Shower for Baby Parker!

In May, I helped to host a baby shower for my sister and nephew on-the-way along with my mom and one of my sister’s good friends, Julie.  I designed and printed the invites from home, my mom handled all the food and Julie helped a ton with the decorations – she is SUPER creative!

I based the design for the invites off of what Katie is using for Parker’s nursery.  She’s using all neutrals – gray, white, cream, with pops of orange. I had to add in a pop of blue, too – with two girls in the house it was fun to do something for a little boy!

This was on the table right where people entered.  I made the diaper wreath and the welcome sign; Julie painted that adorable little elephant sign and we had everyone sign an orange “balloon” for Parker. 

Katie has it framed in Parker’s nursery now!

Here’s the drink station – again, Julie made that adorable pennant!

And the one with his name for the fireplace (that is now over his crib)!

In lieu of shower games, we set up a onesie applique station for guests to make.  They turned out SO cute!

The parents-to-be!

Hadley LOVED to help her aunt Katie open ALL of her presents!

It was such a fun shower and we cannot WAIT to meet sweet little baby Parker!  One more month!

Hadley’s Second Birthday Party

This past weekend was Hadley’s 2nd birthday party!  Even though we celebrated, just the three of us, her turning two on her actual birthday (the 3rd), we decided to wait an extra week to give everyone some time to unwind from the holidays (read: give me time to take down our Christmas decorations!) and give our families a short reprieve from driving to/from Dallas for Christmas.

I had visions months ago of throwing a “tu-tu cute” birthday party for our little two year old, but knowing how much she loves Elmo, I just had to cave into the character theme so we can remember this phase of life when we look back on pictures.  There wasn’t a lot of elmo – just some cookies, stuffed elmos, books, and paper decorations, and the rest was just girly pink, orange and red polka dots!  The party went so, so well, and we are feeling so incredibly blessed by the family and friends that God has placed in our lives.  How lucky we are that so many people were willing to come and celebrate the life of our sweet little girl this weekend!  So, without further adieu… party picture overload.

I used the same birthday banner that I had made for Hadley’s first birthday party (even though it didn’t really match).  I just did not have the energy at 35 weeks pregnant to make another one!  I found the elmo face “wands” on etsy and stuck them in vases with red, pink and white m&ms for centerpieces on the food table.  Then just made some tissue poms for the cupcake/cookie table.  I am so mad at myself for not getting better pictures of so many things.  I did the exact same thing with her first party.  Thankfully my sister came to the rescue and took a lot of pictures for me – I would have none of the décor/food if not for her! 

I didn’t get any pictures on my good camera of the favors, either, which I was bummed about!   Holly, from The Doughmestic Housewife made the cookies.  I ordered cookies from her before for my sister’s lingerie shower and not only were they seriously the best decorated cookies I’d ever seen, they were DELICIOUS too!  She’s actually expecting her 3rd little one right now, and I am so thankful that I’ve gotten to know her a bit (through social media) and she squeezed me in even though she’s really not taking orders right now!  Thanks so much Holly!

This is one of the extra favors – just took a picture with my phone.  And this one is actually a little different as the rest of them were slightly different buckets that had oval chalkboard labels on them so I could write each kid’s name.  The buckets had goldfish, crayons and an elmo cookie in them (if you’ve ever seen an episode of Elmo’s World, you know why they got goldfish and crayons…if you haven’t…enjoy not having that song stuck in your head.) 

The party started at 4:30, so we served an early dinner.  I didn’t get a full picture of the food, but we had a Chick-Fil-A nugget tray, Chick-Fil-A chicken salad sandwich tray, PB&J sandwiches, chips/dip, Elmo face fruit plate, veggie plate, pretzel/kiss/m&m’s, cupcakes and cookies. 

Two things about this next picture.  First – this Elmo book she got from my grandma was an instant hit!  She pulled it out of the box and just plopped down to start reading it and sat and read the whole book!  Second – how adorable is her outfit?  My friend, Hether – of Ditsy Daisy Boutique, made the shirt and Hadley and I both love it!  As soon as I pulled it out to put on her she said “oooooh! Melmo shirt! How pitty! (pretty)”  Thanks Hether!!

And a real life picture for you… this is what it typically looks like to capture a picture with a two year old…

As you can tell, the ice cream set she got for her birthday was a huge hit… as was this tunnel!

A Kitchen Shower in Austin

I haven’t done a great job of blogging about what we’ve been up to the past couple weeks, so I thought I’d do a quick picture recap for our memories your enjoyment. 

First up, I mentioned before that I was co-hosting a kitchen shower for my sister in Austin.  It was like 3 weeks ago and I am finally getting around to posting about it!  I co-hosted with my mother-in-law and we had it at a delicious restaurant called Chez Zee.  I just put together really simple centerpieces of mason jars with wooden utensils and used my Silhouette to cut out some “k+e” and some hearts to jazz it up a bit. 

 

Hadley had her party-face on and was loving all the attention and tissue paper!

We sent out recipe cards with the invites and asked people to bring their favorite recipe to the shower.  I found this recipe box at Bed, Bath & Beyond and then cut out the words/monogram with my Silhouette as a gift for Katie.

The bride with her delicious cake – carrot cake is her favorite!

I always do that funny head-tilt (below) in pictures.  That’s me in the middle with my sister (the bride!) and my co-host/mother-in-law!

Hadley with her grandmas!

Looking back at these pictures, I wish I could go back and eat all of that food all over again!  Everything was delicious!  Here’s to hoping Hadley is as well behaved at the wedding as she was at the shower!

Hadley’s First Birthday Party–A Winter ONEderland!

With the craziness of the holidays, we decided to throw Hadley’s birthday party a couple weeks after her actual big day.  (Not to mention that having it later meant that some of our closest friends – and Hadley’s first friend – who live in China right now, were able to be here for the big day!)
I decided on a Winter One-derland theme for her party, and in true Texas fashion, we had a beautiful, albeit windy, day in the mid-70s.  Go-figure!  This time last year we had had a couple days of snow!  It was wonderful, though, to be able to use our back patio, as our house was not made for entertaining 20+ people!  
Before I dive into the pictures, I want to make sure to include thank-yous to our family and friends.  I could NOT have thrown this party without the massive amount of help I received!  My mom came up  4 days early to help with Hadley and getting the house in order, my dad MADE Hadley’s smash cake (he also made the cake for our wedding, which you can see in this post – DELISH and such a special treat to have it homemade with love).  My sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law were huge helps as well – I wouldn’t have any pictures of the day if it wasn’t for Katie – and the BBQ wouldn’t have been nearly as tasty without Eric’s help!  My in-laws came a little early as well and helped arrange the tables and cut up vegetables – not to mention bringing the adorable mason jar server for the lemonade!  And my dear friend Courtney came early to help with the decorations!  THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU to all of you!  And to everyone who came – we feel so, so blessed by the friendships we have in you! 
Ok, on to the pictures!  I had every intention of getting out my good lens and snapping some artsy, beautiful pictures, but of course I didn’t take one.single.picture on my camera!  Thankfully, my sister took pictures as we were setting everything up! 
First of all, this was the invite I designed… (I blocked out the address info, just so you didn’t think that was all white space!)


The dessert table…  We had cupcakes, “ice cubes” (marshmallows dipped in white chocolate, dipped in sprinkles), chocolate covered oreos, and “frosty truffles” (cake batter truffles). 

This was the table by the front door.  One of my favorite things that we did was have the guests fill out a “Wishes for Hadley” form (thank you Pinterest!).  I will forever treasure these cards!  The favors were cookies that I set out towards the end of the party with a card that read “Thank you SNOW much!”






At the food table, we had BBQ chicken sandwiches, homemade potato salad (thanks mom!), fresh fruit, and veggies and dip (“veggies dipped in snow”). 

I also set up a hot chocolate bar with marshmallows and chocolate chips as add-ins. 

A little behind the scenes look – Eric is shredding the chicken while my dad makes the hot chocolate!

And, last but not least, some pictures of the birthday girl!
Checking out her presents with Brynn…

When it came time for her “smash” cake (which I put in quotations, because she was SO not into smashing the cake, whatsoever), she was a little less than enthused.  She loved being sang to, and loved all the attention, but I had to break the cake up for her and even then she took a little taste and decided she wasn’t in the mood for cake.  She did, however, love the banana filling that her Poppie put in the middle layer for her! 

We had her shirt made by the wife of one of Matt’s co-workers!  She has an adorable etsy shop called LilyBella’s Boutique and she did such a great job.  Thank you Elizabeth! 
All-in-all it was SO much fun throwing this party, but I am exhausted!  Thank you, again, to everyone who came to help us celebrate!  We love you all! 
Sources:
All the paper products (labels, banners, cupcake toppers etc…) were homemade with my new Silhouette machine!  I had planned to make stickers for the cups, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the print & cut feature to work with sticker paper. 
Cupcakes: Sam’s – delicious cupcakes at only $13 for 30!
Cookies: A local bakery
Hadley’s shirt: LilyBella’s Boutique
Decorations: Most of the snowflakes were found either in the dollar section at Target or at the Dollar store!
Oh and one more picture… after everyone had left we realized we didn’t take a picture of the three of us!  So, I set up the self-timer on my camera and we stuck Hadley back in her high chair for this picture… ha!




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