21 Weeks!

So no chalkboard this week – we’re in California for the holidays! So this will have to do ;)

How far along? 21 Weeks!
Maternity clothes? Can anyone tell me where to find a good maternity band? My jeans are pretty much not fitting anymore…and I’m drowning in fabric when I wear the maternity jeans! 
Sleep: My hip cramps are getting worse! Yucky.
Best moment this week: Um. Christmas. Duh. ;) Best thing ever to have our families open their Gender Reveal Boxes and it’s so nice to not have to call my baby “it” anymore!
Miss Anything? Mmm…clothes that fit ;)
Food cravings: Still no cravings, but I still enjoy sweets!
Anything making you queasy or sick: So we went to see The Hobbit last night and that giant goblin king totally made me gag with his overlarge chin flap/thing. Disgusting.  
Have you started to show yet: Yes!! So excited! Though I have a hard time imagining myself getting bigger! Eek!  ;)
Belly Button in or out? In…but it’s starting to change to out! It’s freaky looking! Ha!
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy! I love the holidays and I love that we could announce Nathan’s gender on Christmas and life’s good.
Looking forward to: Planning my Mustache Bash baby shower!! :)

It’s a…Gender Reveal!

Okay!

This is it my friends. Time to tell you who our little Mini-Moffat is!! Are you so excited?! Because I sure am! I can’t believe we managed to keep it a secret for TWO WHOLE WEEKS! Longest 2 weeks ever. ;) Now that both of our families have opened up their “Christmas Reveal Boxes” (I’ll be sharing the details later), here is our Merry Christmas to you!

Introducing…(drum roll please…)

Mr. Nathan James!

It’s a boy!!! YAY!! We are so excited!! Though I do have to tell you that both John and I were a little surprised and a teensy bit disappointed, as we both thought we were having a girl. Call it a feeling, if you will. But rest assured that we are both thrilled to have little Nathan joining our family in just a few short months now! Eek!

Now I feel like I can tell you about the ultrasound, since I can now refer to my sweet baby as “he” :) The ultrasound was amazing! And Nathan was sooooo wiggly! It was kind of strange to watch him roll around in there and not be able to feel most of it. It was incredible to see all his little fingers and toes!

Sometimes he’d have his hand behind his head with his elbow up, like he was kicking back. I think he gets that from John. :) And he did not leave us with any doubt that he is a boy. He was quite happy to show us. *ahem* ;) And one of my first thoughts was “oh, I hope he doesn’t end up being one of those boys that wants to pee on trees all the time”. Ha ha ha! Random, right? John says one of his first thoughts was “YES! The Moffat name will live on!”

Thankfully he has all his vital organs in all the right places and he is developing right on schedule. The doctor said he weighed about 9oz when we went in 2 weeks ago. The ultrasound took a lot longer than I expected, they really try to get a view of everything to make sure we’re good to go. Given that he was so wiggly, they never did get a view of his face; they needed to look at his nose and lips. But he was not having it. Already stubborn. He probably gets that from me. ;) To my growing discomfort (as about halfway through the sonogram, I REALLY had to use the restroom), the sonogram technician (and then later, the doctor) would bounce the wand/transmitter thing on my abdomen, shaking Nathan around – as though that would make him cooperate?! But of course, he responded with what I thought was a perfectly natural reaction: he put both arms in front of his face. I imagined him thinking “WHAT is happening to my safe little bubble?! AH!” But as a result, I will be going back in for another sonogram next month. The doctor also informed us that one of his kidneys is dilated bigger than normal and although it typically resolves itself before the baby is born, they want to keep an eye on it.

And there you have it! Looks like I’m going to be outnumbered ;)

I hope everyone is having a very Merry Christmas!

20 Weeks!

I know, I know, I missed last week. Turns out I was crazy busy. The result of a rash promise made to my mother. It went something like this:

Mom: Now, if I buy this Silhouette for you for Christmas, you have to cut out whatever I want till the end of time.
Me: Of course! (I really wanted that Silhouette)

Which resulted in my cutting out 45 ornament boxes and making 45 accompanying ornaments. Along with another vinyl order. Add that to teaching YW in Church that Sunday and several other things that I have already forgotten. But it was busy.

Anyway, enough excuses. 20 Weeks!

How far along? 20 Weeks – Officially halfway through! Um crazy?! Yes. Yes it is.
Total weight gain/loss: No idea. Maybe I should only have this up once I get back from a Dr.’s appt… 
Maternity clothes? Still in that kind of annoying in between stage…though fewer and fewer of my tops are fitting…but if I wear a maternity top…it’s like I’m wearing a tent… 
Sleep: I’m still sleeping horribly, had the worst night’s sleep ever this past week…though that could have had something to do with the paper-thin walls of our apartment and the fact that I could hear our neighbors’ shrieks of laughter well after midnight…
Best moment this week: I’m going to cheat and say the best moment was our ultrasound! (Even though that was last week) Seriously awesome to see our little person! And just be patient a few more days my friends…gender reveal on Christmas!!
Miss Anything? I’m thinking my clothes, most particularly my cute jeans ;)
Food cravings: No cravings really. I’m almost disappointed! 
Anything making you queasy or sick: Had a few episodes of queasiness that came out of no where from foods I’d been eating all week…so that was weird… 
Have you started to show yet: Getting a little bigger! I’m so glad I’m starting to actually look pregnant! Yay!
Belly Button in or out? In
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy! I love being able to refer to our little person by the name we’ve picked out. Though I had my first hormonal meltdown last week. Hopefully those stay infrequent ;)
Looking forward to: Christmas!! And telling everyone what we’re having!! Hurray!

“Business. It is the American Way”

Points to whoever gets that movie reference. ;) It’s also fits in this time of year. That’s your last clue. hee hee

Anywho, so I’m sure I’ve mentioned on here somewhere that my parents went back to school (and have been in school for the last 2 years) to get their masters’ degrees. Well, it’s finally winding down. Whew! I was able to go down to VA this past weekend and celebrate my Dad’s completion of his MBA! Hurray! His course work has actually been finished since June, but his school doesn’t have commencement ceremonies in June. So here were are in December. Finally getting to see him walk for his graduation.

We headed down to Danville, VA (the middle of nowhere), about 3 1/2 hours from my parent’s house. My Dad got his degree from Averett University, so that’s where we headed for commencement. The graduation was very nice. The speaker was blessedly brief, as I was dying of starvation (okay, not really, but I’m pregnant and need to eat more often than the average human being) but I survived (barely) and managed to get some fun pictures…on someone else’s camera (one of my Dad’s classmates had a sweet DSLR that I got to use. I need to get me one of those). The ones I have on my camera are kinda lame. But I’m going to put them up anyway :) Maybe when I get copies of the ones from the nice camera, I’ll remember to post them. Or not. We’ll see ;)

You’ll have to forgive my siblings – I don’t think they realized we were going for a nice picture ;)
Hurray!! He did it!
Congratulations Daddy! We are so proud of you! :)

18 Weeks!

How far along? 18 Weeks
Total weight gain/loss: I am up to 113, so not too much
Maternity clothes? It’s been a mostly sweatpants week ;)
Sleep: I’m sleeping horribly, but I slept that was pre-pregnancy, so you’d think I’d be used to it. I’ve had to sleep with a pillow between my knees already to help with the weird side cramps I’m still getting.
Best moment this week: I am feeling honest-to-goodness movement this week! It’s seriously the coolest, most amazing (and freakiest) thing ever. The first time I felt it (and actually recognized it as baby movement) John and I were sitting on the couch and John was on facebook or something and I gasped out loud when I felt a little kick! John was all “what’s wrong?!” and I said something like “it MOVED!” And it was awesome.
Miss Anything? Not missing anything too badly this week.
Food cravings: Still eating lots of salad, but still not really craving anything.
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope! Always a good thing. :) 
Have you started to show yet: Little by little! And certain (tighter) tops make me look more pregnant than others.
Belly Button in or out? In
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy! I’m loving feeling those little flutters of movement almost every day now.
Looking forward to: TUESDAY! We have our ultrasound on Tuesday and we will hopefully be able to see what our baby is!! I AM SO EXCITED!!

It’s December!!

It’s officially Christmastime!!! HURRAY! Now if Maryland would just give us some snow instead of these fluke 65degree days…the awesomeness would be complete. But I’m not here to talk about the weather (I mean, we’re going to southern California for Christmas for crying out loud. I promise you there will not be snow. But there will be family, and that’s what counts! :), I’m here to give you a non-baby related update on our lives. ;) Yes, even though my energy levels are still depleted from their normal go-crazy levels (I think I’m also still recovering from Thanksgiving – whew!) we have managed to do lots of fun things since the ‘official’ start of the Christmas season (please, my Christmas season started like 4 weeks ago. I march to the beat of my own drum on the matter. I just try to keep it under control for John’s sake. ha!).

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned on the bloggy here that at church I’m the Young Women’s Laurel advisor. That means I get to teach the 16-18year old girls on Sundays. It’s awesome. The girls are great and I’m loving it so far. Well, one of our class activities on Thursdays was coming over to decorate cookies :) I gave them a few pointers on how to hold the bags and put the icing on…and then pretty much let them have at it. **This picture has 3 of the 4 girls that come regularly, one is hiding in the corner reading a book she found on the bookshelf after she finished her cookies. The YW president is 2nd from the right in this picture.** 
Their lovely cookie masterpieces :)

We also scored a great Craigslist find last week. We have been looking for a hutch/cabinet/something to go behind the dining table for some extra kitchen storage. I know. I’m never going to have a big enough kitchen. Well, we found a nice black cabinet with glass paned doors up in the Baltimore area for $75! John went up with a friend to check it out. It barely fit in the jeep. Like, they had to move the seats up in the front to make a little bit more room. So they were a little squished coming back home, but it all worked out. And we love it!

This is the all cleaned up and finished version. It was missing several knobs, so we went to Hobby Lobby the other day and bought some fancy new ones to spruce it up a bit. AND all the knobs were on sale for 50% off. SCORE! You know how I love me a good deal.

John made the ‘mistake’ of telling me I could pick whatever knobs I wanted to put on here. It’s probably a good thing he accompanied me to Hobby Lobby. ;) At least then he had some input. But I think we both agree that we ended up with some nice choices.We had to drill a wider hole on the inside of the drawer for these to fit, but I. love. them.
We didn’t have to replace the knobs on the glass doors, but I’m glad we did. These black stone-type ones we found complement the drawer knobs quite nicely.
And here it is one more time ;) We still haven’t quite figured out what’s going in there yet, and if I’m going to have to do some sort of frosted glass effect on the doors (you know, to hide unsightly food storage items ;) but for right now, it’s good to go!

This past weekend we made it down to the temple to see the lights and the international nativities. This is seriously one of my favorite things about Christmastime in the DC area. To get into the spirit of the thing, we made Christmas pizzas! (okay, so I had just planned on making pizza this night…and decided to jazz things up a bit at the last minute)

We just used my Christmas cookie cutters to make them. We had stars and mittens too, but the mini circles and trees turned out the best. It was so fun. Well, I had fun. John just laughed at me and my excitement over tree shaped pizzas ;)

Then we went to the temple!

Love it! We had a very nice time at the visitor’s center looking at all the nativities.
Germany! Yay!
This display from Jordan was one of my favorites. The woodwork is just beautiful!
Had to get a picture of the display from Spain for our missionary there! :)
Oh yes, and another German display. The Christmas pyramid. If you are unfamiliar with these, you light the candles at the bottom and the heat makes the fan blades spin. Usually the fan is connected to the displays on the inside of each level, so the whole thing spins. And it’s beautiful.

After walking around the lights outside for a little while, we decided we were cold and it was time to go home ;)

AND! We are allll decorated and ready for Christmas! Oh yeah, the tree totally went up the Monday after Thanksgiving. We do not waste time around here! And John is okay with switching to Christmas mode once Thanksgiving is over. ;) And all my Christmas shopping is complete and wrapped! So I needed a place to put the the gifts!

I’ll have to enjoy being able to have the presents out this early before we have a little one crawling around next year! And most of those are for family members. If we just set out the ones for the two of us, there would only be like…3. ;) I chose a wrapping theme this year and I’ve had SO much fun with it. What?! Can you blame me?! I live to make things cute!
I used brown kraft paper with red coordinating washi tape and tied the tags on with red baker’s twine. I LOVE the effect. And how it TOTALLY matches the tree and skirt. (I know you might be rolling your eyes at me. And I don’t care) The monogram tags are made from dictionary pages of the corresponding letter. Like that D for Dad there was cut out of a page in the D section of the dictionary. I know. Can I even get more ridiculous? That’s a dangerous question…and remains to be seen. ;)

My Silhouette CAMEO (my early Christmas present from my parents – you know, the one we waited up for and bought online at midnight on Black Friday?) came last week and I’ve been having the time of my life getting used to it and experimenting and cutting things out. It’s seriously awesome. I’m quite convinced it can do just about anything. I used it to design and cut out my address labels for our Christmas cards this year and I made these super cute ornament boxes for these ornaments I made for church/neighbor gifts. I’m almost more proud of the boxes than the ornaments. And I made the ornaments! I just had the CAMEO cut the boxes out! ha! ;) Even John was impressed when I showed him that the box’s design comes with a locking flap-thing at the top to keep the ornament from rolling around.

As a result, the coffee table in the living room has looked a little like this for the last week or so:

Hee hee. Well, I guess that’s it for us for now. I suppose I better go and finish my to-do list for today. (hey! at least getting this post up was on that list! one item down, 2 to go) Because I may or may not still be in my pajamas…

17 Weeks!

How far along? 17 Weeks
Total weight gain/loss: Again, no idea, my next appointment is coming up this Monday though.
Maternity clothes? I am finally at the point where the hair-tie trick doesn’t work on my skinny jeans anymore…so we’re back to bigger jeans and sweatpants until I’m big enough for my maternity jeans.
Sleep: I usually sleep on my side, but I have been making an effort in the last few weeks to NOT sleep on my back, so that I’m ready for when I shouldn’t be sleeping on my back. But I’ve been waking up with these weird cramps in my hips and legs down to my knee on the side I’m sleeping on. So then I switch and wake up another couple of hours later to switch again because the cramps have moved to the other side… weird? I know. 
Best moment this week: Hm…that would have to be putting up our Christmas tree and putting presents underneath! (yes, I’ll have you know that I’m ALL done with my Christmas shopping – just waiting on 2 things to come in the mail and then I’ll have everything wrapped too! I know, I’m so good ;)
Miss Anything? I miss wearing a belt. Random, but a belt is too tight, but then my pants are loose in the back so any top tucked in comes back out really easy and it’s driving me crazy!
Food cravings: SALAD! I’ve been eating lots of salad. I was a big salad eater anyway, but that’s been my go-to for the last 2 weeks. It helps that my mom introduced me to this life-changing-good new salad dressing she found at Wegmans. Seriously delicious. It’s called Garlic Expressions. And there are like 7 full cloves of garlic floating around in the bottle. OH yum. I just have to smell it to want to eat something with that deliciousness on it. My mouth is watering just typing about it. But I just had a salad like an hour ago…
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope! Hurray!! Loving this new I’m-not-sick-all-the-time thing. 
Have you started to show yet: My little bump is a little bigger! I’m excited for it to get bigger. I’m kind of tired of people telling me I don’t look pregnant, because um, hello?! My waist does NOT look like this normally! ;)
Belly Button in or out? In
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy! Very grateful I’m not crazy hormonal (though we might need to ask John to validate that statement) At least…I don’t think I’ve been hormonal…maybe I’ve had a few moments…but don’t we all? ;)
Looking forward to: We are down to a week and a half until we find out what our baby is!!! But, I suppose I should tell you all now…we’re not telling ANYONE until Christmas. It’s going to be a fun Christmas surprise for our families – I of course have something super cute planned out. So get your ranting and raving about it out of the way because if my mom can’t drag it out of me before Christmas…trust me, no one can ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Were you getting bored of just weekly photos on the blog too? Good, because I missed this past week. I was a little busy eating, baking and shopping till I dropped. Everyday. Which will also explain the appalling lack of photos of the week. So sorry. I’ll be back to weekly pregnancy photos next week. And then I’m going to have to get a little creative until Christmas…because I got nothin’ else blog-worthy going on. ;)

Anyway, we had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend with my family in Virginia. I actually went down with my mom last Friday since she got the week off of student teaching and didn’t have to go back up for those few days before Thanksgiving Thursday. Those few days before John joined us Wednesday were filled with shopping and baking and crafting. My parents splurged and got a 12ft (fake) Christmas tree for the family room (with its 18ft ceilings) to decorate this year. The thing is HUGE. And since it was the only 12 footer Lowe’s had left – it was the display – it didn’t come with a box or a bag to store it in. The nice Lowe’s guy gave them $50 off…but how they end up storing when it comes down after the holidays remains to be seen. ;) We decorated early in the week because of some plans (which I will tell you about in a minute) on the Friday after Thanksgiving and the house needed to look all spiffy and decorated. But seriously, did I mention the tree is huge?! I mean, I’m only 5’ 1” but this should help give you some perspective on the ginormousness of this awesome tree:

Isn’t it beautiful?! It totally looks like one of those fancy trees you see in fancy hotel lobbies ;)

Mom and I had a girl’s crafting get together with some friends and neighbors and we made cookies and ornaments and a personal favorite – Hershey’s kisses trees!

There was more shopping and decorating, and my mom confessed that she can’t go out shopping with me anymore because I make her buy all sorts of extra stuff. Not true. I only make suggestions ;)

John joined us Wednesday night and it was so wonderful to have him with us! Thursday was of course, our Thanksgiving feast. My dad got a smoker for his birthday and smoked the turkey this year. We did have to put it in the oven after a few hours, but it turned out super tasty. We stuffed ourselves silly and without even bothering to do the dishes (though we did put the leftovers away) we all crashed and took naps. We cleaned up afterwards ;)

It was a good thing we took our naps, because we had a crazy night of shopping! Now, I don’t think I would normally go out Thursday night for Black Friday shopping (weren’t we supposed to be thankful for what we already have on this day?!), but Mom and I were on a mission. And I am still feeling quite thankful for all my blessings ;) Walmart had some sales events happening Thursday night on items we were specifically looking for. My laptop shorted and crashed several weeks ago (would have had to replace the motherboard for the price of a new laptop – blech), and I was desperately looking for a good deal on a new laptop. Bingo! Walmart was selling HP laptops for a killer price starting at 10pm Thursday night. Mom was looking for a specific gift (that I will not mention) for a member of my family (who will remain anonymous) and a printer. Both of which went on sale at Walmart for a limited time Thursday night.

So Walmart on Thursday night it was. And it was crazy. There were people and pallets of product EVERYWHERE. The biggest challenge was finding where they were selling the laptops and printers and things because nothing was sold in its normal spot. And the poor Walmart employees really had no idea where anything was. I found my laptop at the jewelry counter. And I got the very. last. ticket. They had a limited number of laptops and was giving out that same number of tickets and I got the last one!! Feeling pretty thankful about that too ;) So I scored my new laptop and just finished getting all my favorite programs and files and things on it today. Hurray!

Once we got back from Walmart, we still stayed up for an online sale for my Christmas present from my parents to go live at midnight. I’m getting a Silhouette CAMEO!!!!!!!!!

I. am. so. excited. You know my lovely cricut machine? That I cut all my vinyl on? It has had a good long life (it still works) but I’m getting an upgrade! The CAMEO is like the Lamborghini of die cut machines. And the site had 50 machines to sell at their awesome Black Friday price. And I got one!!!!!!!!!! Only to get an email later that morning saying my order was on hold because my credit card had been denied (crazy Black Friday purchases) and would be processed as soon as I gave them the correct info (it was correct). THEN I saw on the Silhouette website that they had a better deal. So we canceled the first order and bought the one from the Silhouette website. So we didn’t even have to stay up till midnight. Oops. ;) Oh well. But overall, I’d say the evening/stretched to the next morning was a SUCCESS! So excited about my new toy coming in the mail in a week or two!!

Friday was the reason the house was already decorated for Christmas. It was time for our annual Come by for Pie party! (I made this for the invitation on Photoshop :)

We had a cute little poem to go with it too. Because we’re cool like that. And I suppose I’m obligated to mention (this is for you, Amy) that we had more than just pie. We had cheesecake and banana bread and sugar cookies. But they didn’t fit in the poem! ;) But the pie party was a success, unless you count my apple pie’s filling overflowing onto the floor of my parent’s oven and smoking up a storm…AFTER guests had arrived. *how embarrassing!* The pie was fine…the oven is not… so sorry mom… :S But we had a wonderful evening visiting with friends and eating pie..and cheesecake, and banana bread, and cookies… ;)

Saturday was cleaning up and relaxing and after far too long, I got my hair cut. My bangs are now once again under control. Thank goodness! We spent the afternoon going to see Wreck-it Ralph and we loved it! Then it was time to pack up and get ready to go home the next day.

I am feeling so grateful for my Savior, my friends and my family this year and especially for this amazing opportunity to have our baby. We are so very blessed and I hope all of you have had a wonderful holiday weekend!

15 Weeks!

 

How far along? 15 Weeks
Total weight gain/loss: No idea, won't know the new numbers until Dec!
Maternity clothes? Still normal clothes, I'm so glad I get a few more weeks of regular jeans :)
Sleep: I'm not waking up at 4 starving anymore, so this is definitely an improvement
Best moment this week: Making it through my first full week without getting sick! Hurray! But another super awesome thing would be when I experienced a very strange sensation in my tummy the other day and realized later after reading in one of my pregnancy books that that could have been baby MOVEMENT! How cool!!! (Just humor me, I could have that totally wrong, but I'd much rather think of it as movement than some really weird bubble of gas doing somersaults in my stomach...)
Miss Anything? Not really missing too much this week...unless you count snow this early in the season!
Food cravings: Still nothing specific, but I've noticed my go to snacks are salty, like chips and salsa, pickles, french fries, etc.
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope, not really! And I can't even express how happy I am to be feeling a little more normal!
Have you started to show yet: I have a little bump! Yay! Though I suspect it might have less to do with the baby, and more to do with all the extra calories I'm packing away because I'm still hungry all the time. Oh well...at least I'm starting to look a little more pregnant :)
Belly Button in or out? In
Happy or Moody most of the time: Feeling very happy now that I'm not sick all the time! Woo hoo!
Looking forward to: Spending Thanksgiving with my family and getting closer and closer to finding out what gender our baby is!!!!!

14 Weeks!

HURRAY! I'm officially in my second trimester!! I'm definitely pretty excited about that! :) I tried freehanding (is that a word?) my chalkboard design this week (I had been using a stencil for the numbers and "weeks") and I can definitely use some practice...but maybe by the end of the pregnancy I'll be a pro! 

How far along? 14 Weeks
Total weight gain/loss: I think total gain is about 5 pounds so far. I am typically 105, now I'm almost 110.
Maternity clothes? Nope, but I discovered the hair tie trick so that I can wear my cute jeans a little longer! HURRAY!
Sleep: Blech. And now I wake John up too when I make my several bathroom trips. So sorry my love.
Best moment this week: We heard the baby's heartbeat on Monday!!!!! It was soooooo cool. John said "it sounds like an alien!" Well...it is a little creature... ;)
Miss Anything? Not having to burp like 50 times after I eat.
Food cravings: Hm...no cravings this week. Except for wanting to eat that clearance candy...but I was like that before I got pregnant :)
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nothing in particular, although I don't think my tummy appreciated my choice of snack this morning (a granola bar and then about 15 minutes later, a pickle. What?! It's what I wanted at the time!) so it was definitely saltines for lunch today until tummy decided to forgive me.
Have you started to show yet: I'm getting a little bitty bump! You can't tell too much because of my sweater, but it's very exciting!
Belly Button in or out? In
Happy or Moody most of the time: Still happy :) John's pretty glad I'm not crazy hormonal!
Looking forward to: Thanksgiving and feeling better!

13 Weeks!

Alright. So I'm late again. Because my chalkboard is Halloween-y...and that was yesterday. Oh well. Here goes ;)

How far along? 13 Weeks
Total weight gain/loss: Still don’t know as my appointment was canceled due to the hurricane. Oops.
Maternity clothes? No, but I can only wear a certain pair of jeans because they are the only ones that don’t feel too tight…but they are still a little big for me, so they sag…ew. ;)
Sleep: Still not fabulous, but that’s pretty normal for me…
Best moment this week: It was going to be hearing the baby’s heartbeat at my doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, but since that got canceled, I have to wait until Monday. Oh well.
Miss Anything? Feeling normal (ha!)
Food cravings: I really wanted sour skittles this week. And I finally got them when all the Halloween candy went on clearance at Target. Hee hee
Anything making you queasy or sick: I guess I should clarify from last week that the only thing that actually makes me queasy it being too hungry. When I said eating made me sick, it makes me bloated (as in gassy (sorry if that’s TMI) as in I’m burping all the time (my sister-in-law would be proud))
Have you started to show yet: Not really…the only time I look like I am is after I’ve eaten. And I’m bloated. Bleeechhhh ;)
Belly Button in or out? In
Happy or Moody most of the time: Pretty happy, I haven’t really gotten moody, but it can sure get you down when you feel like crap all the time…
Looking forward to: *Hopefully* feeling better by next week! I’ll be in my second trimester! Woo hoo!!

That’s a Lot of Cookies

That was the mantra last week. If you’ve been keeping up with my facebook or any of the last 2 or 3 blog posts, you’ll know that I’ve been working on my biggest cookie request EVER of 16 dozen (or 192) Halloween cookies.

Well, they are finally done and delivered. They did get delivered a day late because of Hurricane Sandy, but I don’t care. They are off my kitchen table and we can now eat there again ;)

But let back up a little. You might know by now that I have sent John into work several times with decorated cookies that I don’t want to keep here at the apartment…because I know John will eat them all by himself ;) My ulterior motive was so that other people might know of my cookie fabulousness (forgive me my momentary lack of modesty). And as a result, I get rave reviews from his coworkers and earlier this month, the HR coordinator at his office asked me to make cookies for Halloween for EVERYONE (that’s almost 200 employees) in the office! Whew!

So I have quite a few Halloween themed cookie cutters. I love Halloween cookies. They are right up there with Valentine cookies and Ninjabread Men. But we narrowed the assortment down to 4 different cutters (though I would have loved to use my Erlenmeyer flask again…) and this is what we came up with:
(the witch’s boot is my all time favorite!)

Now, I can only fit about 50 cookies on my kitchen table with enough room to work, move cookies around, and keep 2 or 3 bottles of icing on hand, so this whole 192 cookie business was a little tricky. There were cookies EVERYWHERE. I had to pull out our small white table from the 2^nd bedroom to accommodate more cookie-ness.

Needless to say, we did not use the kitchen table for eating for about…5 days. ;)

I had to have them all packaged up before this past weekend (and I was totally feeling SO sick…dang pregnancy symptoms getting in the way of cookie craziness ;) because of course, we went to VA to have our magical Harry Potter party and they finally didn’t take up quite as much space…

Then during the Hurricane, I made the customized bag toppers that were requested to go with the cookies and spent a good couple of hours cutting, folding, and stapling. Thankfully I could watch Once Upon a Time while doing this (seriously love that show)…once it went online on Monday ;) Then I packed them up all snug in their sliced bacon boxes I picked up from Costco ;)

I delivered them this morning and John tells me everyone loved them! And that makes me happy :)

And wow, that was a lot of cookies.

A Harry Potter Party!

So you remember how I said I was making 192 Halloween cookies? (I’ll be getting to those, don’t worry) Yeah…well…right in the middle of that, I took a quick ‘break’ to head to my parent’s place to put together a Harry Potter themed birthday party for my sister who turned 13 this weekend (and by the way – HOW did that just happen!? I mean…she’s old enough for facebook now! Weird…). So I just put my 192 cookie work on hold for the event. Let’s just say I received the Best Big Sister Award. Again ;) PS: I better be able to deliver said cookies on Tuesday despite the Hurricane “Frankenstorm” Sandy hitting us this week. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway. Harry Potter. LOVE. So I had sooooo much fun putting this together. Seriously. Where do I even start?! Well, I guess to start I made some ‘authentic’ Hogwarts letters for the invitations (and I don’t have a picture, GAH!) And we delivered them by Muggle mail (my Owl was sick that week). The girls arrived at Platform 9 ¾ with their tickets – enclosed in their Hogwarts letters – to board the Hogwarts express for their special mid-autumn session at the wizarding school.

We also had a fun surprise guest!

While the girls waited for everyone to arrive, they chatted and worked on a Harry Potter crossword my mom got from a librarian friend.

So excited the party is happening! I know this picture is blurry…But I thought it was cute anyway…

Once everyone was there, each girl was ‘chosen’ by a wand, which they got to paint

After wand painting, they were sorted into their Hogwarts houses. We ordered these plastic rings with the house crests on them from Amazon and the girls drew their house out of our Sorting Hat :) We may or may not have rigged it to suit the birthday girl and a friend who was the only one who actually wanted to be in Slytherin ;)

Once they were sorted, we divided them up for the two activities. They made fleece scarves (in their house colors)

And they played a Harry Potter board game – also from my mom’s librarian friend – and they each won a pet Nargle!
*Sidenote* Nargles are kind of the ‘snipe’ of the Harry Potter world…as in they aren’t real…even in Harry Potter. Confused yet? We picked Nargles because there is no description of them in the book, so we could make them look however we want. We found a cute idea on another website and modeled ours after theirs. Cute huh?!

As the last few girls were finishing up their scarves, others took to studying their Hogwarts issued spell books and began dueling. That got interesting ;)

Then there were presents!

And a very exciting gift from Mom and Dad to the birthday girl: her very own iPod touch!

Finally, there was shopping at Honeydukes. This was my main attraction. My pride and joy of the party: my Honeydukes dessert table. (And yes, for you diehards, I did take some creative liberties. Work with me here ;)
I found a file online of the Bertie Bott’s boxes, as well as a template for the chocolate frog boxes that worked GREAT for this project.
These were probably the favorite. We bought a frog mold that I used to make them out of chocolate and they turned out so awesome and the boxes even came with collector’s cards of famous witches and wizards!

We gathered everyone around for some group pictures

Had to have a shot with the ‘Headmistress’ Mama

And of course, me. The party planner ;)

Then they chowed down on all that fun candy and we put on the first Harry Potter movie, which they watched until it was time to go home. I also made homemade ice cream cookie sandwiches (instead of a birthday cake – I know, like we NEED more treats?! ;) at the request of the birthday girl. Chocolate chip cookies with double cookie dough ice cream in the middle. Made from scratch. So delicious. ;)

All in all: SUCCESS! But let me tell you, by the time we put that movie on, I. was. Exhausted. ;)

But there was more party fun to be had! It was the ward Trunk or Treat that night at my parent’s ward, so we of course went to that 30 minutes after we sent off the last birthday guest. But lucky for us, we had ready-made Harry Potter décor for our trunk! Complete with the Harry Potter movie soundtrack. I know. Cuz we’re that good. And I gotta say, we definitely had the best decorated trunk in the parking lot ;)

And then finally, I got to go to bed

Party Status: A magical success! ;)