He or She, What Will It Be...???

I could not wait to find out the sex of our baby and we were lucky that the little munchkin co-operated beautifully during our anatomy scan.  We had our immediate family over to share with them all at the same time what we will be having. 

I put out a few decorations, but I am no professional and these were all just for fun, so not pinterest-worthy lol.  Just some curly-cues, a little prediction chalk board I re-used from our wedding, and some confetti poppers filled with the appropriate coloured confetti.

This was my guess before the ultrasound.  I thought from early on that it would be a boy. 

One of my students made me a card with her prediction inside as well.  It was so sweet...

For fun I also put up my answers to a few old wives tales for our family to see before deciding on their guess.

My darling niece Lily also made us a card that I just love to pieces...

Girl loves her stickers!

Even though her card predicts a girl, on my old wives tale chart I put "boy" because that's what she had told me while I was babysitting her.

We bought cupcakes that had coloured icing inside for our family to bite into on the count of three.  Any guesses as to what was inside before I show you???  ...

It's a...

...

...

...

...

...

BOY!!!

I guess my mother's intuition was right!  (Darryl's was too cause he's thought it was a boy from the get-go as well).

We didn't have a preference either way, we were just so excited to know.  It made it all seem more real somehow.

This was such a fun, special and exciting day for us that we'll always remember.  Our families came dressed in either pink or blue depending on their guess and when they bit into their cupcakes, Darryl and I set off the blue confetti poppers for a little extra fun.  Darryl's sister gifted us with one of her "Wrinkles" puppet dogs from when she was little and my mum and sister both came with a little gift of super cute boy outfits and a blanket (they actually brought one for boy and one for girl and just returned the girl one later on).

I also did something different for my staff and students but don't have pictures to share.  With my staff I had them each pick either a pink or blue balloon to blow up.  The pink ones had tiny holes in them so that they immediately deflated and were left with only the blue ones still in tact.  Fun!

And with my kiddos I bought them some silly string and on the count of three they sprayed away and blue came out (I also re-used the confetti poppers as a couple of my kids actually did all the hard work of hole punching them out for me and they were excited to see them in use).  They also came wearing pink or blue based on their guess. 

It was so fun to share the news we were so excited about and to have so many people be excited with us.

Did you/would you find out the sex of your baby...share the news in a fun way??



Happy 2 Weeks!

I'm a little late in posting this, but on Thursday March 29th at 6:46am my little 7lb niece came into the world!!  Twenty-nine seems to be a popular number for female birthdays in our family - I'm the 29th of August, my mom is May 29 and her Aunt Lisa on her Daddy's side (who has a hilariously awesome blog- check it out especially if you're a fan of Survivor!) is June 29th.  Coincidence??  And all but one of us have names starting with an "L"???  That's got to mean something...right??

Little Lily Grace is now at home and doing very well.  She came right in between her Mom and Dad's birthdays, so they are all within 6 days of each other (even their Kitty's birthday is in there too!).  She's only 11 days old and already I love her so much it hurts!  I could just stare at her precious little face all day long.  At just 2 weeks old you can already start to see bits and pieces of her personality taking shape. 

Here she is only a few short hours after being born...

I may be a little biased, but tell me she is not the most beautiful little angel!!

Her first outing (to another house anyways) was over to our house for Easter dinner on Sunday.  She was in an adorably too-big Easter dress that I regret not getting a picture of!  Already I'm daydreaming of when she's older and having slumber parties and craft days with her.  I know, I'm a nerd, I can't help it.

I can't decide what I love more, her perfect little lips, her precious chin or my sister's mini-me nose.  And all that hair! 

I could ramble on and on and on about her already (and will spend my day looking forward to getting a little cuddle in with her tonight - sorry I'm such a Lily hog guys!) so I'll stop myself here.

Happy second week birthday Lily!

Ottoman/Footstool

A few weeks ago, Darryl and I went to my Great Aunt's apartment (she is moving out and needs to downsize so we went to see if there was anything we might want, and helped clear out a lot of stuff).  One of the things that had been placed in the donation pile I quickly snagged, not knowing what to use it for, but knowing that it was too good to get rid of.

Right away Darryl said it would be the perfect foolstool to go with my sister's glider in their nursery (she was using the carseat to push off of).  As soon as we got home I took the legs off and grabbed some left over fabric from some other nursery projects and Darryl got to staple-gunning while I pulled the fabric tight.

The next day, while I was priming the staircase (for hours...and speaking of which I have an "after" post to share with you soon!), Darryl took the legs out to the yard and primed and spray painted them with 3 coats of Rustoleum's Antique White.  Then he brought them in and he BAKED THEM!  My word, does that little trick make them look and feel sooo good!  (DO NOT bake painted things in your eating oven, we have a toaster oven on it's last leg that we don't cook with).

And after dinner and all my priming was done, we drilled the legs into place and voila!  An easy-peasy, super quick project with lots of payoff!

Let's see one more before/after...

And here it is to scale...

So now she can rock herself and baby while keeping the car seat in the car, woot!  

Have you redone an ottoman/footstool (what is the different between an ottoman/footstool anyways...same thing??)

Baby Shower

The shower was a success!  I was a little nervous about hosting 25 ladies in my house, but my mum was such a huge help and made me feel calm and ready.  (Darryl's sister came over late Friday night and helped me set a few things up so that was a huge help as well!)  My mum came a couple hours early to help me throw a few last minute things together which really helped me out a lot - and thank goodness she did because people started arriving half an hour early!

I decided to go with a light green and pink theme as those are the nursery colours and I think they look so sweet together.

What the table looked like before some food and drink were added.

Table with some treats, a bust cake and some cupcakes (made by my aunt's neighbour) on some home made cupcake stands

Rattle cupcakes

The tissue pom poms I made for some decor.  They got a nice compliment or two!

Some books in the theme colours (Anne of Green Gables suffered at the teeth of one of my sweet kitties many, many years ago)

Some prizes for a couple games we played

And the diaper cake that I made for them with a few baby essentials tucked inside like shampoo, baby powder, stretch mark cream, wash cloths and socks.  I forgot to take closer pictures of the turtle on top that I sewed out of extra fabric from the nursery.

Another turtle shot - turtle templates are from here.  The little guy was my first-ever sewing attempt!  I'm quite happy with how he turned out  :)

So all in all, it was a success!  I was in bed 9pm that night though, I was pretty pooped.  But 25 adults fit on my main floor comfortably and I think everyone enjoyed themselves.  Next stop is the baby coming!!

*Thank you to my mum and cousin for giving me these pictures, I didn't have time to snap any pictures by the time everything started!



Have you ever hosted a large amount of people in your home - how did it go?

TGIF!!!!

This has been one crazy week (I'll share more of why next week) so I'm really glad it's finally Friday!  Tonight I'll be running around like a mad woman getting things together for my sister's baby shower tomorrow.  I've been looking forward to this day for so long now, so I'm really excited, but I'm feeling a little less than prepared because of the week we've had.  But not to worry it will all get done!  And my mum is such a big help, she's coming over in the morning to help with set up.

I'll let you know how my first hosting gig goes next week, wish me luck!  For now, here's how I wish it would look in my house tomorrow...

Photo is from pinterest, but the link took me back to a "failed" page.  If anyone comes across where it's from let me know so I can credit them.

***Update: Thanks to Nette from This Dusty House for finding the link.  Pic is from here.

How's your weekend shaping up??

Pom Poms

While waiting for the first coat of stain to dry on the stairs this weekend (mhmm, there's stain!) I started making a few tissue paper pom poms for the baby shower decor.  My sister reads my blog so I'll just give a sneak peak of a picture for now.

So bright, light and airy!  I'll share full pictures with you next week as the shower is THIS SATURDAY!!  I have been looking forward to this day for more than 7 months now!

They're easy peasy to make, take a look at the Martha Stewart tutorial if you'd like to make some.

For now I'm enjoying the extra pop of colour they bring in these blah weeks of not-quite-winter, but not-quite-spring weather we're having. 

Do you have a favourite DIY party decor you'd like to share?