Lifestyle Shoot Pictures

Way back towards the very beginning of spring my friend Katie from Novella Photography came over to our house to do a "Lifestyle Shoot" for us. I LOVE the concept of a lifestyle shoot - Katie literally just sat in the corner of the house and captured moments as we ate dinner, played, did bath and bedtime, etc. She was at our house for nearly four hours I think! It helps that she has done 100% of our family photos since Landon was born - we are super comfortable around her and she's also one of my best friends! :) We did have her take some posed shots at the front of the house while she was there since we knew we'd be selling and moving. I love these pictures so much; I know when we've forgotten the details of our first house and when Landon is moved away at college I will treasure having these moments on film :)

I am extra thankful that Katie was able to capture Boomer for us. Little did we know we would lose him several months later ~ we said goodbye to him just a few weeks ago. I haven't been ready to talk about him or how much we miss him. But he's left a huge hole in our family. I love looking at these pictures to remember him.

Vintage Train Birthday Party

Landon turned two on June 30! We had his birthday party a few weeks before the actual date so we could celebrate in Wichita before moving to Arkansas. Since we sold our house and closed at the end of May, and thus were living in an extended living apartment, we decided to have the party at a park in town. It worked out great! I found out one of the parks in town had a vintage train that was refurbished and used to take a 15 minute ride around the property. So we decided a train theme would be perfect!

Since we were in the midst of moving, we did super simple decorations and food. I bought a cake ($14!) and food trays from Sam's Club and made a couple fruit and vegetable trays myself. I love having Sam's make cakes for parties. I think they are so good and moist and honestly taste as good as a fancy bakery cake. I usually have them do just a basic round cake with "fancy" frosting style and just put a cake topper on top. I did the same thing for this baby shower!

I had Joe dig my old vintage suitcases out of our storage unit to sit the cake on. I loved how it turned out! I had the old glass cake stand from an estate sale. For the top of the cake I got a $1 wooden "2" from Hobby Lobby and glued some denim-printed paper to the front. My mom dug up an antique train pencil sharpener to sit with it.

I got three wooden trains from Hobby Lobby to sit with the food. The "silver" food platters are from the Dollar Tree!

 

In another old suitcase I served the plates and bowls (from Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree respectively), silverware wrapped with a napkin and a piece of colored twine and tickets for the train ride. We also handed out red bandanas for all the guests to wear! 

 

And no party is complete without balloons ;-). I made a banner from a chipboard pennant kit from Hobby Lobby - I just glued letters to the front. 

 Our families and friends gave Landon so many cute gifts!

I always get emotional when I hear people singing Happy Birthday to my baby :)

I don't think he liked the cake one bit. Hah!

The very last thing we did was get everyone on the train for a ride! It was a big hit! We had such a fun time celebrating our little man being TWO!

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Jill's Baby Shower

Last weekend I was so excited to host a baby shower for my good friend Jill. We did our engineering degrees together at OU and she is such a sweet friend of mine! She has had a really inspirational story of getting pregnant and her baby boy is such a miracle. I was happy to celebrate them both!!

I decided to do a Peter Rabbit theme but ended up not incorporating as much rabbit things as I would have liked (simply because we are living out of suitcases right now!). But I thought it turned out cute anyway!

I made a pennant from a kit I found at Hobby Lobby. We glued "rabbit tails" (cottonballs) to the bottom. 

I got glass vases from the Dollar Tree and added fresh flowers and baby carrots to the bottom for centerpieces.

I thought it would be more fun to have homemade pies than cake! It was a hit!

We thought of such a cute, simple game to play. We had the moms from both sides send us little stories from when Jill and her husband were kids. We edited them so they were non-descriptive and printed them out into little strips. I had Danielle, Jill's sister, read them and the guests voted who they thought each story was about. Some of them were so funny!!

"Voting paddles" I made with cardboard and large popsicle sticks. One side said Jill and the other side was for her husband.

Instead of a guest book I just got note cards, twine and mini clothespins from Hobby Lobby and had guests write notes of love and advice on them.

I love this picture of Jill! She got so many great gifts!

 

I had so much fun celebrating with you Jill!

Updates

Whew boy it's been a long time since we've talked last! We've had so many things going on that I want to document - if not to just remember the craziness years down the road.

We sold our house and it only took nine days! We were shocked! We closed last Friday so we are officially living in a furnished "corporate" apartment we rented for a month until we move to Arkansas. It's only a one bedroom apartment so that has been interesting with an almost two-year old and also we had my mom visiting for a few days. ;-)

We are gearing up for our move to Arkansas for Joe's fellowship - we've found a place to live and we've been researching restaurants/parks/museums to explore for the year we'll been there! I've also joined a few Little Rock mom's groups on Facebook. I hope we can settle into a good routine there but I'm worried we will just get settled and we will be moving again (to Kansas City for Joe's permanent job).

Joe's graduation banquet is in a couple weeks and we have so many other fun "finale" events coming up. My mom helped me pick out a dress for the banquet last weekend. I'm so excited to see Joe (and the rest of his class) being celebrated for all of his hard work for the past four years!

I'm hosting a Peter Rabbit baby shower for my friend Jill next weekend and I'm planning a vintage train birthday for Landon's second birthday the following weekend!

Life is busy but it's a good busy, you know? :)