dearest bachelorette Emily //

Many of us have been looking forward to this season. 

A hearty THANK YOU for accepting whatever arm-twisting ABC had to go through to get you on.

Meanwhile, I'll be playing this little game

 ::I created this back on Ali's season::

 

the Mothers Day interview project

Via pinterest (where else?)

Among the advice I'll rephrase & give to my little Jane 

 This mother's day, I'm going to sit in front of a video camera & talk to my future Jane. Then Matty will join me & we'll interview each other. Then we'll interview her. (She currently says hi!, dog, Jane, mama, dada, woof, mmmmmmm (kiss) so conversation should be pretty deep).

Wouldn't that be fun to watch as an adult? I'm trying to imagine what my parents would've said on those tapes. I'm envisioning we'll do this on an annual basis & keep it to 10 minutes or so, cause those will add up over the years!

Let's talk about resumes 1: pleasing to the eye

What's that?

Her resume.

Smells good.

I recently reviewed many friends' resumes (maybe yours was included in that?). Reviewing these brought back a few best-practice guidelines I wanted to share with anyone looking to improve their resume. I'll discuss the first one today ... we'll discuss more later.

Resume: factual document should also be very pleasing to the eye

Think of a resume as both a factual document of your experiences/accomplishments, AND as a work of art. By 'art', I mean it must be visually pleasing ... pretty. Easy on the eyes. A balanced use of white space & text. Cleanliness in use of fonts. Brevity in word usage. Quantify accomplishments to the extent possible.

Have questions about yours? Ask me.

What I learned this week.

 

I wonder who else nerds it up with me in Excel. I do love thee, Excel. Tracking my household bills (cause there are 15 that just come along with owning a home, and we don't even have cable or a gardener or any of those luxuries) - I couldn't do it without it.

I've spent some time with my head in the finances this week, exploring a larger question - how are we preparing as a family for our future? This past year has been a lot about living in the moment (newborn baby, buying/remodeling house, moving & unexpected hiccups in those plans). Stepping back, stretching out and thinking about the broader questions of life are akin to a spa day for me.

Some things I learned this week:

1. For ladies like me, a quality bra is worth 4x its weight in gold. (I recommend Le Mystere & Title 9)
2. It feels a lot better to be saving $$ & loving what you already own, than to feel the need to chase every fleeting trend that comes down the blog & pinterest pike in clothing & hair. I re-realized this week that I've been letting an industry (of fashion) determine what I felt I should be wearing so I could feel approval from others. Hmmm.
3. I can trust Jane to figure it out & learn through life's difficulties, however big or small (this week, we ended co-sleeping & she took very well to her crib & room)
4. I fit nicely back into my smaller clothing, oh happy day
5. Service that really helps someone out feels really, really good
6. I have to see Avengers. NOW.       ::looks around for babysitter::
7. It's nice to see artistic, well-designed things, high fashion & pretty people with awesome-how-did-they-do-that hair braids, but it feels much nicer to ponder larger questions of eternity
8. We started discussing our family mission statement & life goals (more on this later). This is energizing. Along with mission & goals, we'll write down what we believe are our top accomplishments- our high points - in life. When life's got us down, we can read those for a quick pick-me-up. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
9. I'm getting another nephew (on the Bremness side)!
10. Bachelorette starts up again this monday, and ICANNOTWAIT.

 (via here)

You know when you find a store or an organization or a group - something - that captures something you feel deeply about? No? Well I do. I just stumbled upon Agrarian, a new shop by Williams Sonoma people.

 Not two weeks ago I suddenly turned to Matt and said, "When all this house stuff settles down (we're still knee-deep in setting up home & garden), I think bee-keeping will be my new hobby. You know, 'cause our plants need bees." How profound, I know.

Then Agrarian comes along. I think this was meant to be.

This shop seems to be all about the homegrown, homemade, food gardening, bee keeping (!), canning, even urban chicken coops, and most importantly - understanding where our food comes from. That concept has weighed on my mind from early in my pregnancy, when I grew unusually interested in every element of the food I ate, including where it came from.

Mothers day is nearing the bend!

House, guests, & houseguests

This weekends rain pushed back plans on our dream garden. We've hired a landscape designer to help out with the planning (I'm actually itching to do the physical labor) and its nearing ideal planting time for this part of the country.

Family arrives this week, but sadly only for a few short days. We also had family in last week, and it went by too fast (could it be we also love all of the trusted babysitting?)

Having a larger, better equipped home to welcome family into is surprisingly ... satisfying.

This house has many lessons yet to teach me, Daniel-sohn.

This week: il pleu a lot so I baked

Il pleu is some of the little French I remember from hs, but it's enough to comment on the weather 15 days of the year in Los Angeles. So, while il pleu...

Look ma, I made these! Alls by myself. I feel accomplished today. (I also organized the garage, tools, cleaned kitchen, laundry, hung art, organized/paid all bills, finished taxes & ...almost opened the paint can to get cracking on the breakfast nook).