Pupster and Ferocious Bunny's Birthday Week

Will be out all day celebrating Baby Girl's momentous first birthday!

The Quiet Book by Deborah Underwood

My favorite quiet? The "Trying not to hiccup quiet"!

Colin learned to talk fast. I distinctively remember at the age of 9 months on Christmas 2008, Colin repeated back in pitch and rhythm the Korean version of pat-a-cake, "sae-sae-sae." He HAS NOT STOPPED TALKING since then. Literally. He talks and sings ALL DAY.

So one summer day I was browsing Amazon.com for some new books and a book titled "The Quiet Book" was recommended to me. I took a look inside and it was so meaningful to a mom who just wanted a minute of silence! The book thoughtfully describes all the different quiet one can experience.

The illustration is so beautiful and I love all the little details; the subtle introduction of the new character, and the little surprise under the dust jacket (hint hint).

I can't say nothing but good things about this book, but I'm sorry to say that this book is too quiet for the very excitable Boy. I would still recommend that you check it out though!

Free Download: Printable Easter Gift Tags

Free Download: Printable Easter Gift Tags (PDF)

This would be good for baby showers too.

Color Inspiration: Benjamin Moore's Buxton Blue - HC-149

Spring is almost here so they had the spring accent colors up at Pottery Barn, and they had Benjamin Moore's Buxton Blue on one of the walls. I've seen this name come up often on a lot of the home decor/interior sites but I've never seen it in person before. I have to say, I liked what I saw.

Ever since I saw the Benjamin Moore's Labrador Blue on Modern Family (good info on set/decor), I've been set on painting one of the rooms blue. Only kink is that I've been told that houses with blue paint are hard to sell, I'm not a definite authority on this, I've been told by my sister who has been told by her real estate agent, and who knows where that lady heard it from. So I've been hesitant (or rather busy and lazy... can you be busy and lazy at the same time?) also the fact that three bathrooms in our house is very light blue and Caitlin's room is also blue (wedgewood-ish blue)... so where would this blue go? Paint over the blue in the bathroom? Basement? I'm thinking kitchen, already got the white subway tile, burlap curtains and honey colored island. Or maybe the foyer?

"Thick Envelope"

Boy receives his first "thick envelope".

We found out that the Boy has been accepted to the new preschool yesterday. He received his first "thick envelope" (literally, it had a handbook in it) and I literally did the happy dance when I realized what it meant.

I don't know why I'm so happy about this. It wasn't like this was some prestigious school or anything. Maybe it was because what I saw in the school seemed so much better than his current school and I really wanted for this to be his new educational environment. Or maybe I was secretly very pleased that he is "acceptable" (after all, the school demands all applicants to submit a picture).

But as I type this I feel a little pang of sadness for him leaving his current school. I talk about it to people, "Well, the current school just doesn't focus too much on education as the new school, oh, and it's so unorganized compared to the new school. It's good for socializing, but not for learning." I feel sad, because it's still a good school and I shouldn't put it down like that. The teachers there love the Boy and they put up with his rowdiness and taught his little 2 1/2 year old brain to get used to school, to play nicely with other kids, to celebrate birthdays and holidays together. So why am I enrolling him to a new school...

I console my guilt ridden heart by repetitively saying to myself, "It's not like he'll have the same teacher again next year." And he won't and that's what got us rolling on looking for new school for him in the first place. Hopefully it was a good decision...

Baby Girl's Birthday Party Kit

Baby Girl (or I guess you can tell by now that her name is Caitlin...)'s birthday is this Saturday. Since we've already had her fancy cheot dol (or dohl, meaning birthday in Korean) birthday party few weeks back, we'll do something more low scale on her actual birthday: go to ToysRUs and pick out her present and her birthday balloon, go out for a luncheon, outing with her birthday girl outfit and cake. A week later we'll have to do the same for her older brother, yes, their birthday is eight days apart.

As I have mentioned before, I decided not to outsource party decorating for Caitlin's first Korean birthday. So that meant I had to do everything myself. I wanted to save money, but I also wanted to make it special, so I designed everything myself and printed everything in-house (except for the doljabi board and the banners, they are from Costco and Vista Print). My inkjet printer is not the best printer out there, but it gets the job done for a three hour party.

01  doljabi board
02  doljabi raffle tickets
03  doljabi labels
04  trifold centerpiece
05  birthday banner in English
06  birthday banner in Korean
07  PowerPoint presentation template
08  birthday party invitation
09  thank you card
10  table numbers
11  place setting cards

By the way, things are not to scale, obviously a wall banner would be so much bigger than a trifold paper centerpiece.

Baby & Child: Restoration Hardware's Children Furniture

Baby & Child

I love Restoration Hardware, every time I am at Tyson's Corner Mall I have to stop by their store. I love their apothecary bottles, the shiny chrome (and I don't even like chrome!), everything in there looks timeless to me. But when they branched out to children, I wasn't crazy about that. Their pink/blue and brown line (which are now on sale) was too bold and harsh in my opinion and it was more towards mod than what I'm used to seeing from Restoration Hardware. I never looked at their catalogs and drool over their things; I had Pottery Barn Kids for that.

Last year Restoration Hardware was going towards new direction when they introduced that distressed finished line of furniture, but I still paid no attention to their children's line. So imagine my surprise when I see a mail leaflet and I see on it this cute little neutral lion sitting on a linen chair and I'm like, where are these fantastic items from? I look all over and I see that it's from Restoration Hardware!

So I go to their website and see this:


and this:


Oooooh...... I LOVE IT!

It kind of has that french-old-school thing going on... How awesome is that chalk map up in that play room? It's on sale for $638.99.