Mother's Day Photoshoot

Check out these sweet images we took while we were enjoying the great outdoors in the beautiful weather on Mother's Day. (this was around 10:30am, after we'd been up since about 7:30!)

Mothers Day via iPhone

Waffles for Breakfast! Only the best!

Fresh picked Roses from the bush outside! (from Scarlett)

Fresh picked Iris from outside! (from Alex)

Little bit of fuss.. excuse my face please! :)

Homemade stromboli for lunch!

Some champagne with a splash of Peach Mango V8 splash! Yum!

I have some more pictures to share from our actual camera in our little backyard photo shoot which i'll put into another post!

My first official Mother's Day was very nice. Very relaxing! Alex made homemade waffles for breakfast, I snuggled a lot with Scarlett and held her most times she napped (other than her morning nap), we laid outside under a tree for a while, Alex made stromboli for lunch which was delicious!, we popped some bubbly, I made risotto for dinner and Alex added in some collards for good measure, we relaxed indoors and played with Scarlett all day.

Scarlett has been teething, or whatever the beginning stages of teething are so she wasn't happy all the time. We wanted to go take a walk somewhere but the logistics were difficult to plan around Scarlett's cat nap schedule, or non-schedule really. So relaxing at home was the best idea and we took full advantage.

I hope everyone who is a mother or a mother to be had a fantastic day filled with love!

Easter Pictures

Here are some pictures from Easter. Obviously super late but I finally got around to editing them! :)

10 Things :: Link Up :: Volume 3

Hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday! I am off work until January 3rd! woo hoo!

1 :: Christmas

I cannot believe it's christmas weekend. Time in December has almost literally flown by. I had a lot of christmas stuff to accomplish at the beginning of the week and got most of it done last night. Final gifts and finishing the wrapping of those gifts make the tree complete. We can't wait to spend the weekend with our families and celebrate this awesome time of year. Next year will be even more exciting with a little one and I'm sure we'll be thinking about that a lot this year as we go through our days!

2 :: Baby

After posting Do I Have a Breech Baby? the other day I'm feeling less stressed about the situation. I honestly feel that the midwife was wrong and that I am right and I'm going to go ahead and trust my instinct on this. I slept like a baby last night and I attribute that to the fact that I wasn't worrying. Less than 5 weeks to go!

3 :: The Holidays at Work

This tends to bring out the goodies, aka sugar. It's really good that I didn't do any baking this year. On Tuesday we had cake twice in one day! I didn't have the 2nd piece. It will be very nice to have the week following Christmas off of work to focus on baby stuff for a while and try to prep as much as possible so I can relax the last three weeks before her due date.

4 :: Ping Pong

We are just LOVING the ping pong table that Alex's parents got to keep at our house for holidays and get togethers. Sunday night, I beat Alex in best of 7 .. which is super surprising because he is really good at ping pong. I guess this just means that I'm getting better! We need to get all the ping pong playing in that we can before baby girl comes, I don't think we'll have much time for that after she arrives. We're looking forward to this weekend as well when Alex's family comes in so we can have another tournament or two or three or four!!!!

5 :: Maternity Picture

I'll just throw one of these in here. I've already prepped a post to go up on Monday with more pictures from our entire shoot. I cannot share them before Christmas because of a gift sensitive matter. We are still super excited with how they turned out though.

6 :: Pinterest

I've recently dabbled less in the world of Pinterest. The craziness of the holidays have just sent me in a different direction. However I have some new pins I would like to share!

- Pin1 - Pin2 - Pin3 - Pin4 -

Doesn't Pin 1 look like a blast for a little boy? Pin 2 is candy.. yep.. candy jewels! Pin 3 just looks really easy and cute! And Pin 4 is an awesome idea for any party to get pictures of all of your guests!

7 :: Nursery Prints

I am loving this print I found through another pin from pinterest. I don't know yet if it will fit in the nursery but if I could get it in a magenta/purple mix, it just might. I might have to do a variation of my own and print it myself. We'll see how it goes. But isn't it sweet?

8 :: Christmas with children

Just a random idea that I'm sure there's a pin for but I have yet to see it. 12 days of christmas for kids. A countdown with gifts starting 12 days before christmas. Could be easy if you find really small trinkets or what not to give them multiples of.

9 :: Slow Burn

This throat burn is going to be the death of me. And that's all I'm going to say.

10 :: Happy Holidays

I'll say it again, Happy Holidays! This is the best time of year. Five days after Christmas I will celebrate turning 27 followed by a sure to be awesome New Years Eve! 2012 is going to be the best yet!

Photo Dump

This begins with Thanksgiving (GASP!) i know.. sorry it's so late. :)

Next up, Christmas Tree hunting!!

 

 

Random Stuff like making Homemade Marshmallows, our decorated Christmas Tree

and our contribution to the McHenry Christmas Party!

Lastly, a bare belly! I had Alex take this for documentation of 35 weeks!

It's Christmas Time!

I absolutely cannot believe that Christmas is in 11 days. These last couple weeks at work have been so busy that it makes the days fly even faster than normal.

We put up our Christmas tree this past Saturday and I don't have any formal (as in not iphone) photos of it yet but here are a couple of the tree and ornaments that we made at craft night last Friday night!

Wow, blurry! We got a canaan tree and it looks so good that it looks fake. I will try to replace this with a real photo soon!

There's so much you can do with empty glass ornaments!

 

I love this one!

Santa!

How pretty are these babies? I hope they last all month!

Alex and I have a little more shopping to do for the holiday but we're almost finished! Then I need to get to wrapping! I can't wait until next year when we have a little one to share Christmas with. Then Santa will officially start coming to our house and I'll probably have to be way more organized. Things will definitely be different next year (in a good way!)

A long holiday weekend =

a long recap blog post. so if you don't want to read alll about it.. just quit while you're ahead ;)

Wednesday, I got out of work at 3pm which is like heaven on a stick. I made a caramel apple cheeesecake pie from this recipe, which has been working out for me for about 3 years now give or take and my Auntie Christine loves it, am I right Aunt Chris? Anywho, Alex and I did our normal weeknight routine with the addition of hanging out with Nick, Laurel and Nate for a couple hours. Cue the debates about warfare.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, obviously! We headed up to my parents around 9am to spend some quality time before going over to Da's house. (Da is what we call my paternal grandmother). When we got there we got down to business of setting up the table by filling drinks etc. because we had to eat before the Packers game started. The food was delish per usual and after everyone was filled to the brim, we watched a little football. Well, okay, I watched a little and then retired to the kitchen to peruse the black friday newspaper inserts. I can't believe how cheap HDTVs are right now. Who's with me? It's crazy! If only I were in the market for a new TV! (i'm not, hello, baby on the way)

Anyway, at about 2pm we had to take off from Da's to head to our next destination, Lynn and Debbie Brubaker's in Kimberton (1.5 hours away from Camp Hill). We arrived in good time with time to socialize before the meal started. It was really nice to see everyone and catch up a little bit. I even got to show pictures of baby girl since we brought them along. We don't get to spend holidays with the extended Brubaker family very often so it was nice to see them. Plus, Lynn and Debbie do NOT disappoint when it comes to hosting and the food that they and everyone else contributed was delicious! That turkey was probably the moistest thing I have ever eaten (sorry Alex, you make a good turkey too). I wish I had more room in my belly for more food but I was stuffed! We spent the evening chatting and also playing Rumikub with Nate and Laura.. love that game!

Friday, Alex had to work so I got to sleep in! Thank goodness! Though that really only lasted until about 9am. When I eventually got out of bed, I decided to hit up Carter's outlet for the insane sale they were having of 50% off plus I had a 20% off coupon plus got another 10% off for getting there before noon! The outlets weren't as bad as I had anticipated. On my way there, I took a bit of a shortcut down Old Philly Pike and a cop ended up behind me in a 35 zone (annoying) .. then we're waiting at a red light and the person across the way breezes right through it. What did the cop do? Turn around and pull them over? Nope, he stayed behind me and basically ignored it! Cray-zay! I was a bit peeved but whatever. Back to Carter's. That place (as I've said before) is overwhelming. And I totally know I shouldn't be buying my baby clothing before even having a baby shower but I could NOT pass up that kind of sale. So I bought a couple of things for when she's older that she can wear. As well as some really cute summer outfits that were on clearance!

After Carter's, I headed to Neato Burrito to pick myself up something and then to Saigon to get Alex and Keith some lunch. We all had a nice time chatting about baby stuff and eating our yummy food. Neato Burrito is good but it is filling (cue Anchorman quote and the subsequent punting of poor Baxter). After lunch, I headed home just in time to see the surprise from Omer and Charmayne delivered by Charmayne, Nick and Laurel. They were starving so they didn't stay but the surprise awaited setup in the basement. I'm pumped about it, it's going to be so fun! So I put up some Christmas decor and then drew the tree on the nursery wall so it's ready for painting. It's looking really good and if all goes according to plan I will have saved a TON of money just painting it myself instead of buying the set of decals. (Enter shameless self promotion). Then it was time to head to Iron Hill to meet up with the Bru-clan since Alex and Omer usually do that on Friday's that he works anyway. We couldn't stay long however because we had to head up to my Grandparents house for the Christmas Tree decorating celebration which included a house filled with cousins running wild and aunts and uncles to catch up with. We had a good time and took lots of pictures. I had a really nice chat with my cousin Sarah who is due with her 3rd baby in May. She cloth diapers so I got all the dirty details (ha!) about what she uses and how she cleans them and all of that stuff. I've been meaning to ask her all about it so I'm glad I had that opportunity. I'll do another post on cloth diapers because I did take the time to make a spreadsheet (are you surprised?) and the savings are in-sane!

Saturday morning we had breakfast planned with Alex's parents (Omer and Charmayne) and Nick and Laurel. Alex made potatoes (yum) and a napa cabbage dish and I cut up apples and kind of unsuccessfully roasted grapefruit (it just tasted like regular grapefruit by the time we got there, bc it wasn't warm anymore). Anyway, they already had a whole spread waiting so we chowed down and it was yummy. I used to not enjoy breakfast so much but it's growing on me. After breakfast we engaged in a cut-throat game of Yatzhee which I stunk horribly at. The 2nd game we started I was doing killer but it ended up we had to leave before we could finish.

I plan to do a separate post of the activities we did while babysitting my 6 year old niece Makayla, so I'm going to insert here a few teasers: Santa. Gingerbread village. Movies.

Sunday I took Makayla back to my mom's house around 3pm. I stayed and chatted for a little while, just as Makayla expected I would. Then they said they were going to Hoss's so I joined them. I never EVER say no to Hoss's. Ever. Never ever ever. Anyway, to Hoss's we went and it was nice to just eat salad for dinner and not get overfilled for once that weekend. Then I made the trip back home and got to spend some relax time with Alex before drifting off into the best sleep I've had all weekend.

And we all lived happily ever after. The end.

A Very Merry (Pinterest) Christmas :: Decor Edition

Check out this decor inspiration, courtesy of my Pinterest boards. :)

So glad I can finally share these since I pinned a bunch of them months ago!

Mantle Decor

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Marshmallow Wreath

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Snowflake 'Wreath'

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Festive Floating Candle

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Hanging Candy Canes

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Santa Key (for those without chimney's)

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Easy Glittery Candle

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Felt Circle Wreath

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Ruffled Tree Skirt

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