stick picking.

I seem to be experiencing early-onset nesting.

Its complicated when you have nausea, complete exhaustion, and nesting going on all at once.

It mostly ends up in me making Chris move furniture around.

But the good news is our living room is now rearranged, and it feels bigger, and the big window is no longer partly blocked and it lets in all sorts of Fall light.

The next step is a bookshelf-cube switheroo.

Carly's cubed shelf is coming downstairs and I'm getting bins to provide some toy organization.

And the bookshelf is going up to Carly's room in an effort to control her ever growing collection of books.

We are strongly considering putting the baby in our walk-in closet.

We measured and the crib fits in a way that would leave all sorts of room to spare,

and I could see it making a very cute tiny nursery.

I learned last time around that babies don't need nearly as much as you think they do.

I also learned that the more everyone sleeps, the better.

So maybe everyone having their own space would work best at the beginning.

We'll see.

Along with the nesting has come the desire for seasonal decor.

I pulled out our Halloween decorations on October 1st (practically a tradition).

But I was looking for some more Fall-y natural decor that could go into November.

That led us on a stick hunt.

I decided to collect sticks, though I didn't really know what fabulous craft I would do with them quite yet.

But turns out it was a perfect mommy-daughter-get-outside-no-more-Dora activity.

We walked over to our mini walking path forest area nearby.

Carly was an avid stick collector, even if some of her finds were closer to all-out branches.

We brought our treasure home and Carly instantly knew to dig in the dirt with the sticks.

Is that inborn?

By lunch time she was covered in dirt, leaves, and stick particles.

A successful afternoon.

The sticks sat on our front step for days.

It looked like we were going to build a campfire.

I wanted to do something, but wasn't feeling the energy.

I remembered a large glass vase I have, that I thought would be cute to fill with pine cones.

The sticks won.

Presto!

A stick bouquet.



It looks nice and Fall-y on our kitchen table.

Though, Carly asks to play with a "big stick" every time we sit down to eat.

Oh, and I just thought of the irony of "nesting" and collecting sticks.

If I wasn't currently functioning with half my brain, I would think of something clever to say about that.

Alas, you win some, you lose some.

xoxo.