what happened to loulou?

I’ve blogged for years…. I documented every step of our 2 Guatemalan adoptions and made some lifelong friends. We Guatemama’s are a loyal loving group. I’ve noticed as I’ve been documenting my attempts at craftiness that several have joined who know NOTHING about me… about what drives me….. about what makes me who I am. I decided I should start giving you a glimpse at who Loulou is….Who I AM.

For those of you who haven’t experienced an international adoption let me just tell you: they take over your lives…every second. every minute. every day. You don’t leave the house for a week in fear of missing an email about your baby.(the days before the iphone) You won’t be 2 inches away from a phone in case anyone calls….They never call and email as much as you would like. You cling to hope and hate the weekends…you never hear anything on a weekend. Your child is in a 3rd world country, and you have NO control. You eat too much chocolate and gain as much weight as you did in your pregnancies, and NO ONE gets you…. No one EXCEPT those precious souls who are going through the same thing. Your bloggers. Your friends. Your lifeline. Adoption becomes your identity. Finally, your children come home. You spend a year trying to find a new normal….. For the first time in years you wonder where YOU are. What happened to YOU? Where did YOU go as an individual?? Have you ever had a hobby? WHAT did you do before adoption rocked your world?

It took me a while to get myself back together. Sweet Essiecakes has been home 14 months, Anne Pearce for over 2 years, and I am slowly coming out of a fog…. a fog of having 2 babies 7 months apart who couldn’t stand each other most of the time and 2 teenagers with teenage issues. It was tough. Wonderful. Exhausting. Fulfilling. Horrible. The best things we could have ever done as a family. Now I’m having to recreate my life. Who am I? What do I want to accomplish? What do I want for our family? First and foremost I want to do what God wants me to do, and I feel that He wants me to return to the world. Get out of this house. Do SOMETHING….. I’ve had SO many houses in so many different places, and it occurred to me a while back that this didn’t feel like my HOME. I hadn’t done anything creative to change things up and make it feel like my place. My sanctuary. My house. My haven. All of a sudden I was filled with desire for SOMETHING…. I was ALIVE! I have a vision…. I know what I want our home to be!!! All the people who are supposed to be here are here, and it’s time to make our home. Not a home where some of us lived while we waited on the others to join us. A home for all 6 of us. Our place. OUR sanctuary. OUR HOME. I don’t have a fortune to work with or the time I would want to invest, but I am slowly but surely going to make this place be what I want it to be for US. What we need it to be for US. It’s time to live life again, and I am ready. I hope that you will tag along with me on this journey. I always need support, ideas, and I just plain love to blog. This is a different kind of blog than I used to have for a different kind of Loulou. I’m back, people, I’m back. For those of you just joining the story I thought I would help you fill in the blanks…..

The life of loulou:

Fly to Guatemala and fall hopelessly in love with a baby you CANNOT believe God chose YOU to call your daughter…

Get to know this baby girl and adore her more every minute…

Watch Andrew become a daddy to this girlie ….

fall even more in love with Andrew…..

Fly back home and wonder how you will ever make it another day without that face….Fly BACK to Guatemala to see this sweet angel:

Realize that you love her even more than you thought you did…..

Try to soak up every second until you have to leave her again….you don’t believe your heart will EVER heal….

Until you make that final trip and NEVER have to give that baby back again…. You pinch yourself over and over again to make sure this isn’t a dream….after all, this is the dream you’ve dreamed every second for as long as you can remember…

Just be a mama to your baby…

Marvel at every move she makes….

THEN I got to give her BACK to her daddy……after almost 4 months…

I got to introduce her to her brothers for the first time…

Then you bring her home to all the people who have loved and waited for her… Life begins YOU THINK….

You think your family is complete…. You think you are done, UNTIL you see this sweet face and KNOW she is your daughter…. PRAY AND PRAY AND PRAY AND BEG AND BEG AND BEG your hubby for months until he comes to the same conclusion: She’s ours too…..

You decide to adopt this baby TWO WEEKS before adoptions in Guatemala are closing….. no time for paperwork…

Fly to Guatemala less than 2 weeks later….the day after Christmas… Sign papers to register adoption….get registered Dec. 28….cutoff is the 30th…. Praise God that you made it in time….

Fall in love all over again with this TINY precious girlie…

Wonder how in the heck you’re ever gonna take care of TWO of these people!

Cherish every second only to leave.

Become her mama….

Only to have to leave again….fly home to complete paperwork for international adoption. from scratch. by myself. no agency this time. I did it all……Got everything finished in record time and headed back down to see my angel again in March…She had grown SO much.

Still so little and sweet…..loved every second with her.

Wondered what I had EVER done to deserve another one of God’s blessings….

Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.Went home AGAIN.

Went BACK to Guatemala AGAIN…..came back to the same sweet girl….a little older….still my girlie

This picture is one of the worst memories of my life. Essie was so mad at me for leaving this time….She wouldn’t have anything to do with me when her foster mom came to get her….I was devastated…

Then the happy day came when we got to go bring her home…

Two sisters together

Got to share this with my best friend…

Our little family missing our boys….

Bring Essie home to meet her brothers…

and her grandparents….

Come home to try to find a new normal….

Coming out of the fog…..

Here I am now…..ready to reenter the world……craziness. fabulousness…and all.

the tale of a dark table who wanted to be light

I linked this project to Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday!

I haven’t been thrilled with our living room since we moved into our new cottage….. The dark, big, leather furniture just seems to make the space so dark….It also feels very masculine. I have a super hunky hubby and 2 hunky teenage boys, not to mention my 2 little girls who climb over everything like monkeys. Leather is practical right now, and I’ve never wanted my boys to feel like they were living in a dollhouse. Having said that, I don’t want to feel like I live in a men’s cigar smoking room in a club sort of house. We have to have a middle ground. To lighten up the space I’m going to lighten up some of the other finishes in here and add new lighter pillows. This will make it feel a little less mannish and a little more girly…. I started with this side table. We bought this at Hobby Lobby a few years ago to hold the tv in our old bedroom….We had this strange place behind the door, and this table was perfect. I’m always moving things around from one room to the another, so this table ended up in the living room. The height and size is perfect for the sofa… My problem?? It just blended right in with the sofa….Looked like one dark mess….. a hot dark mess.

I started by lugging this table out to my evil laboratory my garage. I wiped it down then primed it with a light coat of spray paint. I was too lazy busy to sand. After that coat I rolled on a coat of Behr’s antique white. I was already loving it.

I rubbed a little Ralph Lauren faux glaze over to give it a more antiqued look. This entire project took less than an hour and was free, because I already had all the products from other projects. Look what a difference that hour made!

I love the way the glaze added that extra bit of interest. I rubbed a little extra on in the crevices to make it look more authentically aged. I just wiped it on and rubbed it off with an old rag. When all that was dry I wiped on a layer of poly and let it dry overnight.

I am so happy with the way this turned out. It lightens up the entire space and makes all my accents pop.

All it took was about an hour of work to go from drab and dark…

To airy and light with a total cost of $0. Gotta love it!