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? :)

Listed

The last month we have been SO busy -- and for good reason. We finally got our house on the market last Friday! It is so strange to see a For Sale sign in the front yard. I have really de-personalized all the spaces so I feel a little bit like we're living in a hotel with most of our belongings packed up and neutral decorations everywhere. I miss having our family pictures on the wall! It is going to be very hard to leave our first home, where we made so many memories. I feel like I walk into each room and have so many moments that are attached to the space!

When we moved in there was no landscaping whatsoever - my parents came for a three day weekend and helped us put a bed along the front of the house and plant some bushes and trees. That subsequently died. Because we have learned that we cannot keep trees alive after three rounds of trying. I always liked to change up the wreaths at the front, have an "H" mat at the door and keep a pair of potted plants at the stairs. My mom wanted to help me add shutters to the front window but we never got around to it. The oil stain on the driveway makes Joe nuts. It was from parking our Jeep there while we had a bad leak.

 

The living room was always my favorite at Christmas. I loved having the tree in front of the big window overlooking the deck. We didn't use the fireplace much after Landon came along but I loved getting it going and watching a movie from the couch. This is the room where Landon first rolled over and crawled and now we play cars and puzzles and he runs through it like a while banshee. We've had parties and baby showers and long late night conversations with friends here. And the ottoman we created from a craigslist coffee table that's been recovered three times already because of my ever changing home decorating "moods". ;-)

The kitchen.. where I feel like I really did some intense cooking at times and then spent a lot of time slacking too - hah! Where I crept at 4am for a midnight snack while I was pregnant. Where my mom always got out the big coffee pot for her visits, where my friend Rachael camped out to make me freezer meals over a long weekend while I was just about to have Landon, where we lined up food dishes for class parties.  And the pantry that has undergone several (failed) attempts at organization. I think I've got it now though!

Our bedroom, which was the first room we painted in the house! I have always loved the huge window to the back of the house. The bed that Joe made from scratch and the headboard we made as a weekend project that has also been recovered twice already. There is a theme of fickle decorating for sure in this house!! Most of all, I will remember having Joe relocate Landon's glider to the far corner and spending middle-of-the-night feeding sessions camped out there.

 

The Master Bath which we painted when I was 989 months pregnant, cursing the tall ceilings but not letting Joe climb the ladder positioned inside the tub because I was scared he'd crack the fiberglass - hah! The mirrors we framed with MDF and painted one weekend (thank you, Pinterest!).  Where we got ready for important events and everyday days and took a lot of bubble baths together. The place Landon has strung toilet paper and removed all the products from under my sink during my five minute shower. :)

My most memory-laden room is Landon's room. Our old office. We painted, polished and prepared for months for his arrival. I remember sitting in the glider while I was pregnant so I could imagine what it would be like to actually have a baby in the room. I've had so much fun adding to the bookshelf and playing on the floor here. Here, Landon peed on me before I got "good" at diaper changes, where we lowered the crib gradually as he learned to sit up, stand and climb. A place I have paced and rocked almost every day for nearly two years. And I'll be real, there were long hard nights and days too during particularly colicky times but I still love this room we created for our first baby.

 

And the family room downstairs where we have really spent a lot of time lately. This has been our casual place to relax where we don't have to worry about being quiet at night while Landon's sleeping or making a mess. It stores the first set of furniture we bought in Dallas when we were first married. The blue tv cabinet is a Goodwill dresser redo. Oh the fun with toys we've had here - especially with the ball popper, bubble lawn mower and cozy coupe during winter months! 

One of my most favorite parts of the house is the porch swing on the back deck. And it will stay with the house so I'm really glad we got a picture of it. I've swung here with my Joe, my parents, friends, Landon.. Some really great conversations and memories :)

Thank you, dear home for being so good to us these four years, I don't think we deserved you but we will certainly never forget you!!

DIY Hobby Lobby Art

I have been so swamped lately with trying to get our house on the market and staging it. One of the biggest challenges I have found is essentially eliminating the pictures around the house that are personal photos of our family. Boy is that hard to do!! But I do understand the reasoning -- so I've been trying to come up with cheap, easy replacement art for our family room and living room.

I found {and fell in love with} this awesome art piece at Hobby Lobby! It was perfect! Full of fun color, non-taste specific and non-personal! Until.. I looked at the price tag. $129.99. Even if they were half off, which they weren't, that's still a lot of money to spend on "staging" art. Yikes! I passed it up and walked a few aisles away when it dawned on me that it would be such an easy DIY copy! I quickly ran back over an snapped a photo!

I knew I had an old frame lying around the house I wasn't using. I bet you do too?! I got this one with my mom at an estate sale years ago for $4. You can always find old frames at Goodwill or garage sales! I have tons that I buy with no specific purpose but are so nice to keep on hand for little projects. Bonus ~ if you're not happy with *said* project you're not heavily invested so it's okay!

sorry it's upside down. bad art but cute frame with lots of potential, right?!

So here's how I did it!

1. *optional* If you want to paint the color of your frame {I think a fun bright frame would look great!!} you'll want to do that first.

2. I bought a large piece of white poster board to cover up the original print with craft glue. As long as your print isn't too big this should work and they usually aren't more than $0.50 at Hobby Lobby! Use the matte side of the poster board.

3. I grabbed about 15 different scrapbooking papers from this aisle at Hobby Lobby. They are often 1/2 off regular price of $0.60 or so. Don't worry about being too matchy ~ I think the more random the prints are the more interesting it will turn out!

oh hello, little shopping buddy

4. Start cutting "petals". I made a variety of sizes for each color and put them in piles by size.

5. Glue the petals down with the craft glue (glue stick would be fine too!). I started with an outside circle and worked my way in. IMPORTANT: don't go in a perfectly circular motion - glue the petals down at different areas so there's not a pattern to how they are layered!

6. Voila! I waited for mine to dry overnight and had the hubby hang it in our family room. I love it every time I look at it!

Happy Tuesday!

411

I thought this was a cute blogging prompt {I hope you'll join me and do it too!}

1. How long have you been blogging? And what got you started on blogging? 
I've been blogging for almost five years now off and on at this page! I started just as I was graduating college in Oklahoma because I wanted to keep a journal for myself as I started a career and Joe finished medical school. This is going to sound terrible but I'm very surprised with myself I've kept up with it {even after some long breaks here and there!} - just because I'm VERY much a project starter but sort of bad at finishing all the projects I usually have going at once. :) But I'm so glad I've done this - we've had so many life transitions while I've had this blog and it's fun to look back and read my account of everything as it happened. 

2. Did you go to college? If so, where, and what did you study?  
I went to the University of Oklahoma and got a BS in Industrial Engineering. I love the field because it's kind of a "soft" engineering - it's all about engineering for large systems and having a good knowledge of people, human factors and how we interact with large systems. I do wish sometimes I would have chosen something that channeled more creativity though! I never thought I was creative or could BE creative since I loved math so much. But you can be both! :)

3. Where have you traveled?  
I feel so lucky to have traveled as much as I have - which isn't really all that much compared to a lot of people! When Joe and I were in school and newly married we went on three or four cruises and we loved that - we just really love cruising because it's convenient and you get a lot of "bang for your buck"! So we've been lucky to visit most of the Caribbean islands - at least for a day or so. We took our Honeymoon to St. Maartin and visited St. Barths too. When I graduated college the ONLY thing I wanted was to celebrate with a long trip to Paris and London so we did that. I love London - it's definitely my favorite city as of now because of the great museums, nice people, the royalty/traditions, gardens everywhere, fish and chips.. just love it. Seriously. I am not afraid to admit I've begged Joe to get his medical license in the UK so we could move there. And I still would if he were to ever say yes! I also traveled for a living before I became a stay at home mom. I went all over the US and also to Italy for work. 

4. If you won the lottery what would be the first thing you'd buy?  
I'm sure I'd obviously save a lot of it or do something boring like pay off medical school loans but if we're talking pure splurge? I'd buy a big country lot of land near my parent's farm and build a giant house with a big porch on the front and a pool in the back and big windows and lots of room for my kids to run around. 

5. What are your three biggest pet peeves?  
I hate when people put their car in park in a drive-through - doesn't it kind of defeat the purpose? I hate when people wait until a cashier reads the total at the checkout to *begin* digging their checkbook/wallet out. You know it's coming, right? And I just hate cars driving around with loud music playing. Noise pollution. 

6. What is your favorite movie? 
I love The Long, Long Trailer which is a hilarious movie Lucille Ball did. She's my idol so I've seen it a million times and laugh so hard each time I watch it. 

7. What's your drink of choice: wine, beer or liquor. Or water, soda or tea?
I want so badly to "get" wine but I don't. I really don't like beer. I will always appreciate a good margarita but I don't have them very often. I almost always order iced tea when we eat out and I always have sweet tea in our fridge. I just love it. My mom makes the best sweet tea!!

8. What is something you enjoy doing when you have "me" time? 
I'm afraid I love watching reality tv like The Real Housewives series but I love reading too!

9. If you could have a $10,000 shopping spree to any store what would it be?
Either Restoration Hardware or Pottery Barn - places I never shop because they are too expensive! :)

10. Share with us an embarrassing moment of your past. Or present.
When I was in high school I won a local beauty pageant and the year after I had won, as part of the crowning of the next "queen" I was asked to do a little reading in front of the audience for entertainment before they announced the winner. I totally put off practicing but I just studied the night before and felt pretty sure that I had the entire thing memorized by the time I got there the next day. Well. I got out on stage and with hundreds of eyes watching... I blanked on the entire thing. I remember just repeating the line I had gotten stuck at over and over hoping it would spark the memory of what was next but I just had nothing. I found my mom's face in the crowd and she just looked horrified - Hah!!! I quickly said something to kind of "sum" up the point of the piece and walked off the stage. I was so mortified!! To this day I hate speaking (even praying in public!!) without having something rehearsed and memorized perfectly!

11. What day would you love to re-live again?
Definitely our wedding day! I feel so badly, but we don't have video of it and I feel like I've forgotten so many details. 

12. If your life was turned into a movie what actor would play you?
I feel like for some reason Mandy Moore kind of acts like me in movies? I think she's kind of the sweet girl next door with a little quirky side. 

13. What are the jobs you had in high school/college/early years?
I've had so many random jobs - I helped at my grandma's daycare very early on in the summers - like when I was 14 and 15. When I was 16 I worked at Gap for gas money and car insurance funds - my parents had a rule that I had to pay those myself to teach me responsibility. Then I moved way up in the world and became a manager at Claire's at the end of high school. I had to pierce kids and babies ears! I have no idea how they trusted me to do that!! I tutored elementary kids as part of a state grant in Oklahoma when I moved there for college and then did research with an engineering professor until I graduated and my first job out of college was being a manager at Hallmark corporate. 

14. If you could travel anywhere in the world, all expenses paid, where would you go?
I would love to visit Ireland! I want to go for a long enough time that I could rent a car and drive coast to coast - that's my dream vacation!!

15. Show us the most current picture of you, your family or something meaningful to you.
The little man that owns my heart, taken yesterday :)

16. Where do you see your life five years from now?
We know we'll be in Kansas City. I'd like to see us living in our "forever home" where we will raise our kids. I would like to have one or two more children and maybe homeschooling them. I'd like to be teaching a college level engineering or math class one or two nights a week. I hope we're still working hard and saving for fun vacations and teaching our kids to be good people.

Now I want to hear your answers!!

Jersey Boys

Last Friday night Joe and I went on a date to see Jersey Boys! He had gotten me tickets for my birthday in November and I have been anxiously counting down the days to go. I think this was the first time we had hired a babysitter to go out to dinner and a show EVER that didn't include a work event for Joe!

We went to a steakhouse for dinner and had an awesome meal! We kind of didn't know what to do with ourselves without having a toddler to occupy/feed/entertain/chase - please tell me I'm not alone here?! Hah!

We had second row seats to the show and we sat in between two older couples. It just cracked me up - I realized they probably remember when the Jersey Boys were putting records out!

We had such a fun night! If you ever get the chance to see this show, do it!

Oh What a Night it was! ;-)

Randoms

This is just a random little brain dump of things I have swirling around in my brain. :)

1. Last night we had a "holiday" party for one of the anesthesia groups Joe works with. It was really fun to get dressed up and get a babysitter! But several people asked me if I was rooting for 'Bama. Oops. Wardrobe fail!! Take a close look at Joe ~ he is wearing a bow tie! I have begged him unmercifully for years to wear a bow tie because I think they are so old fashioned looking and I ended up just buying him one for Christmas! Hah! I think he looks so cute in it! We're bringing bow ties back, y'all!! 

2. I have been in the mood to tackle some furniture projects lately. I had been looking for months for a little wood table to re-do to keep in the kitchen for Landon to eat at and work on crafts, etc. It had been such a challenge to find something close to what I want {solid wood with clean lines and at least two chairs and cheap}!! I ended up buying this one used for $30 and I'm not totally in love with the shape but I have some ideas on how to make it more my style. Stay tuned...!

Then I bought this china hutch at Goodwill I'm going to re-purpose for a tv cabinet for our family room downstairs. I have a serious love affair with old furniture. We have three other old pieces of furniture in our garage right now too. Please don't call Hoarders on me.

3. I pinned this recipe on Pinterest right before Christmas and I have made it three times now and it's just a problem that I know it exists - I just can't go back to life before I knew about it. Red Velvet Cheese Ball. Isn't that just dangerous? It's rolled in mini chocolate chips. Don't even click on the link unless you want this to be a part of your life permanently. Hah!

Look. I couldn't even get a picture taken before I took a bite.

4. I snapped this random picture after bath one night and I just love it. My boys. I love my boys.

5. The Dollar Tree has little nests with eggs in the craft section. I love tucking nests into random bowls and other nooks and crannies around the house.

Have a great week!!!