbies greats: Ernie (Banks) and Fergie (Jenkins).

Ernie sitting in our Wrigley Field seats /// Fergie and his brother Stan Musial (yes, real Fergie even signed it)

The reason I mention these things is to note that I know a bit about baseball and the Cubs.  While reading Will's book, I just honestly don't know for what audience it was written.  He goes so in depth with much of the history, but then he spends a whole page telling me who Ernie Banks is and how he is in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  In my opinion, if you know nothing about Wrigley or the Cubs and need to learn everything there is to know in one book, then this one is for you.  However, for new baseball fans looking for an introduction to Cubbies' history, I think this book would be too much too fast.  Lastly, for fairly-educated fans like me, I felt that a lot of space was taken up with information most fans would already know.

So, yes, I learned a lot from this book, but I also found myself rolling my eyes on multiple occasions, trying to figure out how Will was possibly going to connect Wrigley's history to Shakespeare's Henry IV or Thomas Jefferson making his own beer at Monticello.  Will is incredibly knowledgeable about Wrigley Field, and okay, I do understand the Great Expectations reference.  Now a few days removed from finishing the book, I would read it again to pick up some of the details I missed, but knowing that it isn't 100% baseball would be a good warning for any future reader.

Back In The States

Hi everyone!  Well, I’m back.  I hope y’all had a great week, and I can’t wait to see what you’ve been up to.  Mike and I got back from our honeymoon on Saturday, and it was the absolute trip of a lifetime.  We were at Sandals Emerald Bay on Great Exuma in The Bahamas.  It was the perfect resort for us because there was unlimited golf included in our package.  I promise not to go too crazy with recap posts, so right now, I plan for there will be two (well, three if you count this month’s ootm): one for the resort and one for an awesome water safari trip we did.  Hopefully I’ll get my act together (and our underwater photos developed - who knew it takes a week or two nowadays to get film back?), maybe in time to do the first one with my weekly Wedding Wednesday linkup.

In the meantime, today is the last day to enter my giveaway with Love Garlands for a $50 shop credit – who can’t use something pretty in their life??

Even though we got back on Saturday, we decided to tell ourselves that we were still on vacation and spent Sunday at the pool.  I finished my second book of the trip: Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan.  My first was Ellen Degeneres's Seriously...I'm Kidding (thanks, Megan!), and both were the perfect, funny vacation reads.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with one photo from my favorite hole on the Emerald Bay Golf Club – a beautiful par 3 right along the water.

Have a great Monday!

Linking up for: Weekend Recap, Weekending, and Monday Madness!

Four on Friday

We've all heard of "Five" on Friday, so why not a Four on Friday?!  Thanks to Shelby for this fun idea.  I love reading these on other blogs, so let me know if you do one, too!

Four of my nicknames

Meg

Megs

Meggum

Bear

Four jobs I've had

Golf cart washer

Substitute teacher

Software documentation writer

Program Director

Four movies I've watched more than once

13 Going On 30

Love, Actually

The Parent Trap (the Lindsay Lohan version)

Taken

Four things in my purse

Two planners: blog and real life

Fiber One bar (low blood sugar, yo)

Chapstick

Tide To-go

Four books I'd recommend

Bossypants, Tina Fey

Angels and Demons, Dan Brown

The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Four places I've lived

Westerly, RI

Mondorf Les Baines, Luxembourg

Paris, France

East Hartford, CT

(and now Charleston!)

Four places I have visited

San Francisco

3 Disneys: CA, FL, and Paris

Belgium

Amsterdam

Four places to visit on my travel bucket list

Australia

Hawaii

Italy

Russia

Four things I don't eat

Mushrooms

Mayonnaise

Salmon

Hazelnuts (being allergic to Nutella is the worst)

Four shows I watch 

(I chose favorites that are on tv right now - check them out!)

Modern Family

SNL

Archer

PLL

via

Four things I'm looking forward to in 2015

Our first full married year

Honeymoon in May

Exploring more of Charleston

Becoming healthier

Linking up with That Friday Blog Hop and Oh Hey, Friday!

Bliss {March Edition}

What's your Bliss? What are you loving this month that you just can't live without?

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Join Heather and me for Bliss! On the last Wednesday of each month, we host a fun new link up to share your "favorites" of the month. Not sure what to write about? It can be anything from a favorite product, to a favorite moment, or a favorite new blogger, to even a new favorite quote! Include as few or as many "favorites" and don't forget to take photos!

Ask yourself, did it bring you #bloggerbliss this month? If you said yes, then we want to read about it!

Don't have time to write a whole post or don't have a blog and are just a blogger at heart? Hashtag a photo #bloggerbliss on Instagram and simply link to that photo on the day of the link up!  Our hope is that Bliss and #bloggerbliss will help ladies across the country find new and fun ways to make their next month even better!

Thank you to everyone who made February, our first month of Bliss such a success!

Now here's what's bringing me Bliss this month:


Family Games:  We love games at our house.  We like going out, but we also like staying home and just spending time together.  Here's what we've been playing lately: (1) Racko; (2) Sequence; (3) Cribbage; (4) 4-Way Countdown [great kid game!]; (5) Logo Board Game

Sketching: I always loved art in school.  It was always my favorite subject, and I liked getting to express myself.  Lately, I've been loving it again.  When I'm bored, I love to draw.

I made this card for my mug swap partner, Kerry.  

Sometimes during parties at our house, I might zone out and sketch on whatever I can find.

This one's a bit older, but it still hangs near our front door from the 2011 Halloween blizzard

Vaseline Lip Therapy: I don't know about you, but this is the time of year when my lips are the driest.  I bought this earlier this winter and haven't lost it love it!  

Bossypants:  I can honestly say I've never actually laughed out loud at a book before.  Tina Fey is amazing and confident and beautiful and perfect.  Seriously, you need to read this book!

PLL: Ugh this show.  I JUST NEED TO KNOW!!  I remember I actually started watching it by accident the summer after my junior year of college when I was home sick one day and watched a full-day marathon.  I won't get too much into it here, but if you wanna talk PLL with me, definitely leave me a comment.  I don't think I can wait until the fall to find out who A is!!

My next door neighbor's nephew is Cody Christian [Mike Montgomery], so he sent me these awesome autographs!!