Currently.

Watching: Nashville! Or trying to. I steal my sister's Hulu log in and she's started watching the show now too because I won't stop talking about it and she wants to know what all the fuss is about but Hulu won't let you watch two shows at once on the same log in. Booooo.

I'm a little bit embarrassed by how much I love this show. When Emmett and I are lying on the couch in the morning watching his whale documentary, I'm secretly daydreaming about Nashville. When I wake up in the middle of the night and can't go back to sleep, I'm secretly day(night)dreaming of Nashville. It's that good. And I'm that obsessed. And alllll the drama!

Reading: Nothing exciting. Anyone have recommendations?

Thinking about: Instagram! I have a major crush on Instagram y'all. I love photography and looking at photos, so IG is the perfect social media app for me. There is so much inspiration to be found through hashtags and @instagram suggested users. There are people doing photo prompts like @my_365 and @its_my_week, communities teaching about iPhone photography like @annapolisandco's #theeverdayproject and my new favorite @theportraitclub's #theportraitclub. There's so much to learn and so many people to learn from, all over the world, at your fingertips. I have to be careful not to spend all day digging through hashtags and finding new users to follow. I just think it's so cool to be able to open an app and be inspired, just like that.

Thankful for: The weekend we had. It was really wonderful. Emmett and I started Friday off with a trip to the park with Mary and her kiddos, and finished it off with those same kiddos watching Frozen in the park. Such an awesome way to begin our weekend!

On Saturday, Ray worked at our condo (it's soooooo close to being ready to hit the market!) while I cleaned the house to get ready for our Cinco de Mayo party. Our friends arrived at 5 and we spent the evening chatting and eating while the kids played in the sprinkler and fought over trucks. It was a really awesome evening and left me feeling full and content and ready to host another party. We love having people over, and it's really nice having a place we are excited about to host parties and impromptu hang outs in the back yard.

If you're looking for something yummy to make for Cinco de Mayo, look no further. I wrote a complete menu yesterday!

I hope you had a lovely weekend as well!

The hosts of Currently.:

If you are interested in co-hosting, please email Jenna at info(at)amamacollective(dot)com to get on the list!

Grab our button below:

Here’s the template for you to copy and paste and do a post as well — link up with us below!

Thinking about:

Reading:

Listening to:

Watching:

Thankful for:

Wishing: (goals for the week)

An InLinkz Link-up

Photos From My iPhone

If you follow me on Instagram (you should!), you've probably seen some of these already. To take you into the weekend, here's a view of our life lately, according to my iPhone:

Inspiration: The Everyday Project by Annapolis & Co

I found Annapolis & Co a few months back (through Casey Leigh- if you don't already read this one, start. Now!) and instantly fell in love with her blog. The photography is so striking, I found myself pouring over her posts to see more of her beautiful photos. I found myself wanting to pick up my camera and work harder at my own photography. I wanted to learn! Isn't it amazing when you come across a blog or IG feed that really inspire you to be better? So great.

I've spent some time the last few days reading Mary Beth's posts from her series The Everyday Project. Have you seen this movement on IG yet? You can check it out by searching the hashtag #theeverydayproject. I've been seeing that hashtag everywhere for weeks now, and finally found time to check it out. Mary Beth is an iPhone photography genius! She's writing weekly posts with incredible tips for iPhone photography, giving you simple and brilliant instructions on everything from basics like lighting and perspective, to how to capture movement, and how to add typography to your photos. She gives you the inside scoop on the best apps to use for editing, and even gives really wonderful advice on Instagram etiquette- things like how to grow a following, where she talks about the right ways to connect with others on IG. Really great stuff.

The post she did on how to capture a Silhouette was my favorite- I learned so much from that post about how to use your iPhone's tap-to-focus feature to change the lighting and depth of field in your photos. This is basic stuff, but I never would have figured it out without Mary Beth's help. She is able to take her beautiful photos and break them down to show you exactly how she captures them, and each post leaves me feeling more inspired and more excited to go out and experiment with my own photography. I only wish I'd taken the time to read them sooner!

The purpose behind this series is to inspire readers to go out and play with their cameras, to take better photos, and to share them on Instagram. Spend a little bit of time going through #theeverydayproject hashtag on IG and you'll see that she's done it! She has created a community of people, learning and sharing and helping eachother to grow. As I come across images I love I've been liking and commenting on them, and I've discovered some really beautiful feeds, while getting great feedback on my own images. People are doing amazing things on Instagram. I'm already a huge fan (#overgram much?), but this new community of IGers has really renewed my love for Instagram.

I'm inspired, empowered. Each day I can't wait to take photos, to play with my iPhone camera, to mess with my photos and create beautiful images. I'm rethinking the way I Instagram- I want my feed to be beautiful, to tell my story, and to welcome others and inspire them. I am so grateful to Mary Beth for taking the time to share her knowledge, and can't wait to learn more!

Freshly Picked WINNER!!

Our Freshly Picked Giveaway is now closed! Thanks so much to everyone who entered here and on Instagram! I had so much fun looking through all of the IG pics that you posted, and loved reading all of your comments! Freshly Picked has the sweetest fans!

A BIG thank you also to Susan and Jodi at Freshly Picked!

So let's get down to business, shall we??

In order to chose a winner, I assigned each entry a number based on the time of your entry. I started with the very first comment here on the blog (#1), then the first re-post on Instagram (#2), and kept going in as-close-to-chronological order as possible!

I used the True Random Number Generator to choose a number randomly:

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:12Powered by RANDOM.ORG
So who is lucky number 12?? Are you dying to know?

The winner is.......

Here is the winning entry, from Instagram:

Congrats Corinna! Based on the sheer volume (and obvious enthusiasm) of your entries, I know you were dying to win!

Keepin' It Real

My friend Corinna did a really awesome thing on her blog yesterday. She wrote a post to show a side of motherhood that you don't often see from bloggers- the REAL side! You can find her "Keepin' It Real Mondays" post here.

Corinna wrote about the fact that as mama's, we tend to be hard on ourselves, and to compare ourselves to other mamas who we think have it all together. This is a trap I fall into all the time! It's so hard to remember that the writers of all of the beautiful blogs I read have hard days too. They struggle with things, just like I do. I look up to and admire so many mamas, and it's easy to build them up in my mind as so much better than me- more patient, more tender, more organized.. If I give in to these thoughts and compare myself to the idea I have in my head of what their day to day lives are like, it really brings me down.

So in an effort to counteract all of the comparing and unrealistic perceptions about motherhood, Corinna has started a Keepin' It Real series. Here's what she has to say about it:

"So, while there's nothing wrong with only writing posts about the fun and cool parts of our life, I thought in an effort to keep it real with you, and to show you a peek at the not-so-cute parts of my life, and to remind us mamas how we're united by the craziness, I'd do a weekly "Keepin' It Real" post."

I love her idea so much, so I want to jump on board! I'm hoping Corinna will do a weekly link-up, where all of us mama's can link our real life posts to share. So fun! If you have a blog and you'd like to participate, leave Corinna a comment on her Keepin' It Real post to let her know!

So, here are my real-life confessions...:

I posted this picture to Instagram the other day with the caption "Letting this happen right now so that I can curl my hair":

Emmett is super clingy in the mornings lately, probably because he knows I'm leaving him all day again and he hates it, so getting ready for work lately has been tough. I usually barely have time for a shower, then it's throw on some clothes, throw my hair up, and spend the rest of the morning with the baby. This day was Friday though, and there's just something about Fridays that makes me want to look nice. So, I gave the baby a few rolls of toilet paper to keep him entertained for a few minutes while I did my hair.

A friend commented that if it takes less time for her to clean the mess than the time the mess bought her, she's fine with it! I love that.

I sent this picture to my sister the other night:

I told her I haven't done laundry at all this week so I'm scrounging around Emmett's closet for PJ's every night. I found this little gem of a baseball onesie in the back of his closet just in time for his pre-bedtime chair sitting (he's obsessed with that chair), and it was pretty cute!

But the point is, I'm really bad at laundry. Like, I barely get it washed on the weekends, and then it sits in piles for days until I can't take it anymore and finally put it all away. Usually by then the clean pile has mixed with the dirty pile and I end up having to wash everything all over again. I won't even get in to how long it takes me to wash and dry a load because our washer and dryer are old and hate me..

Yesterday about halfway through the day I realized I hadn't rinsed the conditioner out of my hair in the shower that morning... Hashtag momlyfe.

Last night after Emmett's bath, I let him crawl around naked for a couple of minutes while I searched for clean pj's (see?). He crawled right out the door and stopped at our hall linen closet, stood up, and peed. All over the clean beach towels and the carpet. So now I REALLY need to do laundry.

So there you go. Life isn't perfect, and I am FAR from it.

PS: Today marks 4 months since Corinna and her husband lost their sweet baby girl Celeste. Head over to Track 8 to read about Celeste, and please keep Corinna's family in your prayers, today and always.

PPS: My parents were married 31 years ago today. Go mom & dad! They are such an awesome example to me, and I love them so much! Check out my dad's blog to read more about our family!

PPPS: Don't forget to enter my Freshly Picked moccasins giveaway! It ends tomorrow evening!

Freshly Picked Moccasins Review

I don't know if you've noticed or not, but we LOVE Freshly Picked moccasins. Like, we really love them. We've featured them on the blog a few times here, here, and here. My mom bought our first pair for Emmett a few weeks ago, and we've never seen his little feet look so cute!

These are the Weathered Brown Genuine Leather moccs. These are sold out at the moment. 

So when Freshly Picked sent us a pair of their insanely cute, super-coveted moccs to review on the blog, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven! We chose to review the Cobalt Suede Limited Edition Moccasins in a size 4.

Here they are on Emmett's feet:

Poor teething boy- those pouty lips are so sad!

The team at Freshly Picked hand-makes each pair of moccs to order, so they tell you to allow at least 10 business days for your moccs to be made before they ship. I received a shipping notification in my inbox 9 business days after we ordered, so they shipped right on time. They arrived about 4 days later, packaged in the cutest drawstring bag, complete with a little Freshly Picked logo button!
I forgot to take a picture when our Cobalt Suede pair arrived, but here is a photo of the Weathered Brown pair with the packaging:

So Cute. By the way, we ordered a size 3 in the Weathered Brown pair, but when they arrived, they were just a bit too small. They fit okay, but I knew he would grow out of them in no time so we really needed a size 4. I emailed Jodi at the Freshly Picked shop about an exchange, and she was so sweet about it! Because the moccs are made to order, they do not allow refunds, but they are happy to do exchanges. So, I sent back the 3's and received a size 4 in the mail less than a week later. Thank goodness!

There are so many things that I love about the Cobalt Suede moccs. First off, they are the cutest, most stylish baby shoes I've ever seen. I'm slightly obsessed with how cute Emmett's little calves and ankles look sticking out of them. It's almost too much. The color is so deep and striking, and the bright blue goes with so many of Emmett's clothes. They have hidden elastic around the opening of the shoe that makes them super easy to put on and take off, which is really rare with baby shoes! Big plus.

I love that they are soft-soled, so they don't bother Emmett when he's crawling around the house and learning to stand and walk. Ray doesn't like the idea of thick-soled shoes on his feet as he's learning to walk, but I really want him to wear shoes when we're outside. It's so hot here in AZ, so without shoes I wouldn't be able to let his little feet touch the ground. So, the soft, flexible leather is really perfect for us.

They are also surprisingly breathable. The leather is thin enough that it isn't constricting on his little feet, and there are vents on each side (another feature that makes them easy to get on and off) that allow air in to cool his feet. I assumed the leather might be too hot for Summer here, but they really aren't too hot at all.

The leather used to make both the Weathered Brown and the Cobalt Suede seems super durable, which is so important for babies. Emmett is a wild man who loves to destroy just about everything, and these seem Emmett-proof! I can tell they will last a long time, which is good because at $60 a pair I want to be able to pass them on to Emmett's future siblings.

I really only have a couple of criticisms of the Cobalt Suede moccs. First, and this is a really small one, it can be kinda hard to tell which shoe goes on which foot. There is a difference between the right and left shoe, but it's pretty slight. I can figure it out pretty quickly, but it would be nice if it was an instant thing that I don't have to think about when we're running out the door.

The other con that I've noticed is that the suede acts like a feather duster when Emmett's crawling around the floor in them. They pick up lots of dirt and dust, but it's not a big deal because it's really easy to clean them off. It takes a quick wipe with a dry cloth and then they're good as new. This isn't a problem at all with the leather Weathered Brown pair- they stay pretty clean.

We've had our moccs for about 3 weeks now, and they're holding up pretty well. The little tassels around the ankle curl up more and more as he wears them, which makes them even cuter, if that's possible! This is what they look like today:

Gah those shoes are cute!

Catch Up: iPhone Edition {2}

The last few weeks, according to my iPhone:

Emmett's 10 month photo was pretty difficult to catch. He's not a fan of sitting still for photos these days, and this day in particular he just wasn't having it. So, looking at the window with frog Wubbanub in mouth it is... We took that photo the morning we left for San Diego.

We left the babe in the care of my wonderful mama, and headed to California for a friend's wedding.

Our three tallest friends came along, so of course we made them squeeze into the backseat.

Here we are outside the church where our friends got married. Ray was a groomsman in the wedding, so we were lucky enough to be invited to the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. I love wedding rehearsals! The excitement and anticipation are palpable, and everyone is in such a happy mood. So fun!

The next day we had lunch at Stone Brewery (so awesome), and then spent the afternoon at our friend's parents house. The views from their home are so beautiful. We LOVE to visit them whenever we're in San Diego. 

Here I am at the wedding reception, pumping in the very public bathroom.. Luckily everyone was busy on the dance floor, so I was only interrupted once. Hashtag mom lyfe.

Emmett has a happy place, right there on his little chair. He LOVES to sit on that chair y'all. He smiles so big every time, and says "yaaaaaaay" in an almost whisper. It's the cutest thing he does right now!

He refuses to wear this hat most of the time, but whenever I can sneak it on, I giggle like crazy at those little ears sticking out. 

Here we are at Ikea last weekend. We planned to "run in" to grab some shelves, but of course we were there forever. Emmett was barely holding on by the time we checked out, so we had to get creative to keep him entertained. Those teeth! They slay me.

This is a terrible fuzzy photo, but I love it so much! I snuck in to check on Emmett the other night after he was sleeping, and I found his little feet sticking out of his crib. Those feet are my favorite!

I posted that photo of Emmett above on my Instagram last week. His two bottom teeth were cutting through so we had a tough couple of weeks. He was mostly happy during the day, but refused to nap or sleep at night. He was up 5 or 6 times each night crying out for me, so I spent most of my nights in his room holding him and trying to comfort him back to sleep. We were tired y'all. The above photo of me is a selfie I sent to my sister on a particularly difficult morning. I know, I'm real cute when I'm bone-tired and hating on everything.

Have y'all seen the new A Beautiful Mess app for the iPhone? It's so much fun! I like the filters in this app so much better than the Instagram filters, and there are endless borders, doodles, and phrases to add to your photos. I could (and have!) play with it for hours. The photo above and the next two are all made with the A Beautiful Mess app.

Emmett's first pair of Freshly Picked moccasins arrived over the weekend, and we're just as smitten as we knew we would be. So cute.

Enjoying a cool-ish day over the weekend. It's so hot these days, we hardly spend any time outside in the afternoons. 

I managed to catch Emmett with his hat on in this one. He hates to wear it, but it's soooo cute!

 

I call that look Emmett's teething perma-duckface. His poor little gums have been so swollen that his lips stick out all the time. It's cute but I'm ready for his mouth to stop hurting him!