Category: Life

Life

Architects of Air: Katena Luminarium

Jessica Smith

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Happy 50th birthday, Columbia! (And happy belated Father’s Day, dads!)

This past weekend was the annual Columbia Festival of the Arts and this year’s festival had a special treat as part of the city’s birthday celebration: the Katena Luminarium.

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Katena was designed by Architects of Air. It looked like a giant, enclosed moon bounce, but instead of jumping around inside, visitors walked through tunnels illuminated by red, green and blue lights. It was beautiful!

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I had heard of the Luminarium a few months ago and was excited to go. I wrote about another light installation a few years back at Longwood Gardens, and with that experience in my mind, I took the baby to walk through Katena to see how it compared.

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It was over an hour to get in, but it was well worth it. After all, it’s not all that often that a giant art installation opens up in my backyard!

Life

Light blue and pink nursery

Jessica Smith

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My blog posts over the past year have been very sporadic, partially due to grad school and partially because we were getting ready to have a baby!

 

Our daughter was born at the end of December. She’s pretty stinkin’ cute and I am so in love with her. Here are a few photos of her nursery, which I was working on pretty much until she got here (OK, maybe a little bit after she was here, too!).

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I painted the nursery blue even before I found out we were having a girl, which won’t surprise anyone who knows me and my love of all things teal, mint, aqua and blue. We didn’t want a theme, so instead, we filled it with treasures from our childhood and things that make us happy, like flamingos, golden retrievers, the movie Up, Maryland… and lots of books. I might be addicted to children’s books.

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Little by little, the furniture made its way into the room and then the decorations went up on the walls. I am so freakin’ indecisive, so it’s a good thing this baby took 41 weeks to arrive so I could have a little extra time to make some decisions about what to hang where.

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I absolutely love her room. We spend a heck of a lot of time in there, so I’m glad I took my time and made it a special place for her. One of my favorite things was this mobile that I made. It was A LOT of work, but I adore it. She’s just starting to notice it above her crib, so that’s exciting for me.

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Here are some of the cute and custom things in her room:

  1. Flamingo watercolor
  2. Wooden Name Sign
  3. Elephant Print
  4. Deer Print

The furniture is a mix from Amazon (crib and side table), Target (bookshelf and circular shelf), Buy Buy Baby (glider) and a thrift store (dresser).

OK, now back to cuddling my sweet little girl!

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Life, Vacation

The Windy City

Jessica Smith

Chicago

Last weekend, mom, Emily and I hopped a plane to visit my older sister in Chicago.

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She and her business partner were having the grand opening of their new BYOB painting studio, the Surreal Rabbit.

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The whole store is themed after Alice in Wonderland. They painted murals all over the studio, from a cheshire cat, to Alice and the Mad Hatter enjoying tea together, to the white rabbit and his watch. There was even a card painting the roses red! It looked incredible.

Ribbon-Cutting

My sister is so incredibly artsy, she never ceases to amaze me.

When we weren’t admiring her store and beautiful creations, we were out exploring the city. We went to the Museum of Science and Industry, which was a lot of fun as usual. I mean, you get to make your own tornado. That’s my kind of museum. And there are things to touch and buttons to push EVERYWHERE. Did I mention they have an exhibit where you can watch baby chicks hatch from their eggs!?! Yeah, my kind of place indeed.

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We also went to the Adler Planetarium. I’d never been to a planetarium before — it was so cool! We got to see two shows in their domed theater, which was really cool.

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Look, we landed on the moon!

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We had an amazing trip visiting my sister.

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When we got back, Brian and I finished PUTTING OUR HOUSE BACK TOGETHER! You know what that means — reveal post, coming up!