Spread the Love! An Inspiring Story and an Awesome Sale

If you've been reading Sometimes Sweet for awhile or follow me on Instagram, you may have seen Melanie's from Spread the Love artwork make an appearance now and again. When Henry was born, she sent us over a custom Baby Platte that I feel in love with the second I saw it. It's one of my favorite gifts for the new mama friends in my life, along with a million of Melanie's other creations.

I love supporting Spread the Love for obvious reasons, but I also really love Melanie's inspiring story.  In a nutshell, she and her husband fell in love at 19, went to school together, got married and wanted to start a family. For years and years they struggled with infertility due to Melanie's endometriosis but tried to remain positive. They did everything they could to get pregnant- infertility treatments...Clomid, IUIs, more Clomid. Nothing was working for them and they finally decided to try IVF. It was a struggle as those familiar with the process know. From Melanie's own words: "Finally, IVF was our last resort. Oh, the DRUGS. The drugs were rough and so very insane. MANY, many needles injected into my thighs and bum. To someone who barely took aspirin it was a serious hurdle but I was not willing to give up on our dreams. It was dark at times, and we really had serious thoughts of stopping. Everyone around us was having babies, even their second children were being made and born while we desperately kept trying for our long-awaited first. Finally, we harvested eggs and made them into embryos (still sounds sooo bizarre and weird) which were then frozen. We had 3 attempts. The first 2 failed. The pressure was stifling."

But finally on that third and final IVF attempt they got a positive pregnancy test and Melanie is now 7 months pregnant! I find her story to be so inspiring and special; I actually talked with Melanie about this and she mentioned at the end of her story how important it is to keep believing in your goals and dreams, and to try your best not to compare with the road traveled by others.

So when she decided to do a nursery and kiddo collection of prints to celebrate the upcoming birth of her baby, I wanted to share it with all of you.

What's awesome about these groupings is the hard work is already done for you. The prints compliment each other perfectly, and you get all of them, for one price. M has been selling them at $75 for the set, but for Sometimes Sweet readers she is extending the Nursery or Kiddo set for just $60 each, limited to 20 of each set.

You can check out the sets in detail by visiting the links above, but be sure to buy via this Paypal button if you'd like to receive the $60 sale price! They make great gifts for your own kids, or as birthday or shower gifts too. It's a great deal for beautiful artwork. 

And congratulations Melanie, this is definitely something to celebrate! :)

p.s. if you're viewing this off of my blog's main page (through an RSS feed, etc.) you'll have to click into the actual post to see/use the PayPal button.

Choose your grouping:

The Nursery Collection The Kiddo Collection

Hawaii 2012

What a great week we had on the Big Island of Hawaii! It was really wonderful to have so much quality family time and to spend the week in one of my favorite places. Our family has a home on the Kona coast, so we are able to travel out to Hawaii pretty frequently. I am so thankful for this- it's really a treat and every time we go I think we always spend that first afternoon just overwhelmed with how wonderful it is to be able to go, and how grateful we feel to have the opportunity to do so. We had last been the summer before Henry was born, but since then hadn't been back. We'd been Hawaii-dreaming for quite awhile but couldn't find the time to make the trip, so when my mother-in-law suggested we do a quick family vacation at the end of summer, it was perfect timing.

I'll write more about traveling with Henry next week, but I was blown away with how smoothly it went. I had kind of set myself up for him to be a little difficult but he was a total champ through the early morning flight to Honolulu and then our connecting flight to the Big Island. Yay Henry, and boo to me for not giving him enough credit! He also slept in his pack n play no problem, which was night and day from our recent trip to La Jolla, when he refused to do so and made it a bit difficult when it came time to sleep! It also helps that our bedroom is on the second floor, away from all the other rooms so we were able to really get him comfy and cozy. Both Hank and I were totally happy and after that first successful night we were high-fiving all morning. Yeah!

The week went by quickly, and it was filled with so much outdoor time and enjoying the gorgeous weather. We went to the beach everyday and we all had a great time swimming and building castles in the sand. Henry is such a water baby and absolutely cannot get enough. He cried when it was time to get out of the ocean almost every single time, his tearful "bye bye ocean" and waving breaking my heart. The water was really rough at some points so the lifeguards had all the kids get out, so there were some afternoons we just switched over to the pool at home.

We ate good food, Hank enjoyed some of his favorite coffee spots and we got to workout every day. Some people think working out on vacation is ridiculous (just enjoy yourselves, guys!) but for me- and now for Hank too- it is how we enjoy ourselves. To me nothing is better than starting out a vacation day bright and early with a run, enjoying the local sights and sounds. It sets such a good tone for the day and I can't imagine not doing that! We even got to check out the local CrossFit box and had a great time meeting new friends and have some great workouts too.

All in all it was amazing. Some of my favorite parts: spending extra special time with my wonderful sister-in-law...I love her, macadamia nut pie (my favorite!), Henry calling Hank "Snack Master" (long, hilarious story), all of the live music everywhere, going to sleep and waking up to the sound of the ocean, walking to the beach every morning, our green smoothies, daydreaming with Hank about retiring there one day, good talks with my MIL, seeing Henry and his grandparents have the best time together (I didn't include photos of them here because I usually keep them off the blog- this blog is a little too public for them!), all of the fresh island fruit and all of the delicious seafood, laughing with my hilarious step-FIL, Henry's "Hawaii car," finding the perfect gift for Lucy, and seeing the huge smiles on Hank and Henry's faces daily.

We left with the happiest of hearts, full of gratitude and love. It was a great trip.

And finally, here are a million photos, with a lot more on Flickr. Lots of iPhone/D-SLR pictures all mixed together. Thanks for reliving it right along with me! Mahalo! ;)