Atlanta Toile: Katie Kime Trunk Show with Whitney Durham Interiors and Half Past Seven Home

Three weeks ago, designer Katie Kime released her Atlanta Toile collection by celebrating with a Trunk Show alongside Whitney Durham Interiors and Half Past Seven Home. Whitney’s home is every artist’s DREAM… vibrant color, bold patterns and interesting combinations of texture everywhere you turn. She was such a kind host, and her home made for the perfect backdrop for this event. Katie’s Atlanta Toile is truly special, highlighting Hartsfield Jackson Airport, The Fox Theater, Georgia peaches and more!

Something In-Between

TW: Miscarriage

I like for things to fit in boxes, so when a disruptive occurrence blows through like warm summer air and brushes up against multiple areas of my life, I tense up. Where does this “thing” “fit”? Who do I share it with? What container should hold it? The tricky thing about being an artist is that work and personal life are intertwined. So intertwined at times that there isn't really any separating them. My personal life informs my creative work. My creative work is a manifestation of my humanness. My humanness IS my ability and urge to create and make sense of the world around me, which just happens to be what people pay me for. It’s SO tangly that it’s become difficult to decide if and when it’s appropriate to share my personal hardships publicly. The two affect one another so deeply. I fear the lack of transparency would feel too much like a lie, and at the same time I fear too much disclosure may come across as unprofessional word vomit. These concepts are anything but simple, and really bug my mind, the mind that has a need for containers. The best way I know how to work through it at times is to write it out…

This is my candid, unfiltered thought process on my most recent pregnancy loss, contained within page and text… which feels immensely vulnerable, but still better than floating around loosely in my head.

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It doesn’t make sense… how pregnancy can end either nearly perfect, or kind of awful, or maybe something in-between. Moments before I was called back to the ultrasound room where I heard the words for the second time in my life that my pregnancy had failed, I watched a lovely couple stroll their newborn baby past the OB office to the pediatrician next door. I’m lucky enough to know that stroll… the first visit with the pediatrician. Elated to be on the other side of labor and delivery, but terrified any parenting choice you make will be the wrong one.

Those newborn days are slow and sweet, almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist, and if it does exist, it can just wait for a while. The whole day revolves around that stroll to the doctor’s office, where they tell you you’re doing great, and you secretly question everything about this new life.

I know that stroll because I’m a mom to a headstrong, four year old little boy. I’ve done the pregnancy thing, the labor, the delivery, the visit to the pediatrician. I think that’s why this news feels like such a mindfuck (I’m not sorry for my language, the thesaurus has no equivalent expressions for this phenomenon). Even though our first pregnancy also ended in loss, my body HAS done this correctly once before. I’m now one for three, but damn if that one isn’t a really solid one. Our son is quirky and sweet and damn near perfect. That should be enough.

The doctor leaves the ultrasound room so I can get dressed. She’s coming back in a few minutes to go over the instructions for what I should do at home one more time. She gets it, how the brain doesn’t process technical information the first time around, not when grief and shock are also sharing the room. I slip my black leggings back on and decide to check my work email while I wait. New email, Subject: Baby Shower/Maternity Shoot :). You have to be kidding me. I reply “fuck off” with my mind, and close the phone. Who reads a work email at a time like this? What is wrong with me?

I walk past my son’s bedroom later that afternoon and see all his stuffed animals arranged neatly on his twin sized bed, to no credit of my own, we have really great cleaners. In that moment, I feel inadequate. Not only am I incapable of cleaning my own house, but I’ve also tried for another baby, failed, and inconvenienced everyone around me in the process. It’s only his second week of preschool, barely into his new routines and we’ve had to drop him off at his great grandmother’s so I can lay around the house and bleed for a few days. I feel like a terrible mother. I feel like all this trying and all this failing is saying to him “you’re great and all kid, but we want more”. How incredibly selfish. I can’t possibly allow this to happen again, as if allowing has anything to do with it. It happens by chance they say, not necessarily anything you have done or failed to do. Chromosomal. I’m so sick of well meaning people telling me it’s about time for another baby, as if I don’t know that already. I’m trying…. it makes me want to scream “I’M TRYING! WE ARE TRYING”.

It took two full days for the sadness to really hit me. Before that, I was in logistics mode. I made a mental list.

I know I’ll need:

• the prescriptions. oh by the way, the most important prescription you’ll be needing is also the one that is now more difficult to access due to the new abortion restrictions. you’ll have to call every pharmacy in town to find one that has it in stock because your primary pharmacy won’t have it in for at least two more days.

• the directions from my doctor

• the heating pad

• the Halloween candy pail we use as a puke bucket

• the adult diapers

• the pads

• the brownies and coke (we never have these things in the house, but we’re grieving… just bake the brownies)

• the comfy blanket

• go get CBD gummies

I only know these things because we’ve been through it before. This miscarriage hasn’t been nearly as physically or emotionally painful as the first 13 week miscarriage we delivered at home, but the feelings of confusion and guilt are way more intense this time around. So I made another mental list.

Things I’m confused about:

• We lost this pregnancy so much earlier… should I even be sad?

• Am I heartless if I don’t feel that sad or attached?

• Should I keep it all a secret?

• Am I seeking attention if I share what I’m going through?

• Will people just think I’m lazy if I DON’T tell them what is going on?

• Is it selfish to try again?

• Selfish not to?

We have a coat closet in our living room that is filled floor to ceiling with baby things I’ve saved for a hypothetical sibling that still hasn’t come. If you open it, you might have an avalanche of baby things fall on you. In a house that doesn’t have many closets, it feels like a waste of space to store so many things that can’t be used. The closet is tangible proof of my wishful thinking and need to both be in control and plan ahead. Nature has reminded me again this week that neither of those things are REALLY possible.

I want so badly to have more slow days of rest and skin-to-skin, soft head sniffs, raw nipples and milky little chins. For my son to have a sibling to share memories and our inevitable parental failings with. But not at this expense. Not if it means I’ll be reduced to half a functioning human being in the process. The things I hate and the things I need to do started to feel a little blurry, so I made a running list.

Things I currently hate, and things I hate I have to do:

I’m nauseous and I hate the way everything smells. I hate feeling angry and sad. I hate the brightness of daylight and I hate the quietness of night. I hate my body, and I make sure to hate my husband’s body a little too, just in case this was his fault. I need to go to the post office, and we’re out of milk. Obviously I cannot eat brownies without milk. I don’t know what day it is, but I’m pretty sure my husband’s birthday is coming up soon. I should probably buy him something or plan something fun. The preschool is missing some of the new student forms… why didn’t I take care of this sooner? I need to get “back” to it. Life I mean. How many days can a person possibly stay shut up inside their home hating such lovely things?

Nature is both beautifully brilliant and so incredibly cruel. Our first pregnancy ended kind of awful, our second nearly perfect, and this third one? It’s been maybe something in-between.

One for three. Unfair. So unfair.

Wahoo! Grill Wedding Venue: Hannah & Gregory's Charming Decatur Wedding Day

This was the second Wahoo! Grill wedding of 2022. It was charming, warm, light and lovely. Wahoo! Grill in Historic Decatur, GA is the perfect venue for any couple who wants a garden-like atmosphere for their wedding day.

Choosing an Elopement over a Traditional Wedding: My Elopement Breakdown

It’s almost preprogrammed into our brains at a young age what a wedding is supposed to look like. For me, the quintessential “traditional wedding” is the one in Father of the Bride. Except in this scenario, Steve Martin is me aghast at how much it costs just to rent tables and chairs (not to mention the ever-growing guest list your family members keep dipping their hands into). 

This post is for the couple who has a vision for something smaller or maybe you’ve begun planning your dream wedding, and it seems to be getting out of hand, and instead of being excited for your big day you’re wishing it was just over already. Take a moment to remember what this marriage means to you both. The truth is every marriage is unique and different. So why do we have one upstanding concept of what a wedding should be?

As a creative, I have been invited to shoot an elopement styled session in Boston, as well as plan my own destination elopement. This is a great option for the adventurous couple, for the couple with a small budget, or for the couple who prefers something a bit more intimate. In an article from Popsugar, they report that the average American couple spends $30,000 on their wedding. I don’t know about you, but that number seems overwhelming.

I’ve been where you are. My husband and I were feeling way too far in over our heads planning this big wedding we thought we wanted. I got a beautiful dress, we had picked a venue, caterers and a florist. Deposits had been made, and a date was set. Until I had enough… At this time my partner David had an opportunity to intern with the YMCA in Colorado for the summer. It was a difficult time to be separated and planning a wedding. I was open with him about my doubts about a big wedding from the start, and at this point, he could see the planning was wearing on me. Our wedding was set for November of 2017 at this point it was June 2017. One evening over a phone call we were discussing wedding plans, and he said “we can just cancel it all” for probably the 15th time, but this time I really heard it. Just like that, we decided the wedding was off.

Next came the idea that we could plan something more intimate and special for us. David suggested using one of the YMCA’s event spaces for a venue and flying out just a handful of our friends and family for an elopement. I immediately started planning for our new ceremony reaching out to local hotels and florists. We set our new date, August 5th, 2017 and invited our to closest family members, my husbands brother-in-law became ordained to officiate the wedding, and my amazing photographer who I booked for the first ceremony was willing to fly out to our new destination. Though not what we had originally planned, our wedding day was everything I could’ve dreamed of. The great thing about a destination elopement was that we were able to honeymoon and explore Colorado for the next few days as newlyweds.  

Reflecting on our wedding day, I wouldn’t change a thing. I felt no pressure to perform for others; it was just the people we loved most and us. For those of you considering an elopement, this is a breakdown of what we had started to plan for our wedding and what we ended up spending for our elopement.

Whether you’re thinking about doing a destination elopement or having a smaller wedding check out these links for inspiration! My absolute favorites are the glam Vegas elopement and the Joshua Tree bohemian desert wedding. Click through the images below.