Flower Shower

This last weekend I was honored to have a baby shower for Miss Savannah, which was hosted by my bestie Melissa. Melissa and I love to plan parties and we always do them together, so it was very difficult to keep secrets about how the shower would be decorated! She did a fabulous job and the shower was tons of fun.
Here is a picture of the invitation that Melissa created and made. We had found the little flower on another website and loved it, so Melissa took the flower and made a beautiful theme.

In keeping with the theme, here are the centerpieces. She did two different kinds. The diaper cakes are kind of funny because traditionally I always make diaper cakes for showers and gifts, but have never received one myself. There were 6 tables, so 3 of them had these little diaper cakes. I love the ribbon!

The other centerpieces had little die-cuts that I can take off the sticks and use in scrapbooking. Cute, clever, and will come in handy when I make Savannah's scrapbook. The little bags had chocolates in them with "Dara's Baby Shower" and the date on them. These were the party favors to give out to the guests.

To check out more pictures of these die-cuts and Melissa's other products, click here.
Here is the food table with the "It's A Girl" banner that Melissa made.

She spent a ton of time working on these dipped pretzels and aren't they adorable? They were super yummy, too!

And in keeping with the pink, white, and brown theme, marshmellows dipped in pink chocolate with chocolate sprinkles. These were a huge hit with Sydney who polished off at least 5 at the shower and many more at home.

Here are the cupcakes. My cousin Gretchen made these and besides being very tasty, they fit right into the theme by being pink and brown! Melissa added the cupcake toppers to finish them off.

Even the cheese and crackers were in the theme...see how the cheese was cut into flower shapes?

These are the gifts from Melissa. She is so creative, aren't those bags cute?

My friend Alisa planned the game. We played a version of Scattergories with the letter being S. It was a lot of fun and we had some very creative answers.

Me and my girl. She was the highlight of the shower! She had so much sugar that day and was running wild!

Besties. Thank you so much, Melissa, for the beautiful shower! It was such a blessing.
Thank you to all who came or sent gifts, Chris and I can not believe how much little Savannah is already loved!

Sundays with Sydney

Thank you for tuning in for our regular feature of photography by Sydney.

This is a picture of where the back living room meets the blue tile of the entry way and the pergo flooring of the kitchen. Chris and I hate, hate, HATE that blue tile. We would love to replace it and make it the same flooring as the kitchen, but it's a super huge pain to rip up tile. It's a pain to clean, it's ugly (most of you know I seriously hate the color blue), and it's cold, even through socks. When I clean the floors, I have to of course vacuum the carpet, then use one cleaner on the kitchen floors, and another on the tile. Grrrr...
And the grout! It's ugly and dark. Yuk. I have questioned the sanity of the previous owner many times. What was she thinking? Someday, we'll win our millions and before we move into our large, new, pretty mansion, I will pay to have that ugly tile ripped up and replaced with pretty flooring. So there.

Tuesday Market

Last Tuesday evening we went down to the little farmer's market. We always enjoy going there in the summer and it was a nice, pleasant temperature that evening. We had a yummy dinner and then enjoyed the sites.
Chris, a former fireman, had to have Sydney pose in this picture!


By far the highlight of Sydney's evening was getting this balloon flower from the balloon artist. She's been playing with it non-stop ever since!

Girly Fun

Yesterday afternoon Sydney completed a rite of passage that every yound lady must take...she had her first official, professional pedicure! It wasn't planned. Most of the time I just paint her nails at home, but I needed to get a pedicure and when we got there, they had the cutest little chairs for little girls! So of course, we had to have a mommy-daughter pedicure!



Mine took a lot longer, so while her nails were drying she got to watch Cinderella in the little DVD player attached to the chair. She LOVED it!


The final product!

They did a cute polish, a little Hawaiian flower, and a rhinestone all for $7. Not bad! Melissa and I are going to take the girls there again soon for a girl's day out. This is one of the millions of reasons I love having daughters!

No Holds Barred

We took the rail off the side of Sydney's bed this last weekend. She's such a big girl now! It was way harder on me than it was on her. She was so proud of herself!


But, just because mommy worries about falling out of bed and breaking limbs, this is what I did next to her bed to make me feel better.

Sydney is just on cloud 9 with it all. With the new paint in her room and the rail off the bed, her room looks so different now and she LOVES it. She is getting to be so grown-up, which I have to keep telling myself is a good thing.

The Beach

This last weekend we went away to the beach for one last trip as a family of three. We also realized it would probably be our last trip in a sedan, we'll have to use the SUV from now on! Sydney had so much fun, she was born a beach girl!




We got this little kite at Target for $3.99 and it was one of the highlights of the beach. Sydney LOVED it and we all took a turn flying it. Check out that blue sky, too! We were blessed with fabulous weather 2 of the 3 days we were there.


The mandatory staged family photo!


We took a long walk along some of the rocks. The first day we were there it was a negative tide so we could walk out to rocks that were normally covered in water. Of course Sydney had to climb some of them.


There's a little tunnel through some of the rocks and this is the entrance. Kind of scary looking!


After the walk I was getting kind of tired. I decided to dig a hole in the sand, cover it with the blanket, and lay down on my stomach with my belly in the hole. It felt SO FABULOUS to lay on my stomach for the first time in months. I could have stayed there all day.


Of course you can't do the beach without smores. The beach house we stayed at had a firepit, so we did smores for a while and then after Sydney went to bed, Chris and I got to sit out by the fire and talk for a long time. We talk all the time, but something about the intimacy of a fireside chat is really nice to have sometimes.


The next day we drove to an aquarium and got to feed the seals. Well, Chris got to feed the seals because once Sydney and I saw what they ate...
...we were NOT interested in touching their food!


She wasn't too keen on touching the animals in the touch tank, but we finally convinced her.


We wrapped up the outing with lunch at Mo's, where Sydney proceeded to eat most of Chris' clam chowder, a bunch of my shrimp, and absolutely none of her kid's meal.


This one is one of my favorite's from the weekend. Chris and Sydney were dancing together on the beach. Someday they'll do that at her wedding.

Wordless Wednesday

Preparations Part V

Finally, at long last, here are the nursery pictures! The bummer thing is you can't tell from these pictures how cute the pink walls are. The day I took these there was this crazy thing called sunshine spilling in through the window. We don't get that here very often, and the combo of the bright lights and my ghetto camera make the walls look cream. But they are pink and super cute. Here's the tour...







There are still a few things we need to get. Savannah will stay in our room for a few months, but when we move her to her crib we'll take out the bumper pads and put in the breathable ones. I haven't decided what I'm going to do for curtains in there yet. And we still need the name letters for above her crib along with some other things that we registered for. I am so pleased with how it turned out and can't wait to bring her home to her little room!

Sundays with Sydney

It's time once again for our regular feature of photography by Sydney. Thank you to reader Megan for suggesting the name for this, you can now stay tuned each and every Sunday to see the pictures that my little missy has taken without my permission.

This is a picture of the handle of our vacuum. This one speaks to me of irony as you can see the mess of toys and blankets in the background, yet the very fact that the vacuum was out must mean that there was some attempt at cleaning that day. That's deep, Syd. Nice shot.


Here we have an excellent portait of our front room mini-blinds. I like how she captured the small opening in the blinds where you can see the trashy cars and motor-home that our obnoxious neighbors park in front of our house. If this were hanging in a gallery, I imagine people would say that deep down, we all have some white trash in us. Once again, Sydney, deep. Very deep.

Parade Happenings

Last weekend we went to the Starlight Parade in Portland. Sydney had so much fun! We always get there way early to get a good spot. Sydney was very good about staying in her chair while all the cars were still driving right by us.


Of course, the best part of the parade isn't the parade itself, it's waiting for the parade to start. That's when you can eat licorice...


...play with bubbles once they close the street to traffic...


...and do sidewalk chalk on an otherwise very busy road.


Of course, you can't do sidewalk chalk without having a chalk outline drawn of yourself.


Then it's time for some goofing off with the auntie who is freshly home from college, then have some roadside Pizza Schmizza right before the parade starts.


Once the parade does start, the best thing to do is snuggle up with a Barbie blanket and your daddy for some good, warm parade fun.