She had given each of us a collection of her go-to dishes after we graduated, so were able to use that to get the recipes just right.

I loved that my three sisters went in on them with me so they could be from all of us (we each selected our favorite recipe of my moms and they were apparently so iconic that my mom could guess which person picked each one). Those are the Articipe prints that we spotted at the craft fair, and I ordered four custom prints for my mom (there was a “buy 3 get one 1 free” deal going on, so it was $75 for the four 5 x 7 prints and $20 for the four Ikea Ribba frames). Let’s rewind first to Mother’s Day, when I coordinated with my three sisters to give our mom a gift that was inspired by our visit to Richmond’s Spring Bada-Bing craft fair in April. But we’ll spare you a run-down of every unwrapped gift and just show you some of the highlights – mainly the things we designed/put thought into customizing and personalizing with a little DIY design input. So there are lots of milestones to be celebrated… and lots of gifts to be given. Not only did we have Clara’s birthday and Mother’s Day back-to-back, but in the past two weeks we’ve also marked my mom’s birthday, Sherry’s mom’s birthday, my sister’s wedding anniversary and my parents’ wedding anniversary (their 40th!). May is always a busy month for gift-giving in the Petersik family. So we still have a long way to go, but we’ll be back on Monday to share our progress! Until then here’s an Instagram sneak peek that I snapped of Clara playing Job Site Supervisor while peering through the sliding glass doors (you can actually see some ledger boards hung against the house in the reflection):īut back to the real subject of this post: present projects. Let’s just say that cutting and drilling into brick – especially brick that makes up the side of your house – is not for the faint of heart. Woot! Yesterday we OFFICIALLY BROKE GROUND ON THE BIG DECK PROJECT! Although breaking ground is a bit of an overstatement since we are not even close to digging post holes yet – we’re still working on getting our ledger board up (those are the support beams that run along both sides of the house to start the deck frame).

The Craft of Love by E.E. Ottoman