family pictures 2011

once again, the very talented melissa w/ production b photography did our family pictures. here they are...

so if you live in the bakersfield area and need a photographer, let me know!

life lately...

christmas pictures were coming, so i changed up my hair and got bangs.

nathan had his first haircut too!

(click on picture to enlarge)

i went to 3 baby showers within a weeks time. so i whipped up this changing pad clutch for the mom to-be's.  here's the tutorial.

i was put in charge of the awards for our wards annual chili cook-off.

these are wooden blocks that were painted black and decopauged with the title of the catergory. then i found mini cauldrons at party city, glued dried pinto beans in them and stuck a spoon in the top. then spray painted the whole thing gold. they turned out better than i thought :)

i've been sleeping at my sewing machine the past few weeks, and here's why...

my little sister moved in with us and wanted to learn how to sew. so far we've made a skirt and her halloween costume. more to come on this i'm sure!

i was also asked to sew 2 bridesmaids outfits for a friend in the ward. this was my first time sewing anything like this. glad she had faith in me because i gave up many times! lol. first, i learned how to sew satin, she's a mean lady! i learned how to sew real buttonholes :) and i mastered sewing a zipper on. yay for me!

in the midst of all my sewing was halloween. here are our costumes i made this year. we were a family of gnomes :)

nathan LOVED trick or treating! he got the hang of it real quick!

while my mom was dealing with her spider bite, i went and stayed with her for the week to help out wherever i could.

a common scene the week i was there... my 2 nephews and nathan climbing all over my brother.

although they're the same size, they're 8 months apart and are the best of friends. aaron (on the right) walks around with "his nay-nays" picture most the day. this night, he was feeding him top ramen for dinner.

our current picture...

for family... here we are... going on 5 years of marriage!

knock knock, anyone still visit this blog?

my poor blog has been abandoned the past month :( let me clear off the cobwebs and i'll fill you in :)

of course i've been crocheting!

puff stitch beanie

wacky monster beanie accompanied by nathans cheeeeese face

we had a family movie night at church the beginning of summer. we watched kung fu panda. one of our family favs for sure!

jaren is on the activity committee (they're the ones who put this on) and came up with some pretty neat decor ideas. we bought red poster board (2 for $1) from the dollar tree. man do i love that place! i also picked up a few rolls of electrical tape to use around the edges of the posterboard to make them not so drab. then he (we) came up with some church sayings and used google translator and had them translated into chinese characters and glued them to the poster board. so if they're not right, blame google ;) jaren also made 25 origami cranes that we taped around some of the posters.

i made "panda" cupcakes, kinda sorta?

i found a po picture online and added text that said, "enjoy the movie, or else" and printed it onto brown lunch sacks to use as popcorn bags. i suggest doing this only if you have a top feed printer!! i don't, mines a bottom feed. and i broke my less than 30 day old printer!!! so i jumped onto kodak.com and "chatted" with there 24/7 technical support about my broken printer. EXACTLY 23 1/2 hours later, i had a BRAND NEW PRINTER at my doorstop thanks to the big brown truck :)  and thank you kodak for having great customer service!

k, back to the popcorn... we had 2 homemade caramel corns, jalapeno cheese, cheddar cheese and basic popcorn. they were all SOOOO good!

the "concession stand"...

we bought chinese takeout boxes and filled them with candy for each of the kids to have. i printed the CTR logo in chinese on labels and cut them out and stuck them to one side of the box.

the other side was a kung fu panda picture i found online and added text that fit the nights theme.

fun was had by all!

Nathans FIRST Birthday Party!

first let me start with special thanks to melissa from so wonderful, so marvelous for many of the ideas. my other great friend melissa for designing the party invitation and being the photographer for our cake smash session. and lastly my cousin rachel for the invitation wording idea. lets get started...


here's the invitation... it was printed on heavy photo cardstock with a 5x7 ready to frame picture of nathan on the back.

a few weeks before his actual birthday, we had a cake smashing photo shoot for memoir sake.
here was the birthday boys party attire. the stovetop hat i made and the shirt was purchased on etsy.

his gifts from mom and dad were 3 dr seuss dvds i picked up at target ($5 each!) and a new swing for our swingset in the backyard.
this is pretty self explanatory ;) cat in the hat cupcakes, starbelly sneetches cupcakes, one fish two fish cupcakes and just cotton candy cupcakes. word of caution with the cotton candy, it melts in about 1 hr. so put it on shortly before you plan on serving them.
food... we kept it simple. pull apart pork sandwiches, potato salad, chips and salsa, and lemonade.

favor bags... i made 25 stovetop hats, found the swirly suckers on oriental trading, the horton socks and mini notepads were from the target dollar section MONTHS ago, color goldfish crackers, made toothfairy bags, and found a dr. seuss activity book that i shrunk down in size and printed out. the cat in the hat tags on the gift sacks were also from oriental trading.
my decor was anything bright in color. tried to stick with red, blue, orange, and lime green. i found the plates/napkins at the dollar tree with coordinating plastic tablecloths. i wanted huge balloons! i found 36 inch ones (standard is 12 inches) at party city and tied them to my centerpieces down the center of each table. my centerpieces were dr seuss stuffed characters i picked up at kohls. $5 each w/ coordinating book :) i found the idea on melissas blog for the sign-in book. i found a happy birthday to you dr seuss book at barnes and noble. i printed up a sign that read... "WAIT! stop here you see, and write a very special message to me! a birthday wish, or just say hi, to your very favorite one year old guy. on the front, or back, or any pages. it will be something i will treasure all my ages."
of course the cat in the hat himself watched over our party. he stood over 5 ft. tall and was made out of cardstock. also found that at oriental trading. the birthday banner i made myself just using scrapbook paper. i found a dr seuss font called grinched for the letters and used the remaining cat in the hat tags as spacers. now here's the best and worst idea i came up with. i wanted to make a "bunting" (aka flag banner) that would wrap around the entire picnic shelter. in the end i absolutely LOVED it! but it was SUCH a pain to make! the picnic shelter was around 200 ft all the way around. that would have required LOTS ($40 worth) of bias tape. so i made bias tape the old fashion way, with 3 yds. of white fabric cut and sewn into one SUPER long 2 inch strip and a steaming hot iron. the flags were 7 1/2 inches wide and i had 12 yds of bright colorful fabrics in stripes and polka dots. it took me about 4 days to make the whole thing, LOL.
he loved opening presents and especially all the tissue paper! on the invitation i had put no gifts required! santa was very generous with nathan this year! with christmas being a month ago, this boy really didn't need much of anything. but if they must bring a gift, he is in need of clothes and books for the coming year. and that's all he got :) lots of adorable and awesome outfits and many many cool books!
just a few of the guest...
all in all there were 50 people total who came to show their love for my baby boy, who isn't a baby anymore :( i am SO thankful to have such great friends and family who drove many hrs. to attend. can't wait to do this again next year! now to start thinking of a theme....lol...