Worldly Wednesday

Venice, Italy

I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places. Every Wednesday I share one picture of the places I’ve been.

Bb is for Baby—A Baby Shower

One of Alex’s best friends and his wife (the best friend’s wife, not Alex’s) is having a baby sometime in the next month.  This past weekend, I helped throw her (the best friend’s wife) and baby Jameson a shower.

 

We hosted it at a local kitchenware shop.  It was a cute place and they did the food and clean up.  Our theme was Bb is for Baby because their last name starts with a B, it is a baby boy and she is an English teacher.  One of the other co-hostesses made this cute sign.

 

 

 

 

My contribution was mostly the decorations.  You already saw the diaper cake and cupcakes.  I also made three centerpieces.  I used one of the diaper cupcakes on each table and then a Dollar Tree vase (vase glued to candlestick) filled with black beans.  I made tissue puffs that are all over the blog world using yellow and black tissue paper (the colors for the day) and stuck them on sticks so they could go in the vases.  They were super cheap but also super cute. 

 

 

 

 

Like I said, the venue provided the food, but to make them it a little more personal, I made cupcake toppers for the mini-cupcakes.  I used cut the circles, B's and bees out with my Cricut.  I ran the B’s and bees though a Xyron sticker maker and stuck them to the circles.  Then I used round white mailing stickers to stick the circles to tooth picks.  They were so easy to make that even Alex could do it (I made him help).

We decorated bibs and onesies for little Baby J to wear once he gets here.  To make it a little less messy, we stuck with pain pens rather than puff paint.

We had super tasty cake pops too that two of the co-hostesses made.  They did red velvet and peanut butter/chocolate.  Super tasty and super cute.  It was a lot of fun throwing a part for the mom-to-be and Baby J.

Monday Musings

I don’t really know how to describe this past week other than that it was a blur.  Between co-hosting a baby shower on Saturday and finding out that I passed the bar I felt like things were always going a mile a minute.  I’ve got good stuff to share this week, so stick around.

Here’s what’s for dinner this week.  We are trying a new thing where I cook Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday and Alex cooks Monday, Wednesday and Friday and then we switch off on Saturdays.

Sunday: Tacos with Alex’s parents

Monday: Sausage Penne

Tuesday: BLT Wraps

Wednesday: Kyle Chicken

Thursday: Bubble Up Enchiladas

Friday: Alex is on his own because I’m going out with the girls

Saturday: Orange Chicken

I’m not planning on starting any new projects this week, just wrapping up some that have been sitting half finished for far too long.  We rearranged the furniture in our living/dining space so I’m going to be tweaking that until it is just right.

And finally, here’s a little inspiration to get you though the week:

Source: whenigrowupcoach.com via Courtney on Pinterest

Monday Musings

Do you ever get so excited about something that you take on a little too much and realize that you may have over committed yourself?  But you are so excited that you can't decide what to cut out?  Yeah, that's me with the baby shower this week.  So I'm going to be a busy little bee over the next few days.  And then there's the whole tomorrow-is-the-most-important-day-of-my-life-because-bar-results-come-out thing.  So yeah, its going to be an interesting week.

I don't have a menu for this week yet.  We're trying something new where we are going to switch off making dinner.  My days are Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and every other Saturday.


That's all I've got for now, but here's a little inspiration to get you through the week:

Source: google.com via Courtney on Pinterest

Displaying Alex's Mic-O-Say Beads

My opinion on collectables/sentimental items is that you should either display them or they don't really mean that much to you so you should get rid of them.  And if you are going to bother to display them, you should do so in a nice way that will preserve them.  Boy Scouts was a big part of Alex's life when he was younger.   In the Kansas City area, there is a unique aspect to Boy Scouts called Mic-O-Say.  Once you become part of Mic-O-Say, you get to wear beads and claws around your neck.  The different beads symbolize different things as do the different colors of paint on the claws.  Alex was so involved in Boy Scouts for so long that he has a whole bunch of sets of beads.  Since it was such an important part of his life, I wanted to be able to display them, so I did.

I got a shadow box from Michael's and put batting and fabric on the back.  Then I used fishing line to sew each set onto the fabric.  It's not perfect, but it's much nicer than having them hang on a bulletin board in our bedroom.

Worldly Wednesday

Cinque Terre, Italy

I love to travel and have been lucky enough to have visited a lot of amazing places.  Every Wednesday I share one picture of the places I’ve been.

Diaper Cake

I’m helping to host a baby shower for a good friend weekend after next and I’m making a lot of the decorations.  Of course, a must for any baby shower is a diaper cake.  I've been wanting to make one of these for a long time, so I was super excited when I was asked to help with the shower.  The theme is Bb is for Baby and we are doing a yellow and black color scheme.  The Bb theme is perfect because 1) they are having a Boy, 2) their last name starts with B and 3) she is an English teacher and loves to read so it is fun to incorporate little elements like that.  Instead of doing one big post on everything, I wanted to break it down into the elements, but I will be sure to share pictures of the whole shower after the party.

On to today’s main event:

I used two packages of the Target brand diapers—they have these cute blue and green polka dots on them.  I don’t have children so I have no idea if they are quality diapers or not.  I started by just rolling the diapers up and using a piece of tape to make them stay—a great football game activity.  Then I got started with the actual construction.  I did a bit of Googling and Pinteresting before getting started to figure out what would be easiest for me.  I eventually decided to start here:

Empty paper towel roll and cardboard cake base.  You could cut your own circle out of scrap cardboard but I opted to buy mine so it would look nice.  I’m terrible at cutting cardboard.  Then I glued the tube in the middle of the circle like so:

Just use a little hot glue and make sure it is more or less centered.  Now it is time to add the diapers.  This is a point where it might be nice to have an extra set of hands, but you can certainly do it on your own, like I did.  I started by putting a rubber band around the tube then filled in between the rubber band and tube with diapers. 

Start by just doing one row to make it easier on yourself.  This way diapers aren’t falling all over the place.  After you do the inner row, work your way out.

My bottom layer had three rows so my middle layer could have two and my top one.  After you get the bottom done, repeat with the middle.

Once the middle layer is done, stick a diaper in the top of the tube so that it will be level with the top layer of diapers.  This way you have a nice looking top and not an empty tube.  I didn’t take a picture of the complete cake without the embellishments.  This is where you can really let your imagination fly.  People use fabric, paper, ribbon, baby stuff, toys, just about anything you can imagine.  I wanted to keep mine budget friendly (this isn’t my gift so I didn’t want to buy a bunch of stuff) so I used fabric.  I find it to be more forgiving than paper even if it is a little more work.

Hobby Lobby as this cute bee fabric and I knew I wanted that to be a part of it.  I didn’t want solid black so I went for black with white polka dots.  And I got some black jumbo rickrack to top it off.

The top is my favorite.  I sewed the black fabric into a tube then ironed it flat.  I took a piece of the yellow fabric and added heat and bond.  Then I cut out the B’s on my Cricut and ironed them on.  On all of the layers, I attached the fabric by pinning the ends together then added a few more pins around to keep it up.

The middle layer is a tube of the yellow fabric with the black ric rack down the middle.  I hid the straight pins under the ric rack to make it look a little nicer.

The bottom layer it two tubes of fabric sewn together.  I love how it all looks together—sophisticated yet fun. 

I had some diapers and fabric left over, so I decided to make some diaper cupcakes too.

Instead of rolling the diapers, I used a spiral method on these.  Just Google diaper cakes and you’ll find someone who can explain how to do it.  This method allowed me to push the centers up a little to make them look like cupcakes.