I finally got around to hanging up our John Derian plates in a corner of our kitchen. I've had the J and D red letter plates since Dan and I first reconnected (he gave the best birthday gift that year.) And then a little more than a year ago, I opened up my Christmas present from Dan to discover this Juniper tree plate. At the time, I was four months pregnant and still dealing with an extreme case of morning sickness. It was a really dark few months for me physically and emotionally. We wanted to be surprised about the gender of our baby. But we were convinced we were having a boy (as did everyone who saw me pregnant) — right up through the moment she arrived. I wasn't even waiting to hear "It's a..." because I was so sure we were having a boy. We had a really tough time thinking of boy names, but we quickly fell in love with the name Juniper Claire if we were to have a girl. And so we kept this plate in its box for the remainder of my pregnancy — it didn't feel right to hang it up at the time. But it sealed the special connection we felt to the name. Let me say, we would have been super happy had we had a boy. But we quietly hoped the lucky plate would bring a Juniper into our lives at some point. I'm so happy we didn't have to wait long. While we didn't name miss Juniper Claire after a tree, I can say that after being her mama for more than eight months, this girl grounds me like no one else in my life.
Also, I'm loving my new terrarium of succulents. You can find that glass vessel at West Elm as part of the Shane Powers collection.
ps. If you own any John Derian plates and want to hang them on your wall, I recommend getting plate hangers from the shop. They're sturdier and sized to fit the different decoupaged plates they sell.
