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

15 months!

Little man is 15 months old. At his checkup this week, he weighed 30.5 pounds and was 33 1/2 inches long. He wears 24 months/2T clothes and he still only has 6 teeth. He's growing so quickly, and time is passing by too fast! Since I'm not updating the baby book monthly anymore (and I'm a little thankful for that, let's be honest) I need to still keep up with documenting what Connor is up to these days! His favorite thing to do is walk around, no matter where we are (parking lot, restaurant, etc.)! He is so busy! He walks and shrieks and screams happy sounds. So fun!

His favorite toys:

Balls

The Fisher Price dog that he can pull

Wooden knob puzzles (really just so he can bang the pieces together)

Toilet paper

Wooden spoons

The sprinkle shakers from Connor's own shelf in the pantry

His words:

Dada (first word)

Mama (my favorite word!)

Ball

Dog

Bye-Bye (with a wave toward himself)

Up (he usually says this while he's laying on the ground and he puts his legs up in the air!)

Nana (as in banana)

Out-ide (outside...his favorite place to be)

No (he usually says it when we are reading the Find Spot books)
All done (and he puts his arms out to the side like he's motioning "I don't know"
Hello (and pretends he's talking on the phone by putting whatever object he's holding up to his ear)

Connor is a busy little man, and he keeps us on our toes! Not many quiet moments around our house anymore. But, we wouldn't have it any other way. I'm amazed at how smart he is and how much he understands. What a blessing to watch him grow up and discover his world!

Here are a few recent pics from the past couple of months!

Sliding at the park...I think we did this 20 times that day!

Celebrating our friend Preston's birthday! Blurry picture because he was SO busy walking all over the place!

During the first Houston "snow" day we went to Wonderwild to get some energy out!

Think he has enough bath toys?

First trip to the Zoo in January. He loved the petting zoo!

What a fun age! We are having a blast!
B

Our Merry Christmas!

Whew - I need a vacation to recover from our Christmas. Or a spa day. Hubs, are you listening? Our little man is wild, let me tell you! But these are some pretty fun times, I must admit. Connor starting walking just after Thanksgiving and he hasn't slowed down. When he walks, he still kind of waddles like a penguin. He also squeals and screams and shrieks as he walks, and it's so cute. And so loud - we're going to be deaf here pretty soon! I need to get a video of this, but I swear he's camera shy. Every time I press record, he freezes up. We're going to have to work on that.

I digress. Christmas was fun and filled with lots of family and friends. We headed to North Louisiana to see my dad's side of the family, and then back home, and then off to BR to see the Fords'. Connor got more than we could have ever asked for or imagined. This is one spoiled rotten boy. The third carload of gifts are coming back to Houston from BR this weekend. And I'm not kidding.

So, here is an overload of pictures from Christmas.

A picture from his Christmas card.

Throwing his annual Christmas tantrum after the Christmas Eve service at church.  

Adams cousins in matching shirts! Beck (1), Elizabeth (1.5) and Connor.

Checking out his new chair from Santa on Christmas morning!

Look at all of his presents from Grammy and Paw Paw. Like I said - spoiled rotten. He was mildly interested in tearing the paper off of the gifts, and VERY interested in putting the paper in his mouth. 

The theme of Christmas for my family was tacky sweater!

The Ford cousins. Look at C's expression! So funny!

My favorite picture! Big boy is riding on his new Buzz Lightyear car! Thank you Nana & Pops!

Hope you all had a blessed Christmas!
Brittney

A Christmas Tradition: Texas Trash

As long as I can remember, my family has made Texas Trash for us to snack on at every Christmas gathering. It's a Gibson family tradition, and one that I want to continue with my own family. Every time I eat it, I'm taken back to Christmases spent with my grandparents and extended family sitting around a Wahoo board. I can just hear the sound of the dice being slung across the room when it didn't roll the number my mom wanted it to. But no one sat down to play Wahoo without a bowl of Texas Trash next to their 10 lucky dice!

Ingredients
1/2 cup of butter, melted
2 tablespoons of worcestershire sauce
2 cups chex cereal
2 cups cheerios
2 cups of pretzel sticks
1 cup of mixed nuts
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. garlic powder

Heat oven to 300 degrees. Combine the butter and worcestershire sauce in the bottom of a 13x9 pan. Add in the cereals, pretzels and nuts and mix well so that the sauce mixes in. Sprinkle the salt and garlic powder on top. Bake in oven for 30 minutes. Let cool before serving.

Baby Steps

Any day now. Could be today after his nap. Or next week when he turns 13 months. But the camera is always within arm's reach because any day now Connor could be walking!

And when he does, this little man is going to be so busy. I can't wait!

He's ready to take off walking!

ONE Little Monster's Birthday!

He's a year old and there's nothing I can do about it! I can't stop time and I can't go back and relive all of our sweet "firsts" of this past year. I just have to live in the moment and soak up every day with our ONE year old! So, I have to stop being in denial that my baby is ONE!

I wanted his birthday party to be a celebration of him! I chose the monster theme to carry out the theme from his nursery, and then I could close the door on the monsters. I felt like going from the nursery to the first birthday party carried us full circle for the year. It just made sense. 

So, every great party starts with a great invitation. I chose this invite. I loved the saying and the bright happy colors. And who doesn't love chevron? I used these four colors - red, yellow, blue & green - as a basis for the entire party. I also had coloring sheets printed that matched the invite, thank you cards, stickers for the favor boxes & centerpieces and even the print on his birthday shirt! See, I like a good theme carried through an event!

The invitations.

This was an original design (which I now see all over Pinterest). I wanted a visual way for guests to look back on our year. The younger pictures of him are at the top, working up to the older pictures toward the base of the "1". This was stuck onto the downstairs closet door. In between the living room and dining room, so it was a stopping point between rooms. I wanted to make sure there were reflections of Connor in each party space.

Centerpiece on the table. Bright colored toys for little ones to play with and gum balls for the adults to enjoy. 

With a monster themed nursery, we also collected lots of monster clothes his first year. I put them on a clothesline to display at the party. It was meaningful because these were little outfits he wore and we could reflect on fun memories of him wearing them. It's all about the details!

Festive balloons showed guests that the party was here! The giraffe bike was his gift from us, and it looked fun on the porch.

I made a wreath! So proud of myself. It's a balloon wreath with some spiraled pipe cleaners coming out of it. FUN!

Favor boxes in the party colors with the chevron monster stickers on them. Everyone took home a monster squeaky toy.  The sign on the table says "Thank you from our little monster" This was a bistro table I had at the front door so guests couldn't miss their favors.

We had lots of kids at the party and we knew they wouldn't all fit in the house. So we set up bubbles, balls, kazoos and sidewalk chalk outside for them to enjoy!

His high chair corner all set up for the smash cake and singing! I wanted to make sure that the area would look good in a picture, so the "Happy Birthday" banner is just above the high chair.

His up to date baby book, monthly photos and monster birth announcement.

Photos from his one year photo shoot.

Ya'll, even his onesie is in the party theme!

Happy first birthday to our little monster. We love you more than we could ever have imagined. You are our world! 

He's ONE!

Warning: Prepare for a Connor overload as I recap his birthday celebration(s)!.

I still cannot believe that our baby is a year old. The fastest year of my life, hands down. A few weeks before the big day, we had his one year photo shoot. My favorite part was the smash cake - he went to town on the cake. At one point, he even propped his foot up on the cake stand and continued eating. He LOVED the cake!

On his actual birthday, we had a small celebration at school with mini cupcakes (he devoured two) and balloons. (Side note - I am pretty sure balloons are his new favorite thing. He loves to say "boon" and hit the balloon over and over!). It was really sweet. His teacher Mogee (pictured below) decorated the classroom and had happy birthday music playing when we came in that morning. Cue the first round of tears.

On his birthday evening I had to work (BOO) so when I got home, he was asleep. I went and picked him up and snuggled him at his actual birth time - 9:43 PM and just cried and prayed over him. I rejoiced for the perfect miracle that he is. I thanked God for his sweet life. I prayed that He would grow to know Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior and seek to have a close relationship with Him. It was a sweet tradition that I plan to repeat as long as I can, though realizing one day I won't be able to physically hold him!

That weekend we had his official birthday party, which after months of planning, was a huge success. I'll post much more on that later!