chanelmovingforward

Week Recap

July 25, 2014

Last Saturday night I had some girlfriends over for a “Favorite Things” party. I read about it on one of my favorite blogs, Lesley W. Graham. The idea goes like this: each of the seven girls brings 6 of the same item, all under $6 (with the total being no more than $36, give or take) and then each girl gets 6 new things to take home! It was so fun seeing what everyone picked. Some of the girls wrapped their items and I think that made it more fun (like Christmas!) If we do it again, I’ll definitely be wrapping mine. My loot included a red velvet candle, cloth napkins, hand soap, a bracelet, face wipes, shower scrub gloves and Charlotte’s Web. The favorite item I chose was the Wet Brush mini. I have the full size and it’s amazing on wet or dry hair. I love mini anything because they’re perfect to keep in your purse at all time. Or a hospital bag since nearly everyone I know is pregnant.

Sunday was my friend Ashley’s sprinkle shower for her baby girl. I forgot how much fun baby showers are and it’s even more fun to go to them being pregnant with a bunch of pregnant friends. We played a cute “match the baby socks” game, had yummy food and watched her open all her sweet gifts. I can’t believe her baby will be here in less than 8 weeks!

Later that night at home, we had the best one pot pasta that I saw on Pinterest. It was our first time cooking a pasta dish (including the noodles) in one pot. It was enough to feed the 3 of us for dinner and for leftovers the next day. The sauce is very light and does not weigh the dish down. And all the ingredients were under $10. I highly recommend this as a quick go to dish if you’re short on time.

Monday night my husband and I went to the Braves game with some friends. It had rained all day and was miserable but as soon as we got to the stadium, the rain stopped and the cloud coverage helped keep everything cool. My mom’s husband has season tickets in the front row at the third base line and once a season he lets us use the tickets and see a game. It’s such a great view and very cool to see the players so close. We stayed until the bottom of the 9th but the game was tied and we had a long drive back to the suburbs. Unfortunately they lost but we had a great time with our friends on a date night! Who knows when we will get another one of these since both of us are pregnant.

Here is onto another weekend, but with zero plans. We are going to (finally) work on Henry’s big boy room!

Second Birthday Shenanigans

July 9, 2014

Henry turned two years old on Saturday, June 28th. We celebrated his party with friends on Friday (see pictures here!) and enjoyed celebrating through out the week. My husbands parents, sister and her two children came into town for his birthday. Henry loves being around his cousins and had so much fun playing with them. His oldest one is five and she can entertain him and make him laugh for hours. He gets the biggest kick out of her. Lately Henry wants nothing to do with cake, ice cream or frosting. I guess that is a good thing? He is more of a carb lover like his mommy 🙂 We still had an oversize cupcake with candles for him blow out, even though he doesn’t know how, he ends up just sniffing the cake.

On Monday we celebrated with Henry’s school classmates. The extended family joined us again and we had yummy watermelon cupcakes and wore birthday hats (Henry ate zero of his cupcake).

My mom and her husband were out of town for Henry’s actual birthday, so we celebrated with my family on Sunday. My brother and dad even flew into town from Boston and Ohio. It was a lot of fun to see everyone (including Henry’s great grandmother, great aunt and great uncle). My mom is an incredible baker and made a 4th of July themed cheesecake (I guess you could call this a birthday/4th of July gathering). No surprise, Henry refused to eat the cheesecake, not even the berries on top because some of the cheesecake got on them. I love his little quirks 🙂

I still can’t believe my baby is TWO!

A Monster Celebration

July 2, 2014

Henry turned two on Saturday. TWO. As much as I thought I’d be sad about him getting bigger, it wasn’t as hard as his first birthday. I felt happy. Happy that is he understanding more, happy that he is in such a cute stage, happy that he is learning so much and using more words. This is definitely the hardest stage and the cutest and I wouldn’t change it for anything 🙂 Last Friday we had a small party for him that included all his friends and their moms from my mom group. I wanted to keep it more low key this year and celebrate with family on a different day. It definitely went a lot smoother and was much more stress-free than his big first birthday party. I had some amazing help (our wonderful babysitter and my best friend/Henry’s godmother. Not to mention my husband who worked hard before work to set up the “pool” area). The theme was Monsters University since that has been Henry’s favorite movie for the past 8 months and we turned it into a toddler pool party. I found most of the decorations online (Party City, Oriental Trading) and the blue food baskets were from the dollar spot at Target (3 for $1); they were the perfect size to hold the kids food. We ended up having 15 kids including Henry and a teeny tiny newborn! We borrowed our friend Kelly’s water table and slide and a few other toys. The blow up pools are from Sam’s Club and Target. We also had chalk, bikes, toddler lawnmowers and a bunch of other toys. The kids had a great time and the party lasted about an hour and a half which was the perfect amount of time to visit and play.

(these amazing cookies are by Yummy Delicious Cookies in Marietta, GA)

{Invitations bought here}

{A HUGE thank you to my BFF Shayda for capturing all these pictures and helping me out so much the night before/morning of, despite being 25 weeks pregnant!}

Father’s Day Weekend

June 18, 2014

It’s really crazy how fast the weekends go by. Here I am writing this post and it’s already Tuesday night. I am also watching my cat take the baby outlet protectors out of the sockets with her teeth … Is that normal?! I always end up picking the “strange” animal out of the pack. Her, Henry and our two dogs really keep things exciting around here. If you can call it that. Also, let me say that I have been working on this blog post for over an hour … I am so easily distracted when it comes to writing. No wonder why it takes me so long, in between looking at new stamps on usps.com (why??), texting friends and scrolling through pinterest pinning recipes and crafts I will never do, it’s a surprise I get anything done in my free time at all.

Friday evening we went on a double date with our friends to Studio Movie Grill to watch 22 Jump Street. It was so funny, however I think the first one has it beat (just a little!) Groupon usually has a deal where you can get a ticket for $6, nearly half of what tickets normally cost. And an added bonus is eating dinner/having drinks while watching a movie. Saturday we ran some errands and hit up another BBQ spot called Jim N Nicks. It was so good! I highly recommend it and it was toddler approved. Henry ruined his shirt with all the BBQ sauce and watermelon, but at least he ate!

My husband and I didn’t do gifts for Mother’s/Father’s Day this year, just a card/flowers/small favors mixed with a nice relaxing day. Of course I cannot just give a card to my husband on any special occasion so I wanted to do a little something extra, but not over the top and not too much money. I found this plastic bucket in the dollar bin at Target and filled it with his favorite snacks, some fireworks and new boxers. Totally f’ing random, but he loved it! Plus, it’s the thought that counts right?

After Jan read his cards and went through his goody basket, he decided he wanted to go to Waffle House for breakfast (which was just fine with me). The food is always good there and you always know what you’re getting. It’s great for a toddler too because they have basic items (eggs, sausage, toast). Speaking of toast, do you like how Henry is eating his with a fork?

Following breakfast we went to a nearby park so let Henry run around before nap time and so we could walk off some of our breakfast calories. Henry’s new thing lately is to sit down immediately when he sees a large puddle/body of water, even when he is fully clothed. Needless to say he rode home pant less and was carried out of the park in a wet diaper filled with river water. I’ll be sure to tell him that story when he is sixteen.

We ended our Sunday with Henry playing naked in his baby pool on our deck and drinking water from a hose. We keep it classy.

I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day weekend! (and seriously, have you seen the new Johnny Cash stamp??)

Weekend Wrap Up

June 13, 2014

Friday is as good a day as any to talk about last weekend right? Seriously, there are not enough hours in the day lately it seems. But last weekend was too perfect to not share. Better late than never! {PS: this post has been written since Tuesday. Not sure why I couldn’t just hit “publish”}

This weekend included family time, friend time and even some time alone with my husband. I would say it was perfectly rounded out. Friday I dropped Henry off at my moms house for an overnight stay and then went and visited my friend Emily at Bobo. I picked out a few things for Henry’s big boy room and then we had lunch at FIGO. It was my first time eating there and it was amazing. {This weekend was also filled with lots of firsts.} Friday night we took our best friends, Shayda & Lockett, out to celebrate Shayda’s 30th birthday. We went to Nuevo Laredo and Jan and I each had the chimichanga; it was delicious. My favorite though were the chips. They were thicker than the usual Mexican chips at other places and were very filling. After a yummy dinner we headed home to enjoy some late night TV watching knowing that we were going to be able to sleep in Saturday morning. Such a great feeling. We started watching the TV show Once Upon A Time and we am hooked. We are almost through the entire first season in less than a week.

Saturday morning we got to sleep in and lounge around before heading to get Henry at 11. We stop in Vinings and ate breakfast at the Broken Egg Cafe (there is one also near us which we frequent regularly). The rest of the day was spent doing yard/house work and just hanging out taking it easy. On Sunday we ventured out to Decatur to {finally} check out the Dekalb Famers Market. We had planned to go while Henry was taking his morning nap and while he was sleeping we were watching BBQ Pitmasters which always highlights the best BBQ. Needless to say we were craving it and impatiently waiting for Henry to wake up. We looked up some places on Yelp and saw that Community Q was very close to the farmers market so we headed there. The service was great, the food came out fast and it was delicious. My husband and I are huge BBQ fans and always dream of going to Memphis in May where they host a huge BBQ festival. Maybe 2015 will be our year!

23/52

June 6, 2014

“a portrait of my child, once a week, every week, in 2014.”

Henry: I’m not really surprised that this week is also a water picture. I couldn’t resist though, look at him in his shades! If he wasn’t wearing a puddle jumper you’d think he was a teenager.

Weekend Wrap Up

June 4, 2014

It’s been a while since I posted a wrap up of our weekend. Partly because we haven’t done anything that exciting and last weekend my husband was out of town and I was sick for three days. Wednesday seems like a strange day to talk about the previous weekend but after being on the computer for work from roughly 7am-4pm, my eyes need a break when I get home.

This weekend was a tad more eventful (Except for the fact that our AC was broken for two days. Luckily it has been fixed). On Friday Henry and I got to visit with baby Davis, who is only two weeks old. He is so precious and tiny! I cannot believe Henry was ever that small (actually he wasn’t. He was a whopping 8 pounds at 39 weeks). It was fun to visit and see Henry interact with a newborn. It was his first time around a baby that small and he did so well. He was very calm and gentle and would point to his toes and say “toes” and his footed onesie and say “sock.” He also gave him a stuffed animal before we left. Davis has an older sister around Henry’s age and they enjoyed eating each others pound cake and sharing their apple ciders.

Saturday morning we went to the farmers market near us and got some fresh baked bread, grass fed beef, tamales, coffee and bbq sauce. All local made/grown too. Henry loved seeing all the doggies that were there and enjoyed munching on a fresh croissant.

Saturday evening was our annual pizza night and it was our friends turn to host. We decided to bring cupcakes for a dessert because who doesn’t need a cupcake or two after stuffing their face with pizza? How cute do the boys look eating their pizza at the toddler table? My favorite pizza of the night was the pesto with fresh cut roma tomatoes and a light dusting of fontina cheese.

On Sunday morning we headed to Ikea for breakfast and a new dresser for my husband. We also looked at new big boy beads for Henry. He will be getting a day bed and moving into his big boy room soon! I hope the transition goes smoothly (fingers crossed!) Later that evening was my friend Ashley’s 30th birthday get together at Sips N Strokes. It was my first time ever taking a painting class like that and I really enjoyed it. My husband liked my painting so much that he took it to work and hung it in his office 🙂

Happy June, Friends!

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