. daily daydreams . a blog by love ardently design studio

I know I haven’t had too many updates lately. My life has been consumed by none other than my little one. It’s been so hard to keep a schedule throughout the day when it involves my constantly inconsistent baby boy. He’s getting so much better though. He naps longer (most times) and sleep with a pretty good stretch during the night. He is 9 months old and it seems like he’s currently going through the separation anxiety period. It’s been a tough 2 weeks for us.

But anyway… I’m getting back to design and crafting bits by bits lately, which I’m really excited about. It’s so nice to have an accomplishment other than feeding my baby 3 times a day :) My newest hobby currently is (yeah, you guessed it)… to make handmade goods for babies! I have just listed a few baby girl headbands on Etsy.

{ROSIE}

{SWEETHEART}

{TAKE A BOW}

{cootie catcher by Tenisha on etsy}

Happy new year all!

I celebrated the new year quietly with my two boys, David and Darrell, at home. It was quiet due to the sleeping baby, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I spent my New Year reflecting on things that happened in 2011, and also things that are about to come in 2012. New Year’s Resolution is not just a tradition for me. It’s a goal I set for myself and things that I envision myself doing in the future.

I used to make a long list of resolution (like 20 list of things…). Most of the time, 80% of those things didn’t ever get to be achieved by the end of the year. Then I would feel like a failure and come up with even more things. There is a quote that I recently read somewhere, “Always concentrate on how far you have come, rather than how far you have left to go.” Therefore, this year I have decided to only have 3 resolutions:

1. Pray more. Spend more time with Jesus.
2. Lose my pregnancy weight (and some more). Eat healthier.
3. Be more productive.

The third point includes to design more and blog more. Entering the new year, I contemplated a lot about how this blog is going to become in the new year. I know I haven’t been consistent enough with my posting. Recently, I have been thinking if I should change my content a little bit. Since I have become a mom, my interest towards babies and motherhood grow significantly. I would really enjoy to blog about things like that.

So, since this blog was supposed to be my daily daydream and consist of my musings, things will change a little bit here. This blog will not be converted into a baby/mom blog for now, though. I will definitely still post about design, art, and crafts. I still love those things and those haven’t changed in me. I will add a lot of post about babies, kids, and motherhood, since that’s what my life is about right now.

With that said… here is to a bright new year filled with many joy and blessings of God!

Remember this post? I was planning on decorating my baby’s nursery with a nautical theme. My inspiration board on that previous post was way too ambitious though. I tried to get it done during the earlier stage of my pregnancy, but it was still a lot of task. However, I did manage to make this wall fabric decal that I’m pretty proud of. This room ended up being my favorite room in our home :)

So, here goes a little tutorial. Because I live in an apartment, I was very concerned of finding the perfect solution to adhere the fabric decal to the wall without causing any marks. I researched a lot and found a great tutorial that worked for me. I basically use her tutorial with a few little tweaks to make it work for me.

Things you’ll need:

• the design you want on the wall, printed and cut out into shapes
• fabrics in the color of your choice
• Steam-A-Seam2 Double Stick Fusible Web
• Clover mini iron

First, I designed the whole layout on Adobe Illustrator. I measured the wall and then enlarged my design in correspondence to my wall measurement. After that, I printed the enlarged illustration. I only needed to print several shapes, which were the fish (small, medium, and big size),  the ship (3 components), and the cloud (big and small). Then, I cut out all the shapes and I made them as the tracing guide.

Then, I used the Steam-a-Seam Fusible Web as the adhesive agent. I got mine at Joann’s Fabric. So, the fusible web actually has 3 layering: the adhesive in the middle that is sandwiched by wax papers on each sides. At this point, I removed one of the wax paper which then reveals the sticky adhesive in the middle layer. I place that sticky side down onto the wrong side of the fabric. Then, I apply a bit of heat to the fabric with the mini iron, just so the fabric would stick to the fusible web, while I cut the shapes out.

After that, I used those fabric shapes to trace it onto the fusible web, and then I cut the fusible web according to the shapes.

Then, I remove the other wax paper layer of the fusible web, which leaves the one adhesive layer in the middle. I place the fabric (which has adhesive) onto the wall where I wanted. At this point, there’s a little adhesive and it’s still removable, in case you change your mind and want to change up the layout or something. The next step is to apply the heat.

A lot of tutorial uses simply a good old iron. It didn’t work for me because my shapes were too small and the iron was big. Whenever I try to use the big iron to apply the heat, it would leave marks on the wall on the surrounding area of the shapes that doesn’t have fabrics. I hope this makes sense to you. So anyway, I went to Joann’s Fabric and got the Clover mini iron which worked absolutely perfect for my shapes.

After you apply the heat, the fabric shapes are no longer removable. If for some reason you decide to remove it, it’s unusable and you’ll have to make a new one. One thing I really like about this method is that when I try removing one of those fabric decals, it leaves no marks on my wall!

One bonus pic with my little man in the crib :)

{Photo credit: Ivana Brata/Love Ardently}

{darrell, a few hours old at the hospital}

Hello everyone! I’m so sorry for the lengthy hiatus. Life has been pretty blurry for the past couple of months. Yes, you guessed it right. We have a new little person in our house! I gave birth to a baby boy named Darrell Caleb on September 3. He was born at 7:32am, weigh 7lb 7oz and 20.5″ long. You can read all about the birth right here at our family/baby blog. Being a first time mom, our first few weeks was absolutely the hardest. My toughest challenge was breastfeeding (long story), but I’m happy to say that at almost 9 weeks, Darrell has been exclusively-breastfed and everything is much, much easier now.

{one week old}

So he is now almost 9 weeks and he’s been such a JOY. I have never felt so much love for a person. He smiles and coos a lot these days and those things really melts my heart. It seems like he’s getting bigger and bigger by day! He has “graduated” from all his newborn clothes. Right now, I already miss my tiny newborn baby boy with his sleepy eyes and wrinkly feet!

{7 weeks old, before taking a bath}

As far as my life as a new mom… it’s been much better these days. There are ups and downs of course. Some days Darrell would be as sweet as an angel, but there are times that he’d cry in the middle of the night for reasons I don’t know. We’re getting better and better at “guessing” and fulfilling his needs though! He hasn’t slept through the night (yet), but he’s been much better for the past few days. I’m crossing my fingers that I will get my nice six (or I’ll even take five!) hour of sleep soon :) I would very much love to have a nice, long sleep at night, but I think I’ve also adjusted to waking up for nighttime feedings. I’ve also getting adjusted to life with new baby in general. My schedule is definitely not mine anymore, but we’ve been developing a pretty good routine lately. The fact that I can sit in front of the computer right now, typing this blog post is such a wonderful thing. I really, really miss blogging and working! I have a lot of stuffs that I designed and worked on and haven’t been shown here, so I’m really looking forward to update this blog with those.

I’ll leave you with this picture below that we’ve just taken last weekend. His dad suddenly had an idea to put on some fake mustaches on him. I hope Darrell will forgive us someday! :)

{8 weeks old, rocking mustaches }

So sorry for being absent! I have a pretty good reason for it, though. I hope this is a good enough reason :) Below is the last ultrasound that I had last month.

Yup! We are expecting a baby boy, due in August! We are very, very excited, although it certainly came with a price. I was practically sick for about 4 months with nausea and vomiting. I spent time mostly on my bed feeling miserable, especially during the month of January-February. The second I saw my baby through ultrasound, though, I no longer felt miserable. I fell in love at the first sight and suddenly my sickness became more bearable :) Thank God it’s mostly over now and I feel like having a lot more energy compare to those months!

This our first baby, so I’m clearly one clueless pregnant lady. So for the past few months, I’ve also been educating myself with a lot of baby and parenting stuffs. At this point, I’m a little freaked out, though, because we don’t have anything yet for our baby’s nursery! Zero. None. I’ve looked at a lot of stuffs on the web and have a certain look that I like on my mind.

I love the idea of having sea life or nautical themed nursery. I’ve also been gravitating towards turquoise, coral orange, taupe, gray and white as far as the colors. I’m thinking to make the nursery as light/white as possible in terms of color because we live in a small apartment and having darker colors would make it look even smaller :) Below are some inspirations, taken from my Pinterest board.

Sources: Ohdeedoh | Apartment Therapy | Hepstyles on Etsy | Somewhere Splendid | L’Affiche Moderne | Flensted Mobile |

So, yesterday was my birthday and I am now officially a quarter of a century old :) I realize i have been MIA a lot from this blog and the twitter world as well. I thought I owe you some explanation at the very least. Aside from the holiday business, I have also been sick starting the beginning of this year. This is so upsetting because I want to be able to launch our new portfolio website and our wedding ready-made collection sometime this month, but it is very unlikely to happen. I apologize for haven’t been able to get back to some of your e-mails as well. I will try to finish doing that this week.

Other than that, you will find me on my bed resting :( Being sick is boring and no fun. I can’t wait to get well soon!

From our family to yours. Wishing you warmth, love, and joy on this Christmas season and a wonderful future in the new year ahead!

“For a Child is born to us, a Son is given to us. The government will rest on His shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6 NLT

{source}

For me, Thanksgiving is not about the turkey, the pie, or the abundant decadent food. It is really about being thankful for life. Today I thank my Savior and Lord for the gift of life and for every single blessing.

I am also thankful for you. Yes, you. All of our loyal readers, subscribers, new visitors, clients, and friends. I am truly nothing without you. Wishing all of you a wonderfully blessed Thanksgiving!

I am taking a couple days of this week off to enjoy the fall season. Dallas Arboretum is an oasis in the midst of hectic Big-D town and I think it has its own charm. I’ve been there once for our engagement photo session a few years back. At that time, we weren’t able to enjoy most of the arboretum though.

So, the husband and I went there again for a picnic date a couple days ago and we had a lot of fun. It is such a charming, romantic place. We had a picnic overlooking the White Rock lake and had fun exploring the garden as well. It was a good time to go because they had a fun looking pumpkin village set-up in celebrating the autumn season.

Or not. No, really. I haven’t really packed it all.

{Source}

Hello all! I know I haven’t been blogging a lot lately. My April and May can be described as crazy and chaotic. Believe me, I feel so bad to not update, but I haven’t even been around the web very much and I haven’t checked out my Google Reader for weeks. I haven’t barely breathe just a bit and tomorrow I’ll be on a plane flying home for my summer vacation already! I. just. can’t. believe. it.

While I really can’t promise to be updating this blog until I’m back in the US (June 24), I’ll try to update as much as possible through my Twitter. It’s so much easier to have short tiny updates that way :) Also, just in case you need to reach me, I’m still not sure if I can access my hello@loveardently e-mail right now. That would not be a good idea at all, so I’m gonna try my best to find out how to set up that e-mail on another computer. If not, try to reach me through my Twitter! That’s probably the best way to reach me during my vacation.

Wishing everyone a fun, fabulous summer!