InstaFriday {Changes edition}

I'm calling this week's InstaFriday post the week of changes. So many new things are happening around our house. 

Tommy and I celebrated our fifth year wedding anniversary on September 1st. We put the kids to bed early and had a grown-up supper with actual adult conversation. It was lovely. So was the food and drink. The fight before supper, not so lovely but it happens. I don't want to pretend like we are some perfect couple with perfect kids in a perfect house because that is not reality. I want to be honest with all the happenings of our lives. Fights suck but we survived. We always do.

Tell the truth. This nail polish looks like pea soup. Doesn't it?! I am so MAD at myself. I was at the spa getting a wax when I noticed that OPI had a new collection out. I saw this color on one of the girls who worked at the spa and I thought it looked really fresh and springy, so I bought a bottle. Words cannot describe how UGLY this color looked on my nails.I had to change them back immediately. Yuck. Super bummed.

Look what we did!!! We FINALLY changed painted our beautiful library table. I'm not utterly convinced you can tell the difference between these two photos but we primed and painted the table white. I love how it turned out. Now all we need to do is get some hardware for the drawers and then I can start putting things on and in the table. I am so excited!

We had Kit, my in-laws dog, over the weekend. I learned that as much as I like dogs, we are not anywhere near ready to have one. Maybe some day I will change my mind.

Grayson changed classrooms at daycare. tear. This means he is no longer in "the baby room." The transition has been difficult for me. I'm just feeling like I'm not being communicated with, which is really frustrating. I'm trying to keep in mind that the first few weeks of a new routine are always hard and that things will improve. Grayson seems to be doing OK so far and ultimately, that is what matters.

This little book was in his bin of things to take home. His old teachers made this book of memories for us. The book includes tons of pictures of Grayson during his first year in their room, art projects and stories. Things we've never seen before. At the very end they wrote Grayson a little note. I cried. (Shocker, I know) I am so grateful to be able to look back on his first year and see how happy he looked and how well taken care of he was.

We bought Aidan this Lego CITY police station for his birthday. He built it all by himself. I was very impressed. He is just getting so old. Before I know it he is going to be off to college. I can't allow my mind to go there yet.

We were welcomed into the wonderful world of kindergarten this week. Aidan is absolutely loving it and is doing great with the change. The school district we are in actually has the parents attend the first day of school with the child to try to make the transition a bit easier. I can't stress what a great idea I think this is. It made me feel much more comfortable being able to be there on his first day. Plus, we got to meet with the variety of specialists that will be involved in our children's education which is always a good thing.

Happy Friday people! 

(Sharing our daily moments with Jeannett at LifeRearragned)

Aidan's Pirate Party

We had a little party for Aidan on Sunday to celebrate his 6th birthday. Last year we had a huge party with family and friends so we decided to keep things a bit more low key this year. Aidan is really into pirates so choosing a theme was easy. I lucked out in the party planning department because my MIL wanted to host, which made things really easy for me. I didn't have to do much of anything but enjoy myself, which was nice.

She found these cute napkins from Target...I thought they went perfect with the theme.

Aidan and Grandpa built both of these Lego pirate ships for Aidan to just play with when he goes over to their house. We used them as centerpieces. I wish I had taken a close up. Cathy, my MIL, also bought pirate themed stickers so Aidan could "decorate" the tablecloths however he wanted it. My only real contribution was the eye patches that we put around each pirate ship for party-goers to grab and wear. 

The eye patches were definitely made for small children who don't have large heads though. Many eye patches broke because our heads were too big. OOPs. We tried, rather unsuccessfully, to take a family picture. Aidan was doing his "Arrgh matey" and happened to punch me in the face.It was hilarious!  

Cathy made delicious food! We had the choice of steak, chicken or pheasant kabobs with potatoes and veggies, a lettuce and pear salad and fruit salad. SO GOOD! 

We are blessed with very generous family and friends. Aidan was spoiled rotten and got really nice gifts. His favorites were the Lego City Police Station and his "army guy" buildings. Grayson didn't want to miss out on the action either. He was happy just playing with the wrapping paper though. 

Aidan with all of his "loot." 

Isn't this picture great?! He looks so serious. Nana and Papa got him some "spy gear" which was equipped with a set of walkie-talkies and  this awesome headset. He LOVES it!! After he opened gifts it was the first thing he played with. He also got a marshmallow shooter from Great Grandpa that he carried around with him to shoot all the bad pirates at the party.

After eating and playing with a few of his gifts, we sang happy birthday and called it a day. Happy 6th Birthday Monkey!!!! We love you and hope you had an awesome party!

Grayson's "Little Man" Party

Gray turned one this past weekend and we had quite the party to celebrate. It's rather crazy to admit this but I started thinking about his birthday when he was only eight months old. I wanted the theme to be perfect and I didn't want to do something that had been done hundreds of times. I found the idea for a little man party on Hostess with the Mostess (HWTM) and did my best to recreate it. I wanted there to be mustaches, ties, and bow ties everywhere. I tried to take a ton of pictures so that I could share them here.

The party was held in my parents backyard. They have a pool and its been so warm here that I wanted people to have the option to swim if they wanted to. I hung a sign on the front door inviting people to come right in and join the party. I had pictures of Grayson from his first year on some of the tables and by the food. I made pom poms that I hung from under the patio umbrella. I also made a little banner of ties. I cut the ties out of scrapbook paper and strung them using twine. The birthday boy wore a "little man" onesie to go with the theme.

The little man party on HWTM had a photo-booth with props that guests were encouraged to use as a way to create memories from the party. I loved the idea but knew we wouldn't have an actual photo-booth. Instead, I set up a little corner with a banner and props. There were ties, glasses, hats, mustaches, and signs that said "Mister Grayson is turning one" and "I love Grayson." Whenever someone walked over to see what was in the corner, I took a picture of them and a prop of their choice. Once their picture was taken, I asked them to write Grayson a little note in a scrapbook. I am going to print the pictures and then put them next to each note. I wanted to have something for Grayson to look back at when he is older. In addition to the swimming and "photo-booth," the kiddos played baseball and squirt guns. 

Lets talk food, shall we?  I love planning parties and the food happens to be one of my favorite things to plan. I am so lucky that my mom and mother in law both helped with the food. I wanted to keep it easy so that I would be able to mingle and take pictures. We had cheese, crackers and goldfish for the babies. There was also chip dip and Fritos with Aztec dip. For dinner, we served turkey and gravy sandwiches, sloppy joes, pasta salad, a lettuce salad and watermelon. For dessert, I wanted Grayson to have a smash cake, so Tommy's aunt was kind enough to make him a GIANT cupcake.  She also made chocolate chip bars and I made smores cups for sharing. We served pink lemonade and margaritas in mason jars that I wrapped ribbon around. I also made little treat bags with chocolate covered rice krispies. 

Rather than have guests bring gifts for Grayson, I asked for people to bring a book to donate to Children's hospital. I was overwhelmed with how generous people were. I am looking forward to bringing all of the books to the hospital.  Even though I asked for no gifts, he did still get a few,which was so sweet. His favorite thing to do was play with the gift bags and bows. 

We couldn't have asked for better weather. I think people really enjoyed the make shift photo-booth and props. Everything turned out perfect and Grayson did so awesome! We are blessed to have such wonderful family and friends in our lives.

Update: One Word 2012

At the start of the year, I wrote this post because I thought it might be fun to focus on a word and make it my mantra for the year. The word I chose was relish. I really wanted to focus on relaxing and taking time to enjoy the fun things life has to offer rather than always working on checking things off my to-do list. Are you ready to hear how I've been doing?

The short answer is, terrible! I can't pretend like I've been doing a great job because I'd by lying. In all honesty, I don't think I have the ability to relax. Is that weird? Every time I sit down to TRY and enjoy some downtime I just think about all the things I should be doing and then get up and do them. It's a disease or something. I have good intentions to relax. I have good intentions to not let the dirty dishes bother me. I have good intentions to enjoy my time alone with Tommy once the kids are asleep. However, none of these things happen. I can't relax. Dirty dishes BUG ME and when Tommy and I finally have some alone time, I do the dishes, make lunches, start laundry, or clean up from the day. Then when I finally do sit down, I fall asleep.

Clearly, I need to strike a balance. But the truth is, I like the chaos. I'd rather be busy all day, working, chasing kids, driving from here to there, making lunches, planning our weekend than sitting like a bump on a log.  Deep down though, I KNOW I need a break. I need to enjoy some downtime. I need to spend QT with Tommy and the boys. Even more so, I need to get it in my head and know that its OK to not be doing something every.single.second.of.the.day. I've learned that I'm really good at saying I need a break but I'm not really good at actually taking one. I have six more months to work this out and I'm going to make it a priority.

Little Man Tea Party

This past Sunday I co-hosted a baby shower for one of the lovely ladies in my moms group. I thought I would share some of the decorations and ideas from the shower with you. Who doesn't need a little inspiration when throwing a baby shower or any party for that matter?! (just a little side note...most of the ideas originally came from here, we just recreated them) So much fun...

The general theme of the shower was "tea party", which was super cute in itself, but the host of the shower didn't want to be responsible for setting-up/taking down all decorations, making food, planning games, etc. Her thought was to have individual people "host a table" at the shower, which basically means if you decided to host you were responsible for decorating your table, setting up/taking down all decorations and hosting the guests that sat at your table (bringing them their tea, etc). Maybe I live on another planet but I had never heard of this before and thought it was an awesome idea.  Throwing a party is A TON of work and I personally really enjoy it but I know some don't, so this idea of "host a table at a shower" might really appeal to you.

Because I love planning parties, I knew I wanted to host a table. My friend Katie and I teamed up together. We went back and forth with what we wanted the theme of our table to be. We finally decided on a "little man" tea party.  I had hesitations at first because I knew I wanted to use this theme for Gray's first birthday party and I wasn't sure I wanted to repeat a theme (blame the party planner in me) but then I realized I could reuse some of the decorations so the "re-user" in me decided to just go with it.  Plus, we knew no one else would use this theme, so it was a win-win situation.

This was our centerpiece...we used our husband's ties and wrapped them around the inside of the hurricane. Then we tied a tie on the outside. I also ordered these to put in the center piece. We thought the props would be a fun way to let the people sitting at our table get involved with our theme. Plus, they made for some super cute photo ops! 

Cute signage to go with our theme :)

Because the main theme of the shower was tea party, we used china for our place settings. On the tea cups, my lovely friend Katie came up with the idea to put little "wet your whiskers" tags on all of the cups. She just printed them up on her computer, cut them out and then tied them with ribbon onto the cups. So cute and SO easy! 

Don't you just LOVE these cute necktie napkins?! I do! The idea was to make the napkin look like a dress shirt with a tie so that if you tucked your napkin into the top of your shirt, it would look like you were wearing a tie. We used scrapbook paper, cut pieces out in the shape of ties and then glued them together. I love all of the different patterns we were able to use. The first picture shows more than one tie. 

We found this cute little onesie on Etsy and HAD to have it because it went so perfectly with our table..it was also part of our gift for the mom-to-be for her little man! I thought it was a lovely day and I think we pulled off our little man theme quite well. What do you think?!  

My Journey List

A dear friend of mine who blogs over at Journey with Jess Jones came up with the idea of creating a journey list. A journey list is just a list of goals or experiences you must include as part of your journey or life. She deemed the list a journey list rather than a bucket list and I have to say, I LOVE this idea. Who wants a running list of things to do before they die? Sounds a bit morbid to me so journey list it is! I also love the idea of a running list versus a list for the new year because I feel like then the pressure is on to cross everything off before the year ends. Now, don't get me wrong, I am all about accomplishing tasks and crossing them off but I also hate the feeling I get when I don't accomplish a goal. AND lets be real here...sometimes life gets in the way and doesn't always go as planned which can make it hard to accomplish a goal in a set period of time. So, without further ado here is a peak at my journey list...

1. Find time to volunteer and help others. After all, the reason I started this blog was to not only write about all the crazy, fun, happy and sad moments that happen during my life but to also teach my boys how to help others in both big and small ways. 
2. To blog...sounds pretty obvious, right? 
3. Take a yoga or exercise class
4. Learn how to golf
5. Read the Bible
6. Be more adventurous and push the limits. I tend to stick with what I know because it works. 
7. Figure out what my gifts are and use them to help others as God intended
8. Do a 5K or triathlon (right Kristina, Alicia and Michelle?!) 
9. Take a vacation with my family
10. Date my husband
11. Go back to school for my MBA
12. Be more crafty (or at least try)
13. Cook. As in really learn how to cook... not, find a recipe and follow it. Instead, be creative and create original recipes.

I hope to add more to this list as time goes on and I think it will be fun to see how the list evolves over time. Do you have a journey list? What does it look like?  

Relish

New year. New start. Right?
Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about "letting go" and just letting things BE. For those of you who know me (and for those of you who don't), you know this is going to be incredibly difficult for me. I am a planner. A "do-er" not a "sitter"...I can't sit still unless everything is done and in its place. I really want that to change though. I really want to be able to just take a break and enjoy the little things. I want to stop focusing on things that in the long run don't really matter.  I read this post and it got me thinking about my word for 2012. If I had to choose one word to describe what I want to focus on for 2012 it would RELISH. 


I want to enjoy my husband and kiddos and stop constantly trying to pick up after them. I want to play "Army guys" with Aidan instead of insisting on cleaning the kitchen instead.  I want to snuggle with Gray because before I know it he will be crawling and walking. I fear if I don't cherish these moments now, they will be gone and I will never be able to get them back.  I want to take pleasure in just sitting and reading a book without constantly thinking about my to-do list. I want to appreciate the moments I'm able to get away with friends instead of thinking about what I could be doing at home. I want to RELISH  in all the moments of my life.

What is your word for 2012?