Hokey Dinah.  Who even says that anymore?  Well, me, apparently.  And my two-year-old son.  Because whenever I open up a particularly gruesome diaper of his he exclaims, “Hokey Dinah!”, because I guess I’ve said that on those occasions.  Wow, starting out with digression.  Bad sign.  Run away, peeps, this could get all rabbit-traily.

So I’ll try to hit the main point now: Hokey dinah - life is suddenly feeling crazy busy.  And I have had no time to update my own blog, or read blogs, or do any of that fun stuff.  In fact, I haven’t even been scrolling through the pretty stuff on my Tumblr dashboard.  Boo.

I’m not sure what happened exactly.  Summer was so pretty low key (well, “I just had a baby” low key).  And fall snuck up on us with gorgeous weather and a whole bunch of commitments on the schedule.  Plus my beautiful baby girl is growing up and needing a bit more from me.  And my son’s been on this new sibling/terrible twos/battle for independence thing that is requiring a lot of me.  And… I don’t know what else.  All that to say: “Sorry, Dudes, the blog’s been neglected, and probably will be many more times to come.”  I do feel bad.  But not that bad, cuz let’s face it, I do this for free.

And in the midst of it all I’m really needing to assess what my priorities are.  My main purpose is clear right now - to serve and bless my family; to build my marriage and raise my children for God’s glory.  But what should I do beyond that?  Because there are a lot of things I want to do.  Some things I’m obligated to do.  Some things I wish I’d never volunteered to do.  And a bunch of other things, too.  But what has God planned for me to do?  I don’t have any answers right now - it’s hard to think through such deep life questions on such little sleep and personal time.  But I do know the blogging’s taking a slide, and that’s OK for now. 

I have managed to chip away at a few things around the home on the good days:

Remember my DIY lamp?  It looked cool in pink, but wasn’t working in my space.  So I repainted it in Krylon’s brushed nickel finish (which is actually a much warmer metal tone than nickel, I think), and used a lampshade I’d recovered in blue linen a while ago.  I’m quite smitten with how it looks.

I finally got around to painting our dining room sideboard.  I tried to sell this thing online a long time ago, but the “buyer” never showed up (seriously, people.)  So I opted to keep it, paint it, and now I just need to add new hardware.  I don’t love the piece, but it’s solid, and a good size for the space.  And now it’s not a garish honey colour, so that’s nice.

I picked up this pretty white platter at Value Village.  And I love it.  It reminds me of ironstone, though I don’t know if it actually is.  I try very hard to not purchase things that are for our future farmhouse, but this is one of those things.

And I picked up another Louis chair!  Back when I recovered the first one I purchased enough fabric for two in hopes that I’d find a second one.  So I’m looking forward to redoing this one to match, and creating the double welt cord for both.

I have some other projects in process, and some others on the to-do lis, but I’ll share them when I’m done.

And the most important projects?  A whole lotta’ this pretty thing:

And a whole buncha’ this handsome one:

And those are the projects that make my home the most beautiful.