We knew the birth of our baby would have an element of surprise, but we never imagined that the surprise would be welcoming our new addition 12 weeks early. On Thursday January 26 I was admitted to the hospital with pre-eclampsia. Four days later on January 30 I gave birth via emergency c-section, and we finally met our little girl Olive. It was an incredibly difficult five days leading up to it, and her birthday was the scariest day of both of our lives. The experience rocked us to our cores, but we are proud to introduce you to our teeny tiny micro preemie.
All posts tagged StuffWeHeart
Oh Baby….We’re Expecting
We’ve known since mid-August, but we thought it was about time to share the big news on the blog: that we are expecting our first baby in late April. We are over the moon excited. And totally freaked out. All at the same time. Which is why we waited 13 weeks to tell most of our friends and family and until we hit the halfway mark (20 weeks) to finally share it on the blog. We’ve been neglecting the blog a little bit as of late, but it has all been due to our impending nugget as we affectionately call him or her. We’ve actually been busier than ever, but now we can share all of our nursery plans in the upcoming weeks since that has moved to the top of our priority list this winter. Along with dozens of other things before the nugget arrives of course.
Anniversary Week: The Gift of Paper
Although I think it’s a little antiquated, there is a suggested list floating around out there of traditional anniversary gifts for each year of marriage. What does it suggest for a first anniversary? Paper. I’m not really sure what that traditionally meant, but I envision beautiful personalized letterpress stationery or something along those lines. Dain and I agreed that we weren’t going to do gifts this year, but I couldn’t resist a sentimental paper gift just because. And because it was under $10, I didn’t consider it to be breaking the no gift rule. Here’s what I came up with to commemorate our first year (of marriage) together.
Anniversary Week: The Story of Us
Well, we hit a milestone over the weekend. Our first wedding anniversary. Yep, we made it a whole 365 days. Pretty big time. And we hope no one is surprised. To continue our celebration, we thought we’d have a week of anniversary on the blog to share a little bit more about us. It’s hard to believe it was an entire year ago that we were celebrating our wedding weekend (which you can catch up on here), but in actuality, it all started seven years ago when we went on our official first date. In case you don’t know, here’s a little bit of our back story that began in 2004.
A Mini Minnesota Just for You
In case you haven’t noticed, we are pretty enamored with our state. So much that we like to display our Minnesota love. Dain made me a mini Minnesota painting on canvas months ago because he knows that I am a sucker for all things teeny tiny. And for glitter. He nailed it when he made mine pink with a white glittery Minnesota on it. Now we are adding them to our store so that you can bring your very own mini Minnesota to a home near you. Don’t worry, we do have other colors for those who fail to appreciate the glitter factor. And we’re sharing how we do it in case you want to make your own or make one with a different state since we hear there are 49 others that may also be art-worthy.
Garden Crashing
No, we did not physically “crash” into anyone’s yard, but we did think it would be fun to feature one of our favorite gardens. We were in my hometown of Rochester, Minnesota over the weekend to see an amazing Cloud Cult concert, and if you have never heard their music you are missing out. So you should do something about that. Pronto. When we weren’t busy rocking out to Cloud Cult, we snapped a few photos of my parents’ yard. The one that my dad slaves over. And it happens to have a patio with a privacy fence that we would probably steal if there weren’t so many bricks involved. Here’s a look at a little garden inspiration.
Terrarium Time
We had been talking about making a terrarium for a long time. And we finally did it this spring. We actually made two in our first go since we over-committed on our plant purchase the first time around. And we are still loving them months later. So when it came to thinking of the perfect gift for a family member’s upcoming birthday, we knew it was time to bust out our terrarium skills again.
Rediscovering the Library
I’ve obviously known about the library for a long time. My mom used to take me to the Rochester Public Library when I was kid, and we would go to the little library at our elementary school beginning in kindergarten. But it really wasn’t until this past year that I rediscovered how incredible the library truly is and how lucky we are in Minnesota to have a large, sophisticated public library system. Everyone is so caught up these days with their iPads and Kindles and Netflix subscriptions that we seem to have forgotten what a true treasure the library is. And it is completely free, which is a rarity in this world.
The Heart Shop is Open for Business
Finally. And we apologize for the delay. The whole at-home screen printing thing has been a little more difficult than we thought. But we have finally mastered it. And we’re rolling out our new shirts so that everyone can enjoy them as much as we do. Dain’s been wanting to try his hand at screen-printing for awhile now because he loves graphic tees and figured he could make ones that are just as cool as the ones he buys. So when he found an at-home setup for sale on Craigslist this spring, he pulled the trigger and started the learning process. And now we can say that we make our own t-shirts (not the actual shirt….but you know what I mean).
Adult Toys…Not Those Kind
As any Minnesotan will tell you, we have really long winters. It can easily be cold and snowy from October through May. People still talk about the Halloween Blizzard of 1991. It even has a wikipedia entry (here). Let’s just say a lot of costumes had to be modified that year, and there weren’t any naughty nurses or sexy cops out walking around (thank you for that Mother Nature). We normally don’t let the weather stop us from doing anything outside, but when it’s well below zero in the dead of winter with wind chill advisories and frostbite advisories and the weatherman is telling us not to be outside for any longer than necessary, we stay in. And indoor entertainment is not as fun. We hear that pets and kids are like built-in entertainment, but since we haven’t made those leaps yet, we turn to a few toys that are really fun for kids and adults alike (and that we can nicely place in a cabinet when we are done with them).
Chrissy: Just read your post after checking out a friend's facebook page & ...
Paula in MN: Hoping and praying that your little family is well!...
weheartmn: I don't recall other sizes when I bought it, but the one I got is abou...
Laury: I went to target and saw these jars, they had three sizes (small, medi...
Laura @ House Of Joyful Noise: Olive is beautiful!! I found your news, and request for prayers, thro...
