Babywearing VP??

Just saw this on one of the babywearing blogs I follow and thought I’d pass it on. Did you know Sarah Palin is a babywearer? Awesome.

Party Details

We spent today recovering from Daphne’s party. Normally it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but we didn’t finish the cake until 2am, and by the time I finished the appetizers at 2:30 or 3am, Daphne was up and in a lot of pain (her two front teeth have almost broken through the gum line) and didn’t get back to sleep until 5:30 or 6am. So with no sleep I was pretty much a zombie last night. But it was all worth it. We had a great party.

It was so much fun watching Daphne playing to the crowd (she loved all the attention) and opening her presents. The food was a hit. I highly recommend the white butter cake recipe from The Whimsical Bakehouse. And our attempt at marshmallow fondant (for the butterflies and flowers) was a success. I was afraid the decorations were going to be way over the top, but it came together nicely. And for those of you wondering what happened to her original birthday hat (the one I ordered from Etsy seller Itsy Bitsy Bunny and set the pink and orange theme), I just couldn’t get that thing to stay on her head. I will cut off the elastic and glue it onto a headband (similar to the birthday crown she ended up wearing) for more stability. The Etsy hat ended up decorating the side table, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

We still have the pictures from our D200 to upload, but the pictures I took are up on my Flickr account. So, friends and family, make sure you are logged in to see all the photos (I’m in the process of uploading about 130 pics). And if I haven’t added you as a contact, make sure and create a Flickr account and add me as a contact so I can reciprocate. And finally (I promise to be done with the birthday posts, I know this has become the birthday blog), thanks to all the family that traveled here to make Daphne’s 1st birthday so special.

Party Party

Lots of pictures left to edit, but I’m too tired to mess with red eye correction and all that. Here’s a few shots from today:

Very festive, note the main 2 tiered cake and the mini 2 tiered smash cake for Daph-

Make a wish!!-

More on my Flickr account.

Birthday Sweatshop

So, I’ve recruited the entire family to help out with the final preparations for Daphne’s party. My sister and her husband came in last night and have been helping us with decorating the dining room and cake stuff. It’s 9:30 pm and we are just starting on assembling the cake. Lord help us.

Poppa and Uncle Tyler hanging the streamers:

Lauren & Tyler’s pretzel project:

The candy melt bottle exploded on Tyler:

After the cake, I have to start on all the appetizers. It’s going to be a long, but fun, evening.

Ohdeedoh Birthday Shout Out

Here’s the link to Daphne’s Birthday Shout Out on Ohdeedoh.

Emergency Food

Last night I was listening to bits and pieces of the local news as they were discussing hurricane preparedness. You know, how much water per person per day. All that stuff. It doesn’t appear we’ll get a direct hit from Gustav, but we are in the “cone of uncertainty.” So with natural disasters in mind, when I saw this Emergency Food Supply in a Costco specials email today I clicked through to see what it included.

275 servings in a bucket that looks like it holds pool cleaning chemicals. The first item: 30 servings of Potato Bakon. Yes, bacon with a “k.” I’m trying to think of when I would be desperate enough to eat Potato Bakon from a bucket. Probably after we ate all those random canned goods & old saltine crackers that live at the back of the pantry. And another puzzling item: 25 servings of Ala King. This is a vegetarian set so I’m trying to figure out what exactly is being “ala king-ed” here. Couldn’t be Chicken or Turkey Ala King. I’m not familiar with Ala King just by itself. I wonder what that is?? I guess I’ll never know since I don’t plan on shelling out $74.99 for the set.

Happy Birthday!

Happy 1st birthday, sweetheart!! It’s weird… I can’t believe it’s been a year since we welcomed you into the world, but I also can’t remember life without you in it. I love you, sweet girl!

Oh, and rest up because we are going to party, party, party this weekend (and hope that Gustav doesn’t rain on our fun)!!

Mommy

8-28-07

8-31-07, I forgot how tiny you were!!

10-10-07

1-26-08

3-5-08

3-27-08

4-7-08

5-2-08

7-4-08

8-26-08

I NEED This

Really, really, really, really want this. And you can’t borrow it, Chris. Just kidding. But I do totally deserve it after all those late nights up processing photos for my husband.

Traitor

For the first time since moving to Texas I actually saw OU merchandise at a mall kiosk. And a few weeks before I saw OU baby bottles at Babies R Us. Normally it’s all UT and A&M, all the time. Of course, this is Texas and I don’t really expect to see a lot of Oklahoma merchandise, but there seems to be a pretty big Okie population here in Houston (if car bumper stickers and t-shirts are any indication, plus I know more than a few Okies in the oil & gas industry that have been relocated here).

Obviously, my husband & I are big OU fans. I was born in Norman while my dad was attending OU and I graduated from OU in ‘95. My father-in-law is a big Sooner fan as well. And you know what’s really weird? Even one of my uncles from Chicago and his son are big OU fans. I’m not sure they’ve even set foot in the state. Anyway, so here’s where I become a traitor. If we are still living in Houston when Daphne goes to college she can have her pick between UT and A&M (even though I think Aggies are crazy and burnt orange is not flattering on anyone). That way I can hop in my car and see her in less than 2 hours. Really, how am I ever going to let her go off to college? And why am I thinking about this NOW, since she’s not even ONE? I’m crazy.

High Chair Tutu

Easily the most “over the top” element of Birthday Party Central is the high chair tutu I made to coordinate with Daphne’s other party decorations. Here are my disclaimers- I shouldn’t have used a lighter pink in with the medium, hot pink and orange tulle. It’s too distracting. Also, I never should have tried a no sew thing (it worked well for Daphne’s tutu, but not for this project) but it would have been a total pain in the ass to find all my sewing stuff in storage and actually sew one. And finally, this really didn’t photograph well. At this point you are probably wondering, well why show it at all? Because I still think it’s a good idea, even though my execution sucked.

So, I used 4 different colors of tulle, hot pink and light pink rhinestones (which don’t show up too well in the photo). I had a hard time figuring out how to cover the top, since I didn’t want a really poofy tutu I didn’t stuff the tulle onto the elastic as much as I did for Daphne’s tutu and you could see a bit of the elastic peeking through. Normally I’d weave a piece of tulle in between the tulle strips, covering the band, but that wasn’t working too well since I had already secured the tutu to the high chair. So that left me with hot pink ribbon, hot pink boas- um, no. So I decided to take the light pink curling ribbon I had used on her birthday banner, cut 4-5″ strips, curled them and attached them to a long piece of curling ribbon. I basically created a curling ribbon boa for the top edge. Once I tied it onto the elastic I was done. But I still think I want to add one more element (like a little medallion with Daphne’s initials or something) to the front center. Hmm…