Happy Everything!

Recently, my mom and I were shopping at Genevieve Bond, a local gift shop. They had a huge display of the "Happy Everything" line from Coton Colors. You can see the whole line of gifts here:

Coton Colors- Happy Everything

I liked the idea of a display piece that you can switch out the attachments for different holidays and events (the attachments and platter have velcro). I did not like the idea of paying so much money for a plate! I think G.B. was selling it for around $115.00 for the large platter. The website is the same. Some of us who are married to very frugal men are thinking to ourselves, "There's no way my husband will pay $115.00 for a plate!" So, I set out to duplicate it for myself, for my own decorative purposes.

I checked Hobby Lobby for plates, and they actually did not have any plain ceramic platters. So I went to Home Goods. They happened to have an already tan colored ceramic platter on clearance for $10! The one I found was oval instead of round, which I think I actually like better.

Here is the original I saw in the store:

Here is the one I found at Home Goods after I started painting polka dots:

As you've probably figured out, I am not perfect. I went to Michael's craft store to ask for help in what kind of paint to get. They were NOT helpful. Due to a recent switch of phone services where I have to pay lots of money to get on the internet when I'm not connected to WiFi, I did not get online to check to see what kind of paint to get. I bought acrylic paint. It's fine, but it's not going to give you $115 results. It gives you good enough results for something cute to display. You should probably research what kind of paint could give you shiny, eat off the platter results. (I think I should have used acrylic enamel? I couldn't find this kind) I just wanted something fast and cute that we will never use for eating, so I used acrylic. The lady at Michael's was actually helpful in guiding me to a spongey stamp shaped like a polka dot. This worked great for me because I am very bad at drawing lots of circles that are all the same size. Here's what it looked like after all of the polka dots:

Now for the writing... There are certainly more ways you could do this than how I chose to do so. If you have a Cricut machine, you could cut out vinyl letters. I actually do have a Cricut which I used later on in the project. But I didn't have a font that matched exactly, so I decided to free hand it while looking at a picture of the platter I found online. I suggest using a non-permanent pen to lightly plot out where your letters will go. Then, if you mess up, you can wipe it off the plate. I messed up a couple of times, and I just wiped it off with a wet paper towel.

Ok, so maybe the Michael's lady was kind of helpful, she helped me find an OIL-BASED Sharpie brand PAINT PEN marker. It shook up like a paint pen, looked like a paint pen, was expensive like a paint pen, but it was Sharpie brand. Now this was probably the kind of product I should have found for the polka dots. It goes on glossy, and stays that way. It looks very nice. Just follow the instructions on the package for how to prime it. You could also try to just use your own handwriting if you like your hand writing better than copying the Happy Everything people. I have pretty basic handwriting, so I copied their style, not perfectly, but it's pretty close:

Back to the paint thing...depending on what kind of paint you use will determine what you do in this next step. I baked my plate. At this point, I was regretting my whole "fly by the seat of my pants" approach to this project. The sharpie was supposed to be cooked at 350 degrees and the acrylic paint was supposed to be at 325. I went with 325 for 30 minutes in the oven. The most important thing about this is to put the plate in a cool oven and don't preheat it. This lets the plate gradually come up in temperature with the oven so it hopefully won't shatter. This step is supposed to set everything in place. I have no idea if it worked or not. The polka dots did look smooth after it came out of the oven, but still not shiny like I wanted. Like I said, we won't use our plate for eating, so it doesn't really matter.

Now, you just find a plate stand, some velcro, and some attachments, and you're set!

I made my own attachment with a piece of ceramic I found at Hobby Lobby. I cut out vinyl on the cricut that said "Mom's Special Day" and threaded pink ribbon through it. 

You can really add velcro to almost any kind of flat decoration. Hobby Lobby has wooden ones for pretty cheap. You could also use large magnets or flat ornaments. The sky is the limit! You could also take this as an opportunity to put your foot down and say, "I already saved money on the plate, so I'm just going to buy the original attachments!" And then you can pay about $16 for mini attachments or $24 for the large ones. 

I really just like the idea of celebrating life, whether you have a plate or not!

2nd Birthday Party

I can't believe our baby boy is two! People always tell you that time flies, and you don't believe them until you have a kid! We had a great time celebrating our big boy with a construction-themed birthday party at our church gymnasium. I saw the theme last year and wanted to do it then, but decided to wait until he was a little older and could enjoy the activities more. We had kids there of all ages and they all seemed to enjoy the activities. I used Pinterest, Google, and Amazon for inspiration. Here are some of my favorite things about the party:

When the kids first walked in, they could pick up a pink or yellow hard hat (Amazon.com), a Home Depot tool belt (77 cents), and put stickers on them if they wanted. They could also pick out a plastic tool to put in their tool belt (Toys R Us). We made the tool bench from a $15 nightstand I saw on Craigslist. We took the feet off of it and attached peg board to the back.

Balloons from Party City. Our colors for the party were orange, yellow, and black.

The cupcake holders came from Hobby Lobby.

I picked up these buckets at the dollar store last year. Pretzel sticks and veggie sticks stuck with the construction theme. I used shovels to serve a few items.

Cocoa puffs looked like rocks, goldfish and clementines were perfect for our colors and healthy for toddlers!

There were several variations of this cake online. Some of them had the diggers actually digging the cake out, some had chocolate chips, others had oreo crumbs. I found these Nestle semi sweet chocolate chunks and thought they would be perfect. Each of the digging tools had some of them that they were pushing or digging and then I sprinkled them around the bottom of the cake stand.

 I know the cake stand seems a little fancy for this party, but it has been used for birthday parties in my mother's family for years!

I actually don't like reese's pieces, so I picked out the orange, yellow, and brown M&M's from a giant bag from Sam's. I think it fooled some people at first!





Kids eat lots of grapes. And bananas.

Lemonade and Capri Sun in the metal tub for the kiddos.

We were fortunate that our church building has preschool tables and chairs so we didn't have to bring them.










The gift table with pictures of my little construction worker!










As fun as it was to decorate and decide how to display the food, the activities were my favorite thing about the party! I think everyone found something fun to do.

This is my husband demonstrating the wrecking ball. The kids LOVED this! I wrapped all sizes of boxes in a roll of brown paper I got from the painting section at Walmart. It's designed to be a drop cloth for painting, so it's super heavy duty. At first I used masking tape, which did not pass the toddler test so I re-taped them with bright orange duct tape. We already had the rope and the giant purple exercise ball. We draped the rope over the basketball goal in the gym. If you don't have access to a gym, I think the kids would have fun just rolling the ball into the boxes too. If you have a 2 year old boy, you know how much they like to stack boxes (or anything) and knock them down!

The digging pit was also a much bigger hit than I expected. We ended up having to throw he pool away at the end, but it was worth it! We borrowed gravel from the playground at the church and we used my son's beach toys (and bought a few more from Walmart and the dollar store). Add a few diggers, and you have the perfect digging pit!



















It seemed like all ages of kids enjoyed the blocks. I borrowed the mega bloks from my mom's house. The foam blocks were one of my son's presents from us, and we already had the wooden blocks. The carpet belongs to our church.

Warning: very messy! This probably would have been better outside or at a swimsuit party, but the kids LOVED this! The water table was my son's present from my in-laws. We ordered little squirt tools and construction worker rubber ducks for them to play with. My son went through 3 different outfits during the party because of this thing, but he had fun!

He was in disbelief when he walked in! We had him spend the night with my parents so he would be surprised with the final set up of everything!

 Oh, and we had toddler basketball too! It was fun!

We really did have so much fun! Our big 2 year old had a great time! There are loads of ideas on Pinterest about this theme and so much more you could do if you really wanted to. We are very blessed by our family and church family.

First Birthday Party!

Well, it's almost a year later, but as I was looking for party ideas for our son's 2nd birthday, I realized I had not posted what we did last year for his 1st. A first birthday is a big deal! So many changes take place in the 1st year, and making it through a year with a brand new baby is something to celebrate! We decided to have two parties for our son- one for family, and one for friends. We had the parties in our home and our basement was not finished, so space was limited. We decided to do an "Animals on Parade" theme.

I saw this cake on Pinterest, of course, and the whole party kind of evolved from that. I just frosted the cake with store bought frosting, added sprinkles, and then made a tiny banner out of scrap book paper that matched the other colors I was using in his party.

This is his smash cake. My friend had a tiny cake pan I used to make it. We had done pretty well keeping him off of sweets for the first year, so he was pretty excited to finally eat some sugar!

 I also made some cupcakes for the big day! The cupcake toppers and birthday sign came from Hobby Lobby. And of course we had to have balloons!

I bought these wooden letters for his professional pictures and didn't know how to use them to decorate at the party. I decided to duct tape them to paint stirrers that had been painted white. I had the flower pots up here anyway, so I used flower pot foam to stick the stirrers in and then covered it with Easter basket grass.

I had a TON of Beanie Babies left over from my childhood. I picked out all of the jungle animals (same theme as his nursery) and lined them up on parade across the mantle. Some of them were riding the train we gave him from Ikea, which also matched the banner we bought at Hobby Lobby.

Of course I had to sew some things too. This is the birthday shirt I made. You can't see in the picture very well, but the "1" in the truck is actually a candle with a little yellow flame on it.

And a birthday bib too! My parents and brother bought him a red wagon for his birthday so I thought this was perfect! 

Success!

We did not have any special activities planned for the first birthday. We basically ate cake, opened presents, and we had lunch at the family party. We are so thankful for our one year old! (Even if he's just one for a few more days!)

G's and P's

On a Labor and Delivery unit, a nurse or doctor can quickly summarize a patient by their "G's and P's," their Gravida and Para. Gravida means how many pregnancies the woman has had and para refers to the number of deliveries she has had after 23 weeks. Ideally, all of our patients have para that is only one less than their gravida since our patients are all still pregnant, but often we see G's and P's that don't match at all.

My G's and P's are Cara Brown, G3P2. And then there's this special little addition: LC 1. (living children). I have been pregnant 3 times. Our first baby was an early miscarriage, our second baby was 40 weeks and 2 days! Our third baby was a stillbirth at 34 weeks, but I still had to deliver him so he's one of my P's. 

This is sad that I even had this thought, but after my first miscarriage, I thought, my G's and P's will never match. My mom's did, and I guess I just assumed that mine would too.

One of the hardest thing about Henry's death is having to prove to some people around me that he really was alive. In my mind and in my heart, Henry existed for 34 weeks. Even before I knew he was there, I loved him, prayed for him, and his future spouse. My love only grew deeper as he grew inside me. Henry's entire life was in my womb. But it was a life nonetheless. 

I was so thankful that so many of our friends and family came to Henry's memorial. Some of them said, "I'm so glad you're having a memorial for him." I thought to myself, "Well, why wouldn't I have a memorial for my son who passed away?" 

Then, I thought to myself, we didn't have a big memorial when our first baby passed away. The Facebook world didn't even really know about my miscarriage. I had just found out I was pregnant that week and had scheduled my first appointment, but had not heard our baby's heartbeat yet. Then, I started spotting. I knew that I was miscarrying, but the doctors couldn't confirm it with lab results for a few more days. They saw a dot on the ultrasound that they thought could be the baby, but it was too early to tell. In the end, they called it a "chemical pregnancy." All of my levels had gone up indicating I had been pregnant, but something happened and we didn't have a baby growing inside of me anymore. 

As a labor and delivery nurse, I was devastated. I knew people had miscarriages all the time, and didn't even realize it sometimes, but I felt the loss of my child and thought that I might not ever be able to have any more children. It was so hard when it happened because we hadn't told anyone that I was pregnant yet, so we had to tell them and then un-tell them immediately after. That was not how I imagined telling our families I was pregnant for the first time. 

It wasn't even a month between my pregnancy with baby #1 and Mack. I probably conceived about 2 weeks after my miscarriage. Talk about a nervous Nelly! I was scared the entire pregnancy that something bad was going to happen. As awesome as it was to feel Mack move inside me, (and Henry too!) I never felt like my 5-6 week old baby was less of a baby since I had not heard its heartbeat or felt it move.

At Mack's one year photo session, the photographer suggested we take a couple of pregnancy announcement pictures. She said, Mack can hold a chalk board that says "#1" and you can hold one by your belly that says "#2." My heart sank and I thought "I don't want to dishonor our first baby by calling Mack #1. He's actually #2 and Henry's #3. This is what he ended up doing instead:

This weekend was hard. It marked 6 months since the delivery of Henry and it was the due date of our first little baby. I guess I like that Henry and baby #1 will always be part of my G's and P's. For all of the arguing out there about when life begins, when you can electively end it, and when it "counts" or doesn't, the medical community recognizes my baby #1 and my baby #3 as G's, and it recognizes Henry as a P.

Some friends of mine recently shared this link and I think it eloquently explains some of my feelings on the subject:

http://thelewisnote.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-miscarriage-matters-if-youre-pro.html

I know I am not the only woman with non-matching G's and P's and some women are never blessed with G's in the first place. In fact, I would say the majority of my patients and many of my friends and family have uneven G's and P's. Since Henry's death, I have had so many women come up to me and tell me about their miscarriages, some 1st trimester, and some 2nd, and they say, "I know it was nothing like your loss." There are some differences, but in many ways it is the same. Most women who want a baby have hopes, dreams, a Pinterest board, and a list of names picked out before they even try to conceive. Sometimes loss is about what was, and sometimes it's about what never came to be.  

Thank you so much for your continued prayers for our family. Here are some more pictures I took at Henry's memorial: