Valentine's Dinner Party

We celebrated Valentine's Day at home this year, and had two of our favorite couples over for dinner! My husband is a fabulous chef and prepared an amazing meal for us. It was a great evening with friends, and allowed us to have meaningful conversations without the chaos that comes with dining out on the "most romantic night of the year."

Since we were just at home, I wanted to give the dinner an extra touch with a simple, but elegant tablescape. I pulled my grey chevron table runner I had made out of the drawer to start with. I knew I had to use red as my corresponding color versus pink, since red would pop more on the grey runner. Added in some votives, and we have the table ready to go!

For the silverware, I wrapped it up in red dinner napkins and then twisted a red and silver heart wire strand to keep it together. Very simple!

On the menu: homemade hush puppies with a side of creole butter, grilled veggies, salad, garlic mashed potatoes and flat iron steak topped with New Orleans style BBQ shrimp. It was as delicious as it looks!

Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day!
B

Homemade Toys

Connor loves to play! He plays with the toys we've bought him, he loves his touch & feel books and he can't get enough balls to roll around and throw (in fact he's just learned to roll the ball with someone - thanks for the lesson Grammy!!). But, what has amazed me is how he will turn anything into a toy. The door stopper - he loves! The baby gate - an absolute hit! The dog bowls, cabinet doors, stairs, mirrors....he just loves to play, climb, cruise and push. I'm amazed at his creativity!

We've created a few homemade toys around the house, and he loves them. Feel free to steal these ideas for your little one, too!

Suck the air out of a water bottle. Connor loves the sound the bottle makes when he squeezes it!

Insert a pacifier into a small Rubbermaid container. Homemade shaker. This idea is from my brilliant MIL.

Mardi Gras beads into an empty egg carton. Another great shaker, and another great idea from my MIL. 

This isn't homemade (obviously) but I had to share. This is the ball that finally convinced Connor to start crawling at 7-8 months. He would chase it all around the room. I purchased it on a sort of whim from Target.

Just wanted to share a little fun from our corner of the world. We are having a blast with our 11 month old!

B

P is for PARTY!

I love my job. I've been working at a private school in Houston for seven years and I've done everything from fundraising to public relations to coaching to event planning and more. We all wear a lot of hats working at a school, and it makes the job all the more fun. You just never know what to expect day to day, and for that I am thankful. I don't do well with monotony boredom.

The past few years, I've worn the hat of event planner at the school. Or as my colleague likes to call me, the party planner.

At the end of the school year, we typically have a last day cookout for teachers and let me tell you it's blazin' hot! Not hair blowing in the breeze, cheeks glowing hot....but armpit sweat, frizzy hair hot - you get the picture. It's an outdoor cookout on a rocky playground where we eat burgers that sweaty men are grilling. Umm...I'll pass.

So, this year I approached my amazing boss (but, seriously, he is amazing; and he doesn't even read this) with a new idea. Let's have an indoor, end of school catered party! We'll have fun music, delicious food and give away gift cards. I was so honored that he trusted little old me to run with my crazy idea!

The theme was "School's Out for Summer" and my sweet friend Lauren helped me pull this off!

As the faculty and staff entered, fun songs were playing like "Beat this Summer" (Brad Paisley), "Summertime" (Kenny Chesney...of course), "Long Hot Summer" (Keith Urban) and "Surfin' USA" (one of several Beach Boys songs on the play list) and more. I believe that music can really add to an event! They went through the buffet line and filled their plates with food from Zoe's Kitchen. Happy food = happy people!

Here's an overview of the party! We did bright blues and yellows to brighten up the otherwise drab party space. 

Each place setting had an iced sugar cookie that looked like a beach ball. 

We had 150 personalized beach balls scattered all over the floor! Fun takeaway!

The stage was especially fun to decorate. Yellow striped umbrellas, beach pails with gift cards, blue Adirondack chairs and monogrammed beach towels.

The party turned out to be a success, and a really fun way to send our teachers off for the summer! 

For back to school, we did a bingo party, which was super fun. Maybe I'll post on that one, too. 

The next party I'm planning is the biggest one....Connor's first birthday. Lord, help me! I need to get off Pinterest and get it together!

Until next time...

B

 

All Wrapped Up

I've got several pregnant friends right now. And all of them - no joke - ALL of them are having girls! 2013 must be the year of the girl! Many of these pregnant friends happen to be in my Sunday school class, and so we threw them a combined shower for these sweet second time moms. 

My job at the shower was to get the group gift (besides the diaper gift card). I take gift presentation pretty seriously, so I spent some time trying to come up with a clever way to wrap the gifts. Enter my mom...my go to gift wrap helper. 

I got the girls monogrammed pottery barn kid bath towels. The best baby bath towels out there if you ask me. To wrap the gifts, I bought Kraft paper from Container Store. Then I bought every roll of pink ribbon from Michael's (you just never know what will look right), and large pink diaper pins from amazon. For a final touch, I added the first initial of the baby's name to the bottom corner. 

I was happy with how they turned out....but more importantly, the mom's loved them and the gift inside. I love doing fun things for my sweet friends!

Diaper Cake, Anyone?

Confession: Until about a year ago, I had no idea what a diaper cake was. I just wasn't in the diaper cake/baby shower stage of my life. But now, I'm getting there. I'm starting to attend more baby showers than wedding showers! Which brings me to my point...my friend Kim makes the cutest diaper cakes. I mean, seriously! I don't think she even understands how cute they are because she underestimates her creativity.

See?

She's helping me make one for a sip and see in a couple of weeks. I'm excited to learn to make it!

Here's to being crafty!
B

'Bow'quet Thursday

As the proud MOH in my friend Kim's wedding this weekend, I did my duty of making her rehearsal bouquet. I finally got my act together and made it today. It was so easy and really fun! That much pink in one small area makes me really happy!

Here are some photos of the adorable bouquet. I hope she likes it!
And, no, I've never made one of these before! Another Spring Break first!

Almost finished!

One view!

Another view!

I'll do my last Spring Break post tomorrow - have no idea what my "new" project will be though...
Brittney

Tie Knot Blanket Tuesday

For today's Spring Break Project, I made a blanket! I made a cute tie knot fleece blanket. The lady at Joann's said it would only take me 30 minutes. Well, it took about 3 hours, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that I'm an amateur and that I was watching last night's episode of Gossip Girl (OMG - Dan and Vanessa?!? LOVE IT!). Anyway, I had fun making the blanket and I can't wait to snuggle up and use it, since I'm always cold! Here are a few pics from each step of the way!

First, I cut 4 inch squares in each of the corners of the blanket.

Then I cut 4 inch strips on all sides of the blanket (lesson learned: do this project on a large table, and not on the living room floor)

Next, I tied the strips together. Do you like the polka dot fabric? It's called Skittles - cute, right?

Ta-da - its finished! Charley likes it, of course, he barely stayed off of it long enough for me to finish!

I had fun with the blanket!! Jenna - are you proud?!?
Not sure what I'll be taking on tomorrow yet!
XOXO-
Brittney

Wishful Wednesday

Today, I wish I could be a personal shopper. I want to have clients that pay me to dress them, decorate their home, and pick things out for them (with their money, of course). Wouldn't that be a fun job to go to each day? I think so! Is anyone out there doing their dream job? What is it?

Dreaming of a New House...

The #1 thing on my mind these days is my new, neverbeforeseenbyme, house! I constantly think about what the rooms will look like, the colors we'll paint the walls, what the yard will look like and countless other details. That being said, I scour the internet and magazines now for ideas! I'm obsessed!

Look what I found yesterday from Insipired Rooms. Isn't this a neat way to hang and place the mirrors in a fitness room? I think on the adjacent wall, I'd hang a flat screen TV so I could do my Jillian Michael's Shred Workout and have plenty of room. It's fun to think about these new things!

Have a great Friday!
Brittney

The week is almost over!

It's been a pretty good week so far, just incredibly busy! I've been in the redocorating mood, so I've changed around our bedroom, bathroom and living room. Yesterday before J got home, I went ahead and rearranged some of the TV boxes to make room for decorative candles. I was so proud of myself that I rewired everything correctly and the TV actually turned back on (and more importantly, that I didn't lose any of my shows on the DVR). Am I a champ, people, or what?!?

So, I'm excited to do some more bargain shopping this weekend to look for new yellow additions to our navy bedroom! And I'm looking forward to celebrating the best Mom in the whole world on Sunday! Shout out here to Lynnette! Love you!

And BTW - my blogger friend Sara is doing a fun giveaway on her blog, so go check it out! She updates her blog daily and she's a really cute, fun newlywed! Click here to see her blog!

Love you guys!

Feeling Creative....

I love being creative - doing scrapbooks, making things, purusing Hobby Lobby and more! So, on Tuesday when school got rained out (woo hoo!), I set to scrapbooking and did 12 pages! It was so awesome and I feel like I may actually catch up and finish my pre-married book, then my wedding scrapbook and then my married life book! Sounds like a lot!

I also made some notecards last week for a sweet senior that is graduating from SBS in a couple of weeks. She's heading to A&M in the fall. So, I made her a dozen notecards, and personalized all of them with her name and nicknames on them. It was so fun and I was proud of my creativity, so I had to take pictures!

Maybe I'll post some scrapbook pictures soon, too! I really like some of my pages! And I want to be able to show them to Jenna :)

I hope everyone is having a great week and gets the chance to be creative, too!