so Venice | traveling Europe with kids

I'mfinally carving out time to cull through and edit our pictures from our trip this summer to Europe. Knowing full well that I should do something with them! It's fun to look at them and to relive each day, each outing and even some meals. These are my sweet memories of Venice. they are so Venice. Anne Lois loves it here. I love it here. These struck a chord with me today as I went through 100's of pics.

Cottage Renovation | Fairhope, AL

We bought a cottage. We bought a 1938 cottage.

We are going to renovate a 1938 cottage!

This summer our home life changed when we bought a Fairhope cottage and sold our home of eight years in 2 weeks- SURPRISE!

Our comfy home life as we knew it, was suddenly packed up into multiple storage units and a new chapter started.  We are thrilled to have found this cottage- I think it sorta found us.  For a long time, PB and I have loved older homes. Homes with character and charm. The kind that has a story to tell.  It's taken months to plan, draw, meet, talk, design, email with our fab team at Walcott, Adams and Verneuille (a local architect firm). Rebecca Bryant has been our sounding board all along helping us design and work with this house to modernize it for our family while retaining its original form. I never would have dreamed we'd take on a project like this one.

The plans are drawn, the builder has started, it's progressing before our eyes. I've made a personal goal to keep a cottage renovation update on my blog and to photographically capture the metamorphosis.  I have some back writing to catch up. This is my start-  Nov. '12.