Getting Ready

This semester, one of my classes is being taught by the editor of The Horn Book. Yesterday we got to visit their offices, which featured stuffed shelf after stuffed shelf of children's book - essentially, heaven. I love the magazine's most recent magazine cover from the lovely Jonathan Beam.

It's fitting on multiple levels right now. I could practically build a snowman this large with the amount of snow in my tiny yard. And we're getting ready to go back into building, renovating, and construction-mode in our house. The plan is for the latest (and maybe final?!?) round to be done by mid-April, leaving a couple of weeks to clear the dust ahead of my due date (which I share with Grace and Olivia, weirdly enough! Also, those are two names are on our long list of girl's names, ha.). If the baby comes early, though, hooooooly cow.

I'll be able to give more of an update about our plans later, once we review all the quotes and make our final-final decisions about what to do. Suffice to say, I'm having frantic thoughts at 4:00 a.m. about setting up our dressers in the bathroom upstairs and assessing how many slow-cooker recipes are actually in my repertoire (not nearly enough).

Plans for the weekend include watching the open ceremony tonight with take-out, lots of school work, and hosting friends for a dinner party on Sunday. I have zero ideas about what to make, which isn't like me, but I'm sure it will come together just fine. (Just kidding, as I was reading over this post, some inspiration struck: meatballs with braised onions and mashed potatoes, carrots and fennel, and the most perfect brownies would all be good.)

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, friends!