The Doting Aunt and another hiatus

I'm an Aunt!!! It's official! And I'll admit, it's turned me into a monster. All of those annoying people that have a new family member born and insist on showing everyone baby pictures, yeah, that's me. I can't help it though! She is honestly the cutest baby I've ever seen!

Her name is Dahlia Jane, and she was born last Weds, 4/7 at 6:02PM. Believe it or not, Dahlia came out of an online Anagram finder when Tali and Cliff entered my name, my mom's name, and Cliff's mom and sister's names. How cool is that?! And to make it even cooler, when Cliff googled "Dahlia Wildman," they discovered that the "Wildman" is actually a type of Dahlia!

Ok, you get it, I'm smitten, and I frankly have been insaaaaanely busy, and will continue to be, so I leave you with photos. Pretty much everyone who reads my blog has already seen photos, because, yeah, I'm that aunt. Remember?

I'll try to be back soon with some house (*ehem* baby) updates. :)

spending time with mommy

spending time with Auntie

The battle of the bench

The age-old battle of bench vs. chair has come to a close! Allow me to explain. Mark's gorgeous dining table has two matching benches that I have nagged him about since the day we moved them into our house. They're beautiful, don't get me wrong, but having to climb over someone to get out, or scoot the whole bench in and out just isn't for me.

My other argument against the benches was that together with the table, the look is very rustic, and since we are going for a slightly more contemporary kitchen, I wanted to tie the whole thing together with some fun chairs.

And friends, yesterday my wish was granted! I found these gorgeous chairs at World Market that were on sale, and get this, GREEN! In case you don't recall, we're tying green into our kitchen with a green glass backsplash, so I saw this as a perfect opportunity to connect the dining and kitchen areas. I quickly called to see if the chairs were available in-store so we could avoid the shipping charges and test one out before diving right in and getting six. They had them! I placed six of them on hold and Mark went and checked them out yesterday after work and as luck would have it, he LOVED them!!! Not only were they super comfortable and on sale, but the friendly sales person allowed Mark to make six separate transactions with a coupon for an additional $10 off!

Now let's not forget the benches. They won't be going too far. Mark and I have looked into how to properly weather treat them and they will be making their next appearance in our backyard.