Category: Uncategorized

I went to a baby shower in honor of my friend Emily on Saturday. I wasn’t quite sure what to bring so I put together this diaper cake. (By the way, N was disappointed when he found out the “diaper cake” I was talking about making was a cake-shaped display of diapers and not a diaper-shaped cake. He had been envisioning snacking on leftover cake pieces and marzipan but gamely helped me roll up the diapers anyway.)

My sister-in-law showed me how to put it together and how to make the little flowers out of baby socks for the top. (Thanks, Miranda!) It took 70-something diapers to make so it ends up being a fairly practical gift.

Looking at it now, there are a couple little things I would do a differently but over all I’m happy with how it turned out. I forgot to take pictures while I was putting it together but I’m going to make another cake for another shower in a couple of weeks and I’ll post a how-to with pictures then.

I meant to post about this, oh, two months ago but I kept missing the chance to take a photo of it in the daylight. And then the holidays and such happened.

I’ve been lucky enough to win two things online. The first thing was this fancy Breville grill from Citymama. And the second thing was this cute picture drawn by Natalie’s sister.

Isn’t it cute? I got to specify a theme and I suggested balloons which E loves and this is what Natalie’s sister came up with. I’m going to hang it up in E’s room.

The style reminds me a lot of Exploding Dog, a site that N and I used to look at when we were dating (coincidentally, Exploding Dog turns ten this year which makes me feel old). Anyway, at Exploding Dog people submit captions and then Sam draws pictures interpreting the captions. It may not seem that special now but back in the day it was pretty cool.

My sister-in-law Miranda is hosting a baby shower for a friend and she asked me to try my hand at an invitation for the event. She’s having a chocolate fountain at the party and so requested a pink and brown scheme.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and there are still things I’d like to change about it, but I had a lot of fun mucking around in Illustrator to put this together. If anyone has any good Illustrator/Photoshop training books or websites to recommend I’d love to hear about them.

Thanksgiving 2009 will go down in family history as The Year With The Mouse. Yep, yesterday a mouse somehow made its way into the crawl space behind our fireplace and then decided to take a tour of our family room. I was on a last-minute grocery run so our poor babysitter was the first one to spot it. N arrived home first and got the report from our freaked-out sitter and then promptly called me on my cell. And I promptly freaked out and bought several traps and packages of poison bait.

We looked everywhere in the living room but couldn’t find it. It didn’t show itself until after we put E to bed and were watching a show. Then it darted out from a vent in the back of our gas fireplace and ran behind a bookshelf. Needless to say, we were pretty freaked out. We were up until after 1am trying to get rid of it. It wasn’t interested in our sunflower seed butter baited traps (with E’s allergies we don’t have any peanut butter in the house). At one point I had the ambitious idea that I was going to trap it under a sieve and then take it outside and let it loose. However, it didn’t quite catch the vision of my humane plan and wouldn’t cooperate. So we broke out the poison.

We haven’t seen it all day today so I think it either succumbed to the bait or found its way back out again. *Shudder* So hopefully we’ve seen the last of it.

Other than the drama with the mouse our Thanksgiving was really nice. Very low-key, but nice. Not to get sappy, but the older I get the more I can truly see the hand of the Lord in my life. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful husband, a sweet son, loving parents and family, kind friends, and a warm home on cold nights (mouse notwithstanding).

Over the weekend I met up with another blogger; Elaine and I both brought along our husbands and got together at a Korean restaurant for some delicious soon dubu (spicy tofu soup). It was my first blogger meet-up. I confess, I got a little nervous about it beforehand–it almost felt like a first date! Even though I’m sometimes kind of shy around new people it was a lot of fun.

Check out Elaine’s blog, clothed much. Her and her husband are both still in school and have somewhat limited resources so on her blog Elaine focuses on creating stylish and modest outfits out of the clothes she already has. She has a real eye for fashion and I like seeing what she comes up with. And she’s adorable.

Unfortunately both E and N came down with colds over the weekend but I still had a nice time (while taking zinc lozenge after zinc lozenge to ward off their germs). Friday night I opened present from N and family and friends. I was really touched by everyone’s kindness–I’ll share some of their lovely gifts later this week.

On Saturday N and I took E out for lunch and then stopped by a park to let him play on the slides and swings. He had a great time and it was a lot of fun to watch him. N and I had made plans a while ago to go out that evening; I thought it might be better to reschedule for when N was feeling better but he wanted to be a trooper and still go. So we went and saw the movie Bright Star which was great and then we went to the Melting Pot and ate ourselves silly on cheese and meat and chocolate. And then to top off the weekend I won my fantasy football game last night!

Work’s going to be pretty crazy for me this coming week so it was nice to have a relaxing low-key birthday weekend. E seems to be mostly over his cold so if N can just get better (and I can avoid getting sick) things will be in decent shape around here.

Thank you for all the kind birthday wishes! Yesterday turned out to be very nice. After we hit up the stores Jan and I drove up the canyon to Sundance and had lunch at the grill there. A lot of the tress had finished dropping their leaves but the drive was still very pretty–so pretty in fact that I missed the turn for Sundance and didn’t realize it until we were at the reservoir (3 miles past the turn, oops!).

I had never eaten there; the food was really good. We split a chicken sandwich (flavorful but very moist), a vegetable pizza (we each had a slice and took the rest home), a side of sweet potato fries (which I adore), and a chocolate dessert which were all very tasty. But the best part of the outing was just hanging out with my sister. We’re both so busy (and she’s about to because a whole lot busier when the baby comes in December) that we don’t get the chance to do so that often.

After I got home I spent some time playing with E on the swingset out in the backyard and getting ready for woodworking. I figured out what I’m going to do with my jewelry boxes; I’m going to remake the lids. On one hand it’s frustrating because I’m wasting the wood and time I used to make the original lids but now I’m mostly just excited about the new design. I think it’s going to look really good. I took some pictures at class last night and will get them off my camera and post them tomorrow.

I had stayed up quite late reading Tuesday night and so even though yesterday was great I was dragging a bit through the whole day. Luckily for me E decided to give me a birthday present just from him and let me sleep in today. He played quietly in his crib until 9:30, something he almost never does. He’s usually up by 7:30 at the latest. It was a great end to a lovely birthday. And I still have this weekend to look forward to: N’s taking me out for a special dinner on Saturday. It’s fun when the birthday festivities stretch on for a while.

That’s how I keep thinking about my birthday this year: I can’t seem to help it. I know twenty-nine’s really not that old but it kind of seems like it. To tell you the truth I don’t really know where the last five years went. I still feel like I’m twenty-four. But obviously I’m not. When I actually think about it, I’m happy about where I’m am right now. And I’m excited about what the next year will bring.

Our babysitter is coming over in a little while and I’m going to head out with my sister Jan to go shopping for baby stuff (No, not for me: she’s expecting at the end of the year) and then have lunch. Then it’s back home to look after E until N comes home from work and then I’m off to woodworking class (we’re going out for dinner this weekend).

All in all, it should be a great day.

I’m not a huge follower of fashion magazines but I’ll pick one up on occasion when I feel like a breezy read. I just noticed that Amazon has one-year subscriptions to InStyle for $5 which works out to a ridiculous $0.38 an issue. They must be trying to up their circulation.

I don’t know how long the sale will last; click here for details.

Yesterday I sent an email to the store where this happened on Monday. This morning I received a nice email from the store manager Bryan apologizing for the way the employee handled the incident. He said that they “have procedures in place, for safety purposes, around cleaning up any type of bodily fluids. We also have other individuals in the store who can be called upon to assist in these types of situations.”

Bryan also said that they will talk to the employee I dealt with so she’s aware about how the situation could (and should) have been handled differently. He also offered to send me a giftcard for my inconvenience and time.

Phew! I feel so relieved. While the actual incident was stressful and humiliating, Bryan’s response cheered me up. Let’s face it, while it’s a bit of a drive for me, I like going to Whole Foods and now I feel better about returning there to shop.

Thanks, Bryan.