Don’t forget this Saturday is our vintage warehouse sale! I will be selling some of my vintage furniture and some vintage kid and adult clothes (I will even have stuff for dudes!). I will also have my last dollhouse pillow on hand and some wool felt boy crowns. My friends will all have great stuff too! Misha Lulu will be there with her pretty dresses, 3 Ring Circus with her load of vintage for wear and for home, Salvage Life no doubt will have pretty dresses, and We Love Citrus will have wonderful paper goods! It will be a great sale folks and I hope you stop by and visit! RSVP here, so tell me, are you coming or what?!

Yes! Friday’s here! This week has been a crazy week as Ben and I started it with a fight. We really rarely fight, but when we do… watch out. At least watch out for me. I am not a clear headed fighter. I throw things, but I don’t yell. But if you tell me to stop yelling when I’m not, then by golly, I am going to yell. *wink* And after talking with my friend, I realized I am totally the guy because if we fight, I can totally still sleep, whereas Ben tossed and turned and only got an hour in. We’re friends again now, so all is well. This weekend is my mom’s birthday and we have plans to go to the OC Fair before they move on out. It’s tradition, so we make sure to go every year. The girls are really excited about it and frankly, so am I! I just hope this insane heatwave we’re having over here cools off by tomorrow.

This week’s learned and links…

Glow is so good at eating what we’re eating these days. It totally saves us money to not to have to buy baby food anymore. Now, if only Soul would start using the potty!

Brave is quite efficient and always remembers to bring her empty dishes to the sink.

Making whip cream is this easy? I am going to try next time instead of buying the ones loaded with hydrogenation.

Don’t forget to RSVP for our vintage sale!

Wish I could go to this Mer Mag and Gap collaboration event, but we already have plans. If any L.A. peeps want a fun event to go to, you should check it out here!

Love this magazine display.

The jewelry from this shop is so pretty!

I can’t wait to have some funnel cake at the fair tomorrow. Other than that, totally not a fan of fair food.

I hope you all have a great weekend and try to keep cool wherever you are! We have one week until school starts… how did summer go by so fast?!!

On August 18th from 9-12pm I will be joining along in a sale with Oh, Hello Friend, 3 Ring Circus, Misha Lulu, and a few others, and we will be selling a bunch of good stuff! I am getting rid of some of my vintage goodies, mostly home, but some clothes thrown in too, so if you want something, you better come by! Plus, it would be so much fun to meet some of you too! Lots of my goods are some pretty European goodies I kind of have a hard time letting go, but really need to as I try to really cut down on clutter.

To RSVP and get more info, go here. It’s early bird gets the worm, so make sure you don’t miss out! Hope to see you there!!!

Monday already?! I got a lot of things done this weekend because Ben was here to help manage the girls. I am pretty jazzed about some projects I finally completed, just for fun we had a family dinner by candlelight, and we even went out on with some friends on Sunday. We also made sure to sneak in some Olympics here and there. This week’s schedule is already full because it’s Brave’s birthday on Saturday and we got some special plans going on. She is so excited about it and keeps telling us that she is. She’s even got a countdown going on.

Oh and if you want to follow on instagram just look up @rubyellenbratcher or click here.

Monday evening’s here and my house is upside down. Same old story right?! I have some fun plans this week that involve seeing friends, so we’ll see when this messy house gets back on track. The most monumental moment of last week was having all clothes washed and all clothes put away and there was no single piece of laundry left undone. Of course, now I have one batch that needs to be put away, but let’s see if I can control it before it becomes uncontrollable. Doubt it, but I will try. Also, I did get to clean out our front porch and prettify it up with some plants and some furniture re-arranging. It makes the space much more inviting. I love sitting out there now. Do you have a front porch that you can relax on?

Learned and links…

I love silence. It’s a rare thing, so when I get it, I cherish it.

Glow can pull herself up to stand now.

Love this lyrical bunting DIY.

This gal’s packing is insanely good. I always link to her because her blog always surprises me with good things.

This Competitive Mothering post is good for a heart check when it comes to the blog world.

My friend Kim, who I plan to have my next family shoot with, will be in San Diego this weekend. If you want to get some engagement, family, or just because portraits done, now is the time and she wonderfully good with the camera. See her stuff here and here (and she did the photos for here too). Send her an email at [email protected].

Don’t forget to enter my Mixie giveaway!

Monday’s already been crazy over here and so I am sure the rest of the week will be too!

Welcome. Cakies has a new home! Well, a web home to be clear. We are currently going through our home home and streamlining and changing, so it was time to do that to my blog too. Change was needed. I think it was a mighty good one in fact. The person responsible for this design is Joy Laforme via Sage and Berries (my friend Alice did the cakies logotype) and I think she did a splendidly good job with everything! Especially  for putting up with the wanna-be graphic designer in me. I tell you, I am neurotic. And just to be sure I was using that word correctly, I just googled it, and yep, that’s me. With all my crazy requests, Joy got everything exactly right. She’s good people (look at her  blog and shop, and aren’t these iphone cases pretty?!!).

This new layout is so simple and so clear. You want some categories? Well, it is over there on your right! If you want to pin something… then just scroll over the image and a “pin it” button will come up. Have some questions for me? I may just answer some of them here.  Need to facebook or tweet or share something? Well, see that little minty dot at the bottom of the post, scroll over it, and you can share! I love the simplicity and the functionality of it all. Oh and if that wasn’t enough, you can even follow the Cakies facebook page here and the other little pretty social icons on the right can lead you to other social media places you will find me.

You may have noticed that I have also partnered with Federated Media and will on occasion work with brands in this space. I did the Levi’s thing, which was fun, and I am sure strange for you to hear my voice (it’s strange for me too) and my most recent one with Dreyer’s here. Just like that most recent one, the content is still me and was still cohesive with this space and my life. I love blogging and am grateful for the opportunities that have come as a result of it. Yes, I am a mom, who blogs, and sometimes it’s about my kids, sometimes it’s about food, sometimes it’s about how to make something, it’s pretty much random little slices of my life. Remember though, these bits are just snapshots and never the whole.

I am not going to lie, I think the blog world is a very deceiving place. It is dangerously deceiving. You can come here (or any other blog space) and admire what you see, but please don’t let me deceive you. If you see a clean and clearly styled room (like above) it probably looked like a tornado ripped through it right after the picture was taken (see bottom pictures) and most other times. It’s the reality with four kids. I have hideous messes (proof here and here), I sit on the potty and do my business, and, on occasion, pass stinky gas too. Just on occasion though, most times it comes out like roses! Bloggers aren’t aren’t anything special or the shizzle (no offense), they are just random normal people who decided to let you peek in, but they go through everything you do too. Think about that next time you are sitting on the potty. So as you read blogs (mine or anyone else), read with appreciation (love how my friend Frances phrased it), and not with envy because envy is not good for anyone.

Last blog tip… only read blogs you like. There was a blog that I liked, then I didn’t like, but would still check in to see the train wreck that was occurring in that space, but that would just fuel negativity in me and well, I didn’t like it, so I just stopped reading it. Sometimes it’s hard to look away from a wreck isn’t it?!! You don’t have to love every blog out there, there are tons of people sharing and I am sure you can find one that really just resonates positively with you and some that won’t. Don’t read the ones that don’t. I don’t think I am for everyone and please if you don’t care for what you see here, don’t waste your time. You really have better things to do with it.

Okay, I don’t know how a “Welcome to my site” turned into that, but I think those are important things that need to be said. Well, to all of you who take the time to pop in here, thank you and I hope you continue to stick around! There may be a few kinks with the new site, so if you see any, just let me know in the comments or if you like it (or don’t like it) feel free to say so too! Thanks friends!!!

 *In the move, some formatting was lost, so if the old posts have long paragraphs, forgive the mistake, but I just don’t have time to fix every post. My neurotic self wants to, but there is just only so many hours in a day.