*warning: lots of pics in this post. many including cute toddlers.*

i have a special place in my heart for piney woods. if it were possible to enjoy the beauty of pine forests with out the humidity then it would be hard to keep me away.

this weekend we had the chance to go to east texas to celebrate the marriage of some friends, and decided to make the most of it and enjoy a chance to get away from the city with some of our besties.

though i was born in southeast texas, i had never spend much time in other parts of east texas. in case you haven't heard, texas is big y'all. we ended up renting a cabin that was part of a bed and breakfast between hughes springs and jefferson, texas called holly hills homestead.

the little cabin we stay in was a cute little rustic spot off of the main house. it was tiny, but charming, and had everything you might need. i wish it had rained while we were there, because i bet it sounds amazing on the metal roof. i should have taken the pics right when we arrived, but i never remember to do that, so sorry for unmade beds, etc... i promise it was all impeccably clean when we got there! :)




we flipped for rooms, and we ended up with the loft. you know jia loved climbing those stairs!









the girls had a good ole fashioned jumping on the bed slumber party!

we totally lucked out. for a last minute internet discovery, we weren't sure what we would find...but it was pure heaven in the woods! it had all the charm of a b&b but hidden away on a beautiful and secluded piece of land. i loved every minute there. it was like a secret garden. pictures don't do it justice. we will absolutely be back.










despite living in texas nearly all my life, i had never really heard of the town of jefferson. but it's a cute little place that you can tell must have been a pretty happening spot a couple hundred years ago. it's full of history, antique shops, and country charm. a great little get away. it reminds me a little of fredericksburg, though smaller and not so crowded. and of course the piney woods have a totally different charm than hill country.






we enjoyed roaming around the shops there and exploring. it felt like stepping back in time. we found a couple birthday gifts for jia, including this vintage rocking horse that i'm totally in love with. why is it that vintage kids stuff is so much more stylish?



on the way home we let the girls and dads take a swim in lake o the pines. i think they had a pretty good father's day.




we all had a great weekend and i'm already looking for a chance to go back!

in the fall i was anxious to re-stain and repair the deck in our back yard.

it was peeling and pretty nasty and warped in some places. our toddler was in constant danger of getting splinters or tripping and falling on her face.

however my husband convinced me to hold off, and said that maybe in the spring we could just tear out and redo the whole deck instead. that deck had seen many happy days, but it was time.

over the next few months our idea of building a new deck morphed/snowballed into building a flagstone patio.

the main reason was that we figured that if we were going to invest time and money, then we might as well make it something that would be low maintenance and that we wouldn't have to redo again in 10 years.

so in february we started demo. i fully anticipated relaxing on my stone patio by the end of the month. at least by march.





everyone helped with demo, and it was disgusting. pics of a cute toddler are much cuter than pics of us at this point. why is dirt only cute on babies?

when we found tons of rat poop and spider eggs underneath the deck, i was more happy than ever that we weren't putting up a deck again. the underside of those things are a magnet for nasty apparently!

we also found that part of the deck was built over a concrete pad. this meant that we would have to lay the flagstone a couple different ways on the concrete vs the ground.



the dogs were confused.



we needed lots of breaks.

the demo alone was a tone of work. then the next step was digging out the area on the ground where we would be laying stone.



by now it was march, and the texas spring weather was not working in our favor. this was just a weekend project for us, and some how every weekend seemed to get rained out.

once we dug out the area we wanted, we then filled it with a couple inches of decomposed granite and rented a tamper to flatten it down.

we thought we were done with the hardest part.

ha!

next we had the stone delivered, pressure washed everything, and then dry laid the stones. it felt like the home stretch.



all that was left using some cement to stick down the stones that were laid on the concrete, and then we'd fill the cracks and seal everything.

however, i forgot that i was married to a perfectionist. sticking down the stones and laying them in the perfect place where they would be perfectly level and perfectly sloping away from the house required hours of measuring, placing, and the pulling up the stones and doing it all over again if it wasn't perfect.

this was our life for a month. if i had been the project manager on this part, i would have just eyeballed it, slapped it down, and call it a day. in the end i'm glad my husband took the time to make things look professional, but at the time i was so over it! notice i forgot to take pics of this step. i think i was too traumatized.

that seemingly simple step of sticking down the stones ended up being the most complicated part of the project, so after that we could actually see the finish line!

we filled all the cracks with concrete sand, and then sealing the stones and cracks.

tadaaaa!




by mid may we were enjoying our patio. yes, i said MAY!!
i never thought that day would come.



i got a steal on some comfy patio furniture via craigslist, and we were ready to finally enjoy this thing!



this definitely took the prize for the most exhausting diy of all time. it was back breaking, and never ending. but worth it? now that we're on the other side of things i think i can say yes. i can also say never again! lol.




we've certainly been living it up in the backyard since we finished!

this patio was also a part of my husband's dream of creating a backyard theater, so we're planning to really make the most of all our hard work!



i thought i would be burned out on doing yard work/diys for the rest of my life after that one, but now i'm actually feeling inspired to tackle some new projects. stay tuned...one of them has to do with that big black thing against our exterior wall.



we'll have lived in this house for 5 years next month, so it feels good to give it a little bit of sprucing up in honor of the occasion. hopefully now this patio will last even longer than this house, because we are so done with this project! :)

for the past 6 months or so my girl and i have been going to a mommy and me sort of gym class that's offered by the city. it's 3 mornings a week, so it gives us a good routine, and a chance for her to burn off some energy early in the day so that i can get a few things done later! :)



these pics were all taken back in the early days of the class when everything was still new...hence the much younger looking baby. i can't believe how much she's grown up in the past few months! and her hair has grown like crazy!



i would have thought that parachute was the coolest thing ever when i was a kid. actually i still kind of do.




hopefully my kiddo has learned a lot about how to interact with society through this class. it's definitely been good for helping her to learn how to wait her turn, share, sit down and listen, etc... although she certainly still has her moments that she forgets...she's almost 2 after all! ;)



i really enjoy having this special time with her though. hopefully we're making memories!

i would be a pathetic home diy blogger. first of all, i'm posting this about 6 months late, and secondly, i'm completely horrible at taking in progress pictures when i'm working on any kind of project.

when we bought our house almost 5 years ago, it was a flip that had been sitting on the market for a long time that we got a great deal on in a neighborhood we loved. however, since it was a flip, a lot of the finishes and upgrades weren't something we would have chosen, but it took me awhile to feel justified in ripping any of it out since a lot of it was new.

but this dark granite tiled fireplace had been glaring at me ever since we moved in. it was the first thing you would see when you walked through the front door, and it felt like it sucked the light out of the room.



sorry, i forgot to take a before pic before i started demo. but another thing that always annoyed me was that the tiles were off center! ugh! i just couldn't wait to get started!

one day on an impulse i just started ripping off tiles with the hope that there would be some beautiful brick underneath. alas, there was brick, however it was covered in gunk and not really salvageable.



so plan B was to put a better looking tile on the fireplace. we picked a light split faced travertine to kind of brighten the room and to tie in with travertine that's in the kitchen. also since part of the charm of split faced tile is it's imperfections, it was a good kind of a good easy medium for my husband to learn tile installation. he got the fun of fixing my impulsive demo job!



but in the end it was completely worth it! for about $100, this was a high impact project that really made the house feel so much more like our own.



ok, enough pics mom.

parsley sage rosemary and thyme....



scarborough faire is one of my favorites, and i absolutely can't go without getting that song stuck in my head!

out first trip there was last year, and we loved it so much that we decided to make it an annual tradition! jia really loved it this year too, and we were able to go with some friends this time!













it's just a fun chance for grown ups to play make believe and totally escape from reality for a bit! can't wait until next year! :)

our little munchkin turns two next month, and we haven't had a vacation in a VERY long time, so we decided to take a little trip now while she still flies for free!