weekend powerhouse

After many consecutive weeks full of tests, Shannon gets a break this week. Therefore she spent the entire weekend hanging out and it was super amazing awesome. We slept in and went out for dim sum on Saturday. We were extremely efficient as well. We got a crib (this one from Ikea) and a new kitchen table (this one). We cleaned and had friends over for dinner. Shannon made baklava for a classmate's birthday. We took the dogs to the park and did laundry. We hung pictures and made a little nook for the rocking chair. Shannon put up Halloween decorations and got a pumpkin for carving this week. We even went back to the big scary baby store and put the last things on our registry (mattress, diapers, etc) that we had been procrastinating about. Shannon's arm is doing well enough that she's back to driving and was able to run errards by herself on Sunday. Now, though, we need another weekend to be lazy.

The new kitchen table was part of a larger plan to beautify our apartment. Although we've been there nearly 10 months, we hadn't put up much art or really personalized much of the space. The kitchen, which is particularly small with no storage, has been in our minds for awhile. We bought some wall-mount shelves but found that the studs are too far apart to make them sturdy enough. Plus I'm not such a fan of wall mounted shelves in apartments we rent. Instead we put one of our existing shelves in there with the smaller table and voila! It's like a whole new kitchen. We also put up a new poster we got at Ikea of trees and an old print from Emily M from Grinnell. I should take some pictures because it's so lovely and clean right now.