Gender Reveal: Pink Icing Filled Cupcakes

In a fun way to announce the gender to our coworkers, Monday afternoon/evening I made a couple batches of cupcakes for us to take into work. I filled them with pink icing to reveal the gender but topped them with white icing so that you couldn't see the pink. They turned out awesome if I do say so myself. Here are the steps in case you want to do something similar in the future.

Step 1: Bake cupcakes and let them cool. Obviously.

Step 2: Use a sharp knife to cut a cone out of the top of each cupcake, 

saving the cones in a bowl.

Step 3: Separate the icing that you made into two parts. 

(I had to keep making more pink icing and then I had to make more 

white icing because piping icing uses a lot more than just spreading it on).

Step 4: I chose a regular large open tip in my piping bag (sorry, no picture) 

and then piped the pink icing into each cupcake.

Step 5: Put the cones back on. They don't have to be perfect since the rest 

of the icing will be covering them anyway.

Step 6: Fill another piping bag with the desired tip attached. I did a large star tip. Frost those beautiful cupcakes, doing your best to start far on the outside to make sure to cover the pink.

 Step 7: Test one! The lighting is way off in this picture but it showed the pink the best.

MMM.. i wish i had more here to eat, lol.

Anyway, just thought i'd share this step by step in case anyone ever wanted to do it and didn't know how. It's a great way to reveal the gender. Alex had a good idea to only fill one of them so that they'd have to eat through the cupcakes to find out what it is, but that's a lot of cupcakes, sugar.. butter.. etc, lol. We might use that in the future though!

Gender Reveal. Birthdays. Shuffleboard. Housework.

Labor day weekend was great!

Friday night we had the gender reveal with our families. My mom bought Alex and I these cute booties (2 pairs) to hang from our car rearview mirrors. Mine are already in my car but here are Alex's. How cute are they!! They were actually supposed to be booties but my mom turned them into the car accessory, how creative! I can't believe babies tootsies are that tiny! The reveal went well, it was nice to hang out with both families at once, although it's quite hard to socialize with everyone at a restaurant. Everyone is excited for a baby girl!

Saturday we had to wake up early to head to York to sign a couple of papers that were missed when we bought our car. First we stopped at the Herr house to pickup a rototiller. Then we had to take it home before heading to York but got to experience the convenient cargo space of the Pilot. Speaking of.. here's finally a picture of it! After the signing which took about 5 minutes, we got our car washed in the rain (bc it's free for 30 days and only in York). We then headed home to pack and get ready to head to Nicholson for Glen's birthday party. First we lunched at Isaac's and took advantage of a coupon and then got on our way. 3 hours later, we arrived! lol. This was a surprise party for Glen so I think (hope) he was surprised. I totally underestimated the weather.. it was super humid out and I was wearing skinny jeans that stuck to me like glue. It was nice chatting and playing shoes and washers with the Hettel's and catching up with Glen and Jeanette. We ended the night around the fire and with some Ghost Adventures on tv.

The next morning, Mrs. Mackey made delicious potatoes and sausage. Mmm! We headed out around 10am and got home around 12:30ish. We ate some lunch and then headed to Home Depot to get a couple things. I thought about taking a nap and about starting some projects but settled with playing on the iPad and watching Titanic on tv. Later in the evening, we met up with Phil, Ashley, Anne, Jess, Lauren, Andy and one of Phil's coworkers at the Taproom in the city to celebrate Phil's birthday. We spent most of the time chatting and playing shuffleboard. It was awesome! Later we stopped by the Rendezvous Lounge at the Marriott where the following pictures were taken:

 

 

Today, we got to sleep in, which was fabulous. Followed by some rearranging of the upstairs furniture and then spray-painting the changing table while Alex brewed a beer. Now i'm writing blog posts for the week and hopefully having an early dinner followed by some straight up relaxation! I love busy weekends and especially weekends that I actually take a couple pictures! Enjoy the rest of the week!

19 weeks and 20 weeks

Yesterday, I was 20 weeks along. Officially halfway!

Things are still going great! Still feeling great (despite minor backpain brought on by too much walking). I feel the baby girl move at least once a day and really have no complaints!

Here are the pictures from 19 weeks and 20 weeks.. since we all know that I procrastinate!

19 weeks

20 weeks

In the 20 week picture, don't worry.. that wasn't my martini! Just thought it would be funny to pose with it since I was out at a bar, dancing with my belly ah la amy poeler's snl skit. More pictures from that night in the next post recapping the weekend!

Not much left to say about 20 weeks, other than.. it went relatively fast. Hoping the next 20 go even faster!!

The Nursery {part 1}

These posts will be in pieces due to the 'work in progress' scenario that we're currently in. I won't reveal the whole nursery until the last post but there are bits and pieces that I would like to share. Starting with color.

With aqua blue walls that aren't being repainted, we decided to just do splashes of color around the room instead of deciding on one or two other colors to focus on. Here are the paint chips that I have for inspiration. I haven't decided yet between the lighter or the darker of the two sets. (Sorry for the blurry left one).

We bought some shelving board at Home Depot that Alex is going to cut down into 12" x 12" pieces that I'm going to use for the wall decor. Some of the 8 pieces will be painted and some will get scrapbook paper adhered to them for some pattern.

All furniture will be white, as you'll see in part 2 but i'm not quite sure yet about the rocking chair. Our friend Glen had a great suggestion this weekend to help me get what I want with the chair in this post so I need to explore those options a little bit more.

And despite my sincere distaste for the state of the bathroom upstairs, the most I will probably do is remove the wallpaper and repaint it. Maybe i'll go into detail about the rest of the bathroom in another post, maybe not. ;)

Obviously we have more plans for the nursery that haven't come to fruition in our minds yet to even speak about but I have plenty of ideas.. including sewing my own (or asking my MIL for help) crib sheets so that I can make sure to get the pattern/colors that I want. Exciting things to come!

It's a..

GIRL!

That's right, we saw girl parts on the screen at the ultrasound on Monday. We are beyond excited to add yet another girl to the family. I know my niece is going to be super pumped (though I'm sure she would be either way, every time I see her she asks to see my belly.. with my shirt up, hilarious!).

Doesn't looking at the picture from this post just scream girl now that you know? Such a dainty little nose. We're still surprised it's a girl. We would've been surprised if it were a boy as well. It's just crazy knowing the gender in general. There's a little girl in my belly! She'll join her newborn little girl friends baby Snyder and baby Hix and she'll meet some cute newborn boys too, baby Doutrich and baby Nowak.

I also cannot wait to get my niece's baby clothing. Perk!

We just told our parents by giving them a copy of the picture and having them guess the gender. They are beyond excited as I'm sure you all are (lol)!

Sorry to everyone who thought boy ;)

5 Random Thoughts

We're getting closer and closer to the big reveal. I bet you're all on the edge of your seats, aren't you. HA!

I just wanted to jot down a couple random thoughts from today.

{pin}

Thought #1: I wish that I could sew my own clothing. I say this because i'm having some real trouble finding anything that I would even remotely want to purchase on any of the maternity clothing websites i've browsed (gap, old navy, motherhood, jcpenney, the expensive ones like pea in a pod, etc). Even H&M was disappointing last time I was there. Is there no where to get cute maternity clothes?? Forever21 has a line but it's way little.. by little i mean there isn't much to choose from, tanks, camis and leggings. I could live in those, sure, but they aren't quite 'work appropriate'. I have a pair of Forever stretchy jeans that still fit (and button, woo hoo high five!) so i'm thinking maybe i'll just buy normal jeans a size or so bigger so that they're slouchy and can button easily. I just don't get maternity tops. My mom commented to me a couple weeks ago (while I was wearing a normal tank with a cardigan) that they make looser fitting tops for pregnant people.. implying i should probably start wearing them. No offense to the clothing I got from my older sis (from 5 years ago!) but it's outdated and i'm not going to walk around wearing a shirt that says baby in rhinestones. I want to wear clothing like the picture above, but in adult sizes. Why do they make the cutest clothing for kids (at an awesome price by the way) and not have the same styles (albeit a little different) for adults. It's some kind of joke, isn't it? Anyway, back to sewing. Obviously, I don't know how to sew.. if i did.. i wouldn't be complaining. I mean, maybe I should just learn to sew, and then learn where to buy all the 'cool' fabric so that I can make my own cardigans and maternity tops and then i'll start a fashion line and rule the world. bahaha, just kidding. What a long thought, am i right?

Thought #2: We decided on nursery colors. I plan to do some posts on this including before and after and i wish i had an inspiration board to share but to be honest, i don't really know how to make those, and the inspiration is more in my brain than on an image that already exists (but check out this post or this post for some of the nursery related thoughts). Oh, you want to know the colors? How silly of me not to mention them. I can't possibly tell you the colors without revealing the gender.. so this will have to wait. I even wrote everything out and then thought, what the heck.. everyone will know if I write all this now. Sorry charlies.

Thought #3: Headed to the gym today again. Looking forward to it. Then i'm going to make dinner and probably do more laundry. I should probably mop the kitchen too.. it's a cream colored floor so it shows so much dirt so easily. But that means I have to vacuum first. We'll see if I have time for all of these things.

Thought #4: Every morning when I get in my car to go to work.. I wonder how long it's going to take to get used to driving this new car. This reminds me that I haven't taken a picture of it yet. Put that on my list of things to do this evening as well!

Thought #5: Tomorrow is Friday!!!!! Add to that the fact that I might get out at 3pm due to the holiday weekend and also we have off on Monday! I live for these work holidays even though they only come 10 times a year. That seams like a lot but it isn't.

It's the small things..

Yesterday, I decided that I need to be healthier. Not that i'm not healthy.. I've just kind of let things go a little bit when it comes to eating (for instance, I had 2 bowls of ice cream Saturday night). The fact that there's a baby who needs my nutrients is about 75% of the reason. The other 25% is so that I keep healthy habits going throughout pregnancy making it easier to stick to them post pardum.

I've decided to stop eating processed foods and excess sugar except for special occasions. I've also decided to start back to the gym on a more regular basis (perhaps, 3 times a week) just to get my heart rate up a little bit. Yesterday, I successfully did 20 minutes on the elliptical. Granted, I started out faster and ended up slower but I still did it, and I felt pretty accomplished. I was also excited because it didn't make my back hurt like walking on the treadmill does! So I figured I can do 20 minutes a day, 3 times a week and then throw in some yoga on off days if I feel like it. I feel like a balloon filled with water recently, (and i know, i know.. i'm pregnant!!) but if it helps my self esteem even a little bit, it'll do wonders for my day to day life.

Not to mention the fact that I spend my allowance on lunch every week instead of shopping or other things I want to buy. Packing a lunch will help with saving money and eating healthier.