With Mother’s Day coming up in just a few days, I wanted to put together a few really fun, easy gift boxes packed full of goodies. I love giving and receiving gifts like this, with an assortment of things I might not otherwise buy for myself. For me, I’m all about luxurious bath and body products since I rarely splurge on those treats. That said I wanted to pull together a few different gift box options for all the moms in your life or for yourself!

A year ago today, Bob and I carried a little baby girl into an attorney’s office across town. There may have been a lot of nerves. There may have been some pinching to be sure we weren’t dreaming. We sat across a big wide table, with our tiny girl sitting with us, and thanked the now former owners for selling us their childhood home. Their parents bought the house in the early 1950s (making us only the third or fourth owners of our 100+ year old house) and having lost their mother in her 90s back in 2014, it was a bittersweet day for them as they said goodbye to more than six decades of memories.

Hi, friends and happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. Did you do anything fun? Try any new recipes? Watch any good movies? Last Saturday we tore up our kitchen for what was intended to be a relatively quick and inexpensive interim renovation, but which is proving to be a much more involved project than we anticipated. Of course. So more than a week later my house is a certified renovation zone once again after taking a much needed break from any major projects since last fall when we wrapped up our living room renovation.

I’ve always been a fan of a really really great baby shower (you can find loads of baby shower ideas in the archives), but I’m especially into them at the moment since my sister is currently 20 weeks pregnant with her first baby. And with a seventeen month old toddler baby of my own, I feel like my own shower was just yesterday so, the long and short? Yes. Bring on all the baby shower stuff. When the ladies of Social Design & Events sent over this incredibly beautiful baby shower planned for one of their very own, Emily Sapp, I could not wait to share with you. Inspired by Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams video, their shared loved for plants, greenery and charcuterie (with photos by Leah Barry Photography), the ladies planned one of the loveliest baby showers I’ve seen in a long time.

This time of year I almost always have fresh cut flowers around the house. It’s almost a little crazy just how happy a big bunch of blooms in the center of the dining room table or tucked on the mantle can make me. Now that the snow is finally gone and the screen doors have been opened up, flowers around the house really drives home that spring vibe and they make me insanely happy. I get a lot of questions from friends about how I take care of cut flowers and I’ve shared them before here, but it seemed like a good time to revisit my favorite easy tips for how to keep flowers fresh, alive and perky for as long as possible. Any other tricks you can share with me? Fill me in!

Happy Monday, friends! I’m working on getting back in the saddle following a little spring break adventure over the second half of last week. There’s a really funny story there about a toddler who refused to sleep and cried for seven hours in a car only to then hate living in a hotel, but we’re going to save that one until I’ve recovered a bit more. Ha! In the meantime, let’s talk about these breakfast pastries. Because it’s Monday and by Monday I’m already thinking about weekend brunch.

To call this space a playroom per se is a little bit of a stretch, but when we embarked on our living room renovation, I knew I wanted to carve out a space at the end of the room just for Em. Since it’s right in the living room I was pretty passionate about wanting it to look as chic and well designed as possible, but at the same time I’m totally ok with our house showing evidence of children living here since this is their house, too.

Over the last few years I’ve seen several people share their favorite items from Trader Joe’s, and while I love Trader Joe’s as much as the next gal, the one nearest to us is an hour away. When we’re in the area we usually have a long shopping list of stuff we want to stock up on (we love their coffee and I’m crazy about the dried baby sweet pineapple), but we only make it there every month or two. Instead, I do our daily shopping at Aldi. I just started shopping there regularly less than a year ago and since then, I’ve become a huge fan. I think Aldi has a bit of a weird, mixed bag reputation (even though it’s owned by the brother of the guy who founded Trader Joe’s), which is why I kind of always avoided the place. The truth is, they have some incredible stuff at really unbelievable prices.

Happy Monday, friends! I hope everyone had a beautiful weekend. After a long, gray week of nonstop rain, we finally had an abundance of sunshine this weekend and it felt incredible. And now it’s the run up to Easter! Naturally no Easter festivities are properly complete without a killer deviled eggs recipe, so today I’m serving up just that. To be honest, my mom tends to be the deviled egg maker in our family, but we love to make them at home from time to time, too.

Is anyone else really really glad it’s Friday? I hate to be that person living for the weekend all the time, but this week has been so dark and rainy and gray and drizzly that it has been all I can do to stay awake the last few days, let alone feel motivated on any real level. We are finally expecting a bit of sunshine over the weekend and I need it so much more than I can even tell you. I’m also glad to have a pretty quiet weekend ahead of us for the first time in a while, which always feels nice.

When I started making chocolate bark (first Halloween candy bark and then Christmas chocolate bark), I was pretty sure I’d started something I wasn’t going to be able quit. Fast forward a few months, dump bags of my favorite Cadbury Mini Eggs on every store shelf and, well, I was right! This, friends, is Easter candy bark.

With Easter coming up next week, I’m admittedly in full-on brunch mode. Actually, because I consider any day ending in y a perfect reason to do brunch, Easter may well not have anything to do with it, but regardless, brunch has been on my mind a lot lately. So, too, is the promise of warmer days in the coming months, all of which has converged to inspire this trio of homemade lemonade recipes! Made with Truvia Natural Sweetener, they’re a delicious reduced sugar alternative to the traditional, and completely worthy of serving your family alongside Easter brunch.