Sparkly Shoes

 

I obviously do not put much importance in my shoes - as I type this, I am sitting at my desk wearing black sandals that I have had for at least 3 years now.  I bought the same pair in brown, because I knew they fit, they went with a lot of things, and so that I wouldn't have to think about finding a brown pair.  I wore them today even though it rained last night and I walked through wet grass this morning.  When I got married, I bought a pair of sandals at Walmart (no, I'm not joking), and my friend Lindsy was so embarrassed by that she took me shoe shopping and bought me the most amazingly adorable blue heels so that I wouldn't have to wear walmart shoes on my wedding day.

My daughter is now to the point where she's about ready to be wearing shoes - at least when we go out.  I bought her a pair of Robeez before she was born, but they never seemed to fit right, so I just didn't bother buying another pair.  My sweet Meme fretted over Isabel's lack of shoes.  She even traced her foot on a piece of paper and carried that paper in her purse so that she could find Isabel some shoes that would fit.  Neither of us had any idea how they size baby shoes, so this was a necessary task, and also really cute and sweet of my Meme.  

At Katie's wedding shower, my Meme brought Isabel a pink box with glittery shoes inside.  They fit perfectly and they are crazy cute.  Isabel loves them, too.  One of the first times I put them on her, we went over to Meme's house for Papa's birthday party.  In the car, the light would hit the glitter and Isabel would look at them, touch them - she was fascinated by the reflection of the silver glitter on her shoes.

Cinderella puts it best - funny how one shoe can change your life :)  I have gone from saying when I found out I was having a girl that "girls don't always have to wear pink and ruffles" to planning outfits around sparkly shoes.  I love it and wouldn't change it for the world.

Well With My Soul

 

 "For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances." Phil 4:11

A lesson learned over and over and over again... or maybe I just haven't actually learned it yet. I'm all about having little reminders through my house of the woman I want to be.  This one is above my mantle.  

I found an old piece of chip board in the back of my classroom that had seen better days - it was stained, painted on, and just generally unusable for our art purposes in the class.  I didn't want to throw it away, so I thought I would make something out of it.  (symbolic, no?)  So, I printed off the letters on my computer and drew them with Pencil.  Then I used grey acrylic paint and painted around the letters.  It only took me about half an hour, and I love the look of it above my mantle.

Goin to the Chapel and We're...

As I have mentioned in a previous post, my sweet cousin Katie is getting married in November.  Saturday, my family and I threw her a wedding shower at my house.  I had such a fun time planning this party.  I am not going to lie, I spent HOURS on Pinterest finding ideas and planning every detail.  This was pretty much a Pinterest party.  Here are a few photos by Lisa Pittman of the event, along with links to some of the projects I created.

I wanted this party to be as colorful as possible.  I think we succeeded!  This is a photo of the table.  At the end of the table, you can see one of the decorations I made.  I made several tissue paper poofs and used them around the living room and one one the table.  Also on the table are Garlic Chicken Puffs, made by my aunt Jerri.

Here we see a photo of Nutella Cake in a Jar.  I was in charge of this particular project, and at first I was worried that this was going to be an epic failure, but after only a few failures, I finally got them to work.  The recipe on Pinterest calls for a pint sized jar, and I used baby food jars instead, which needed only 45 seconds in the microwave.  I was really worried that they were going to stink, but apparently they were awesome, because they were all gone and neither me or my Aunt got one at all!

One of my favorite food items at the shower were mini Pop Tarts on a Stick, made by my mom.  They were so good!  And apparently pretty easy, though the strawberry jam did seep out a bit around the stick.  I like that you can personalize these with sprinkles that would match your decor.

Sometimes the simple things are the things that turn out to be quite beautiful.  My aunt and I were trying to figure out what to do for beverages, and at a shopping trip to Aldi, she found sparkling juices which turned out to be the perfect accompaniment to our colorful food.

I hate the idea of games at showers, but we did have 2 things that gave Katie something to take home to remember the shower, and also got everyone involved (one intentional, and one not).   In the invitations, I sent a recipe card to everyone invited, asking them to write down their favorite recipe to share with Katie.  I was happily surprised that almost everyone brought theirs back for her!  I think this is a great thing to do at a kitchen shower.  One of our cousins even brought all of the kitchen utensils necessary to make her recipe as her gift.  I thought that was a great idea!

 Our other "activity" was quite unintentional, but ended up being hilarious and crazy fun.  I found a great wedding shower card for Katie at Border's book store - 60% off even!  Do you remember the old fish fortune tellers that would curl or flip based on the temperature of your hand?  Well, this was the same idea, only with a groom instead of a fish, and the fortune was about your relationship.

We all laughed so hard at the fortunes of the married women in the room.  Mine was "true love forever."  Big shock there ;)  The ones that were so funny were my cousin Charla, whose "groom" flipped  over about 3 times, meaning "I didn't know you were so... umm... adventurous." And my sweet Meme, who's groom flipped over as well.  She was a little embarrassed because we laughed so hard some of us were in tears.

And of course, as always, my daughter was a little ham and had a great time.  She is going to love her birthday and Christmas - ripping all the paper and playing with the boxes!

All in all, I think the shower was a smashing success.  So happy for you, KK!

A Pic-a-nick

Today was a rough day. I spent my morning worrying about my best friend and feeling helpless that I had to work instead of be there for her during a rough day. Then I spent my afternoon worrying about Isabel and an issue we were having at her preschool. Then I also had to throw in some worry for the state of my house and the fact that there is a shower at my house in a mere THREE days.

So when Drew got home this evening, and while we were trying to figure out what to do for dinner, I was desperately thinking of something fun and stress free. Drew had the idea of taking Isabel to swing, one of her absolutely favorite things in the world. I took that one step further and decided a picnic dinner at the park was exactly what we needed. It has been great weather this week, we haven't gotten to spend much time together lately, and it was great to get out of the house and not think about things for a bit.

We chose a neighborhood park with many names - Annie Stevens Park, Toddler Park, Red Park... Take your pick. It's a small park in a beautiful neighborhood with baby swings and small scale climb-ons.

I made Drew and I some sandwiches, and packed Isabel a cut up banana and some turkey. Isabel cracks me up with her eating lately. She LOVES food (hmm, wonder where she inherited that). She loves to try new things and loves to express how much she loves her dinner with exuberant "mmmmms". One of her favorite things lately is bananas. If she keeps eating so many of them, she might turn into one!

After we ate, we headed to the swings. Drew pushed Isabel in a baby swing and she was laughing and smiling big time. It was probably the greatest thing I have seen in a long time. She had so much fun!

As if Isabel needed another reason to adore her daddy - swings and the outdoors. We are going to have a fun fall!

Thoughts I Had While Cleaning

1. I'm sure that there are hovels in third world countries with dirt floors that have cleaner kitchen floors than I did until about 20 minutes ago.

2. Cleaning - really deep cleaning - is difficult while pregnant. So many of the cleaners have harsh chemicals and odors that I am sure I shouldn't be breathing, I get tired really easily, and I get dizzy when I get tired or dehydrated.

3. My house had gotten pretty bad - like, bad to the extent that I had to clean one thing to be able to clean the next, and sometimes it was pretty circular.

4. There are SO many poems about being a mom and having a dirty house.

5. I love that my sweet husband thanks me for making our house look nice, but at the same time, it makes me feel awful that this isn't the natural state of things.

6. Remember dish pan hands? Well, I have mop bucket hands. Ew.

7. I love that in a neighborhood with a mostly Hispanic population, we use cleaners with such names as Fabuloso. And it smells pretty darn fabuloso.

8. It's both sad and nice at the same time that an event at my house is one of the main ways to motivate me to clean. Honey, our house is looking kind of awful, let's have people over!

9. I clean well under pressure.

10. Wet, freshly mopped floors are a magnet to kitty paws.

11. I think alot of random things while cleaning my kitchen.

12. I threw away coupons in my kitchen that expired in early July. Wonder how long that means they had been there.

13. I need to tighten the screw in the vent cover in the den. From where I am laying, it looks like it's going to fall out of the ceiling. On one side at least, haha.

14. I don't even want to know what my AC filter looks like after the past 2 weeks.

15. One of my favorite lines from an awful country song - "I need a vacation from my life, me and my husband we need a wife."

Shower Invitations

My cousin, Katie, is a wonderfully unique individual.  We are close in age, and though we grew up in different cities, we have always enjoyed spending time together.  I am so happy that she has found Hunter, the man she will marry at the end of November this year.  To celebrate their upcoming nuptials, my family and I are throwing Katie a wedding shower at my house in next weekend.

I think I would like to be a party planner - especially with the help of Pinterest.  I adore planning a menu, making decorations, and planning all the details of a party.  And I love having parties at my house!

For this party, I felt like it was a good time to completely redo my living room ceiling, paint and redecorate - ok, ok, I didn't actually feel that way.  My ceiling dictated that I must do that because of a huge AC leak in my attic that soaked through the ceiling in our front room.  But now, the living room is a beautiful shade of grey and ready for me to nest, hehe.  I can not wait until the ceiling is done tomorrow so that I can get in there and get started!

Anyway, back to the shower.  I struggled for weeks with what theme to go with for the shower.  I had thought about doing a Vintage themed shower with aprons and depression glass and all that girlie stuff, but that just didn't seem to fit.

During a light bulb moment, I decided against a "theme" persay, and went with color inspiration.  Black, white and bright colors.  Seemed to be the perfect thing for Katie, and I had all sorts of ideas for a fun, non traditional shower.


More on the details after the event, but I wanted to show you the invitations I created.  This was so easy!  I used black card stock, a white opaque marker, a yellow paint pen, bright colored paper, and a stamp I found at Michael's for a dollar!  I had fun making these and I am already brain storming how to make the invitations to Isabel's first birthday!

Here's a sneak peak at the shower invitations: