We’ve been searching for toddler spoons to try, as Fischer has been showing interest in using utensils recently. These Olababy spoons seemed great since they are made of silicone and have a wide handle for Fischer to grab onto. He mainly eats with his hands still, but I’m excited to try out these spoons more and more! Plus this bowl is super cool, because you it can be used as a steamer and bowl all in one (aka less dishes to clean later!).

How cute are these Ray Ban look alike for babies and toddlers? WeeFarers makes these sunglasses, and you can get them in a range of sizes, colors, and polarized or unpolarized. I think toddlers wearing accessories is one of the cutest things! Fischer still isn’t totally sold on hats and sunglasses, but I know the more we try to have him wear them, the sooner he will get used to it. Especially with summer quickly approaching, I want to keep his eyes and face shielded from the sun! Find them on Amazon too!

We’ve owned 2 houses and lived in 8 houses/apartments together in our 13 years together and I’m tired of moving haha. We thought the Atown Aframe was our forever home, but things changed after Fischer was born. We still own our house in Atascadero and we’re currently renting a house in Livermore while we wait for the right thing to come for sale. What we want next is to find land to build our dream home. We did the fixer upper thing, and now we just want to start from scratch and design every inch of the place. It really excites me :)

I’ve been asked a lot of questions about taking good photos yourself, especially during this quarantine. Families are stuck at home and can’t have professional photos taken of their family. This is a great time to learn how to take better photos and be able to capture special moments yourself. These tips below are ways to get professional looking photos at home, with your phone or your DSLR camera.

I’ve been searching for a non toxic, clean laundry detergent for a while now and finally found one I like, Branch Basics! I’ve tried many brands over the years, and most left our clothes and sheets with a weird smell within days of being washed. Some even left the clothes smelling weird after I changed detergent and washed them again and again. I had given up and went back to using regular laundry room, and Adam wound up having an allergic reaction to something in the soap and broke out in a rash. When this happened, I knew it was time to continue my search for a better laundry soap. It also means I can wash our clothes and Fischer’s clothes together, since it’s a gentle detergent and won’t bother baby’s skin. We’ve been using Branch Basics for a few weeks now, and so far we are totally happy with it :)

Head to this LINK to get $10 off!

If you follow me on Instagram, then you know that this his party didn’t go quite as planned due to COVID-19. About half of our guests didn’t wind up coming which was hard for me. But we made the most of it and enjoyed our last day with (most) of our favorite people for quite a while! It was so fun to see my decor visions come to life and to see Fischer playing with his friends. I LOVE birthdays so this was a special day for me for so many reasons! Thanks to everyone who celebrated with him or wished him a happy birthday from afar. Here’s a glimpse it’s his party at Creative Space Studios. Photos by Adriana Klas.

We don’t feed Sawyer many dog treats and he’s on special dog food because this poor guy has a sensitive stomach. Recently, we tried out Jiminys treats and so far they haven’t bothered his stomach! Yay! And he loved them of course :) They contain crickets as the protein, which are one of the easiest proteins for dogs to digest. They are also gluten free, which is surprisingly hard to find in dog treats!

We did a few small grocery trips to stock up on items we always eat when we started hearing how crazy it was getting a few weeks ago. Adam came home from one of the trips and told me he bought emergency Kraft Mac and Cheese and emergency Bush’s Beans (2 of my guilty pleasures haha). And if you know me, you know I have ZERO self control so I took out the beans over the weekend and used my new can opener from Kitchen Mama. I’ve always thought electric can openers were better then hand crank ones. This one is the best because it basically does the job all on its own (great for parents with only 1 hand free because they are holding a kid in the other arm) and it’s cordless, so you can use it anywhere in the kitchen. It’s also compact so it stores easily in the drawer. Use the code DANIELLEP10 and get 10% this electric can opener!

Now that I’ve shared a blog post about what to consider when buying a house, from things like square footage, location, if it’s your forever house or not, and more, I want to share this post about the whole buying process. We have been through it twice now, with houses in Livermore and Atascadero, but since I’m not expert, I brought in our Livermore realtor Katie Moe and Bay Area mortgage broker Andy Spellman

After doing the Instagram stories of my ENTIRE day, I wanted to share our general timeline in writing on the blog. It’s already a little different now (babies change so fast), but generally this is how our day looks.

I’ve used an electronic toothbrush for a long time now, but I felt like it was time for a new one. I'm the first to admit that teeth brushing is not my favorite thing, so having an electronic toothbrush is a must for me! I love that it tells me how much time has passed while I’m brushing my teeth and it has multiple settings like whitening and gum massage. We even joke that when it’s time for Fischer to brush his teeth, Adam will be the one to show him how it’s done since it’s a “better” teeth brusher haha. I partnered with Smile Brilliant to try out this CariPRO toothbrush and so far I love it!! Of course I care about how things look (I mean, who doesn’t?!), and I love that it’s grey and even the charging station is grey and compact. If you’re in the market for a new toothbrush, I’d suggest checking this one out!

It easy to get caught up when house hunting and buying a house. It also can be daunting when you put offers in and they don’t get accepted, or no house feels like the one. I promise your house is out there, and know that the right one will come along when it’s meant to be :)

When we were in Kauai with Adam’s family in November we decided to do family photos of the whole crew. Obviously it can be challenging trying to figure out what 7 people are going to wear (plus Jenae’s boyfriend, Ryan’s best friend, and their family friends).

We took our second big trip of the year to Kauai in November with Fischer, which was his second flight! This flight was almost 6 hours (compared to 1.5 hour flights over summer), so it was a little harder. It was more challenging because he’s older which means he sleeps less and is more aware of his surroundings. On our way to Kauai, a worker from the airlines asked us if we wanted to change seats so we could have a whole row to ourselves. (THANK YOU TO THAT LADY!) It was great, because it gave us room to spread out and let Fischer nap and we also brought his Dockatot solely for the flight and we put it between us for him to sit in. On the way back home, I went up the desk and asked if there was a full row available and there was! So that’s my biggest TIP for flying, asking for a whole row! Fischer took 1 long nap both there and back and the rest of the time we tried to entertain him with his favorite toys.

It’s been so fun to see Fischer really change and grow into a big boy these last few months. He learned to crawl while we were in Kauai in November and two teeth came in! He’s crawling everywhere now (baby gates are in our future), pulling himself up to stand, and just overall more interactive. He’s also eating a lot more food then he was just a month ago and super interested in it. Here are some things that we’ve found useful or fun at this stage:

Click HERE to buy all the items below that I mentioned:

Every few months Fischer grows out of something, changes stages, needs something new, and just gets bigger which means there’s always something new to buy for him. Here’s my 6 month baby items update for things we’ve recently purchased or purchased a while back but didn’t start using until now. I hope this is helpful! Click HERE to buy all of the items I mention below!

Here are some tips for how to get good family photos outdoors: (Big thanks to our photographer friend Kristine Herman and makeup by Bay Area Beautiful)

We took our first real trip with baby to Montana for 4th of July week. He’s a pretty easy baby so we expected it would go well, but we did plan a few things to hopefully make it easier. I think we packed pretty well, but below I’m going to share the items we brought and think were TOTALLY needed and some items we learned we need to for our next trip to Kauai.

I started this blog post a while back and then realized I never finished it or shared it for you guys to see! I compiled a list of new items we discovered we needed around the 3 month mark with Fischer. Click HERE to head over to my Amazon storefront where you can find most of the items.

Our first family photos as a family of 4 were at our Atascadero house. I wanted to share some tips for doing photos at home and having a successful photoshoot!

It’s been 8 weeks now with Fischer, and I wanted to share all the things we’ve needed so far. Some of these things we got at our baby shower, some I bought before baby arrived, and some I bought after he was here as we discovered more things we needed. There are just so many baby products out there, so I hope this is helpful!

I’m really excited to share Fischer’s nursery! Our decor plans changed a little from the beginning to the end, but always had the same vibe. We didn’t want a theme, as we aren’t really theme type people when it comes to decor. I wanted his room to feel like an extension of our house, design wise, and not feel like a “kids” room. As you know our vibe is Mid Century Modern, Palm Springs, desert, so that’s what we did for his room too. We brought in greens and oranges, mid century modern furniture and lighting, and put up desert photos I took on our first trip to Palm Springs a few years ago. Nursery items can get pricey, but I found some great deals while still being able to stick to the look I wanted.

So let me start off by saying that the first panel of wallpaper went up really easy, and then every piece after was a bit of a pain haha. The instructions (and youtube videos) don’t tell you exactly how much water to use to make it sticky enough, so you’re just guessing, it claims you can slide the wallpaper around for a good 20 minutes or so as you adjust it which is NOT TRUE, they mention nothing in the instructions about how to line up the pattern, and they make cutting the wallpaper at the ceiling or around anything super easy looking.

We decided to have a co-ed baby shower for a few reasons, which I’m going to talk about below! I think it’s a great option for everyone :) When deciding on the location and theme of our shower, we picked our friends parents house ( they were nice enough to let us have it there) because their backyard is super pretty with a pool and vineyard views. Sadly, a big storm decided to show up the day of our shower forcing us to be indoors. Thanks to my bffs and our moms, we moved things inside and made it equally as cute! As far as the theme goes, desert vibes was the OBVIOUS choice. I didn’t want a gender related theme or a baby related theme, I just wanted something that made sense with our style. My good friend Jess and my sister in law Jenae put together this amazing cactus balloon sculpture which I wish I could have taken home with me and kept forever haha.

I knew I wanted our maternity photos in Joshua Tree from the moment we found out we were pregnant. I realized we would be there mid December for a Palm Springs wedding, so we should make it happen on that trip. I also was totally fine doing our photos while I was still on the smaller side (I wanted to have these photos and our baby shower done before I was huge and uncomfortable). For reference, I’m 26 weeks in these photos. So we met up with Carmen Santorelli the day after the wedding and did our photos. We luckily were able to bring Sawyer down with us too!! I mean, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do our maternity photos without him haha. I see a lot of bad maternity photos online that are just too cheesy, and I wanted to stay away from that. I wanted these photos to just capture this moment in our life and for us, it was just our yearly photos.

Buying a fixer upper has been a goal of ours for a long time (bucket list item for sure!). In case you didn't know, we've been together for 12 years, so dreaming of our future started when we were 17 years old (2007). When it came time to buy our first house in 2014 in Livermore, we had wanted a fixer upper. We offered on a house in a neighborhood that two of our friends lived in, and I really had my heart set it on it. It was a good price, it had the potential for an amazing kitchen, and overall would have been a good flip . We wound up having the highest offer, but lost to an all cash offer that was lower than ours.

The biggest part about literally living (in the house) through a remodel is just reminding yourself that it will all eventually be done and worth it!! I think getting big things done first like kitchen cabinets, laying flooring, and painting walls all make a big impact and feel like progress is being made quickly