I’ve been toying with the idea of having one of Daphne’s pictures printed as a gallery wrap or maybe a standout. I really like the idea of grouping several together, like in this Pottery Barn Kids room:

Or even a wall display with frames like this one from Flickr user life.in.motion. No mattes. Not a fan of mattes.

I don’t know why every design/decorating decision I make has to be so difficult. You should see me try to pick out a bedding set. It could take months. I don’t think I put that much thought into Daphne’s name!!

What I’d really love is a display of photographs and art with different sized frames, lots of different colors and mediums, like you see in design blogs and magazines. The problem with that is I have this “matchy-matchy” gene that renders me incapable of creating those effortlessly eclectic groupings. When I do it the result is more “um, Jenny, were you drunk when you hung these?” (Which, now that I think about it, is probably a valid question anytime I hang a picture. Seriously. I can’t hang a picture straight with the help of a level, crazy glue and half the hardware dept. from Lowes.) Same with clothes. You know how Stacy and Clinton on What Not To Wear are always pairing teal or purple shoes with an outfit that has no teal or purple and it looks really chic. I can’t do that either. I just look like I was running late and couldn’t find a matching pair. That’s ok. I’ll just stick to my own crooked matchy-matchy style.

Daphne is 15 months old today. I didn’t see much of a difference between 13 and 14 months, but she has changed quite a bit in the last few weeks. Here’s the latest:

- Adding new words to her vocabulary all the time. This past weekend she said “baby” (BAY-BEEEEE, all strung out like a proper Southerner) and “no” for the first time. “More” is one of her favorite new words. Like a true girly girl, she is obsessed with lip products and lotion. She’ll bring me her lotion, I’ll dab a bit on her finger and give her back the bottle, she hands it back to me, says “more!” and the whole scenario repeats until she’s COMPLETELY moisturized (slimy, really) and I have to hide the bottle from her.

- She LOVES her baby dolls. It’s so cute to see her carrying them around, hugging them, kissing them, feeding them (sometimes from the dog bowl, apparently they like kibble). Today she checked out the American Girl catalog for the first time and pointed to just about everything in the book. Chris, start saving your money now!!

- Daphne sang for the first time on Sunday. It was baby dedication day at church, so we had Daphne in service with us. During the praise and worship time Daphne just started singing. And she was SO serious about it. We couldn’t stop laughing.

- She discovered TV a few weeks ago. When she was younger she’d watch maybe a minute or two of TV before getting bored. Now she will sit and watch an entire episode. She also realizes there is a relationship between the remote and the TV. Today she was trying to turn on the TV and kept looking at the remote and the TV screen, trying to figure out why Noggin wasn’t on. She does the same thing with the Wii wheel. She’ll stand in front of the TV just driving away with the wheel, wondering why Mario Kart isn’t on the screen.

- She loves to give the dogs hugs and kisses. But when I ask for a kiss or hug she either ignores me, or shakes her head no. Pfffft!! The only time she’ll kiss me is when I’m rocking her to sleep. Chris gets hugs and kisses all the time from her. I don’t get it.

- Her hair is getting long enough to pull out some of the baby curls. The ringlets are gone and have been replaced by slightly wavy hair. It’s not pretty wavy, more weird/funky wavy. Definitely another awkward hair stage. I bought a curl activator cream for her and have attempted to scrunch it dry. Yeah, that’s way too much work considering she’ll just roll on the ground and destroy her hair.

- It’s amazing to me how much she understands. She follows commands pretty well. Go in your room and get your baby doll, put this away, go give this to Daddy, go close the door.

- Can’t wait to see what the next month brings!!!

Daphne woke up at 2am with a fever. She wasn’t a happy camper. This is just after Chris took the video camera away from her:

Turkey Throwdown on the grill. One is a fresh, cajun marinade injected turkey breast. The other is a thawed from frozen, traditionally seasoned breast. I liked the cajun bird. The marinade was a good match for the slightly smoky flavor of the grilled turkey.

The table:

Daphne crashed in the dog bed (already in a Christmas outfit):

In fact, sometimes she thinks she’s a dog. She had the flashlight cord in her mouth and was shaking it:

Football game:

And then bedtime (for mama and baby) at 8:30pm. We were tired!!

- Uploading our Christmas card to mpix.com for printing. I had grand plans of a fancy press printed card, but it didn’t happen this year. Maybe when Daphne gets older and is easier to photograph.

- Checking to make sure my Black Friday order went through on Gymboree.com. Don’t you love websites that put their BF deals up on Thanksgiving Day? Anyway, I got Daphne a winter coat for $11.20 ($14 doorbuster deal with 20% off coupon). All I can say is it better be cold when we are in Tulsa for Christmas, because I don’t think we will need it in Houston. It’s going to be near 80 degrees here today.

- Looking forward to today’s Turkey Throwdown (Bobby Flay style). 2 turkeys, 2 different seasoning methods, both grilled. We will see who is victorious.

- Ready for Christmas. Not that I’ve done any shopping.

- Irritated that my husband wants to discuss FTP login stuff with me at midnight. Doesn’t he realize that my brain doesn’t function after 10pm and I don’t remember my password or how the hell I set anything up with our web host. After some sleep, I might remember. But not now.

- Going to bed. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Just a few of my husband’s pictures from today’s Via Colori street painting festival. Impressive work!! My street painting is limited to crooked hopscotch boxes.

I can’t believe Land of Nod is charging $89 for a cardboard playhouse. Seriously people, just go to the grocery store or Lowe’s and get a big box, some markers and a box cutter and go to town.

- During the move I managed to lose every piece of fall and winter clothing I own. It’s a good thing we didn’t move to Wisconsin or something.

- I suck at digital asset management. I’m currently in the process of transferring 1,600 photos off my 8GB SD card onto an external hard drive, but only because I’m almost out of room and plan on shooting in RAW only from now on. My current work flow- take pictures, plug card into laptop, edit photos, save on hard drive, upload to Flickr, procrastinate about wiping SD card, finally transfer photos to another hard drive after Chris gets on to me, hope I never have to find an original file since I don’t tag or rate any of my photos. I need a plan. Or a 32GB card. Bwahaha!!

- I’m having focus issues with the D90 when shooting with wide apertures. I can’t tell if it’s me, or if it’s the camera, since others have reported similar problems, especially with the 50mm lens.

- I need to order my Christmas cards. Of course, this will require us getting a picture of Daphne first. I swear, my husband will go shoot an event at the drop of a hat, but if I want him to take a picture of Daphne I have to bug the hell out of him. (Which is why most of the pictures of Daph were taken by me.) “Can we take pictures of Daphne today? Honey, hello?” Must be that husband selective hearing thing.

- Oddest thing said tonight after dinner: “It’s a good thing Elvis is dead!” What? Actually, I don’t like Elvis either.

- I’ve been in a bad mood today, can you tell?

I finally got Daphne’s hair accessories under control, without it costing me a dime. I used my hanging jewelry organizer and clipped each bow and snap clip to the edge of each row, and used some of the pockets for hair elastic storage. It’s not pretty, but since it hangs on the back of her closet door you don’t really see it anyway.

I’ve had several people ask where I get Daphne’s bows. Her first bow clips were from No Slippy Hair Clippy and didn’t take me long to realize that it was insane to spend $7 on a clip that would more than likely just get lost anyway. So then I moved onto bows in the $3 range, from places like Dillard’s or local children’s boutiques. Now almost all of her bows come from Etsy. I have found a few sellers with prices ranging from $1.50 to $1.67 a bow. And for that price it doesn’t stress me out too much if they get lost.