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!

Announcing!!!

We are SO excited! Details to come soon!...

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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? :)

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!