Sobremesa Stories

Five on Friday: Nesting Projects And Baby Updates

February 19, 2016 By Lauren

As the weeks pass by and Caleb’s due date gets closer and closer, these final weeks of teaching are dragging on a bit. For some reasons I describe below, it was a tough week of teaching and being on my feet. Beyond our small group (which was wonderful), our week nights have been slow and sweet and involved lots of resting and just soaking in some time together (plus a wild Duke game or two). Even still, I am so glad to be at the start of another weekend!

1) Valentine’s Day Dates

Although we did go out to a fun brunch on our Friday off last week, we decided to do a mostly low-key Valentine’s Day since I was feeling pretty tired. Two friends spoiled us to a yummy lunch with some delicious chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert, and then Sunday night I cooked us a delicious maple-glazed salmon recipe from Lexi’s Clean Kitchen. We finished off the night with some microwave blueberry crisps and a fun movie on the couch! Not the craziest Valentine’s Day off our lives, but I loved getting to spend that time with my guy and soak in our last weeks as a party of two.

Note the bag in the background…yes, we did wrap our Valentine’s gifts in leftover Christmas bags.

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Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Rejection And Recovery

February 17, 2016 By Lauren

Welcome to this week’s Womanly Wednesday! This week’s poster, Leigh, is a friend whom I met through my church small group. Leigh has a deep heart to thoughtfully and intentionally love people and I have learned so much from my friendship with her these past two years. She’s a fellow writer whose passion and love of language I deeply respect, so make sure to check out her blog too!

I experienced my first rejection around age 5 or 6.

What I remember most from this rejection story is that I noticed it easily. Maybe more easily than a child should, but then again, children are sponges and aware of way more than that for which we give them credit. My Grandmother (my Mom’s Mom), from as early as I can remember, favored my Dad and my Sister over my Mom or me. My Sister was more even in personality (not hyper-active like I was), very smart where she didn’t have to try at school subjects, and quieter – more behaved. My Mom and I are more emotion-on-our sleeves people. I was all over the place growing up. Loud, hyper-active, talked so fast and rarely sat still. I spoke before I really thought about it and laughed at high decibels.

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Five Ways To Update And Brighten A Dark Hallway

February 16, 2016 By Lauren

I received hardware from D. Lawless Hardware in return for writing this post. However, any opinions expressed are still my own and I promise I would only recommend products that I love and use myself!

We lived in our house almost a year before even touching the upstairs hallway. Since we didn’t have kiddos and the only people in that hallway were the occasional Airbnb guest, we just weren’t all that worried about it. But once we started working on our little boy’s nursery , we got inspired to update this space!

Like most of our house, it was painted a yellowy-tan with orange-toned wood trim (we had already painted the trim in this picture, but you can see what it looks like in the before pictures of our son’s nursery). There’s one big window opposite the hallway, but otherwise it gets almost no natural light and felt very dark and closed off.
A couple hours of work, some coats of paint, and a few pretty frames later, it looks so much better! If you’re looking to update your hallway, I recommend you try these five things that we did. They made all the difference and our hallway is now a space I love walking through!

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Nine Month Pregnancy Update

February 15, 2016 By Lauren

Nine months pregnant. 36 weeks pregnant. Are those really three words I can use to describe myself?! Even if I’m struggling to wrap my mind around it, my body feels nine months pregnant (or maybe more like 10-11?) and I am getting to excited and ready to meet our little guy. But instead of just rambling about it, here are a few more organized updates about this past month!

How I’m Feeling

It’s funny, because people ask me this question all the time and my usually honest self never really knows how to answer. It is acceptable to say something like, “Oh you know, just feeling like my body’s been taken over by an alien that’s smooshing my organs, making it hard to breathe, giving me heartburn and carpal tunnel, making any and all physical movement difficult, and slowly trying to push his way out my rib cage booty-first?”

I usually just stick with “Just chugging along, you know?” But if I’m honest, the first answer is more accurate.

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Five on Friday: Brunch Dates And Parent Teacher Conferences

February 12, 2016 By Lauren

Hallelujah we made it through this WEEK! Happy dances all around! It was a week I’ve been anxious about for a while and I am so glad to have made it through with nothing but some swollen ankles to show for it. I’m sharing below a few reasons why this week was so long, as well as our plans for the nice long weekend that follows this crazy week. Happy Friday, friends!

1) Weekly Brunch Dates

As of this weekend we are officially in the final four weeks of pregnancy, and we’re trying to soak in as much time together and baby-free as we can. I’ve been a brunch lover my entire life and decided the best way to do this was weekly brunch dates where I can eat as much sugar and carbs as my little heart desires! I’m hoping to do this up until little man comes. I’m so grateful for mornings with this guy and the easy, natural companionship we share. There’s no one I’d rather spend time with and I can’t wait to add another little person into our family.

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Womanly Wednesday: Having A Sister With Severe Psychiatric Illnesses

February 10, 2016 By Lauren

Welcome to this week’s Womanly Wednesday! It is always an honor to have women share their hearts in this series, and this week’s post really touched me with its honesty and rawness. Autumn, a blogging friend from Stay Gold Autumn, is opening up about her experiences growing up with a sister with many mental health issues. I can relate to some of this from my own extended family and some of it from friends and their families, and I hope that anyone who’s in Autumn’s (or her sister’s) shoes is encouraged by her words here today.

A Doctor approached my dad in the hospital. “Is this your child?” My dad replied. “Did you adopt your child?” My dad replied. The doctor looked back and forth from my sister to my father and said: “I wouldn’t have bet a penny on this child’s life a year ago.”

My parents adopted my sister at the age of 3, but she had almost died from malnutrition multiple times before being placed into foster care. A year or two after the adoption, my parents were in an abuse seminar when my Mom realized that they were passing my sibling’s pictures around as examples; in that meeting, my parents found out that my sister was placed into foster care after being in the worse child abuse situation the state said it had seen.

I’ve always been very cautious about talking about my sister’s experiences, and my experiences as her younger sister, because I did not want to add to the stigma of foster care adoptions or perpetuate stereotypes of children who are adopted having “problems.” Instead, I want you to understand that my sister’s illness is indicative of being severely neglected and abused, having severe psychiatric illnesses, and that I forgive her.

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Six Tips To Create A Beautiful And Fun Nursery Gallery Wall

February 9, 2016 By Lauren

Since I shared our little man’s nursery reveal a few weeks back, I’ve gotten so many compliments on the gallery wall above his changing table! The longer we’ve been in our house, the more confident I’ve gotten in my design and decor dreaming, and designing this nursery gallery wall was such a fun process.

If you’ve ever wanted to design a gallery wall for a nursery or another room, these are my tried and true tips for making sure it’s warm, personal, and balanced instead of feeling too cluttered or mismatched like some gallery walls do. I hope these tips will inspire you to try your hand at designing a gallery wall of your own!

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A Letter To The Son We’ll Soon Meet

February 8, 2016 By Lauren

Our Dear, Sweet Boy,

As I write this letter, I am 35 weeks pregnant. That means it’s just a matter of weeks until you leave the safety of my belly to come into this crazy world. Do you know how excited your dad and I are to meet you? We talk about you every day and dream about what you’re like. We wonder if you’ll have blonde hair and blue eyes like so many people in our family, or if you’ll surprise us and crack us up with a head full of strawberry blonde hair like I had as a baby. We wonder if you’ll love sports or music, if you’ll love reading and language like your mama, if you’ll grow up a Duke fan like your daddy or if you’ll just love all things Kansas City.

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Five on Friday: Awkward Classes And Long To-Do Lists

February 5, 2016 By Lauren

Wahoooo! We made it to the weekend! We had a busy week this week with church small group, doctor’s appointments, and some classes. I am so ready for this weekend of resting and fun times with friends!

1) To-Do Lists

I have two running to-do lists on a (digital) sticky note on my laptop these days: one for blogging and one for real life. I try to add to them each day and set some goals for what I’ll accomplish that day. For the most part, I’ve been knocking things off the list pretty well, but with just five weeks until Caleb arrives I am starting to feel the crunch a bit. I’m trying to remind myself that Target will still exist after he arrives and that friends and family will be happy to help if we desperately need something. I know it will all work out, but I’m still doing my best to work through the list one by one.

On this weekend’s agenda? Wash some of the baby clothes, sheets, Boppy covers, etc we’ve gotten these last few months so we’ll at least have a few outfits read to go when little man gets here. And don’t all those little clothes look so cute hanging in this closet? (Make sure to check out the full nursery reveal HERE if you haven’t already!)

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Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Life After Divorce

February 3, 2016 By Lauren

Welcome to this week’s Womanly Wednesday! I met Danielle through a friend when I moved to Kansas City and have been so impressed by her joy, honesty, and sense of humor in the midst of what has been a really hard few years. I’m so grateful to have her here on the blog today sharing about what it’s looked like for her to find a new plan after her divorce! Thanks for sharing your heart, Danielle!

It is what it is. In the last 6 years this has become my motto for life. Wait, let me back up. Here’s my story…short and sweet. High school best friends fall in love, date for four years while he is in the Marine Corps, deal with two tours in Iraq, get married, deal with PTSD, and three years after that have a son. That’s where the fairytale ends.