My own room!

For Christmas, Jason got me a bunch of craft storage cubes. It took awhile to get them put together, but I love them!

Also, for the first time we were able to put all of our holiday decorations up in the attic, which cleared out that end of the storage closet/room upstairs. We moved up a desk/table that used to be in our living room - you can see that on the left of the picture. Now I need to find a chair for it. The storage cubes are on the right of the picture.


Here's a direct view of the cubes. The top left has a bunch of slots - that's where I put all of my paper. The bottom left is a file cube. The top middle and bottom right are 4 drawer cubes - I have a cube for writing utensils, scissors/cutting things, extra paper, glue/tape/etc, ribbon, paint supplies, and then two miscellaneous drawers. The 2 drawer cube has stickers and note cards/greeting cards. The last one is a 2 shelf cube - I have my knitting stuff on the top shelf and misc on the bottom.


I'm so excited to have my own room!

Jen's shower

Anne and I hosted Jen's baby shower today - everything turned out great!

First, the invitations. The final version had a safety pin across the diaper - much cuter in person!


Our next big idea was to make a teddy bear cake. Thank goodness my mom stepped in to help (or rather, actually do the entire thing for us.)

Step 1: Getting the cake out of the pan (I bought the pan and Anne made the cake - as you can see we were very instrumental in the creation of the teddy bear cake.) Here is mom carefully opening the pan up.


Step 2: Keep trying to get the cake out of the pan. See that the bear's face is still stuck in the pan.


Step 3: Finally! Bear out of pan! Use toothpicks to help hold bear together, then crumb coat it and let it dry, so you can ice it.


And voila - a teddy bear cake!!!! It turned out SOOOOOO adorable!


My drink containers once again in action.


The food setup. We had fruit w/ dip, cucumber sandwiches, pizza dip with bread to dip into it, a chicken club/veggie pizza thing, and baked brie bites. Yum!


This is part of the gift that Anne and I gave Jen. We painted the box so that it matches their nursery.


Painting onesies was such a hit at Anna's shower that we wanted to do something similar at Jen's, so we painted bibs!


The finished bibs all together, plus some close ups of my favorites.


(I made the PARTY one on the right)




The one in the middle is hard to read in the picture - it says "Spit Happens."


We had a few mini guests at the shower - Gavin (Megan and Allen's little boy -he's almost a year old)


And Molly (Anne and Kyle's little girl - she's 5 weeks old)


Poor Mr. Bear at the end of the shower ....

Anne's shower

Anne and Kyle Hultgren are also expecting a girl! She should arrive around the first of December. We had her shower today at Kay Hultgren's house. It was another beautiful day!

Here are the invitations that I made! There were actually four different ones - the differences were the stickers at the top.


This is the front cover of a book that we made, where people wrote out advice for the parents-to-be. The finished project had silver rings at the top that held the book together.


Part of my gift to them was a diaper cake that I made (with help from Jen!) On the front is the book, "The little mouse, the red ripe strawberry, and the big hungry bear." In the invitation we requested that everyone bring a book instead of card. They got about 30 books, and NO duplicates!


Cake that we had Taylor's Bakery make:


The punch in my punch bowl that I got from Grandma! It had pink lemonade, sprite, and raspberry sherbert. To help dress it up, and keep in line with the pink and yellow theme - I floated raspberries and lemons in it.


Some of the decor. The little stuffed animals are holding the favors - little bottles filled with pink and yellow jelly beans.


And my favorite part- the food!! We had veggie pizza, spinach dip, blt bites, cucumber sandwiches, stuffed strawberries, white chocolate covered strawberries, chicken salad sandwiches, baked brie, and crab dip. I think I may have gained 10 lbs in one afternoon!


To see the rest of the pictures, go to:
Anne's Shower

Anna's shower

Anna and Ryan Dilger are expecting a little girl around the end of November. We had a shower for her on October 14th, at Anne's house. It went great and everything was so beautiful!

Anna grew up on a sheep farm, so of course we needed a little lamb on her invitations! Anne and Jen came over one night and we made these:



The food at the shower was fantastic - Nate (Anna's older brother) does some catering on the side, so he provided all of the food. Chicken salad sandwiches, mini salads, sliced french bread with a cream cheese type spread and a piece of meat on it, and petit fors. So good!

The biggest hit of the shower were the onsies. Most of us aren't really into games anymore, but we still wanted something to do, so we had onsies for everyone to decorate. I won't lie, I was a little nervous about how they'd turn out, but some of them you could buy in a store!



I'm hoping someone got better pictures of the food and decor (a few little lamb things and lots of pink!), because mine didn't turn out. You can see other pictures of the onsie decorating and finished products at:
Anna's Shower

Just call me Martha Stewart

The latest "fad" in fall decorating are glitterfied pumpkins. I've seen them in stores and on Martha Stewart's website so decided to try them myself today. I used fake pumpkins so that I can use them year after year.

Before:


And after! I'm going to do some smaller ones in a brown/purplish color.