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!

where is the time going?!

seriously. we need to stop this now. my baby can't be 7 months old already!

but anyways, i think it just keeps on getting more and more fun as time passes.



i caught her singing in this month's pic. singing is pretty much her favorite thing. our household is getting kind of noisy! haha.

she loves to play and laugh all the time! the toys that just sat around the first few months and getting lots of attention now!

baby girl has cut 2 teeth, and is getting pretty close to a crawl! she is able to move backwards, but hasn't quite gotten the forward motion coordinated yet. which is fine by me! i'm not ready for this kind of mobility!

she also has had a cold the past couple weeks...so she's gotten very used to the saline and nose sucker. so much so that she's pretty much a pro and just lays there quietly and let's me take care of it!

she's trying out new foods now. i'm doing a combo of baby led weaning and purees. so far mama's milk is still her favorite...though she's having fun tasting new stuff, when she's hungry she wants the milk! so far the chocolate her papa snuck her is her favorite new food though. go figure! :P

bath time is splash time now. everyone gets wet, but it's lots of fun!

changes are happening so fast now...it's hard to even keep up with! each day is like a new adventure!
this kid is such a blessing!

one home related improvement i've decided to tackle in 2013 is to finally do something about all the shiny brassy hardware in our house. it's definitely not my favorite look.

all of our door knobs look kind of like they stepped right out of 1993.



however, i'm too cheap to buy new hardware...and i kind of hate replacing something unless it's worn out anyhow.

but changing the finish on all our knobs is going to be a lot of work...that's why i've just been staring at them for almost 4 years now.

these days i've been hearing about brass making a comeback though...which makes me a little nervous. i'm hoping it's not the case...but if it is then i'd like to know for sure before i expose myself to hours of work and chemical fumes! :P

right now the options i have in my mind are to spray the hardware all oil rubbed bronze like this:



most of our light fixtures in the house are oil rubbed bronze.

or the other idea i'm playing around with is trying to remove the lacquer from the brass to get an aged brass look like this:



what would you do?
has anyone successfully attempted any of these things?
has anyone else heard rumors of brass making a big comeback?
if you wait too long to update something, is it better to just wait until it comes back in style? ;)

so last night i finally finished up jia's crib wall.

while i was prego, i was inspired by this image on pinterest.



they just took doiles and cupcake wrappers, and made a cute organic 3D wall feature!

so i just went and started throwing some up on the nursery wall when i suddenly had my doubts...

we didn't know if we were having a boy or girl...and even though i nixed the doilies and was only using the cupcake wrappers, it was reading pretty girly to me. maybe a boy wouldn't appreciate it.

plus the whole shebang is held up by thumb tacks. and i had my reservations about combining thumb tacks with a baby's room.

but alas, june came around, and we were blessed with a baby girl!

then last night in a sudden spurt of inspiration, i decided to just go for it and finish what i started. as far as the tacks go, i figure that by the time she's pulling up and could possibly get anywhere near reaching any of them, her mattress will be dropped down and put them way out of grasp. most of them are really very high up. plus they would definitely be a challenge to get out of the wall. my sore thumb can testify. my thumb hurt, and i ran out of yellow tacks, so my interpretation is more spaced out and floaty than the original, but i still like it.

ta daaaa!



i think jia likes it too...and that's what really matters! it gives her something fun and textural to check out.





any it's always nice to create something so impactful in a room for a total cost of about $3, and a 15 min time commitment! can't complain about instant gratification!

by the way, all those pillows aren't in the bed if it's being slept in...but they're nice for playing babies to tend to bonk their heads! :P



we still need to put up her book ledge and her wall hooks, but this room is almost done! but since it took this long just to do a 15 min fix, i'm just hoping we'll finish the rest by her first birthday!

ps- forgive the bad pics. it's dark and rainy today, so there wasn't much natural light, and i was too lazy to get out the real camera. :P

wow, i'm behind! or maybe i've just been in denial about christmas being over. :(

anyways, this year was of course our first christmas with a little one, and that was pure joy! jia is in this phase where she's obsessed with tearing paper too, so that worked out well.

in my whole 30+ years of christmases in texas, i had only experienced one white christmas before this year...and that was just a couple years ago. so my little munchkin was lucky enough to have the once in a blue moon texas white christmas on her first one! (too bad she won't remember it!)



she's a cold weather girl like her mama, so jia loved the snow!



anyways, christmas was adorable. i'm looking forward to starting new traditions with her over the next several years.

a couple days after christmas, jia experienced her first conference...which was an awesome one! but one thing i learned is that conference schedules don't always work with baby schedules! thankfully jia was still pretty off schedule from our trip to india anyhow! :P



in other news, over the past 3 weeks jia has cut 2 teeth, and had 2 colds! we've been passing one back and forth between each other. :( poor baby. it's a snot fest.



someday i will sleep again. some day.
in the mean time, i'm lovin' my baby snuggles.