Category: Everything Else

Categories
Everything Else

Eleven Weeks

I was in Charlotte with my aunt getting my Papa’s condo all spruced up for Christmas Saturday. I meant to try to post from his computer last night but there were issues there so this is a day late. I did remember to take self-portraits with my phone using his cool mirrored wall! And yes, there’s no hiding the babies anymore {it was at night but I wasn’t trying to stick the belly out}.

Three babies saying hi after a day of Christmas decorating!

How far along? 11w1d.

Maternity clothes? Yes for pants but I can still wear my normal tops & sweaters {for now}.

Weight Gain? Last Monday it was about ten pounds from what I *think* my pre-pregnancy weight probably was.

Stretch Marks? No.

Sleep? Pretty good switching from side to side with pee breaks throughout the night. Moekitty has started cuddling one of the pillow thinking it’s me!

Movement? Not that I can feel, but as we saw Monday, they’re moving!

Genders? We hope & pray for healthy babies first & foremost. But I’d love to have boy/girl combos.

What I Miss? Nothing at the moment. Feeling great & happy.

Symptoms? Same as last couple of weeks. If I eat frequently & stay on top of drinking water, I’m good. Definitely more worn out & I can take a nap at the drop of a hat.

What I’m Looking Forward to? tomorrow’s high resolution ultrasound. I’m really hoping we’ll be able to get great views of babies B & C as well as A.

Weekly Wisdom? Birthday’s while pregnant are fun! Eat everything you want times three! 😛

Milestones? We now have fig-sized babies who are pretty much fully formed!

Categories
Everything Else Food

Dessert with Friends

Thanks to Duncan Hines for sponsoring my writing. There’s no limit to the baking possibilities, so grab your favorite Duncan Hines mix and Comstock or Wilderness fruit fillings and Bake On! www.duncanhines.com.

Is there anything better than dessert? Only one thing I can think of…sharing it with friends. December is the perfect month for me to do just that thanks to my birthday on the 11th & two short weeks later, Christmas & then New Years.

Luckily for me, my friends seem to like dessert as much as I do. As has been the case for the last couple of years, between now & Christmas I have a few Christmas cookie exchanges on the calendar as well as other lunches & dinners with friends.

Starting Saturday, I’ve got a busy week ahead of me. Christmas decorating & a little birthday celebrating with my aunt & grandfather. Hello Sunday buffett dessert table! Sunday night, a group of my college friends & I are going to dinner then coming back to my house for birthday cake & ice cream. Monday night, my husband & I along with another couple are going to dinner to celebrate my big day.

Wednesday day, I’m meeting a friend for lunch. And since our lunch meeting spot just came out with a new holiday flavored milkshake, you can bet the babies & I will be enjoying that for dessert while chatting with Marie.

Wednesday night is my first cookie exchange of the year. According to the evite, about 20 of my Chi O alum sisters are gathering to share three dozen cookies. While searching my blog for cookie ideas, I discovered I’d posted about this exchange two years ago & I’m planning to make the same white chocolate cranberry cookies. Hope everyone else is too busy catching up & having fun to remember I made these already! 

Saturday night, I’m dressing to the nines in my tacky Chistmas sweater best. Oh & I’ve got a few to choose from thanks to my overabundance of holiday spirit during day-after-Christmas shopping a couple years in a row. Fingers crossed that one of these jewels fits over the babies belly! I’m planning to double or triple the cookie reciple above Tuesday night & freeze half so Saturday I can easily make two more dozen cookies to share with some of my local online favorites. Clearly we had a great time with this party in 2008 & 2009! Yay for another yearly GTG! 

2008 Tacky Sweater Party! {photo from BA}

Husband & coworkers, get ready for cookies next weekend & Monday!

What’s your favorite part of sharing dessert with friends? The getting together with friends? The dessert? The leftover dessert you come home with? Honestly, I love it all!

Remember to check out Duncan Hines’ website www.duncanhines.com to find some great recipes for your holiday get-together! I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective.

Categories
Everything Else

Paper Culture

This post has been brewing since August. I met some of the representatives from Paper Culture at BlogHer this summer. I genuinely adored their cards, invites & artwork. Especially this owl print.

Owl Family

Generously, at the end of our conversation in the expo hall, Paper Culture gave me a $50 gift card to use on whatever I’d like.

I really wanted to get Christmas cards done. Cute photo ones. Like these two.

The Essence of Christmas
Hand Drawn Holidays

Except we didn’t have a good photo of us. And back in the summer/fall I’d thought it’d be super fun to announce our pregnancy on them. Except the gift card expired Nov 15th when we didn’t really know what was going on. I decided it was too early for an announcement like that. And their beautiful bamboo wall art kept drawing me in.

Here’s when I really had a hard time deciding. Did I go with something for future babies nursery unsure of our theme? Is it weird to have two little owls on the art & three babies? Did I want to go owl crazy {y’all know that answer was yes}. Then I remembered that I still haven’t ordered our wedding photography album. Of my dream to have one of our favorite wedding photos made into art & the Capture the Memories design spoke to me.

I gave y’all a brief preview in last week’s project 365 post. To say I love it wouldn’t be enough. I went with the small size which will be perfect to be hung in our den where we can see it every day.

Love love love it!

I loved the customer service. They previewed the art, made the photo pop just a bit more & changed the font color. They also wanted to verify that the four year old date was correct {yep, just lazy & sentimental}. Oh & they plant a tree for every purchase~ how cool is that?

I wasn’t paid anything to do this post. I haven’t talked to Paper Culture since BlogHer & they don’t know I’m writing this nor do they probably remember me. But I’m grateful for their gift card & so happy with my product that I just had to share it with y’all.

Categories
Everything Else

Quick List

Things I suck at recently:
Cooking
Cleaning
Running a lot of errands
Staying up late
Twitter
Reading
Blogging.

Stuff I’ve been good at recently:
Laying on the couch
Playing thoughtless solitare on my phone
Eating
Drinking water
Peeing
Rocking maternity pants.

Hoping to kick back into blogging & blog reading & commenting soon.

Categories
Everything Else Pregnancy

Baby closet craziness

I started this post back in August {at the beginning of my Infertile Fridays} but had been holding off on hitting publish until I had a chance to take photo evidence to reveal my baby stuff hoarding secret.

Before I was even engaged, I’d amassed a pile of wedding related things I hoped to use. Favorite programs, invitations, photos I’d taken of friends’ flowers & dresses. I had ideas of location, time of year & colors. I’m a planner & it made it much easier once that ring was on my finger & the real planning needed to be done.

That said, you shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve slowly been gathering future baby things over the last couple of years. Enough that there has been a “future baby closet” for a while. It’s the closet of our office/man cave/future nursery/junk room so it works. It began when I saw the Vera Bradley owl pattern was being retired & thus the baby bag was on major sale. I love the versatility of that pattern & knew several friends who’d enjoyed that bag. A quick click or two online & it was at our doorstep. Then one day I was shopping at Target {before we were even TTC} and noticed there was an owl themed gender neutral set on sale. I went home, discussed with Jason then bought it, crib sheets & all. Nothing like being prepared way before the fact right?!

Then I discovered blog giveaways. Free baby stuff. And next thing I knew a Sophie, ruffle butt training pants, a Bird E Studios diaper wristlet, a nursing cover & an owl patterned cloth diaper were added to the closet. Then the Haute Green party at BlogHer happened & I very happily came home with eight more cloth diapers, wipes, cloth diaper laundry detergent & a Fuzzi Bunz to-go wet bag. Another cloth diaper {Soft Bums} was won recently & I also received burp wraps earlier this fall. Yep, all this before my first positive pregnancy test.

& since we announced our news, my super sweet friend Kelly gave us our first future baby gift. A precious owl lovey! I’m obsessed! My parents brought down a five pack of teeny tiny newborn onesies last weekend.

While she was in town to help, Mom & I went through the baby stash at the bottom of this closet. Of course all the ones of things need to be multiplied by three now! We organized the crib set {& later discovered at Target that while they no longer sell that one, Circo still makes another neutral one that will coordinate}, put all the toys in the diaper bag, & all the super cute cloth diapers in the tote bag. Ignore the mess, as this has been my secret closet until now…

my no-longer-so-secret baby stash

Am I the only one who pre-baby hoarded tiny little things?