home decor blogs have long been my guilty pleasure, and pinterest is a more recent one. so i thought that this time around i would take on the challenge put out there by some of my favorite home blogs and actually turn some of my pinspiration into reality.

there are several things in our house that aren't exactly my style, but they're not horrible either, so the reality is that i'm probably not going to invest much money in changing them.

one of these such items was our dining room chandelier.

it was your basic builder/box store sort of unit. nothing horrible, but definitely not a show stopper. and when you put an oil rubbed bronze fixture up against the back drop of a reddish brown wall, you're not doing it any favors. the thing just blended in.



you'll have to pardon my crappy photo shoot. i'm having to use the phone camera at the moment...and i was too anxious to get going on this project to wait to take a daylight shot.

but anyways, i had been browsing pinterest for some cheap updated ideas...preferably something that didn't involve paint, because i wasn't really in the mood to bust all that out...and i ran across this:



a diy rope knock off of a $1500 restoration hardware fixture.

so i decided to give it a whirl.

i just picked up $2 worth of jute twine from home depot, grabbed my hot glue gun, and got to work.



i was a little lazy for this project, because i didn't even take the chandelier down to work on it. my arms got tired, so i just worked on it whenever the mood would strike, or during baby nap time.



i'm quite pleased with the result though. not bad for a $2 upgrade. now it really pops out against the wall, and ties into all the other natural fibers i have going on in the room. i may try to figure out a way to accessorize it a little more in the future, but for now it's much improved.



so i'm pretty happy with how this little pinterest challenge turned out.
now to tackle some of the other bajillion things i have pinned...

i've been kind of awful about keeping the blog up to date with the latest going ons in the mother-hood these days.

a couple months ago though we started introducing jia to solids. the girl was ready.
we were trying to wait until she was 6 months old though, and until we got back from our india trip. at that point she was basically trying to grab everything off of our plates!

i'd heard about baby led weaning, which contrary to how it sounds, isn't really about quitting nursing...at least not immediately. it would be better called baby led solids. what it means basically is that you let your child feed themselves with baby safe foods they can gnaw on and enjoy, and skip the who purees phase. so basically they can eat whatever you're eating provided that it's healthy and not a choke hazard. i think people have been doing this for a long time really, but now it finally has a name.

i read a bit more about it, and jia's pediatrician was for it, so i decided to give it a try...
and jia loves it!!



it took a month or so for her to do much other than play around with the food, but with baby led weaning, the motto is pretty much "any food before the age of 1 is just for fun," so that was ok! with this approach baby still gets most of their nutrients from mom, until eventually they get more efficient at eating solids and wean themselves off the milk.

jia's first solids were sweet potatoes. then she tried some bananas, and it's just gone on from there! she's had a few purees, but even with those she really wants to feed them to herself! haha. this whole baby led feeding has just been really natural for her.



these days she eats pretty much whatever we're having. she's had indian food, thai food, italian, all american, you name it! she already has more diverse tastes than i did until i was probably 20 years old!

she hasn't refused a thing though. does she look like a baby who refuses food? haha.

even when we gave her a lemon to try, she kept on giving it another chance!



it was bitter sweet starting solids at all for me. when you've grown your child entirely with your own body, it's a little hard to leave that time behind when they're so sweetly dependent on you. but alas, if baby girl has to grow up, then this been a fun journey to experiencing food!

whoops! looks like it's been a while month since i posted, because baby girl is now 8 months old! hard to believe!



this freaks me out a little bit because somehow 8 month feels so much closer to being 1 year old!

baby jia is changing and developing like crazy right now though! i feel like i can't even keep up with all the milestones that are flying by!

she crawls now...well, backwards anyway. she's been crawling backwards for a couple months, but now she's doing it with skill and precision to get to an intentional destination! she also pulls up, and stands up on her knees!! time to baby proof around here for real!!

she still just has 2 teeth on the bottom, but she's definitely teething badly at the moment, so i expect the top two front teeth to pop through sometime this week!

we've been doing baby led solids with her. at first she mostly just played with food, but now she loves it! there isn't a single food she's turned down...not even sour lemon! our baby girl is quite the chubster! and she definitely loves her indian food!

between all the newly acquired skills and teething, sleep is a rare commodity right now. i can't wait to sleep through the night again...someday!

i love this kid though...i wouldn't trade one moment for the world!