Cleaning Out The Junk

Bringing a baby in the home makes a whole lot more junk in the trunk. No, I don't mean the kind you get from carrying a little person inside of you for 9 whole months, although that extra poundage sure does get heavy from time to time. I am actually referring to the "stuff" you acquire when bringing the little person into the world. It seems like every month there is something new we need for Eden. We don't mind, but living in 834 sq. ft. means we have to get creative when finding places to put all of the additional necessities. 

When Eden started eating solid food a couple of months ago I ran into a problem. Every little nook and cranny of our kitchen was already stuffed full and I had absolutely nowhere to put her bowls, spoons, bibs, washcloths...well, you get the idea. Then I had a bit of an "ah ha!" moment. I had a drawer full of JUNK (well, at the time I didn't really think of it as junk) that really didn't need to be there. So, I cleaned it out.

Yeah, not pretty. I then pulled out each item and laid them out all over the counter. It just emphasizes the ridiculous amount of items that were just stuffed into the drawer.

All items found in the drawer were relocated to our kitchen storage in the basement, or elsewhere in the house. I mean honestly, I don't use most of those items on a daily basis. For fun, here is a list of what was found.

• cheese slicer from Norway
• pie server
• salad servers
• apple slicer
• sippy cup instruction sheet
• plastic bag with Tums
• another cheese slicer
• meat thermometer
• sharpie
• pen
• a Christmas notepad
• extra filters for the breastpump
• coupon for string cheese
• pizza slicer
• spatula
• spoons
• basting brush (no idea what the technical term is)
• handmixer whisks paddles (seriously the name escapes me) 

Typing this all out embarrasses me so I hope you appreciate it. Actually I am doing this solely to motivate you to find a "junk drawer" and do a quick clean up. It honestly took me maybe ten minutes to sort it all out. I have to be honest, this isn't the most stunning "after" photo you will ever see, but it definitely gave me a sigh of relief once it was cleaned out. So, the after...

See what I mean? Now, things have changed a bit since this photo was taken because I think everything in your home should be flexible and ready for changes as they are needed. The bowls still reside in the drawer, as do the bibs, but I needed to make room for a couple more things that are needed most often. I combined the bibs and added in washcloths (seriously this girl loves to make a mess) and spoons. I originally had both items in separate locations but quickly realized that I needed them right at my fingertips instead of having to walk to multiple places in order to get the things I needed. Yes, even saving three steps is worth it...honestly, I will do anything for a spare second in my day.

So, there you have it. A quick organization project that may not be the most life changing thing you have ever seen, but it does the trick.

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Yes, I do believe this post is a bit trivial considering all the lives that have been lost in Missouri and the homes that have been destroyed. Definitely praying for everyone over there. Natural disasters are so devastating and it makes me so sad to see so much hurt. I am going to be certain to hold Eden a bit tighter tonight and be thankful for what I do have. Praying for you all!

Shake Your Pom-Pom's

Hmmm...I hope the title of this post doesn't garner strange bits of conversation. I thought it was funny, but now I have placed the words to a certain Ricky Martin song and I am feeling like it is quickly becoming inappropriate. Typical. Anyway...

I promised you some party details from Ruby's Golden Birthday Party (if you missed the deets on the party check them out here) and I am actually keeping that promise. Now, I am going to let you know that I didn't know that I got the privilege of being in charge of decor until right before the party (well, I didn't have a whole year to plan like for Eden's upcoming first birthday...) so I was coming up with ideas rather quickly and implementing them even quicker. This means no step by step tutorials because honestly I had no time to take photos as I was frantically putting together the decorations. Zero. Zilch. Nada. In fact we were finishing things up as the birthday girl was walking through the door. I always say I work best under pressure, but man, I really pushed it to the limit this time. 

All of the decor came from inspiration I found all over the web. However, most of it came from my love, Pinterest. Honestly I don't know what I would have done without it in this situation. I had already 'pinned' some ideas for parties (without a specific one in mind) and thankfully they worked out for this particular party. It was pretty great. Other ideas just came off the top of my head (or Josh's in some cases) and we just worked with what we had or could find easily. 

The pom poms. I am starting with these because they have had their day of fame and then some. Martha did right on this craft because they are easy (once you get the hang of it) and look great. Oh and the best part? They are super inexpensive. Now, we have all seen these in every color of the rainbow, but I thought it would be fun to mix it up a bit. I knew I wanted something smaller to use as a centerpiece, but I also wanted it to have a bit of pizazz. So, I went through my collection of tissue paper (seriously am I the only one who has BOXES of this stuff lying around the house?) and picked out different shades of pink, some that had sparkles on it, and I even found some zebra print paper to tie in with the theme. The gold tissue paper was not one I had on hand, I did buy it, but I think it was probably about 50 cents for the pack so it definitely wouldn't break the bank if you were doing a party on a budget. I used this tutorial to put them together, but I am also going to add a few comments as well. 

Hanging Pom-Poms

1. Stack eight 20-by-30-inch sheets of tissue. Make 1 1/2-inchwide accordion folds (fold on the shortest side or hamburger side as we learned in elementary school) creasing with each fold. (I wanted smaller pom's so I took the 20-by-30-inch sheets and cut them into 1/4's by folding them in half twice. DO NOT try to use less than eight sheets, it won't work so don't even try.)

2. Fold an 18-inch piece of floral wire in half (9 inch if making the smaller version), and slip over center of folded tissue; twist. With scissors, trim ends of tissue into rounded or pointy shapes (I prefer the point version in case you were curious).

3. Separate layers, pulling away from center one at a time.

4. Tie a length of monofilament to floral wire for hanging (I didn't do this step because I didn't want to hang them, of course you are welcome to do this step if you do choose to hang them).

Read more at Marthastewartweddings.com: Pom-Poms and Luminarias How-To 

Oh and if you are thinking that the tissue pom-pom's look familiar, we also used them at our gender reveal housewarming party (thank you again Maggie for making these for us!)

Back to the centerpieces. So, to give the pom's a bit of height since they were the stars of the show on the table, I placed them on top of square votive holders that we had leftover from our wedding (we have like a gazillion so I use them for EVERYTHING). We bought out WalMart's entire stock. Seriously. Josh and I would go to two different ones in Salem (and we even ventured to others in various cities) and would pile the cart high with all of the ones they had. We did this at least six different times. Yep, we were THOSE people. 

To finish off the centerpiece I just threw on a couple of votives that we had leftover from when Josh proposed to me (duh, obviously it was to me) and then threw on some handmade confetti. 

How did I make the confetti you ask?

Simple.

I picked out a couple of sheets of scrapbook paper at Michael's, borrowed a circle craft punch (thanks Jessie!), and punched away. I also had wanted to make confetti from black and white photos of Ruby. I actually tried, but it turned out horrible I ran out of time. Seriously though, if you are throwing a party for someone, you should definitely do this...just don't try to do it at the last second before the party and definitely use heavy weight paper. Trust me. Here's a photo of photo drink sticks, but you could easily adapt this into confetti.

via Sugar and Charm

Cute right? And so very perfect for a party celebrating the life of someone special.

Alright, I don't want to overwhelm you all in one day with craftiness so I will bid you adieu for the night. More to come!

Eden's Room Revisited

Okay, see what happens when I go out of town and don't get all caught up on my blog reading? Eden's nursery was featured on one of my favorite go to websites, Spearmint Baby and I MISSED IT. How does this even happen?! Anyway, for all of you that are visiting from over there, welcome...glad to have you! Take a look around and stay awhile...although you may quickly come to find that I am quite crazy and typically say weird things and put myself in awkward situations. 

Oh and for those of you that have hung around here for awhile and have already seen the room reveal, you may want to go check it out again...I added a few new things...or just head on over because there is some GREAT inspiration to be had. Honestly I was all over that blog during pregnancy getting ideas and just enjoying all the different features. It's quite fantastic!

Alright, I am going to go bask in my fame now change a dirty diaper. Oh the life of a mother, no time to enjoy being a star...and I wouldn't have it any other way.

8 Months

Another month has absolutely flown by. I couldn't believe I was already pulling out Eden's 9 month clothing last night. I remember when I was putting them away before she arrived and I thought to myself that it would be so long until she wore them. I laugh at my silly ways before Eden was born. 

This past month has been so fun and yet so exhausting. This girl move so much that I absolutely cannot keep up with her. You turn away for one second and bam! Eden is in Bella's food bowl, or getting ready to chew on a cord, or...honestly she picks the worst things to play with. Watching her learn how her body works and start to recognize the things around her is so much fun. She definitely likes to explore! I've loved every minute of this stage...okay, well most of it.

8 Month Stats
Length: 25.5 inches (guesstimate)
Weight: 15 lbs (major guesstimate)

Eden Rae, here is what you have been up to lately:

You army crawl everywhere
You say "buh" in reference to everyone and everything
You love to "walk" while holding mommy's hands
You prefer vegetables over fruit (unless its bananas...just like your mommy!)
You put everything in your mouth
You decided to no longer sleep through the night (bedtime: 10-11pm, eat at 2 & 6:30, wake up at 8:30am)
You are extremely vocal and love to screech and shout at an ear deafening rate
You love your stacking rings, stacking cups, all LeapFrog toys, and of course Sophie the Giraffe

You learned how to throw a ball back and forth to mommy and think its fun

You laugh at everything your sister does

You just started getting up on your hands and knees, and sometimes even your toes (baby push-ups)

So, we are kind of obsessed with you baby girl. It's hard to believe you are only four months away from being a one year old. We love you so much E-bear, munka punka, punkadoodle, bug...well, you get the idea.

And of course, what kind of post would this be without photos highlighting Eden's past month.

Happy 8 Months Eden Rae! 

Baby Mama

I filled my hard drive. Full. Red line. Done-zo. I know the solution is to start purging files and anything else that is taking up space (try 5 million photos of Eden), but I am having a hard time doing it. I have been chipping away at the mass amount of photos almost daily, but IT.IS.HARD. I already had to come to the conclusion that I absolutely cannot delete any of the photos of her first month, even if they are blurry or duplicates...simply because I really didn't get many newborn photos of Eden. I have had a hard time getting over the fact that I was bed ridden for her first two weeks and thus didn't get to spend the quality time bonding with her like I had dreamed that I would, so deleting the photos just feels like a knife in a still healing wound...it hurts too much. Anyway, all this to say that it takes me a week to delete enough photos to upload the mass amount of photos I have taken recently on my camera that are just sitting there and waiting. Last night I finally cleaned out enough photos so I could have everything I took on mothers day on the computer. Now, I am finally here to share what my first mother's day (with baby in my arms and not in my belly) was like, and more importantly I can share about Eden's dedication.

Sunday morning we woke up super early knowing we had a big day ahead of us (yes we were still late even though we both woke up earlier than we usually do for church). Josh finished cleaning the house for the lunch we were hosting at our house for our family and I got the little chickadee up for her big day. Our church does all of the baby dedications on mother's day which we feel is so special and just love that tradition. For those of you that are not familiar with baby dedications, let me give a brief explanation. Basically it is a time that parents commit to raising their child up in the church so that one day (we pray) our children will choose to accept Christ into their hearts as their Savior. Now that we have dedicated Eden we have just proclaimed to the church that we do desire to lead godly lives as examples to our daughter and one day, when she is ready, we will help her to become a follower of Jesus as well. 

This is what happens when Eden is near me during prayer...it is rather distracting :)

It was a really neat time getting to stand up in front of the church, with our family in the audience, and our church family looking on. We had a good amount of seating taken up by family members (and adopted  family members). Grandpa and Lola Phillips (Mal's parents), Brett and Stephanie (Mal's brother and sister-in-law), Great Grandma Phillips (Mal's grandma), and Daniel and Ruby (our adopted family/best friends) were all there to witness Eden's big day (for all of our family that were unable to be there, we missed you!!). Eden...who loves being the center of attention already...definitely made her presence known. She let out a few squeals, laughs, and shouts and absolutely could not get her eyes off of our Pastor. She was very into what he was saying. We always laughed when I was pregnant with her because every single Sunday, without fail, she would wake up and start kicking me just as Pastor Tim went up to preach. What a good girl :)

After service we all headed back to our house and celebrated mother's day with a big spread of sandwiches, potato salad, veggies & hummus, and chips. For the sandwiches we used bread from Great Harvest (yum!) and had a bunch of toppings so everyone could choose what they wanted. I really wish I would have taken a second to take a photo of the whole shebang, but unfortunately I just did not even have a moment to spare. 

Once our bellies were full and satisfied we did presents. Eden of course got to go first and can I just say this girl is SPOILED. She got so many presents. Mostly thanks to my parents who apparently bought out all of Target. This girl loves to pull the paper out of bags and look at her presents. We also exchanged a few mother's day gifts as well. I'll have to show you the gift Josh and Eden gave me in another post. 

Overall it was the most fantastic day. Josh took care of diapers (besides the one #2 diaper I got stuck with...of course) and did most of the cleaning and I didn't even have to actually cook that day. I really liked having the opportunity to sit back and relax a few moments in the day. 

I hope everyone enjoyed their mother's day whether you are a mom, want to be a mom, or have a mom, or think moms are da bomb dot com. 

Rockin' Mom's

Happy Mother's Day to all the mother's and soon to be mothers out there! We appreciate all the hard work each and every one of you do. In short, mothers are ROCK STARS and we LOVE THEM. So, here's to you hard working mama's. 

To the mom's (and apparently my dad who snuck in a photo) in our lives...we love you all so much! 

I Shot The Flowers

With mommy's day on the brain, flowers just seemed to fit today's post. Yes, I am FINALLY posting photos from our visit to the Tulip Fest. I would like to say I planned it this way so that it coincided with a holiday that uses lots of flowers, but I didn't. I just can't lie. Anyway, I decided that this post wouldn't be about recapping our visit, but instead I would use it to give you a little insight into my day as a camera happy nut. 

Can I have a moment of confession here? I felt like it was my first time picking up a camera as we headed out to the fields. My fingers shook as I pressed the shutter, unsure if what I was seeing would actually come through in the photos. Funny thing is I have had so much practice taking photos of Eden INDOORS during this long Oregon winter, but I have never really had the opportunity to practice OUTDOORS. Crazy right? 

Since this was a rather new experience for me (well in the sense that I was controlling my camera and not letting my camera control me by using "automatic" mode) I figured it might be helpful for me, and for all of you out there to see what my settings were for each photo. This may help those of you that are dabbling in amateur photography to see what each setting does for a photo. As a reminder, I use "Av" mode almost exclusively so I set the aperture and the ISO, while the camera determines my shutter speed. I have actually started to play around in manual, but am still loving my "Av" mode. Another note, I used my 50mm 1.8 lens for all photos unless noted.  

F 3.5, 1/4000, ISO 100

F 4.5, 1/320, ISO 100

 1.8, 1/4000, ISO 100

F 1.8, 1/4000, ISO 100

F 1.8, 1/4000, ISO 100

F 5.0, 1/500, ISO 100

F 5.0, 1/500, ISO 100

F 5.0, 1/1600, ISO 100

We are ignoring my goofy face and enjoying the fact that my daughter looks adorable in her sunglasses and um HELLO check out my hair...it hasn't been this long since my wedding day.

F 2.8, 1/2500, ISO 100

F 3.5, 1/1600, ISO 100

I  was in love with the color of this picnic table. I wanted to take it home and put it in the backyard. Sadly, my yard is the size of a cracker jack box so I realized a photo would be the best choice. If I were cool and had a fancy editing program I would have only had the picnic bench in color. So let's just pretend I am fancy.

F 3.5, 1/2000, ISO 100

 Lens: 18-55mm
Focal Length 34mm, F 4.5, 1/2000, ISO 100

I hope that gave you a bit of insight into how I work when I pull that camera out. It was fun getting to play around with my camera with a real live sunshine. Now, if a certain little person didn't choose to have her naptime and meal time during the later part of the day, we would have visited the fields in the evening so I could have avoided some of the harsher shadows from the sun. However, the little miss kind of rules our lives and you know what? I am okay with that. It gives me a little more of a challenge. Yes, I am perfectly aware that morning light is just as fab, but let's not go there...certain people in this household like to stay in bed FOREVER. Just saying.

Now go pick up your cameras and start clicking! 

Tray Talk

Mother's Day is coming. Soon. Please tell me you didn't forget. 

Well, even if you did forget...or well, even if you didn't, I wanted to give you a quick crafty project to tackle just in case you hadn't yet decided on a gift for your beloved mother. 

Here's the skinny. Some moms are hard to shop for. You know they work so hard and do so much all year long, but when it comes to buying them something you just don't know where to start. I think most moms oftentimes don't feel like they actually "need" anything so you are left trying to figure out what extra special thing you can give to the woman who birthed you or brought you into her life in some way or another. Honestly I am all for handmade. I think any gift that was thoughtfully made by you shows just how much you care. It's a great excuse to get your craft on as well...and that is never a bad thing. 

Last year I made a chalkboard tray (I know, using old craft projects as blog material seems to be a theme lately) and it is now well used by my sister from another mister, Ruby. Yes, the same Ruby who just celebrated her golden birthday. Okay, I know what you are thinking, Ruby is not my mother. This is true. However, in going through old photos of projects I had done, I came across the tray and thought it was such a great gift for anyone, especially mommies. Now, this would be the part where I show you that photo. The problem is I wasn't so great at using my camera back then and the photos are so blurry that even I had a hard time making out (that's what she said!) what it was. So, without further adieu, I give you a whole bunch of other people's chalkboard trays that I found all over my beloved internet. 

via

Trays can be used to write notes to the family or even to have in a guest room with some welcoming words and some toiletries or even a little snack as shown above.

via

Does your mom love tea? Have a grown up tea party outside with her new tray. Oh and husbands, you aren't getting out of this that easy. Why don't you use those DIY skills I know you have and make your wife a chalkboard tray of her own AND THEN do something bold. Go cook her breakfast and serve it to her in bed. Stop your whining. I don't care if you don't know how to cook. Go watch some Food Network, do a little googling, and figure it out. Trust me, she deserves it and she will love you and your burnt toast.

via

Nobody said chalkboards have to be black (or green like in elementary school). Find a chalkboard paint in your mom's favorite color, or find one that matches her decor. Need some inspiration? Check out all of the colors that Hudson Paint carries.

 Want to really get your hands dirty and can't find the paint color that you really desire? Make your own. Check out the oh so talented Kate from Centsational Girl's great tutorial. 

via

  

Not feeling the whole tray thing? Then, grab something else and paint away! Seriously, if your mom loves to cook or garden, how cute would painted chalkboard pots be? Honestly, the possibilities are endless. Just head out to your local thrift store, Target, wherever and find something that looks like it wants to be painted. 

Oh and most definitely don't forget the chalk. Preferably some pretty colored chalk. Although, white is always nice as well.

Now, go forth my pretties and make something nice for that special mom in your life.