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November2nd

Berlin’s Pretty in Pink Birthday Party

Posted in: Family Traditions
When a girl is having a birthday, two big questions arise. 1) Is there such a thing as too many ruffles? 2) Is there such a thing as too much pink? Of course, the answer in our case was “Are you kidding me?!? NEVER!” And so began the Pretty in Pink birthday celebration for Berlin’s big day. I’m a girly-girl at heart, I love pink and I also figured there are only going to be so many years where I can pick the theme for my kid’s party, so when my girl looks this good in pink, I just couldn’t say no.

I started with the paper doll invitations from Martha Stewart and then continued to use them throughout in the decorations. Not surprisingly I had tons of pink patterned paper to use for their dresses and then we also used that to coordinate the lollies and pom-poms that we hung from the ceiling.

I desperately wished my Silhouette Cameo had come in time to do all the work of cutting them out, but this time around I had to do it the old fashioned way. I thought I’d never be done cutting out round heads, so of course I recruited my mom to help. She’s amazing! The trick to printing the party info on the dresses was that I printed the outline of the three girls on an 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of cardstock, then glued the dresses on, then ran them through the printer again before cutting the girls out. It worked like a charm.

Of course the menu consisted of pink food:
- Red Grapes atop Pecan Rolled Goat Cheese
- White Chocolate Dipped Strawberries
- Pink Candied Pretzel Sticks
- Strawberry Cake Pops
- Peanut Butter & Raspberry Jelly Sandwiches
- Cranberry & Turkey Tea Sandwiches
- Pink Circus Animal Crackers
- Pink Lemonade
- and Pink Sugar Cookie Lollipops with a bag of Pink Jelly Beans for favors
The cake was a three layer lemon cake covered in ruffles of pink frosting, also from Martha.

One of the things I’d seen on Pinterest and fallen in love with was a pettiskirt for little girls. I knew I wasn’t going to plop down the $75 to buy one, so I decided to make one (in pink, of course) for Berlin to wear at the party. It was so much fun and I loved how it turned out. I even learned a few good lessons (unfortunately, some of them after the fact…yes, there is a difference between chiffon and nylon chiffon) but it was frilly and pink and she looked gorgeous in it, especially with the cowboy boots from Marmie & Grandpa Dan!

The rocking chair she’s sitting in is well over 100 years old and was given to me by my grandma when I was a little girl. It was so fun to be able to pass this down to her. Every girl should have a place to rock her babies.

Luckily, my mom, Marmie, came out the week before the party and helped with all the baking, decorating, and pink-ifying that took place. I literally could not have done the party without her. Although, if I work her that hard every time she comes, she may start opting out of a trip to see the grand kids, so I might need to tone it down the next time.

Berlin loves her daddy, no doubt about it. She is starting to pick up a few words, she says Mom, Uh-Oh and “mmmm” means everything from the sound a cow makes to “more” to “tastes good” to “I want that”. But the thing she says clearly every night when Kyle walks in the door is “Dad’s home!”

Big brother Kade loves his sister and was more than happy to “teach her how to do it” for all the new toys.

I love this girl!

How did one year fly by so quickly?! How is she old enough to give kisses and make faces and play games? How can this tiny of a person have so big a personality? How are we so blessed to have her as our daughter? Thank you God, for this beautiful precious gift!
April25th

Our Easter Table

Posted in: Family Traditions

I hope everyone had a fabulous Easter. We had a great time with friends yesterday. Kade had a bowl of cereal yesterday morning and about 3 bites of ham at lunch and I’m pretty sure that the rest of the calories consumed were some form of candy…so you can imagine what his energy level was! Luckily (?) grandparents had sent out a Dancing/Singing Bunny for the kids and Kade spent most of the day hopping along with that. Last night he slept for 14 hours straight! Nothing like that crash after a sugar high…

As promised, here are a couple before and after pics of what I worked on last week for our Easter table. I wanted dessert to be able to double as a centerpiece, so I made little nests out of chocolate and Chow Mein noodles and then filled them with chocolate eggs. Then I covered some floral foam (because it happened to be cheaper than styrofoam) with moss so I would have something to hold my cake pops.

I didn’t have 12 matching napkin rings, so I whipped up these out of some cardboard and leftover scrapbook ribbon. The napkins I had left over from the last time we hosted Easter – they were white ones from Bed Bath & Beyond that I just dyed at home.

Next I wanted some flowers for the table, but didn’t want to fork over the cash for real blooms. So instead I did a quick Google search for tissue flowers and then made these one night while watching TV. I think they turned out pretty cute, especially with the jelly beans filling the vase instead of water.

And my favorite project this week was attempting Bakerella’s Cake Pops. These took absolutely forever, but since I’m not doing them every week, I think they were totally worth it.

But the real cuties of the day were, of course, Berlin and Kade. Here they are with their Easter baskets, before the sugar high.
September23rd

Shared Room for our Boy and Baby Girl

Posted in: DIY

When we found out #2 was on the way, Kyle and I had the logistics talk. We ended up deciding that whether the new baby was a boy or a girl, the kids would share a room. Both of us had shared rooms at one time or another growing up and lived to tell about it, and to be honest, we didn’t want to give up our guest room / office. After we found out Fritz was going to be a girl, I started brainstorming decorating ideas.

Kade’s first nursery had a farm theme, which we loved since Kyle and I both grew up on farms and it was very “boyish”. I don’t have a lot of great pictures of the nursery after we moved to NorCal, but here are a few from when it was set up in our LA condo.

This time, since it was going to be for a boy and a girl, I thought a nursery rhyme theme would be cute, sort of a “Jack & Jill Nursery”. Plus I already had a few family pieces that I wanted to incorporated. My grandmother had made a baby quilt for me and it was nursery rhyme themed.

And Kyle’s grandmother had given us a couple of wall cut-outs from the 1950′s that used to hang in her children’s room.

Here is the result. The nursery rhyme illustrations are from my parent’s antique shop and I painted 3 frames that I picked up at the flea market. The bunting is made from the scraps my mom sent out. I had made basket liners and a lamp shade for Kade’s farm nursery, but I modified them to both to fit into this new theme. And the nursery rhyme nesting blocks I picked up on Etsy.

I was glad that the grandparent picture frames still worked in my color scheme, and the farm overalls were a great compliment to the vintage pink dress I’d picked up at the flea market.

My parents gave Fritz her very first doll and below her are the fitted sheets that I made, along with a few pics of the new white eyelet crib bedding.
September16th

Nesting: Prepping the Nursery

Posted in: DIY

So I realize I haven’t been the most faithful blogger in the last few weeks, but it’s because a girl can only handle so many projects at one time. One of the projects was a face-lift to my site. Kyle encouraged me to take a critical look at my background, as well as look into a few different ways to personalize the site. So I’ve been experimenting with colors and hope that the new look stays true to my pink-obsessed self while allowing the blog and pictures to really pop. I also incorporated some green in the site to keep it from being too monochromatic. Nothing is set in stone, so let me know your opinions. (If the changes aren’t showing, make sure to reload the page in your browser.) I’m also trying to learn a bit more about WordPress and the many many options that are available. For instance, my Choice Finds in the sidebar (send me an image if you’d like me to include a link to your website) and the Follow option vie Google Friend Connect. Even though we’ve had the site almost a year, I still feel like such a novice sometimes.

Another project on the list has been to find Kade a “big boy bed”. We were looking for a Captain’s style twin bed: Captain’s style because I knew we would need under-the-bed storage and a twin because the kids will be sharing a room and we wanted to save space. (We opted out of the “toddler bed” to avoid another bed purchase in 2 years). Eventually I found a great deal on Craigslist and convinced Kyle it was worth driving an hour and half to retrieve it.

On a side note, can I just say that it truly irritates me how men respond to women? I keep trying to explain to Kyle what it’s like to walk around this world as a 5’4″ woman vs a 6’5″ man. I’ve learned to be OK with the fact that no one will step out of my way in a grocery aisle or on a sidewalk (even when pregnant), that salesmen at hardware stores won’t answer my questions directly, and that I will be treated like a moron at Best Buy. But the Craigslist guy seriously irked me! When I initially called about the bed I asked for measurements to see if we could bring it home with our SUV or if we’d need to get a truck. When I called back to say that, yes, we would come pick it up, he asked how I was going to get it home. I said we’d use our SUV, we’d put the drawers and headboard inside and the bed and mattress on top. His comment, “Does your SUV even have a rack on top? You know, you just can’t set things on the top of a vehicle” which was followed by, “Do you even have rope?” Are you kidding me??!?! Did he really think that I was just going to toss a bed on top of an SUV and start driving 80 miles an hour down a freeway? I guarantee he would not have said that if he was talking to a male’s voice. I wear pearls, love aprons and can make a mean pot roast, but that does not mean I’m an idiot!

Moving on…here’s a pic of the bed in process.

It’s just particle board covered in a veneer. No matter what bed we got, I wanted it to be white. So I read some tips on painting this kind of pretend wood and got started. We lightly sanded the veneer to help the primer adhere and then I painted 2 coats of primer, followed by 2 coats of white paint and a clear coat. (Don’t worry, Dad! The garage was well ventilated and I always wore a mask.)

These are the drawers with one coat of primer.

Thank goodness Kyle convinced me we should put it up on 5 gallon buckets to paint it! Since we had to BUY the buckets, I thought I could save a few bucks and just leave it on the ground. But after crawling around our garage floor for 4 days sanding and painting and sanding and painting – it was the best $7.50 we’ve ever spent!

Next on the project list was nursery bedding. I was going to need a new set for the crib and twin size bedding for Kade’s new bed. Again, in an effort to save money, I ended up making both. I used a white-on-white eyelet fabric for the crib bedding (bumpers and skirt) and then made four different crib sheets out of some gorgeous fabrics to bring a splash of color. I was shocked at how much cute patterned crib sheets costs (around $40ish) and then shocked again when I found this super simple pattern for making your own. I ended up making 4 sheets for less than the price of one purchased one. Here’s a preview of the crib set.

For Kade’s bed, I cut down our old white duvet cover to fit a twin and then inserted an old blanket rather than an actual duvet (potty training is going well, but I wouldn’t say we’re batting a 1000 just yet!).

With all the white though, I need to start thinking about how to bring color into the room. Leave it to mom to save the day. She sent me a ton of vintage-esque fabrics (top photo) to work with which I’m using to make bunting, curtains, basket liners, and more. I also got a few old nursery rhyme illustrations framed and Kyle is going to make me a quilt rack to hang my Grandma’s nursery rhyme quilt from. I can’t wait to show you how it all comes together.

One of the most fun projects has been getting ready for a little girl to join our family. I went through Kade’s infant toys and got back out all the baby supplies. But the most fun was when a co-worker of Kyle’s gave us 2 boxes of little girl clothes! It was like Christmas as I sorted through mountains of pink and ruffles and lace. Now everything has been washed, folded and carefully put away in it’s spot in the nursery.

Just a few final touches to finish up before Fritz arrives…and I promise I’ll post pics of everything put together as soon as I can.