Oh Boy Shower

A couple weeks ago I co-hosted a shower for my good friend, Jes. I've talked a lot about her on here as my friend and Adalyn's photographer. But before she took pictures of my child, she was my apartment-mate during college and after college. We've been friends during our crazy single lives, when we started dating our husbands, our weddings and now babies. We are just about extreme opposites but it's perfect.  I was so thrilled to be able to give her a baby shower for her sweet baby boy who is going to be here shortly.

Along with being honored to give the shower, I was equally worried about decorating for the shower. Jes is the artistic one of us. Neither of us are into baby-ish baby shower decorations so I knew I had to do something different.  Jes told me she was looking into using grey, light blue and green for the nursery so I went with those colors and got some ideas for "oh boy" showers from Pinterest. 

The first thing I did was contact my friend Shannon, who did all the paper stuff for Adalyn's birthday. She works with Jes' husband (and me too) so she had a good idea for what Jes' tastes were. She created awesome invitations, drink flags, wish cards, food tents and a banner that were perfect! And perfectly "Jes"!  Here are some pictures:

The invitation. (Please don't be jealous of my mad photoshop skills!)

I love paper straws. I found these on etsy.

 A peek at the food table and the cute table tents.

 Sweet Wish Cards. The co-host had seen this idea online somewhere and Shannon tweaked it for us. It was a sweet idea and I'm sure fun for Jes to read all of the wishes for her sweet baby. (We didn't play games because we're not into silly shower games. This is the closest we came to a shower game.)

 Cute banner. If you enlarge the pic, you can see it has chevrons on the outside of each letter. It was so understated and so clean. Loved it.

Also, if you noticed in the last picture, you will see a bunch of pictures. I had this crazy idea to feature pictures since Jes is a photographer. I contacted Jes' and Justin's moms to get baby pictures. Then I got some of the Christmas pictures that Jes and Justin had taken (closest to maternity pictures I could get). And I also got an ultrasound of Caleb. Billie found this idea online as a way to "frame" the pictures. I was going to try to just mount the pictures to foam board, but she had an idea to use painters tape and spray paint to make the frames decorative. I originally was going to do a chevron pattern but I ran out of patience and just did some other patterns. I used grey hard boards from Hobby Lobby and then used dark tacks from the scrap booking section to secure the pictures to the frames. I thought about taking a picture while I was making them but then totally forgot. Bad blogger!! I loved how they turned out and i think Jes appreciated the personal touch!  here are a few other frames we had around:

Another fun idea I got from pinterest (and I'd post the pin but the pin didn't have a good link so it doesn't help) was this cute front door welcome sign. It is a "little man" type sign instead of a normal "baby" sign. I loved it! I used scrapbook paper from Hob Lob cut into the shape of neck ties, attached letters I had a friend who has a Cricut cut for me and I threaded some twine to hang it.  (Sorry about the glare from the storm door. It was raining that day so I didn't want to put the sign on the outside of the door to get wet.)

Here is a picture of the food table with the poms that Billie so graciously made for us to use. We just had light food because the shower was at 1pm.

The other decoration I made was a diaper cake. I like making diaper cakes for the showers I throw because they are cute decorations and also useful! They are fairly simple to make once you get all the diapers rolled up. You just need about 6 hands to hold everything straight while you get the layers secured! I thought this turned out cute.

 I ordered the fabric for the table at Carousel Designs and was super impressed with the price, quality and ship time. I would recommend them! I think it gave the room a festive feel.

And now that we've seen the shower details, how about some pictures from the actual shower! We planned the shower on a weekend when some of our old college friends were coming in town for a girls weekend, so it was a great time to all get together and see each other. 

My college girls having a laugh. We had 3 toddlers and 1 baby at the shower so they were good entertianment.

 Jes and me

Jes got lots of great presents.

 This onesie was my favorite gift I gave Jes. It was so perfect for her and so cute. I got it from here on etsy.

A picture of our college roommates and friends.

 Another group of girlfriends. (3 pregos and 1 post baby - even tho she doesn't look it!)

There were other girls at the shower but I'm not going to post pictures of them because I don't know how they feel about blogging:)

I think the shower turned out well! I hope everyone had a good time...I think they did. And Jes got some great gifts. So all in all it was a great time celebrating Jes and baby Caleb!

It's a.....

BOY!!

(In case you missed all the many forms of social media that Jonathan and I spread it across yesterday.)

I was in absolute shock. I absolutely KNEW he was a girl because this pregnancy has felt exactly the same as the last pregnancy. I even asked the ultrasound tech if she was sure because I was sure it was a girl. She checked again and replied with a resounding YES, IT'S A BOY!

We are so excited! It will mean a complete shift in our house from all things pink, girly, ruffles and bows to all things "little man", superheros, and trucks.  I held a few of Adalyn's bins of clothes out of storage because I knew we'd need them soon, but I guess we won't need them this soon! Thankfully we found out the sex at 16 weeks which means that we will be able to load up on all things boy at the consignment sales that start next weekend and go through the month of March at different churches and clubhouses.  Thinking about dressing him in little plaid shirts, argyle sweaters and polos to match his daddy makes me so excited!

We have started talking about names. It was so hard to name Adalyn that I figured naming a boy would be WAY easier, but I'm not sure if that will be the case. Maybe we just need a few more days to decide. I'd love to be able to call him by name soon!

I've also been looking at different online stores and pinterest to get an idea for bedding and nursery decorations. Again, I'm not a fan of theme nurseries so I keep leaning toward bedding with geometric designs (stripes, chevron, madras) in colors I like. I know it will all come together and I've only been looking for one day, but so far I haven't had too much luck finding anything at the "big box" stores. And goodness knows I'm not going to be making it myself. I don't have time for such things!

We are planning on putting baby boy in our guest room (we only have 3 bedrooms) and moving our guest bedroom to our basement.  Ok, that's not quite as bad as it sounds. It's not like our parents will be staying in a nasty dungeon of a basement when they come to visit. Our basement is finished (in the sense that it has carpet and walls - not in the sense that it is painted nicely or decorated) with a bathroom. The basement also has a separate room from the TV room, that up until now we has been used as a sewing room/office. But if you read my earlier comment about sewing, it is obviously not getting much action in that sense and we barely use the desk in the room because we'd rather use our laptop upstairs. So we've decided to get rid of the desk/bookshelf and move our guest room furniture in and somehow work my sewing table into the flow of the room. It's a good sized room (and even has a very small closet) but thinking about making all of that tie together and look nice stresses me out!  So, we have got our hands full just to clear a room to begin a nursery for baby boy! I know it will get done, but there is just a lot of extra junk that has made it's way to that room in the basement and it will be HOURS of time to sift through (toss) and organize things.

So that is where we are right now!  I thought I'd attach a few ultrasound pictures. They aren't too clear, but the tech said it's hard to get good pictures when they are still this small. We go back in 4 weeks for our big 20 week ultrasound and hopefully then he will cooperate and give us a good profile picture! (Yesterday he was facing my back so we could only get the back of his head and spine. At one point we got a picture of his face but never a good profile of his little body.)

Randoms

~ It has now been 2 weeks since my shellac manicure. I can see how if I had a color on my nails, that it would start looking bad by now. My nails have started to chip around the cuticles but since I had white tips, you really can't see where they have chipped unless you're up close and personal. I do have one nail that chipped all the way to the top but overall I've been very impressed. I would definitely do it again (with thicker white tips since my nails are now longer than the white tips) but I just have to say...I cannot stand my nails right now. I always keep my nails trimmed really short and it is killing me to have long nails. Killing me!! I'm about to go chop them all off now! So, for those who don't mind long nails, I was definitely recommend a shellac manicure! Here is a current pic:

~ My child has issues with being dirty. I personally don't mind it since I'm not into getting dirty. But when we are eating she usually will not feed herself anything that is messy (mashed potatoes, items with sauce, etc.) so it's quite frustrating. Remember her birthday? She wouldn't even dig into the cake.  I can't spoon feed her till college so I try to find items that aren't messy but I'm not a short order cook so she just has got to get used to eating what the family is eating. (She is like this at the sitter's house too...not just ours.) You know how kids have ups and downs with eating? Well the last few days she just keeps eating and eating and she's never "all done". She just points to the kitchen and says "dis" like she wants more. Must be going through a growth spurt.  

Last night I made these low fat chicken burritos that have cheese and chili in them. (It used to be a staple item in our weekly rotation but I haven't made them in forever and they were so good.) So I put some chicken mixture (without a tortilla shell because we didn't have enough) on her plate. I also gave her refried beans and corn. My child inhaled that food. I mean, she dug in and we refilled her plate so many times with chicken I can't remember. And she loved the beans! (Sorry to the sitter for that diaper!) Jonathan and I didn't want to acknowledge what was happening so I think we just held our breath. But by the end I had to take some video and pictures of my child with food all over her. I'm not going to say she's completely over being dirty because through the entire meal she would show me her hands and want them wiped off, but I stayed strong so then she'd flail them all around splattering beans everywhere. (I think the dog ate well last night.) But we went with it and she was all good!

~Today marks 16 weeks for baby #2! I can't believe time is going so fast this time around. Tomorrow we have an appointment for a gender reveal ultrasound! I can't believe that tomorrow at this time I will know if we're having a boy or a girl! It's so exciting. Once we know the gender I know I will feel like I need to start on the nursery and names, etc!  Time is ticking away! 

~I have yet to take any belly pictures. I know! That is so bad! I'm planning to start today with a belly picture and we'll take them going forward. This past weekend I got together with Janine and Lindsy and our families for lunch on Sunday. The three of us are all 16 weeks (do within 2 days of each other!) so Janine brought her camera and we took belly pics right there in the restaurant. So much fun that we're all at the same stage!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day! I know it's a Hallmark holiday but I love Valentine's day!  Jonathan and I went out to dinner and a movie on Saturday night. I can't remember the last time we did that. My parents were in town and babysat while we went to Sal's and then to see One for the Money. It was a wonderful Valentine's day date!

I love decorating for Valentine's day and this year I did just about the same decorations as last year so I didn't take new pictures.

While my parents were here, Adalyn got some extra attention. She got lots of books read to her by papa and grandma.

Papa and Grandma also brought some homemade Valentine's iced cookies that Adalyn thoroughly enjoyed.

  

I decided that Adalyn needed to take Valentine's to her friends at daycare, but I didn't want to do candy/sweets.  I ended up putting some Cuties in cute little bags with little tags on them. Adalyn even helped me...if help meant trying to eat the cuties with the skins on.  I think they turned out pretty cute!

The bags and tags were from Hobby Lobby 30% off.

There are lots of Valentine's because we decided to give the sitter and her older kids Valentine's too!

Here's my precious Valentine this morning. Can you tell she was not happy that I was taking her picture instead of opening her box of raisins?

And this was a happier girl mid-raisin bite! She was pretty serious about the raisins so there were no smiles for mama's camera!

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's day!

Sickness and some Pampering

I've been quiet around here lately.  We've had sickness in our house. Thankfully I didn't seem to catch the funk that Adalyn and Jonathan came down with.  Poor things. The first half of my week was taking care of my people and getting extra snuggles from my girl. The one good thing about sickness in toddlers is that they stop long enough to cuddle and sleep in your arms like they are babies. I had flashbacks to holding my newborn baby.  But it breaks your heart to see how pathetic they are when they are sick.

Thankfully yesterday everyone was feeling good enough to go back to work and daycare. Adalyn's eating is still not back to normal, but she seems to be acting much more "herself".

Last night Adalyn and Jonathan seemed to be well enough for me to leave for a girls night out with my MUMs (moms) group. We decided to do a pampering girls night out for Valentine's Day coming up. Only two other girls were able to come, but we had a good time anyway.  We started out at Menchie's for some Frozen Yogurt. (I don't consider myself a fro-yo specialist but that's the second time I've tried Menchie's and I still think the flavor is watered down and not as creamy compared to Orange Leaf. Just my personal opinion. But I still ate it!) Then we walked next door for manicures and pedicures. It's been so long since I've treated myself to either so they were wonderful!

I decided to try a shellac manicure since regular manicures chip within 24 hours. I loved the girl doing my manicure and she talked me into doing french tips because then you won't be able to see a color line by my cuticle when my nails start to grow out since shellac's last for 3 to 4 weeks. I LOVE how it turned out. It really looks like years ago when I used to have fake nails. (For the first 3ish years we were married and the time before then when we were dating I always had fake nails with white tips and Jonathan had never even seen my real nails!)  I love the look and I love that they are dry and you can't mess them up when you're leaving the salon!!  I'll have to give updates for how long they actually last.

Don't mind my claw-hand. Jonathan was laughing at the picture I posted to twitter last night so I tried to take a better one but it still looks like a claw. oh well. Just look at the pretty nails:)

Happy New Year-ish

So what that this post is one month late. It's late for a good reason.  I never posted about our New Year's Eve so today is the day! For years Jonathan and I have had NYE get togethers at our house with friends. Looking back over the years was quite amusing when we remember our parties going well into the night. Or should I say morning. This past NYE, we had Derek, Billie, Tim, Lindsy, Justin and Jes (and all the kids) over. The funny part was that only Tim and Lindsy stayed long enough for the ball to drop. Ahh. Times they have a-changed.

I do have to say that the kids/babies were really great and all went down to sleep in different rooms of the house and let us all have a nice adult evening. And we even watched a movie. (Because we have wild par-tays if you haven't figured that out yet.)

The reason I never posted about NYE is because we didn't take many pictures, but the pictures we did take showed a secret that is now "out". So here are a couple pictures:

Our girls announced some news in their Big Sister shirts!

 Jes (mommy to be), me, Billie (newborn Emalyn was sleeping), and Lindsy - The 4 mommies all with new babies / babies on the way!

Yes! Lindsy is pregnant and due the same week that I am! And we decided to surprise our friends on NYE! It was so much fun to surprise everyone. And fun to do it with a friend. How many chances in life do you get to reveal such exciting news like that with a friend?

The way that Lindsy and I found out about each other was so crazy. I was bound and determined that I wasn't going to tell anyone until we went to the doctor but I was doing a service project with Lindsy the day after I got a positive pregnancy home test and randomly things came up about how long till the next baby. I guessed Lindsy was pregnant and when we got over the screaming and hugging I must have had a crazy look on my face because she said "you're pregnant too" and I couldn't lie to her. So cue another round of screams and hugging. It was so unbelievable! Then Lindsy let me in on another secret... our friend Janine is due the same week!! Crazy!!

Such an exciting way to start the new year by telling our friends our good news!  We had a fun time of fellowship and food too! Next NYE we will have 3 more babies for our party!! How fun!