I’ve never won anything before!

One of my favorite bloggers is Marta. I started reading her blog a while back when she contacted me about doing a giveaway from my shop as part of her holiday giveaway collection back in December. The giveaway was for a giraffe and a set of party hats. It was lots of fun and I was honored that she chose my shop to be part of it.

She’s now doing a mother’s day giveaway and I thought it would be fun to enter. She has tons of readers so I knew it was a long shot. For yesterday’s giveaway she asked that we comment on what we love about spring. I said, “What I love about this spring in particular is the fact that my husband is graduating from architecture school and we are moving to a new city. Exciting new adventures.” And, guess what? She chose me to win that giveaway! I was so excited this morning when I opened my email and saw that I had won!

What did I win, you might be wondering. Well, I won a $75 gift certificate to lisa leonard designs. I am so excited! I’ve already looked through her shop and am pretty sure that I’m going to choose this bracelet with my children’s names on it. Can’t wait! What a wonderful mother’s day gift!

new apartment = fun

It’s official! Well, almost. We still have to sign the lease, but we put a deposit on an apartment in downtown montgomery. Woo hoo! We are super excited about it and can’t wait to move in. And, one of the best parts about it is that nick will be able to ride his bike to work (note to self: get bike for nick). We will live only about a mile and a half away. We’ll also be able to WALK to a lot of fun places in downtown. one of our number one requirements in finding a place to live was walkability. Definition: a measure of how friendly an area is to walking. Check outwalkscore.com to see if the area you live in is walkable. Downtown montgomery isn’t exactly the best place for walking. There’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to make it more suitable for walking like bigger sidewalks and more narrow streets, but at least we’ll be able to walk and not have to drive everywhere. We’ll be close to several restaurants, the baseball stadium, and the riverwalk. And, there’s a cute little park near old alabama town which is just a few minutes away. I thought i’d share a few pictures of the new apartment. Keep in mind, the pictures were taken while someone else was living there, so that’s not our stuff in there. I like to look at the pictures and think about where we’re going to put our furniture and things. enjoy!

And the Winner Is…

Montgomery, Alabama!

The Henninger family is packing up and moving to the state capital. Nick just accepted a job offer from Seay, Seay, and Litchfield, an architecture firm that he interned with a couple of summers ago. We really feel like it’s where God is leading us at this time in our life. Nick is thinking pretty seriously about grad school in a couple of years. So, maybe Boston next? But, for now, we’re moving only an hour away!

We are excited though. We’re excited to see what God has in store for us there. Excited about meeting new people and living somewhere new and experiencing what a new city has to offer. I’ve already been googling things to do there and have come up with some pretty fun stuff!  They have a zoo which we’ll be getting an annual membership to. Oh, and by the way, I expect my Auburn friends to let me know if they come to town so we can get together! There’s also a splash pad by the riverwalk amphitheater which will be close to us since we’re planning on living in downtown. Have another loft apartment to go look at tomorrow. That’s a whole other story which I will be devoting a post to in the near future- the reasons why we want to live in downtown. But, for now, back to things to do in Montgomery. There are several fun museums and parks. I also have family there and several family friends. My three half brothers and their families live in the area. It’ll be fun for my kids to get to know their cousins better. And, I plan on visiting my auntie ceil for lunch dates. She’s not really related, but she lived next door to my grandparents for many years and she makes awesome healthy food!

We don’t have a moving date set yet, but we know it’ll be by June 1st. Nick graduates on the 14th of May and he’ll probably start work on the 17th, so we’re hoping to be moved in by then- which I’m now realizing is very soon!  It’s been a good 5 years here in Auburn- since we’ve been here we got engaged, got married, and had two babies! and we knew this day would come, but it is kind of bittersweet. We’ll miss our church family and our friends, but we won’t be far away.  We are so thankful that Nick has a job when many of the graduates from last year still don’t have jobs. God is good. The end.

Easter, Eggs, and the Hunt for a New Home

We had a very busy, fun-filled Easter weekend. It began with a  morning egg hunt on a lovely little farm. Then, a cute little friend’s second birthday party. And after that, apartment hunting in downtown Montgomery. Yes, Montgomery. More on that later…

Spring is in the Air

We’re enjoying the spring weather!

Two Months Old

My has time flown by! Our little Olive Jane is now 2 months old! She is growing and changing every day. She smiles a lot and is starting to coo and gurgle and “talk” to us. She loves to listen to her big brother Noah tell her stories about dinosaurs and spider man. She’s discovering her hands. She sleeps pretty much through the night (even though it’s with us!). She loves bath time and hates to get out.  And, she’s about to go on her first big road trip to Chicago! We’re so blessed to have her in our life.

Diaper Duty

We all know that changing diapers is part of having babies. Here is my big question of the day…Why, oh why don’t men’s bathrooms have changing tables? Granted I’ve never been in a men’s bathroom, but according to Nick there are never changing tables in the men’s bathroom! A thought just dawned on me…maybe he just tells me that so he doesn’t have to change the kids’ diapers when we’re out. No, he wouldn’t do that…I think.

But, seriously, I just don’t understand why. The modern day dad is much more involved with his children than he used to be. Nick does just as much of the child care as I do when he’s home. And, by the way, he is an absolutely wonderful husband and daddy. I hear stories about men who come home from work and plop down in front of the tv while mom continues to take care of the kids (even though that’s what she’s been doing all day) and cooks dinner, cleans, does laundry etc. I don’t know how women who are married to those kind of men make it.

Back to the dilemma. I realize that there are family bathrooms in some places, but they’re not that common. I really don’t mind having to change diapers while I’m out, but I think it would be nice to have the option for dad to change the diaper when we’re out of the house. Oh well. It’ll probably happen when my kids have their kids and I’ll say something like, “They didn’t have those when we were raising you guys and we were just fine.”

Life’s Changing Fast

It’s been awhile since our last post. Guess that’s to be expected since life’s CRAZY right now and is about to get even more so. But, what’s new?

I’m realizing how quickly Nick’s graduation is coming up and keep wondering what’s the next step for us. Nick’s been applying to quite a few firms, but we keep hearing about how horrible the job market is right now. Nick just heard about another round of lay offs in the architecture world. I know how incredibly talented my husband is, but I also have to be realistic and know that he might join the slew of jobless college graduates. And yet, we are hopeful all the while. We’ve talked about how fun it would be to just move to Chicago, job or no job. We do have our business babydarling that could keep us afloat in the mean time. If we went ahead and moved there it would be a lot easier for Nick to pursue job opportunities. We’re heading that way next weekend for Nick to hopefully interview, or at least visit some of his favorite firms. Apartment hunting is also on the list of things to do. We’ll see what happens…

We take comfort in knowing that God has a plan for us and are really excited about this new phase of life!

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Life as a Family of Four

Where to begin? It’s wonderful, exciting, joyful, scary, busy, exhausting, happy, amazing. We are truly blessed. As my mind tries to peer through the fog of the last few weeks and realize what just happened, I’m overtaken by the sweet moments we’ve had together as a family of four.

The first is when Noah came wide-eyed (even though it was almost 11 at night and he’d been sleeping) into the delivery room just half an hour after Olive was born. He was so excited to meet his baby sister. He climbed up onto the bed with me and couldn’t take his eyes off her (that is, until he spotted the nurse’s latex gloves and just had to have some)!

The second is when we came home from the hospital. We all rode home together in our little car. Noah was being so sweet, and Olive slept the whole way home. Then, we walked up the steps and into our “humble home on wheels” just the 4 of us.  Noah was so excited to show Olive his room and his toys. It was special.

We’ve had some rough moments too- Noah had so much attention from grandparents the first 2 weeks that when they all left he apparently forgot everything we taught him the last 2 and a half years. But, now that we’ve had some time to adjust he’s done really well. He’s been really sweet to Olive the whole time though- and protective of her. When other people hold her he usually gives a scowl and says, “That’s my baby sister” in a gruff voice. It’s kind of sweet, actually.

The last few weeks have been sort of a blur, but I’ll never forget the very true words that someone once told me, “It’s amazing how your love can grow.”

Meet Olive!

Recap of 2009

Here’s a little recap of 2009 for us:

• Went to Kentucky for cousin’s New Year’s Eve wedding
• Noah was ring bearer- 15 months
• Visited friends in Cincinnati
• Nick turned 22
• Noah said, “I love you” for the first time-18 months
• Took Noah camping and hiking in Pine Mountain, Georgia
• Found out we were expecting baby #2
• Visited Chicago
• Celebrated our 3^rd wedding anniversary
• Nick completed his interior architecture thesis program
• Found out it’s a girl!
• Visited Saint Louis
• Nick began 5^th and final year of architecture
• Noah turned 2!
• Went to Kentucky for Henninger family reunion
• Brooke turned 23
• Noah became Peter Pan
• Nick finished his second-to-last semester
• Spent Christmas at our home here in Auburn

It has been a busy year for us as I’m sure it has been for you. We are very excited for what’s coming in 2010. Here’s to a blessed new year!

Fresh

The new shop is up!… well, it has been for about a week or so now. We started it because we needed something a little more flexible than “babydarling” for any non-baby items we may want to make. So far “HENNstudio” only offers two basic items: fabric bookmarks and pen pouches. You may be wondering what exactly a pen pouch is. It is something I developed about a year ago. Being an architecture student I am very particular about my drawing/sketching/writing utensils and these would fall out of my pocket and be lost, all the time. This pouch keeps my precious drawing utensils in order and together as one manageable unit, like a wallet… and like my wallet I never leave home without it! There are other things we’ve talked about making but we’ll see if we ever get around to it. And the shop is not doing too bad. We’ve had 5 sales – all pen pouches – and all possitive feedback. One person even wrote: “WOW….I couldn’t get my pens in this sweet pen pouch fast enough. You did a beautiful job making it. Great communication and fast delivery. I may have to have another one…it’s so darn cool. Many thanks!”… that was pretty exciting. Here’s a screenshot of my SOLD page.

We’re also in the process of adding some fresh items to babydarling. Just today we had a photo-shoot for a couple new crib sets.  We’ve decided that bumpers might be a little too intense for us to keep making (especially with the new baby on the way), so hopefully these new bumper-less sets will be well received.  Also, authorities on infant-safety now say that bumpers significantly increase the risk of SIDS, so these sets are a great option for those who feel uneasy about crib bumpers.

Anyways, the photo shoot went pretty well.  We rearranged our living room, assembled the crib, borrowed Noah’s mobile and mattress, and turned our little living room into a photography set.  We have more to do tomorrow, but here are the two sets we were able to add to the shop today.

This has been a nice break from schoolwork, but we have so much more to do before baby Olive gets here, including my portfolio and thesis book (that I should be working on right now).  A new baby is sure to slow things down…

Movie Theater First-Timer

Cold, rainy, dreary day=perfect weather for the movie theater.

I had gone out to run some errands this morning in the freezing cold rain, and when I was on my way home I had a thought. We should go see a movie today…at the movie theater. But wait, we’ve never taken Noah to the movie theater. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time Nick and I went to see a movie. I pushed the idea aside as I remembered exactly how much work I needed to get done today. Pulled into the driveway. Went inside. I mentioned the idea to Nick not thinking he would actually go for it, but much to my surprise, the next thing I knew he was looking up movie times on the internet. He listed off a few that sounded great for us but not for Noah. The only thing that was rated G was The Princess and the Frog which we decided would be our best bet. And besides, it looked like it would be cute. So, we ate our lunch, got bundled up, I grabbed our camera (thought we should document Noah’s first time at the movie theater), and off we went.

We figured the theater would be basically empty since we were seeing a showing at 12:35, and we were right. We walked up to the box office to purchase our tickets when the ticket lady said it would be $20.50. I thought to myself, “Man, that’s really expensive, especially for a matinee.” I glanced at the sign and told her that Noah is only 2. She looked back at her manager like “what should I do?” and he mumbled something back to her. They seemed like they didn’t believe me or something. My mind began thinking of how I could prove to them that he’s only 2, and then I quickly told them that I would be happy to use the extra $6.50 at the concession stand, but she offered to just go ahead and give me the cash back. She gave us our tickets and we went inside.

We purposely got there early because Nick said he wanted Noah to have the full movie theater experience and have some time to play in the arcade. So, we ventured into the dark room and the boys tried out all the driving games.

I spotted the photo booth which immediately brought me back to my teenage years. I thought, “How fun would it be for us to have these pictures from Noah’s first time at the movie theater?!” We piled into the tiny booth, pulled the black curtain shut, and tried to figure out this modern version of the photo booth. I don’t remember these things being this complicated. It had like 5 different categories to choose from. Do you want the picture to be in color, sepia, or black and white? What kind of theme do you want? There were more that I can’t remember. Then, to top it off we could only choose the very first thing on the list because the buttons were broken! So we’re preparing to take our first picture out of 4 and we notice that our faces are not on the screen…because the camera is pointing way up high! We quickly half-way stand up all the while trying to get our faces in the frame while it shoots the pictures! Good times. We paid $3 for 2 strips of priceless pictures that say “Season’s Greetings” at the top. I’ll always remember our session in the photo booth.

We still had some time to kill, so I suggested we try the “try and position the claw just right so you can win a hideous stuffed animal” game or something like that. Nick put 50 cents in the machine and worked his magic! I don’t know about any of you, but I have never been able to win anything out of those. Well, wouldn’t you know! God was smiling on Noah’s first visit to the movie theater because we got a funny little panda bear with huge eyes!

Now it was time for us to get our popcorn and a drink and head into the theater. For awhile we were the only ones in there, but a couple of kids with their parents came in a little later. Nothing real exciting to report about the actual watching of a movie because Noah did great! He enjoyed the movie and sat through the whole thing. He was, of course, not excited when the movie was over and we told him it was time to leave. The Princess and the Frog was a cute movie, by the way. And, Noah is officially no longer a movie theater first-timer.

Merry Christmas from the Henningers

Here it is…our 2009 Christmas picture!

It’s been awhile since our last post. Our camera has been in the shop. Thankfully, our good friends let us borrow their camera so we could go ahead and take our Christmas picture. I was 35 weeks in the picture and am now 36 weeks! We officially have less than a month until baby Olive joins our family! Here’s a couple more favorites from the photo session.

Hello December

I welcome this month with open arms! I love that the first day of December is a nice crisp chilly one!  I have to admit that we’ve already had our Christmas decorations up for over a week now. I’m usually not a fan of putting up Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving, but for some reason, this year I was ready. Maybe it’s because I’m in my 8th month of pregnancy and know that with each passing day I’m getting bigger and it’s getting harder to do every day normal activities…

I’m really excited about this Christmas. This will be our first Christmas in our own home here in Auburn! On a side note, I just realized yesterday that it will also be our last Christmas here in Auburn. But, back to the excitement of having our very own Christmas all to ourselves! In the past, we’ve always had to do “our” Christmas early because we’ve split the holidays between our two families, but this year, because I will be only 2 weeks from my due date, we decided it would be best to stay at our own house for Christmas and let the family come to us. I am so excited for Noah to wake up Christmas morning in our own home and get to open his presents!

I’ve already gotten some Christmas cards from some obviously organized friends! Receiving them reminds me that I need to get on that- we’ve done a Christmas card every year since we’ve been married- this will be our 4th Christmas card! We might have to borrow a friend’s camera because our’s broke a couple of weeks ago and we are still awaiting the diagnosis. Getting that fixed might be mine and Nick’s Christmas presents to each other!

I love all of the activities of December too! There’s always so much going on. There are 2 Christmas parades this week…I’m not sure if we’ll make it to both, but we’ll at least get to go to one of them. Next week is our Ladies’ Holiday Tea at church which is always a lot of fun! Not to mention a few Christmas parties and other community holiday activities.

I just popped a couple of snowman marshmallows into my mouth after Noah said, “I want some marshmawows, Mommy” which reminds me that another thing I love about this season is hot chocolate! I’ve got to find me some hazelnut hot chocolate- a friend of mine had some last year and it was absolutely amazing!

The Countdown is On…6 Weeks To Go

Who am I kidding? The countdown has been on since I found out I was going to have another baby! But, now that I only have 6 weeks or less until Olive arrives I am really counting down the days. Mostly because of exhaustion and readiness to have this baby out of me, so my body can go back to normal. And then I remind myself that I’m only going to get bigger and more uncomfortable, experience more symptoms of pregnancy, and then have to go through labor and give birth! I’m really not complaining here because I know that it is truly a blessing to experience pregnancy and have a healthy baby at the end of it all. I guess I would just say that I’m ready…to be not pregnant and be able to breathe, walk normally, sit normally, run (or at least have a skip in my step), not have to pee all the time, and many many other things that you get to do when you’re not pregnant.

This pregnancy has been very different from my first. With Noah, of course, I didn’t have any other children to tend to, so I did a lot of relaxing, reading, watching movies…really, whatever I wanted to- and I wasn’t working. Basically, I just sat around- which I think made the time go by really slowly. I felt like I was pregnant with him forever! And this time around it has been totally opposite. I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by! Contributing to that is my full time job of motherhood, wifehood, and my business which has been busier than ever.  I spend a lot more time on my feet which, I think, has caused a lot more ailments with this pregnancy. I’ll spare you all the gory details…

I just read my little weekly email update that I get about the baby’s growth and development, and it said that “now is the time to slow down.” Yeah, right! Now is the time for me to hurry up and finish all my orders that my customers are waiting on before Olive arrives and the real exhaustion sets in! I’m at a crossroads here because, on the one hand, I am so ready to be done being pregnant, but on the other hand I still need some time to finish my orders. So, my sweet little Olive, I guess you will come when you are ready, but my customers will be really happy if I can get them their stuff on time. Oh well, I know it will all work out in the end. Thankfully, I have already had the so called “nesting” instinct- it’s either that or my obsession with organization- and I have already gotten Olive’s little clothes all put away and even went ahead and packed her bag for the hospital- just in case.

A Tid-bit on Architecture

I’ve been meaning to post some architectural design work on here for a while now, so this is at least a start.  Now in my fifth and final year of architecture school I’m currently working on my “thesis” project — “thesis” is in quotations because it is a little different from what it is in other professions.  It is basically an idea/understanding that arises through our investigations on a particular architectural subject matter.  Mine, so far, is about the intentional manipulation of light and perception through boundary (more on that some other time).

The medium of investigation is the design of a building in downtown Montgomery, a once thriving city devastated, like so many, by the advent of the car.  With the car came glorified suburbia, and out went people.  As pedestrians disappeared so did storefronts… empty buildings were torn down for parking lots/garages, and streets were widened to speed traffic.  This left the urban fabric in shambles and pretty unsuitable for pedestrian use.

You can see in this figure ground map of downtown how sparse the street frontage is– pretty much all the blank space (other than the streets of course) is parking.  I color coded the heights of buildings to show the lack of density: the lightest shade represents 1 and 2 story buildings while darker is taller.  Thankfully, now that people are beginning to realize these flaws and the beauty of good urbanism, the city is working hard to revitalize through proper planning.

 In small groups we researched the city and their overarching planning proposals to make our own proposals to revitalize specific portions of the urban fabric.  Out of these proposals came our individual building projects that we are working on for the rest of the year.

Mine (represented by the small orange dot on the map) is basically an observation tower that serves as a terminus for a major street and the backdrop of a new public park/plaza a classmate and I are designing across from the baseball stadium.  Above are  just a couple little images from earlier this semester.

Growing Up

This post is dedicated to my husband. We have been “together” for  7 years now! We started dating in 10th grade in high school, got engaged on November 25th of our freshman year in college, got married the summer after our freshman year (yes, we were only 19), had our sweet baby boy Noah a little over a year later, and will now have our baby girl before Nick is done with his bachelor’s degree! Praise the Lord he graduates this coming May!

We both feel so blessed by God that we were able to get married young. We have learned so much together, and I think that has really created a bond in us that is like no other. Unlike a lot of couples today we literally began our lives together. We didn’t already have careers or jobs or even college degrees. When we got married we were still wondering what we were going to be when we grow up. I mean, Nick knew he wanted to be an architect, but he’d just finished his first year of school. And now, here we are, still just babies in the eyes of many, with babies of our own, but we finally feel like we’re almost there- like we’re almost all grown up! But the thing is, we’ve done it all together, he and I-with God’s hand on us the whole way guiding us.

I thank God so much for my Nicholas. I know this might sound corny, but he’s truly my hero. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without him. I don’t want to imagine it because I’m so incredibly happy and blessed.

We’re so excited about where we’re going next- we don’t know yet, but we’re just excited to be on this journey through life together.

Featured!

As many of you know, the front page of Etsy always features a set of twelve “handpicked items” chosen from treasuries curated by members of the site.  Our crib set made it to the front on November 1st (this post is obviously a little overdue).  Treasuries are usually based on a theme or color… in this case it was the term “linen.”  The fabric we use is not linen, it is cotton, but fortunately its name “optic blossom in linen” helped us to become part of this set.

Delightful Daddy-Time

A couple Sundays ago, when we had some fantastic fall weather, Noah and I (Nick) got some of our occasional alone-time while Brooke attended our friend’s baby shower for a couple hours.  We thought about staying indoors sword-fighting and such, but the weather beckoned us to swing on the porch for a while and then to finally take a stroll to the nearby pond.  We took our dog Bella along with us to hang out, admire creation, and, of course, gather acorns and throw some sweet sticks into the water.

Noah even got to climb on the fence as we left.  Luckily I thought to bring the camera along to get some handsome pics of little boy.