Natalie & Ryan: Picture Projects & Date Night

I've used the past month, while waiting for Lilly's newborn pictures, to ponder what I was going to do with them when they finally came. LOTS of crafts and ideas were flowing through my head and making me anxious, so today I decided to act on a few. I'll give credit where credit is due, and say that I stole a few from Pinterest. A lot of the creativity came from our spontaneous date night activities that we did last night. Ryan's parents wanted to give him a date night as part of their Father's Day gift to him, so they came over yesterday to babysit while we went out. At first we didn't know what to do. I joked that if they needed us, we'd just be sleeping out in the car. After a few minutes of sitting in the car, saying stuff like "what do you want to do?," we got the exact same idea at the exact same second. We decided to have dinner at the Blue Plate Diner because they make something that Ryan rarely gets: buffalo burgers! Since this was his date night to do whatever he wanted to do, I wanted to take him. Once we got there, we spent all of dinner trying to decide what to do next. Randomly, we decided that wandering around IKEA sounded fun. Why? I don't know. I think it had something to do with the fact that we've been spending a lot of time talking about buying a house lately, so we wanted to browse the furniture and room layouts. I personally just wanted to talk Ryan into buying me all the fun knick-knacks that they have there. My begging was successful, and I did end up leaving with a new cutting board, a scrub brush for dishes, some picture frames, and a potato masher. When we got back to the car, we realized we'd only been gone for maybe 2 hours. We felt so lame! Why were we having such a hard time deciding what to do?! The last step in our date night adventure was a relaxing drive. Ryan picked a spot on the mountain and said "let's try to get there!" So we drove until we reached it! Then we were board again....At that point, we decided that we didn't have anything else to do, and maybe getting home to bed was the best option. Although it was a pretty lack-luster night on our part, we very much appreciated Kevin and Jan giving us the chance to just do whatever. Maybe next time we'll actually have some activities thought up.

PROJECT #1: When I originally painted the tree on the wall, my intention was to make it appear as if there were pictures hanging from the branches. My lack of skill, where painting is concerned, made that a bit tricky, so I just kind of let the idea go...until last night at IKEA when I saw the perfect frames! I gave it shot, and I won't lie, I think I like it enough to leave it.

PROJECT #2: A WORK IN PROGRESS. I hung the pictures of Ryan and I with Lilly on our respective sides of the bed, and then hung a large print in the center. I'm thinking it still needs something else...maybe a quote and two more small prints on the side of the large one. Either way, I like it. I love getting to see my beautiful girl wherever I turn.