ROSY CHEEKS & TAN LINES

by christine victoria alexander


A little over a year ago I decided to add a master bath remodel to our list of home projects before welcoming baby #4! Quite a few people told me it was a very silly thing to do pregnant since I would lose the use of our primary bath for months and possibly not have it finished by the time our baby arrived. Not to mention pregnancy is already enough, why add a remodel on top of it? But I told them all the same thing... I'd rather do it pregnant than with a newborn! 



The biggest change we made was turning the side wall of the shower into a half wall to open up the room visually and let natural light into the shower. It also added symmetry (and you can never go wrong with symmetry) by framing the bath. I opted for classic box molding instead of more tile on the front of the bath for a softer look. I love it!



It was absolute bliss having a sparkly new bath to soak in during my labor at home. I took my first bath with little baby Violet while the sunset caught the brass and sent little rainbows all over the walls... a memory I treasure. 💛



I love marble and always will. My preference is marble with lots of inky veins but Isaac likes it a little more subtle so we met in the middle with this beautiful Mont Blanc. We found a pair of matching slabs and used one for the tub surround and the other for the two countertops. I had new door and drawer fronts made for the cabinets and painted everything to match in Clare Snow Day



For a room that sees quite a lot of the mundane parts of life, this project has left me gloriously excited to shower and brush my teeth! Let the bubble baths begin! 

Find my inspiration and all the before photos in this post. 

Hello lovelies, I hope you have all been well! After a little break from sharing on here, my creativity is waking up and wanting to come out and play again! I'm ready to be creative; take pictures, plan trips, host parties, make things, bake things, sew things...! I know I owe you all a (very much overdue) kitchen makeover reveal and I will get to that soon, but first let's catch up. 

It's been just over a year since we became a party of 6! Our family feels complete now. At mealtimes every seat is filled with a squirming, happy little girl. I look in the rearview mirror of the car and there they are - the four daughters I was always supposed to have. I feel like I've been waiting for this moment ever since I was a little girl playing house with my dolls. It feels too good to be true!

The girls are flourishing. Olive and Rosie love school and I'm completely blown away by their reading, writing, and drawing abilities. Madeline is picking up so much just by listening to them. Naturally, I think they are the best and brightest children I have ever met! I'd like to put together a coffee table book of the their drawings. They make me tremendously happy! 

Since finishing our kitchen and bath renovations we are taking a break from big projects and just enjoying our home. I keep a few small decorating projects going on the side purely for enjoyment and Isaac happily obliges that little passion of mine. Speaking of Isaac, he is thriving! His work environment and schedule changed recently as part of a very exciting merger and we are thrilled! Family dinners are back in rotation and I'm already planning spring evenings on the deck now that we have our main man home before sundown. 

I love my days with the girls. Becoming a mother brought out the best parts of me (and shined a light on the rough bits too, I'll add!), and I'm so grateful to get up every morning and do what I love most! What an incredible gift getting to play a part in shaping the hearts and minds of these precious girls. I love my job! 

Look forward to sharing more with you soon!

xx Christine     














Yesterday was Purim, the holiday that celebrates the Jewish people being saved by the heroism of Queen Esther! It is tradition to dress up, eat hamantaschen (a funny triangle shaped cookie), and read the whole Megillah (the story of Esther). This year I wasn't quite up to hosting my nieces and nephews for our annual hamantaschen/dress up fete, so I set up a little tea party for the girls instead. They dressed up like Queen Esther and ate cucumber sandwiches and hamantaschen while I told them the story of Purim! It was just the low key celebration we needed this year. 💛



I found this set of tea cups on Offer Up last year really cheap and it's been perfect for tea parties with the girls. It's not sentimental to me so if something breaks it's fine, and the girls feel so special getting to use "real tea cups" instead of their toy tea set. (It's also great practice for taking care of nice dishes!) 




I don't know why but it's just my nature to want to make every birthday & holiday feel really special for my girls. Last year I hosted or attended a party for every single holiday on the calendar and it started to feel like I just couldn't keep up. Or sometimes I would have really big ideas of a way to celebrate something and then it wouldn't happen and I would feel like a failure for not celebrating to the max - I mean, you don't get those birthdays back so if you miss the opportunity it's gone! My nature is to make things exciting and fun for everything and if it's not exciting and fun then it's a dud. Are you like that too?
Over the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about what the next few years will look like for us and I realized this: it is okay to make things special in a small way. It still counts. I am still making memories with my girls even if it's not the big colorful celebration that I have planned in my head. I am still making memories with my girls even if we are celebrating at home. I know that with a new baby I won't be able to do all the things for all the birthdays and holidays the way I would might like to, but I'm giving myself grace and planning to celebrate things in a small way this year with my girls. And it will be amazing and so, so special. Yesterday was proof of that. 💛 Chag Purim, sameach! Happy Purim, friends! 

 Hello world, meet our fourth baby girl, Violet Serena! 

We are all completely smitten with this sweet baby. Her features are so teeny tiny and delicate and she has the most beautiful head of fluffy blonde hair that the girls can't keep rubbing and kissing. Birthing her was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was strenuous and exhausting, and not really like my other births at all. I am so grateful to my incredibly knowledgable and caring birth team for helping me birth her in the comfort of my home. And to my amazing husband for being my rock through all the emotional and physical ups and downs of this pregnancy and birth. I am sooooo happy to be on the other side of this pregnancy snuggling my sweet girl!

She weighed in at 8 lbs 11 oz, my biggest baby yet (though you wouldn't know it because she is so long and lean)! We just had our 2 week checkup and she is healthy and strong and nursing beautifully! 

I was laughing with my midwife at our checkup saying that while the birth was very difficult, Violet is a very easy baby and I think I'd rather have it that way than the other way around! She wakes up for her feedings every 3 hours like clockwork and goes back to sleep as soon as she is done feeding. She is rarely fussy and doesn't mind being bumped, poked, squished and squeezed by her adoring fans all day! 

Enjoy this photo dump of our first 2 weeks together!  

the prettiest flowers from my Poppop & a cozy hand knit sweater from Aunt Julianna




socks for mittens because I never remember to buy mittens before a baby comes




first bath and she loved it until it was time to get out...


(still warming up to) the cutest little animal friend from Aunt Morgan...



daddy & mommy love you so much

I will share more pictures of the girls with Violet soon - we had to keep them apart a lot the last couple weeks due to a cold circulating through the family but now everyone is healthy and I can't wait for all the sister pictures! I have four daughters!!! I could cry (I have, several times! haha postpartum hormones)! God is so good and I feel like the happiest wife and mother in the world! 
Sending big hugs to you all (and especially to family and friends that live too far to visit our cutie! We miss you!) xo

People assume because I post pictures of painted dreidels and colored pictures that I am an arts and crafts mom. I am not. I love the arts, not so much the crafts. Over here we do all the painting, drawing, watercolors, pastels and crayons, but you won't find any Elmers glue or popsicle sticks at my house! I am so excited to see my love of the arts being passed down to my girls! Olive is an incredible artist - I just bought her two new sketch books to fill during nap time. I have stacks of her pictures saved to frame once we paint her room. She loves drawing and her pictures are so happy! Rosie enjoys drawing too, but I think she might lean more towards music. She recently discovered the piano and doesn't even change out of her pajamas before sitting down to play in the mornings. She can't wait to take lessons from her aunt when she gets a little bigger. It makes me so happy to have a home filled with music and drawing and laughter all day! It's like living in a toddler version of Little Women! 😂



Today we didn't have anywhere to be, so we pulled out our watercolors and painted dreidels for Hanukkah! I was a little nervous it might be a huge mess letting paints loose with three children under 5 at the table, but I was pleasantly surprised! We spent about an hour painting away and then cleaned up for lunch. The watercolors were a lot more manageable than acrylic paints and aside from the little bowls of water my only cleanup was wiping the table down after we finished. I let the dreidels dry on paper towels while we ate lunch and then used a black sharpie to write the Hebrew letters on them. I know these will make me smile every year when I pull out our Hanukkah bin! 

Hope you are all having a wonderful Hanukkah week! Tag me in your photos if you try painting dreidels! xx

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