Domestic Kate

At first glance, it may seem like my sweet nephew with the striped hat isn't on our sleigh ride.... but after looking again, {and Tom's photoshop skillz} you can see that he is indeed on our sleigh ride!! Can you find him?!

Tom got me a gift card to Anthropolgie and I was able to browse the store earlier this week while Hans was napping. I love gift cards because I like to take several trips to the store and know I have money to spend there, but still take my time looking through things. I like to really stretch those suckers out rather than spending it all in one shot. While I was there this week, I found this adorable set of children's dishes. They are china but they are safe for the microwave and dishwasher. I love how the animals stick out from the dishes. I would have loved these as a kid! I know they are easily breakable but I'm looking forward to making a "special" lunch for Hans one day using these dishes. I'll probably wait until he is around preschool age. Right now, we're working on using a plastic children's plate without slamming it on the floor. =-)

...and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go!!! We truly had a "vintage christmas" this year as we all headed back to my Grandma's house. All of my siblings and nieces and nephews were able to go as well making this a very special time!! Because the size of our family has more than doubled since we were little kids, we are no longer able to sleep snuggly at Grandma's house and were fortunate enough to be able to stay at a cozy little hotel in town. It felt like we should be waking up to a mountain range out back and with the off and on snow fall throughout the weekend, it really felt like a Christmas in the old movies {for lack of a better description}. There were too many places I wanted to stop along the way from our hotel to my grandma's house. I could take pictures of every old building in this town! To say I'm sentimental would be an understatement. Although, this building holds no significance to my family. I just liked the green gar...

Thanks to Shutterfly {and my friends that told me about it!} for this free Christmas card. They gave these out to bloggers who posted about all of the cards they offer on their site! Retro Plaid Christmas Card Customize your Christmas cards with Shutterfly. View the entire collection of cards.

Oh boy, one of my favorite things about the beginning weeks of December leading up to Christmas is when the mailman delivers the mail. Why, you ask? No, it's not because I am waiting for a packaged present, it's simply that I'm so so excited to see what Christmas cards we receive that day! My husband had the pleasure of opening our first card of the season a few weeks ago (grrrr...) afterwards I kindly told him how much I long to rip open each card we receive =-)....so we compromised, he opened the first card aaaand now I get to open the rest! =-) Being a new mommy (and even before!), I've had the pleasure of using Shutterfly to organize and print our photos (including our darling birth announcement *note: the link does not include the photo of our son) and now, with it being our first Christmas with a family, we are able to order everything from Shutterfly, from our Christmas Photo cards all the way down to gifts for our family and friends! By the way, I thin...

We had a little fun simulating a good old fashioned bath....in an old galvanized washtub no less! I've literally scoured the internet, antique shops, garage sales, and thrift stores trying to find one of these for a reasonable price. I have visions of using this thing for all sorts of things....from photo op's with Hans (and future children), to tie dying shirts (do people still do that?!), washing the family dog (if we ever decide to own one...), and finally I wanted to use it to put my Christmas tree in this year....only to realize our beautiful tree stand for our Fraiser Fur doesn't fit in the wash tub....I said I had visions people, this doesn't always make it reality!!!

Morning Coffee, Knitting, and my little babe snuggled in his bed....

As any new mother can probably attest, photography takes on a new level of passion once you have your special littles in your life. It's been some of my favorite times shared between Hans and me, especially as a stay at home mom. I just love when he wakes up from his nap and the sun is at it's perfect place and we get crazy and silly with photo's. And another thing I love about photos is that I can choose where I point and shoot my camera. Meaning, I can point at my little guy playing with his new hat rather than the multiple piles of laundry that were once folded in a basket and are now strung all over the floor (thanks Hans). Anyway, taking pictures of Hans (among other things) has just been so fun for both Tom and I. We started playing around with our pictures in photoshop and let me know just tell you....comp.li.cat.ed . Tom is figuring it out like a pro but I'm struggling along. I took some photos of Hans today and just wanted to share a couple of them. I ...

While I know this is a horrible picture of me, I just had to share it because I think it's funny that Hans and I are making the same expression with our mouths. Hans continues to look like a complete combination of Tom and I. Sometimes, when Tom is holding him, they look identical and then recently I've noticed a lot of expressions that Hans makes remind me of me when I was little. Regardless of who he looks like, we can't help but fall more and more in love with this little guy. Can you believe he is already 10 months old?!

I still haven't uploaded the Halloween pictures but wanted to put up a recent picture of Hans because I just feel like he has grown by leaps and bounds since our Superior trip. He just seems like such a 'big boy'. About a month ago, I definitely thought I heard him say "Hi" as he was waving to himself in the mirror and then just a few days ago we were at my parents house and he was waving to me and my mom and we BOTH heard him say "Hi". Last week, he was playing with some toys on his play table and hitting them and "babbling" the whole time and then clearly I heard him say "uh oh". I don't know if it was a fluke or not because he hasn't said it since, but it was so crystal clear. "Uh Oh" is something Tom and I say to him all of the time so it's plausible he'd pick up on it this early. He stood for 8 seconds without holding on to anything the other day. Last week, he also had his first whole meal of all fi...

Earlier in October we took off for a few days and headed up north to Superior's South Shore. We spent a couple of days up there, soaking in the serenity, and then headed back home with a quick stop to see Grahamcracker. This was a much needed break for us. Tom's schedule in the summer is beyond busy so we have been looking forward to this fall when we were able to get about 3 days off to spend time together as a family. Apparently, the South Shore happened to pretty much close down shop for the season the weekend before our trip, but we enjoyed the peacefulness and had fun feeling like we were all alone up there. Our cell phones didn't work and there was no land line so it was an unheard of vacation away from technology. And so funny because the "mom" in me was slightly worried that something would happen to the baby and we'd be without communication with anyone and have no idea where a hospital was....I don't know how we survived before cell phones, ...