. daily daydreams . a blog by love ardently design studio

{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 }

{Source: Jane Reiseger}

Please bear with me with all the cute kiddie-related inspiration here! These days, my head is filled with these kind of things to welcome the upcoming arrival of our baby :) Although doing a nursery mural is something I’ve been wanting to do since forever, we won’t be able to do that in our rented apartment (and although at first I was disappointed, I’m now over this ;)). I have decided to just stick with hanging a nice curtain and some good looking art print. At this point I will be satisfied with a decent looking, comfortable and functional nursery! Well, maybe someday when we get to have our own house, I can go all out with the mural :)

Meanwhile, I’m adoring all these nursery wall mural illustrated by Jane Reiseger. It’s so simple, light, and effortless. Love her child-like stroke style. I’m in love with that huge whale mural. How amazing is that third pic of the mural at a children’s hospital!

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 |

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Interesting puzzle concept by Upon a Fold, one of my most favorite paper goods shop and blog. You can assemble the kit into a strand of 6 pyramids, which then can be folded to form letters of the alphabet. I love how abstract the forms that the letter makes and how colorful they are!

. valentine’s raspberry macaron by mad baker

. marshmallow heart tarts by simply modern mom

. heart cake by i am baker (via swiss miss)

Note: All images belong to respective owner.

While I am not going to be baking this Valentine’s, it certainly is such a delight to look at those amazing baker’s Valentine’s Day creations! I was looking and drooling over those lovely baked goodies and it reminded me of my birthday present from hubby that I have not touched or even let out of the box. It’s so big, I just don’t know where to put it in my teeny tiny kitchen. I am just recovering from my sickness (thanks for your sweet well wishes!) and now we are in the midst of packing and moving into a new apartment. I guess I have to delay the baking fun until we move into the new bigger apartment!

Meanwhile, I wish you a fun and love-filled Valentine’s weekend!

Lo Bjurulf is such a style and color genius.

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I just love this handmade, mix-media Cadbury hot chocolate ad designed by Owen Gildersleeve. Quoting from his portfolio website, he created the ad out of a mixture of found and handmade winter items, like pine needles, snowflakes, woolen jumpers and miniature ice-skates. Isn’t that fabulous? Love, love it!

Dallas is still icy, snowy, and slippery today. Hopefully it will get better in time for the Super Bowl visitors. Meanwhile, there’s nothing better for me than get cozzied up on a comfy sofa with blanket and a cup of hot chocolate.  Have a happy weekend everyone!

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Happy Chinese New Year to all who celebrates! Wishing you a wonderfully blessed and prosperous year ahead!

It’s the first of February, already! Valentine’s day is near and pink (and red) seems to be quite the appropriate color of the month everywhere. Luci Everett‘s french-folded book with the theme of party completely wins my heart today and get me in the pink mood. It’s very well crafted with simple but very intriguing concept. Her typography and illustrations are equally adorable, too. This is such a lovely piece to look at that brightens today’s dreary winter weather!

{photo source: luci everett}

I came across Scoutbooks the other day and thought it was so neat. They sell pocket notebooks with a lot of cool designs and patterns on the cover, but if that’s not enough, you can MAKE your own CUSTOM notebook! How neat is that.

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