The most wonderful time of the year!

I declared on Friday that I was working on Christmas decorations over the weekend - if it didn't get up, it wasn't going up! So in between cleaning & laundry, sleeping & eating, that is exactly what I did.

So now our house is mostly decorated for Christmas, inside & out. I moved a few things out of their "normal" spots this year and kept some of my more meaningful and breakable items stored away to keep my monkey away from them, but it's festive & merry and I'm in love.

How sweet are my boys?

Of course, between everything, I didn't have time to take many pictures ... but, I'll be back in the next week or two with a home tour :)

Happy Monday!

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Back to basics

After a few months of really struggling with the blog, I think I am back on track. Not sure what happened, I guess I was just feeling like nothing was extremely blog worthy.

But then I remembered why I blog ... and truthfully, it's for me. It doesn't matter how many followers I have or how many comments I get - it's my journal and way of sharing my thoughts and feelings.

With that being said - I know I have some new followers, along with the old! So tell me - what do you like? Is there something you'd like to see me blog more about? Any specific questions?

Ask away! I'm a {mostly} open book!



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Coop's rookie year! {birthday party}

It didn't take long for hubby and I to agree on a theme for Mister's first birthday party. I wanted a play on words and something easy. He vetoed Onederland, so we moved on to the Rookie Year baseball theme!

 

My super-talented friend Bel made the invites. Since she lives in DC and can't attend parties, she loves to do this and be a part of things. I took the picture, and told her to make it cute and like a baseball card. {Of course it didn't have those lovely white edit marks to blur out the personal information either :)}

For the cake, I just went with Sam's Club. None of our local stores did smash cakes, and with his birthday being the day after Thanksgiving, I was hesitant to ask someone local. We did a smash cake for him, and chocolate and vanilla cupcakes for everyone else. They were very yummy and inexpensive!

The set up :) We are extremely fortunate to have a large, mostly finished basement, so we just brought in some tables and chairs and were ready to go. I didn't get a close up of the food table (along the wall) but we did hot dogs, nachos, veggies, chips, peanuts, tea & lemonade.

Of course, I suppose there aren't any "true" baseball colors, but since we live in Cardinal country, we stuck with red & blue, as seen on the tablecloths and balloons. We also had candy dishes on the tables.

For favors, we gave out Cracker Jacks :)

The gift table, before we filled it up! The one is actually a cardboard 3D thing I found at Hobby Lobby and the hubs spray painted. Cheap but exactly what I wanted. Cooper's gift from hubby and I was the wooden Louisville slugger, which we invited all of our guests to sign.

 We used this space to string up C's monthly pictures, and hang his most recent above. Everyone loved seeing how he's changed. And if I'm being honest - I do, too, and it's still hanging :) If you want to see them, go HERE.

Our high chair is strapped in our nice kitchen chairs and I was searching high and low for a wooden one I hubby could spray paint red. I never found one, but a family friend allowed us to borrew their chair.

The cute banners were made by an Etsy seller, found HERE.

Since this is getting long, I'm going to stop here with the end of the setup/decorations, and come back again {hopefully tomorrow} with some of the party pictures. But as a sneak peak ... yes, someone really loved his cake!

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What I'm Loving

It's easy to think of lots that I am loving on this beautiful December day.

{1} Obviously, I'm loving that the weather is so mild. Love having temps in the 60s :)

{2} I'm loving the yummy chicken taco chili I made yesterday ... especially that I have lots of leftovers :)

{3} I'm loving that we are having a work Christmas party on Friday, and going to be snacking all day!

{4} I'm loving my OOTD - a navy maxi dress I found on clearance for $4, blue jean jacket and brown boots - total fall love.

{5} I'm loving the Christmas touches I've added around the office!

 

{6} I'm loving that we had a great Parents as Teachers home visit last night - Cooper has already hit all of the milestones up to 14 months, and a few for beyond that!

{7} I'm loving all the baby announcements lately! I <3 :=":" babies="babies" font="font">

{8} Of course, I'm loving my sweet baby. And his daddy.

What are you loving today? Happy Wednesday!
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What would you do?

Something has been weighing heavily on my mind ....

While walking to our from a store on Sunday, hubby noticed a man & woman a couple rows away. They were arguing.

We watched for a few moments, while getting Cooper settled, etc. Not gawking. Concerned.

It seemed that everything was settling down, so we began to put the car in drive. Then, it got physical, with the woman shoving and hitting the man.

What to do? It wasn't our place to get involved, clearly. Would calling the cops make it better or worse?

We hung out for a bit longer. Hubby saw that the man was only verbal, not physical, with the woman. That was his main concern - he didn't want to see a woman getting hit. Shortly after, they drove away so we did too.

I'm not sure at what point we would have gotten involved and, if so, how.

What would you have done?


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First haircut :)

Last week, we took baby boy to get his first hair cut! For a couple months now, I've been thinking Man, this kid has some old-man, shaggy hair but refused to cut it because I know there is some old wive's tale about waiting until the baby is 1, and if I'm anything, I'm superstitious!

Of course, I was that mom at the salon taking a bazillion or so pictures. We took him to Miss Shannon, who does my hair. Hubby and I argued over who's hair lady got to, and of course, I won :)

Back to the pictures ... I took a lot. And Shannon was singing and jumping around to keep Coop entertained. We made such a spectacle that, when we left, a man thanked us for the show - ha!

He looks even more handsome now, if that was even possible.

Before ... crazy long hair!

Snacks make everything better :)

Not so excited after the first cut

Buzz, buzz, buzz

And we're done! Handsome baby with a mohawk!

Of course we had to take a family picture.

The final consensus? I love it. Just like everyone said (and I thought), he seemed to grow up after that first haircut. He now looks older, yet chubbier ... and the hair looks a bit lighter.

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Lately ...

Whew, it's been a whirlwind!

• I attended a craft fair over the weekend, and had lots of fun looking at the neat items. With that being said, I only purchased one handmade item - a sock cap for Cooper. My other buys were Pampered Chef and Scentsy.
• I totally got in trouble for buying the Pampered Chef! When I told hubby I purchased a can opener (we've been needing a new one and I like my mom's Pampered Chef) he groaned. Turns out, he was planning to buy me one as a stocking stuffer for Christmas. Luckily, he hadn't placed the order yet.
• So as of now, no buying anything for myself until mid February :)
• Speaking of Christmas, I finally finished the first tree - Cooper's :) It's red, blue and silver and has a penguin blanket as the skirt. So far, so good in terms of baby and the tree, but then again, he doesn't spend a lot of unsupervised time in his room, either.

• The diet started back up yesterday. So sweets were tossed.
• I'm also planning to do some working out and utilizing that treadmill ... now just to find the time!
• It was in the 60s and 70s all weekend and amazing! Unfortunately we were on the run and didn't have a lot of time to just enjoy.
• I'm about 80 percent done with my Christmas shopping!
• Highlights from Coop's well check last week:
• He is 21 lbs., 7 ounces - 30th percentile. Totally normal for a very active boy, she said.
• 29 inches, which has him right in the 50th percentile
• Right where he should be or a little ahead in terms of speech and movement.
• We had our family/Christmas photos taken yesterday. LOVE. I can't wait to share :)
• Hubby's work Christmas party was on Saturday, and among other things, I made spicy cayenne pretzels. They went over so well, so I thought I would share the recipe here:
• You need: One bag pretzels, oil, cayenne pepper and 1 packet ranch dressing mix.
• Pour the pretzels in a brown paper bag and coat with about 1/4 cup of oil. Add ranch dressing mix and about 1 T. cayenne pepper.
• Shake about every 15 minutes for an hour.
• Enjoy :) Of course if you like them more or less spicy, just adjust the amount of pepper.
• Someone decided he was King of the House over the weekend. Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough to snap a picture when he was standing on the boxes with the hairbrush in his hand like it was his sceptor.

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