a little family photo shoot

thanks amy jo for the most beautiful pictures! i'm so happy you caught these simple moments. our first officially family photo shoot as a little family of 3!!!! loved being able to include our little bug in these photos. i was 13 weeks along when we took these. 

amy jo royall photography

have you ever met someone that you just immediately know you were meant to be friends? that some how you think the same, act the same and can agree on almost everything? 

thats how i felt when i met amy jo. now if you have met amy jo you know what i am talking about. she is one of the most uplifting, happy, inspiring and beautiful people on this earth. i am so grateful to call her my friend. she has been just what i have needed these last couple of months. 

now not only is amy jo amazing she is an incredibly talented photographer. long story short i actually discovered amy jo before i knew amy jo. i'm one of those weird people that looks for new photographers before she moved to chicago....haha i know! i ran across amy jo's website and fell in love. over time i discovered that we had mutual friends in chicago. but i was too much of a chicken to say anything to her.

fast forward a couple of months....amy jo and her husband moved just a couple of blocks from us. we've been fast friends ever since. when we found out we were expecting i wanted some pictures. amy jo was on board and i couldn't be more excited.

i'll post some more of those pictures later but i wanted to show off some she took of our family room. i love how she can make a family room look beautiful. i also love that i get to keep these pictures forever and have a reminder of our favorite chicago apartment. i just wish i would have had her take pictures of our old place. 

thanks amy jo for making our little home look beautiful! now i just need to clean my bedroom and kitchen so you can come back and document those!!!

our photo wall....i had too may pictures to share and not enough wall space! thank you ikea shelves

love our over stuffed game baskets. we are just game people i guess

thanks to my beautiful mother i have the most perfect fabric for my windows....now i just need to finish the last 3.

so random but i am in love with our brick walls. i didn't realize how much i wanted some until we started looking at new places.

our glider for the baby. we bought this before we moved to chicago. i can't wait to finally have a baby to rock in it!

so it seems we've made it to a year

this week marks our one year anniversary of living in chicago. honestly i can't believe it's already been one whole year. so many thoughts run through my mind as i think about our last year in chicago. some days it feels like we just moved here yesterday. most days though i can't really imagine life not in chicago. 

this past year has been the best year and the most difficult year at the same time. i won't say worst year, it's not even close to that. but difficult yes. i won't lie. there are days when i cry myself to sleep because i'm so homesick. where i long for our days living in holladay. i didn't realize it then, but life was simpler.  we were just playing "grown up". here in chicago reality hit us. somedays harder than others. we're real lifein' it now. we are for reals "grown up". we're on our own out here. and while it's easy to say being grown up isn't all it's cracked up to be....most of the time it's pretty great. 

we're truly creating a life for ourselves out here. though we miss family and friends like crazy, and LOVE going to utah to visit, this is our home. this is where our life is. our daily doings and adventures happen here. i think i'm going to be a mess the day we have to leave this beautiful city. 

the past year we've explored just a small part of chicago. we've visited museums and tried to do a lot of touristy stuff. we've had many visitors and have loved showing off our favorite places. we've tried way too many restaurants but still have so many more to try. we've fallen in love with date nights downtown. the mr. has taken over med school and is now the big man on campus. i've mastered the whole "working from home" thing. i found a love of interior decorating. we've created little family traditions for the two of us. we've laughed. we've cried. we've had our share of heartbreak. we've had our share of hope and love. we've made the most incredible friends, lifelong friends truly. we've learned more about ourselves, our marriage and what we want out of life. we've learned to become "city" people. we mastered public transit and went carless for over 6 months. we've grown more in love with each other. we've fallen in love with chicago. 

this past year we've made chicago our home. we've made memories that will last us a life time. i'm so grateful to my sweet mr for moving us out here. for creating a good life for us and making each day a new adventure. 

so chicago.....we only have 3 years left (if the mr. doesn't decide to keep us here for residency). i thought that would be a long time but considering how fast year 1 went we are running out of time. i hope you help us create even better memories. i hope you will be the city where we have our first baby. i hope you keep the weather fairly mild like you have (pretty please this one). you are now home to a new adventure for work, more on that later. and you will be where the mr. finally graduates medical school. keep having fun things for us to see and do. we can't wait for another 3 years of incredible memories. 

thanks for being a part of our little family chicago. you will always have a place in our hearts. can't wait to see how the grows these next few years. don't get sick of us yet ;-)  

a weekend home

sorry for being m.i.a for the past little while. we so loved having mom and megs with us last week and then this week i flew to slc for a "work" trip. the mr.'s wonderful parents surprised him with flights to slc for the weekend. though he wasn't here for long it was so wonderful.

on saturday we spent the day with spencer's fam.  we ate fresh toast at kneaders, we went bowling (a typically b. family activity), went puppy shopping (mamma b. has been helping us pick out a puppy for the past couple of months. maybe i'll finally decide what i want), ate at cafe rio, watched the byu football game, played card games, ate pizza, and just loved being together.

we ended the night with spencer's entire family having family prayer together. though it was only for about 48 hours, being home with spence was just what we needed. there is strength in being with family. how blessed we are to live in a time where quick trips home are possible. i am also super grateful for a company that will fly me home every so often.

this morning we got dressed up and headed to temple square. it was the perfect fall day.  chicago has really cooled down so it was nice to have some "warm" weather for a change. we walked around temple square hand in hand. what a great way to spend our sabbath morning.

the mr. is headed back to chicago right now. so wish he could have stayed longer. i have my big event this week. super nervous but so excited to see how it all turns out. after months of smaller meetings for practice i'm ready to big out the big guns! who knew i would love event planning so much!

happy sunday friends!

decorating on a budget: my project this week

slowly but surely we are making our little condo our "home sweet home". this week i decided i needed to give myself a project. making our home a little more cozy was the perfect project. we had some target gift cards (yay) that helped with my project.

first: fix our patio door/window area. forgive me for using this awkward picture but it was the best i could find of the before

after: i spent about 1 hour looking through curtains at target. you can't really tell but our ceilings are high. and thus i needed long curtains. i almost gave up and realized i would probably have to pay about $100 a curtain. but then spotted these beauties. wonderful, long, and cheap table cloths. yep, i spent $15 each for the tablecloths turned curtains. luckily i already had the hanging clips and shear curtains. plus the mr. was pretty excited i didn't have to spend $150 on curtains.

second: rearrange the harp. it was in our second room (which i loved) but i wasn't playing it as much. it was awkwardly tucked in the corner and too difficult to get to. so i solved my problem by moving rooms. i added some vintage sheet music prints to give it a more "harpy" feel. bring on the practicing.

third: the shelf. i feel in love with our shelf in our last apt. i knew i wanted to recreate the look in our new place. we ordered the shelf months ago but ran into a problem with our stud finder. we finally got a new stud finder and i begged spence to put it up last night. this is still very much a work in progress. i have big plans for this wall. a mirror, some shutters etc. we'll see how it all comes together. 

fourth: so this hasn't happened yet. our new couch. we have been waiting two months for our new baby. ahhh i hate waiting can i just say that. so for now we have a very classy (and very cheap) futon from wal-mart.  we almost didn't buy a temporary couch. we thought we could last. but boy am i glad we've had this little guy these past two months. hopefully in the next couple of weeks this will be switched out for a lot bigger and nicer seating arrangement.

fifth: our patio. it was sad and needed some tlc. this one will get some more lovin in the spring with a new paint job and flooring. for now i gave it a good cleaning, added some plants and (my personal favorite) twinkle lights. 

i wish i knew enough about photography at night so i could capture these beauties in their full glory. but these vintage round clear bulbs won my heart.

as you can see our neighbors are steps ahead of us plant wise. our little mums look sad compared to theirs. but we're working on a med student budget. i'll keep adding and maybe by next summer we'll have our own little garden.

my favorite spot: my little reading corner. i love sitting in our big overstuffed glider. it's so cozy and makes me happy. it's also nice have a bit of diy "art" on our walls. a good mix of us and other stuff. i felt like in our old place all we had was pictures of us. i like us but don't love staring at myself all day long.

my office: again still working on this one. i might get some shelves for the wall and a new (cute) file cabinet but for now this works just great. i love being able to look out of the window and see the little squirrels chasing each other (seriously just happened).

spence's little corner: now it doesn't look like much (and lets be honest it isn't) but this is my mans spot. he is an amazing piano player and i love to just sit and listen to him play. one day (when we have a house) we'll move our real piano in. for now our piano gets to sit and wait for us at my parents house (thanks mom and dad for the piano by the way).

another cozy corner: i've found that this is my new place for phone calls. something about my 7th grade butterfly chair makes me smile. we brought it with us as a temporary seat while we wait for our couch but i think it might just stay with us!

so there you have it. my week has been full with settling into our family room, second room and patio. i still have a bit of work in the bedroom and kitchen but i'm slowing putting it all together.

it feels so nice to have our home feel like home. i still have tons of projects but thats good! i think i'll attempt homemade roman shades for the second room next week. we'll see how that one goes.

how do you decorate on a budget?

well hello there friend

(don't mind the sweaty faces...we got a good workout in)

we woke up this morning in chicago

decided to go for a run

ran to the "beach"

and fell in love

at least i did. the mr. has already fallen in love with this place

we've been mia for a few weeks while we've been packing, moving, unpacking and getting settled

it is finally feeling like home

never would i have thought chicago would be our home

but now i can't imagine having home be anywhere else

so excuse us for a bit longer....

we still have some work to do to get set up

(the mrs. still needs to unpack all her clothes...ugh)

we'll be back soon

with plenty of updates of the last couple of weeks

and our new place as it comes together

peace and love from chi-town

our new home...the story

when we started the med school application process i chose favorite schools based on where i wanted to live. when the mr. choose a school i tested it by looking up apartments. if i found some good options in a good price range it was a go. i did this for almost all of our top schools. except for northwestern. long story short northwestern was a late add. we know now that is because that's where were supposed to be but at the time neither of us considered living in chicago as an option.

spence got an interview, like so many others, and i was excited. at first i was thrilled about living in a big city but that was when other schools were in the running. fast forward to one month ago. we had a plan (or i did) that we were going to live in california. because lets be honest who doesn't want to live right on the beach. even though we had been accepted to northwestern i wasn't going to live there. i was set on my plan. turns out heavenly father didn't have the same plan. after some tears, confusion, and doubt we decided that we were meant to go to chicago. once i let that reality sink in i started getting really excited. it all seem to feel right. like it was our plan all along. 

there was (possibly still) an option of another school but to my surprise both spence and i would turn it down. we are so excited (to the point where it's almost all we talk about) to live in chicago. i wish i could have felt this way at first but i think i needed to learn a little faith, trust and patience. 

so once we officially decided that northwestern was our school it was panic mode. we made the official decision right before our cruise. then with a week without internet we were left with 3 weeks before move date. meaning 3 weeks to find an apartment. thanks to a huge blessing we met noly who became our agent.

noly sent a few options to look at on monday. that night we found our dream place. noly agreed to go see it for us the next day (because we can't afford a day off to fly out there...boo). so we put our trust in her and waited. tuesday she called me. it was perfect. but 7 others thought the same thing. we hurried and put in our application. and waited again. 

we searched for other options. some bigger, some nicer. but i couldn't get this place out of my mind. wednesday we received bad news. the place went to someone else. at this point i was done. i was tired and stressed and so sad. but we needed to find a place (before today i might add). so i found a few other options. 

that night noly called us. the contract fell through. now it was down to 5. we sent everything in again and prayed our little hearts out. this was our home and i just knew it. i couldn't imagine living anywhere else. yesterday we got the news....

we got the place!

we are now (or will be) the newest residents of cuyler in chicago's wrigleyville. we were beyond excited. it all feels just right now. i thought i would be living where the palm trees grow. looks like i'll be living where the buildings grow and the air is cold. we can't wait to move into our little place. we're paying a lot more for a lot less but we couldn't be more excited. plus we have this awesome little deck. wanna come have a bbq with us?

(there she is. and i won't even have to walk up 5 flights of stairs)

so there you have it. sometimes things don't work out like you plan. but in the end i think things are working out much better than i expected. we're packin' up and movin' out in 3 weeks. we're excited (and scared) but know it's the right thing for us. 

anybody want to come visit us in good ol' chicago come on out! we love visitors!