10 Months!

Holy Cow! We’re in the double digits! How did this even happen?! His birthday is TWO months away!

Can I just say that this was the most difficult photoshoot to date?! Now that he’s crawling, Little Man does not have time for the mamarazzi. ;) And isn’t his outfit so CUTE this month?! I wish I could remember who gave us that shirt – but we love it. If you are reading this – thanks again!

And now, the outtakes :)

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really need to get back into the living room and pull down all the books off that bookshelf you haven’t baby-proofed yet”

“I am so excited about this birthday thing Mom keeps talking about. There will be cake, and cookies…”
“And presents! And party favors! And ice cream! And cake! I’m gonna eat soooo much cake…”
“Wait. What’s a smash cake? You mean I’m only getting a little cake?”
Mom: “Say cheese!”
“Cheese!”
I’ve never had cheese in my life…
Mom: “One more time! Say cheese!”
“Cheese!”
What is cheese?!
Mom: “Last time! Cheese!”
“CHEESE!”
We didn’t get nearly as many pictures as we usually do because there was a lot of this going on:
So Dad was enlisted to help with ‘positioning’.

“But I don’t want to take any more pictures!”
“Catch me if you can!”
“Aw, drats…”
A kiss to make it all better :)
He just getting so big and developing such a fun personality. He is so full of energy and makes us laugh with his silliness, his curiosity and his insistence on doing things his way. (yes, he’s totally a Boss Baby!)
And he just keeps getting cuter and cuter!
Love you Little Man!

Our Totally Tubular Table

Sorry, I meant to blog this days ago. Right after my cookie post. Then I got really excited about my sewing. And so here we are. Finally. ;)

So up until maybe a week and a half before the activity, I didn’t even know what a Chastain activity was. Neither did most of us at our table, apparently. But basically, everyone that signed up to come was assigned to a group – headed by table leaders – and before the activity, each group comes up with their own theme, to include their decorations, costumes and food. Then on the night of the activity, everyone votes on the best table and you play games and hang out with your friends and eat yummy food, etc. Sounds fun!

We didn’t sign up to come until a week before because I didn’t know if I’d be able to find someone to stay here with Nathan – this is the only ‘adult only’ activity the ward has in the year – but my Mom and brother came up for the evening and it was so awesome to have them do that for us, because it was so nice to get out with John and have some fun.

And we had so much fun! As I mentioned with my cookies, our table chose the 80s as our theme and it was bodacious. ;) I mean, look at our decorations!!
We offered free Thriller lessons to anyone interested ;)

The girls got together beforehand to do our hair and make up – as I was leaving, John says to me “don’t go too crazy!”

Um. Okay. Hee hee

Karen had a crimper, so we crimped my hair, hairsprayed it within an inch of its life and pulled it up into a side pony. I busted out the blue eyeshadow and put on some bright pink lip gloss and I was good to go! I hadn’t put my outfit on yet, so on my way back to the apartment I was really hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone.

So of course I did. Someone was entering the apartment diagonal from ours as I was coming up to our door. He totally did a double take and I said “oh. I was hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone…” and he just started laughing. I have the best luck.

Nathan had the best reaction to my hair and make up. My mom was feeding him in his high chair (which faces the front door) when I walked in. His jaw dropped and he just stared at me like “Mom? Is that really you?”. I wish I could have gotten a picture, because it was classic!

But once I got my outfit on and got back together with my friends who looked equally outrageous, it wasn’t so bad. ;)
Our (mostly) preppy guys
I was pretty proud of my get up, considering up until this past weekend, I didn’t own a single item of clothing that would be considered from the 80s. I made a really simple black circle skirt to wear over the black leggings I purchased for the occasion. I got those two neon shirts from JoAnn’s and cut them and rearranged them and I already had the belt. You can’t see them much, but I made some leg warmers from the sleeves of an old blue sweater and that’s it!
Karen and Kyle, our awesome table leaders and makers of that cool Pac Man backdrop!
For our dinner, we had pizza, soda, chips & dip, and pasta salad (and of course, cookies for dessert)
We played games…
Danced…
And our table ended up winning the Chastain Cup! About halfway into the evening, ballots were passed around and you would vote on your favorite table. And we won! Yippee!! But there were so many awesome tables – I wish I’d taken pictures of them! – and it was a really fun night.

And on the way home, John and I started brainstorming table ideas for next year! Who’s in?!

Sewing Shenanigans

In the last month or so, I have rediscovered my love of sewing. It comes and goes, mostly depending on whether or not I want to pull down the heavy box containing my sewing machine from the closet in Nathan’s room and we want to eat meals on the couch for weeks at a time, since the machine and all my sewing things are all over the table (and living room). But I stole the table we’d been using as Nathan’s changing table and moved it into the bedroom and now I have a little sewing station in there and I’m far enough away from Nathan’s room that I can sew during naps and in the evening without worrying about Nathan waking up. And no more fabric scraps and bits of thread all over the living room! Yay!

Several weeks ago I was hanging out with some friends at chik-fil-a and we were talking about sewing and fabric and how JoAnn’s is great and all, but their fabric selection is pretty much always the same, and there’s not enough variety. But none of us knew of any local fabric stores in the area with a better selection (and just ordering fabric you’ve never seen or touched can be tricky). So later when I got home, I googled specialty fabric stores with my zip code and would you believe it?! There was one right down the street from me! What?! So that weekend a friend and I went and checked it out! And while the selection wasn’t big, it was all new (to us) and it was fun to go see what they had. Almost right as we walked in, I saw ‘it’. Navy blue with white polka dots. And I knew it had to be mine. I didn’t even have any plans to sew anything, but that didn’t matter. An hour later, two yards came home with me. And I was so stinkin’ excited.

By the time I got home, (the drive was all of 5 minutes) I had decided that I would make a skirt, and I found a skirt tutorial on my pinterest board HERE that would go perfectly with my polka dots. Later I was face-timing with my mom and she’s all “um…where’s my fabric so that you can make me one?!” So back to the fabric store I went, buying almost the rest of the bolt to make skirts for me, my mom and my sister.

But enough talk, here is my cute pleated skirt that I made with my awesome polka dot fabricYou might not believe me, but I’m still quite the beginner. My measurements for the waistband and the length were a little off, so I altered as I went and made it work. But it has a zipper in the back and I’m quite proud of that. AND pockets. Cute coral colored pockets. SO FUN. My mom’s and sister’s did not get pockets, as I didn’t have them there to measure their hands and pocket placement. So my pockets are special ;)

I ended up having quite a bit of my polka dots leftover and with a little creativity in my pattern piece placement, I had enough material to make a dress with the leftover fabric. I used Simplicity’s New Look 0180 and added the sleeves from New Look 6000. 0180 was sleeveless and while I could have left it that way and just worn something over it, I wanted to be able to wear it this summer without getting too hot, so sleeves it was. This project was especially exciting because John got me a serger for Valentine’s day and I got to use it for this dress. It’s the coolest thing ever. He got me a Brother 1034D and I. Love. It. The seams and edges on the inside just look so professional and it’s pretty awesome. The pattern also includes instructions for a belt and I had some leftover white satin from my Mary Poppins costume, so that’s what I used. I’m really happy with the way it came out! I think I need like, 5 or 10 more dresses like it ;)

I’ve also made a few other small things, mostly for my camera. I had been looking and looking for the perfect fabric (and I must confess I kind of wanted it to match my adorable Jo Totes Gracie in Mint camera bag that my in-laws got me for Christmas) and I finally found some white with gold polka dots (I’ve got a thing for polka dots lately, can you tell?) as well as some gold and white chevron - both are from Michael Miller’s ‘Glitz’ collection - and snatched some up from an online store and made a reversible padded camera strap – with pockets for my lens cap even!

It’s already on my camera strap, and I didn’t want to take it off…so this is the best I could do ;)
I had quite a bit leftover, even though I’d only purchased 1/2 a yard of each, so I made some more fun accessories for my bag. Like this battery and SD card wallet:
And it folds up all cute and little ;)
And some little zippered pouches to hold odds and ends (And I really just wanted to practice zippers. They are pretty awesome once you get the hang of it!)

And that’s it so far! But I haven’t put my machines away just yet, I’m having way too much fun!

Chastain Night Cookies –The 80s

While our activities at the ward chastain night last night are going to get their own post, I wanted to share the fun cookies I made for our table.

What is a chastain night/activity? Well, each table picks their own theme.

What was our table’s theme? The 80s!

And I, of course, was in charge of dessert. ;) Since I can’t actually remember any of the 80s, I couldn’t tell you what kinds of sweets were popular then (besides sherbet. and razzles.) but I could make some cookies to depict the trends of the day. So that’s what I did! We’ve got Rubik's cubes…
Pac-Man and his ghostie friends (Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde. Clyde is the orange one. I looked it up ;) )
Tape cassettes! My Dad loooooooves 80s music, so making these actually made me think of him. And how he has a seemingly endless supply of knowledge of 80s groups and the songs they sang and all the words of said songs...
And finally, brightly colored sunglasses and catchy phrases of the day.
I’m really happy with how they turned out. Even though I wasn’t really around for the real 80s, 80s cookies are pretty fun!