A Baby Shower to Remember

We did it! Even with all the snow, the roads stayed clear, and the baby shower was a go! All those weeks of planning were worth it, as Aminta and I pulled off a wonderful shower to celebrate Phuong & Cactus's baby.

Aminta was in charge of the decorations and totally made everything look cute.

Here is our table display:

I love how my storks looked on the table! You can find the stork tutorial here.

One of the most hilarious mishaps was the fruit salad I made, which people dubbed the "alien baby." I'd found it on Pinterest (you can find that pin here). But, here's the thing: I don't like most melons. I've never bought a honeydew melon before nor a cantaloupe. In my mind, they were the same thing: melons that don't taste good. Ha! So, I bought a honeydew thinking it was a cantaloupe. The morning of the shower, I went to peel back the melon skin only to discover it was green! Oops. So here is the now infamous alien baby fruit salad:

I think my baby bump cake ended up looking cute! I joked that I should have tucked a plastic baby into the tummy, kind of like people do for King Cakes at Mardi Gras. You can see how I made this cake by clicking here.

Deviled eggs are some of my favorite treats. I scoured the internet looking for ways to make them cute for a baby shower. I ended up finding a pin on how to make hot dog babies in the deviled eggs. I don't eat meat, and, frankly, I wasn't sure how good deviled eggs would be with hot dogs on them anyway. So, I just made a few into babies and left the rest plain.

Aren't those little duckies cute? I bought a package of them to decorate the punch I made! I got the rubber duckie idea from Pinterest, but I didn't want to use the punch recipe. I based my recipe off of one from Allrecipes.com. I used two frozen pink lemonade concentrate cans, one two-liter bottle of club soda, and four bottles of sparkling apple juice. To make it foam, I scooped a couple pints of berry sherbet on top. It tasted like sparkling strawberry lemonade! I was so amazed at how delicious and cute the punch ended up! I used another tip from Pinterest and froze slices of lemon in water in a cupcake tray.

Aminta made these cucumber sandwiches that were soooo good. Seriously, I think I ate half of them. She added some herbs and spices to cream cheese, spread it over rye bread, and topped it with fresh cucumbers. Not pictured are some miniature cherry danishes she brought in addition to a beautiful vegetable tray with dip and hummus.

We hung the diaper wreath near the entrance. It got a lot of compliments! Everyone made me feel so appreciated for everything. In case you missed the tutorial on this diaper wreath, you can find it here.

Aminta made these cute "lollipops" for Phuong out of washcloths and baby spoons. She poked them into a sand pail & shovel and filled it with Easter grass. It almost looks like flowers blooming! That idea also came from Pinterest, and there's a tutorial with that pin.

This is the start of the gift pile. Pictured are the "lollipops" by Aminta, the diaper tricycle that I made, the blanket I made, and the giraffe I made. 

Aiiiee! They are so cute! Seriously, Phuong and Cactus are two of the sweetest people in the world, and they are going to make the best parents. They loved the giraffe and tricycle diaper cake, making all of my hard work absolutely worth it.

Here's a close-up of the blanket. The pattern for this blanket is free, so if you like to crochet, you can find it through this pin.

More decorations from Aminta!

The balloons were loved and coveted by all the children.

Here are my best friends and me, ready to get the party started!

Phuong greeted all of her guests at the door. There were new friends and old friends and friends she hadn't seen a few years. We all had one thing in common... we all wanted to create a special day to shower our dear friend with gifts for her baby!

Oh.my.gosh! This is me with my friends from high school! It's been more than a decade, but we agreed that all of us looked exactly the same. 

We had favors for our guests, of course! I'd originally planned on making these fortune cookie favors (and did), but they weren't big enough to hold candy!

So, a couple days before the shower, I was really feeling the time crunch. My supportive husband helped me cut out a couple dozen paper shoes, which I then filled with the candy that was supposed to have filled the fortune cookies. You can find the paper shoe pattern on the Michael's website, or on the description of this Pinterest pin.

I found this poem online.

For games, we had people guess the width of Phuong's belly. We also had everyone fold a paper crane to string up on a mobile for the baby. Actually, folding paper cranes was a lot harder than I expected! I'm glad a couple people there knew what they were doing and were able to help everyone else out.

Here's Jennifer helping me with my crane:

I was able to string up all of the paper cranes while Phuong opened her gifts. The cranes have a gap in the bottom, and I couldn't figure out how to string them. The knotted thread wasn't thick enough to hold up the crane. Sayaka advised me to cut out circles. Using a needle, I thread the string first through a crane, then through a circle, and then I made a knot under the circles. It worked like a charm! You can get the how-to for this paper crane mobile from my Pinterest pin.

Here's our finished mobile:

Everything was perfect. The food, the company, the decorations, the happy couple... It was wonderful! I couldn't have done it without Aminta. Aminta kept everything moving smoothly. She made sure gifts were opened when they should be opened, she had people fill out their addresses on thank-you cards, she wrote down who gave what gift. She was so organized and on-top of everything! I might have had fun decorating the shower and preparing the food, but things would have been stagnant without Aminta's expertise. Thanks, Aminta!

And here are a few random shots from the shower:

Diaper Wreath & Knit Booties

I spotted a cute "diaper wreath" on Pinterest, but it was only available for ordering. Since I had leftover diapers from the diaper cake, I wanted to make one myself. Here's how I did it:

Step 1: Take a wire hanger and bent it into the shape of a wreath.

Step 2: I took an extra receiving cloth that I had (also leftover from the diaper cake), folded in half into a triangle, and then rolled it up around the hanger to give it padding. You could tightly roll diapers around the wreath for padding if you'd prefer.

Step 3: Open each diaper and insert the wreath into the opening. Secure the top of each diaper with a rubber band, like so:

Here's what mine looked like after tying on each diaper. I used nineteen size 1 diapers.

Step 4: Tie ribbon over each rubber band and curl it. I think the orange ribbon on the original pin was very cute, but I only had baby colors available.

Step 5: Using extra ribbon, tie on any extra goodies you want to include on your wreath. I included some outlet safety covers, two pairs of booties that I made, a teething toy, a pacifier, and some hair bows.

Here are close-ups of the booties I made (also a Pinterest find, which you can view here).

My Attempt at the Baby Bump Cake

Once again, browsing Pinterest has be in over my head! I have so many things planned for the shower this weekend, and so little time to get them done! Heaven help me, I found a really cute "Baby Bump Cake" pin on Pinterest. I decided to tackle that project today.

I looked at craft stores for a half-ball cake pan but had no luck. I ended up ordering an 8" one from Amazon for about $8. I used two boxes of cake mix for this project. After mixing one box, I made two cupcakes and poured the rest into a 13"x9" cake pan. I used a full box of mix for the half-ball (make sure to grease & flour your ball pan really well!). In addition to boxed mix, I also just used a can of pre-made frosting from the store for the crumb layer.

Here's how I decorated mine:

Step 1: Spread a layer of frosting over your sheet cake.

Step 2: Arrange the ball cake and cupcakes on the sheet cake.

Step 3: Trim away the excess cake on the sides (don't discard or eat that cake yet!).

Step 4: Use the parts of the cake you cut off to fill in some gaps in the "body," using frosting as your glue. Below, you can see the cupcakes before and after I filled the gaps.

Before:

 After:

Step 5: Use the rest of your frosting to create a fairly seamless and smooth cake. The frosting can be very thin. 

Step 6: Use fondant to decorate! You can buy some pre-made at a craft store or cake supply shop. I made my own using this "Rolled Buttercream Fondant" recipe. Originally, I intended to use brown trim like in the original pin, but my brown fondant looked like turds. That wasn't very appetizing, so I scraped that and went with pink.

I have only worked with fondant twice before and still am not at master with it. The surface of my cake has some cracks and stretch marks, but I figure that's just more realistic, right? ;-)

With the cake done, there's not much left for me to do until the morning of the shower. Let's just hope the weather doesn't put a damper on our party... the forecast calls for 8 to 14 inches of snow!

Look What the Stork Brought! Diapers for the Baby Shower!

I'm starting to get things ready for my friend's baby shower this weekend. I bought two packs of 50 diapers to make the diaper tricycle for her shower. It called for 55 diapers, but I ended up using 52. It also called for 2 receiving blankets, and I bought a pack of 5. The tricycle needed 2 bibs, and I bought a pack of 3. So, I've been getting crafty with my leftover supplies! I'd found a really cute pin on Pinterest that showed a stork carrying a sack of diapers (here: http://pinterest.com/pin/216383957067889576/). Unfortunately, like some links on Pinterest, clicking the image takes me nowhere. I had to figure out how to make it myself!

Here are the storks I came up with:

To make these, you need:

100 (Attempted) Ways to Entertain a Young Toddler, Day 90: Stacking Blocks

I get a few monthly updates in my inbox that tell me what stage my kids are in, what parenting difficulties I might face this month, and what activities might be good for their development. I'm actually not even sure how I got subscribed to these emails, and I don't always read them. I think I get one from Pampers and one from some sort of "baby center" or something. Well, anyway, I recently read that Joanna is at a good age to enjoy stacking blocks. She received some large, stacking/nesting blocks for Christmas. At the time, she wasn't very interested in them. At almost-16-months, she's supposed to be interested in them now (according to my email...). So, I decided to test it as a young toddler activity.

I demonstrated to Jo how the blocks stacked. She took to it immediately! Our blocks are various sizes, and she didn't grasp the concept that smaller blocks should be stacked on larger ones. That must be a later development stage. She was positively thrilled to stack them up however she could, only to knock them down immediately and squeal with glee!

Here are some photos of Joanna testing out our "Stacking Blocks" activity:

This activity wasn't just fun; it was a hit. We tested it out yesterday morning, and she keeps begging to play again and again. When she isn't stacking blocks, she can be found pointing to the computer, pleading with me to play the videos of her stacking her blocks.
                                                         

Pros: Simple, Educational (gets them thinking), Fun, No Mess
Cons: Blocks costs money

I couldn't find these exact blocks to link for you, but I did find some Melissa & Doug Nesting & Stacking Blocks that are very similar:
                                                                                                  

Because of the upfront cost involved (and, thus, planning), I give "Stacking Blocks" an A-.

Looking Back at 10 Years Together

Reading about other people's relationships is about as exciting as looking at their vacation photos, but I'm writing down my feelings and opinions to mark this milestone of mine and Andrew's relationship so I can reflect on them one day (or maybe my kids can even read this one day).

Andrew took me out on our first date on this day, ten years ago. We went and saw the re-released Lion King on IMAX. The very next day, I took him out for a hot chocolate, and he showed me his recent vacation photos from his family's trip to Australia. About two weeks and half a dozen dates later, I got snowed in at his house for four days, after the second largest blizzard in the last century to hit Denver dumped nearly three feet of snow on the city.

Here we are together at a bowling alley in 2003:

Andrew is a very patient and slow-to-anger person. I am fiery, passionate, and spunky. There were moments early in the relationship when I would get ready to argue or fight, but Andrew would just have none of it. He doesn't believe in yelling or arguing, only in talking things through. In a period of weeks, I could feel myself growing as a person. I learned how to articulate what I was feeling and to ask for what I want or needed out of the relationship. We've been together for 10 years, and my husband has never once yelled at me or shown any signs of anger or hostility at me. There have been moments in which I've gotten mad, but I don't direct it at him. I take a few minutes, and then I come back and discuss things with him. What I'm trying to say is this: we've had problems we've needed to work through, but we've never fought.

From very early on in our relationship, I knew we'd get married. We just got along so well. We complimented each other. Also, we were able to maintain healthy relationships with our friends and family.

When two people first start dating, it's so easy to forget everyone else. Early relationships are passionate and bursting with love and lust and discovery. It's natural to want to spend every waking minute with the other person. At some point, however, that will change. Each person will want to start seeing their friends again, and it's easy to mistake that for not wanting to spend time with your significant other. When we first started dating, Andrew wanted me to go with him when he was hanging out with friends. He used to ask me to go watch when he played Dungeons & Dragons with his buddies, or just hang out while they played video games. I insisted he spend time with his friends without me, and I insisted I do the same. We set up some good boundaries to establish a healthy relationship.

When my family celebrated my grandma's 80th birthday with a huge event at Mahoney State Park in Nebraska, I let Andrew know that I love him and want him to meet my extended family, but I didn't feel like a family reunion was a place to bring a boyfriend. Maybe that idea was a bit extreme, but I felt  (feel?) like those family events are for family: spouses, kids, cousins, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters. Not boyfriends. When his family celebrated his grandmother's 80th birthday, I neglected to go, too. If we were going to be together for the rest of our lives, then we'd be welcome and expected at all of those family events as spouses. As boyfriend and girlfriend, I thought we needed to keep a certain degree of separateness. Besides, on the off-chance we didn't stay together, it would be pretty crappy if all of his family reunion photos had his ex-girlfriend in them, and vice versa.

Andrew and I certainly spent a good amount of time together, even while making sure to spend time with other loved ones. We enjoyed camping and hiking together. We played a lot of video games together. Many evenings during the week, you could find him playing World of Warcraft with me reading a book on his bed behind him.

Here were are in 2004 and 2005:

When we'd been together for about a year or so, we'd occasionally discuss marriage. Andrew knew I didn't want to live together until we were married. He also knew I wanted to get married before 26. It sounds a little silly, but I've always wanted to be able to celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary. I felt that getting married before 26 would make that more likely than marrying later in life. On August 9, 2006, I was at work at the old Starbucks that used to be at Tamarac Square. I was working a morning shift from 4:30am to 1pm. In the late morning, I got a call from Andrew. He asked me if I'd like to go on a picnic for lunch at Wash Park after I got off work. I said sure and hung up the phone, my heart beating rapidly. We hadn't talked about marriage recently, but I knew he was going to propose that day. I told my coworker about it and struggled to get through the rest of my shift. Andrew picked me up when I got off of work, and, for the first time in our relationship, neither of us could find something to say to the other. The drive to Wash Park was almost silent. We were both so nervous! Andrew picked a spot out under a tree by the lake. He spread out some delicious food from Whole Foods, and we ate in silence. I couldn't think of a thing to say, as all I could think about was, "This is it!" My ears were echoing, and I felt flushed. My memory is actually very patchy here, but, at some point, Andrew said to me, "Becky, I have something to ask you." My heart beat hard in my chest as he got down on one knee and started talking about our life together. I started sobbing (and sobbing). He asked me to marry him, and I just cried and hiccoughed and then kissed him. "Does that mean yes?" he asked me. "Yes," I said.

Exactly one year later, on August 9, 2007, Andrew and I got married at the Denver Botanic Gardens. I really struggled with the wedding, as I don't like being the center of attention. I trembled throughout the ceremony, but Andrew held my hands and held my gaze. I got through it with him and for him and we entered a new stage of our lives as husband and wife.

I love my husband so much. He's my partner in life, my witness to my existence. He's wise, patient, respectful, and, most importantly, nice. We've been together for 10 years, and he's still just so good to me because he's a nice person. I love the compliments he gives me, from my cooking to the vacations I plan for us. Here is one of us in 2008, on our road trip up the California coast to celebrate our first wedding anniversary:

And here we are in Florida in 2009:

At the end of 2009, our relationship evolved further when we became parents. Instead of playing World of Warcraft together almost every night, we'd trade off baby shifts so the other could get some adult time. We had to trust that the other would be waiting for us when we made it through the first year of sleepless nights and almost no time together as a couple. We faced new challenges, and we both changed as people. As we changed, we our relationship had to adapt, but we stuck by each other through everything, never fighting and always talking things through.

Here we are in 2010:

We don't have nearly as much free time as we used to. We have to remember the other and make sure we remember to help each other. I do my best to always make sure he has time to play games with his friends online, like League of Legends, and he does his best to get up at night when the kids are crying and to get up with them in the morning because I really value my sleep.

As our kids get older and are no longer entirely dependent on us, we try to make sure we get time together. Once every week or two, we have a date night in at home so we can have uninterrupted adult conversation. Once a month or so, grandparents watch the kids over night, and we get a real date. In some ways, it's like dating again, but with a lot more trust involved. Sometimes, we might not get time together at all for a couple weeks. We have to trust that we still love each other and will be waiting patiently for the other when we get through that rough patch of no couple time. In fact, when we went to the hospital to have Joanna, I told Andrew, "I'll see you next year," as I kissed him goodbye when he went to park the car at the ER.

Here we are in 2012:

Ten years ago, a tall, young man whose entire face crumpled into a brilliant smile when he grinned caught my eye in writing class. I loved his Jack-Nicholson smile, his white patch of hair above his right ear, and his slight dimple. He was just 19, and I was 20. He describes meeting me with my cute overalls and fiery red hair that matched my face when I blushed. I knew we'd spend our lives together, but I couldn't imagine the journey we would take, together, over the next 10 years. I love Andrew, my partner, more deeply than I can write here. We've faced our share of difficulties, but those are for reflecting on at another time. Today, I'm celebrating the fact that we've made it, together.

I love you, Andrew.

2013: