I seriously take too many pictures every day!! I tried limiting myself to just ten yesterday for the 10 on 10 project but failed miserably. My 10 on 10 turned out to be more like 63 on 10. Oh well, what can I say- at least we are well documented these days :-)
I left out a few yesterday that were too good not to share so here’s my 6 more on 11…
p.s. thank goodness it’s Friday!!!!
One of my favorite blogs lately is Under the Sycamore (if you have time check it out, it’s simply lovely). I check my reader a few times a day to see what’s new and I always read hers if I see something new. So last night before heading to bed I saw that she was going to be participating in A Bit of Sunshine’s Ten on Ten project . I looked it up to see what it was all about (very simply- take 10 pictures, one every hour on the hour, and post them on the 10th of the month) and was intrigued. I figured I’d give it a whirl too, after all it would give me a reason to take and post some pictures within the same day (something that I haven’t had a lot of time to do lately) and maybe it might stretch my creativity a bit too. Well it was rainy most of the day (ie the light in the house was pretty bad) and my pictures didn’t really stretch my creative side but rather chronicled my day today. Either way, good and bad, since I took them here they are…
I am hoping to remember next month and maybe to stretch myself a little more creatively next time. At least that’s the plan for now…
Happy almost Friday to ya!
I feel like Jay is growing up so fast these days- walking, “talking” and acting like such a big boy. So this AM while I was feeling particularly sentimental I decided to freeze time and capture just how tiny my little guy still is. He laughed and giggled the whole time we were doing our project- so, so sweet! Thank goodness for sweet spring weather, porches to paint on, adorable little boy giggles and those tiny hands that constantly pull at my heart strings…
Dear Jay Bird,
This week has been rough. Honestly, I have been wishing for Friday afternoon and the weekend since the week started on Tuesday. I know it was even a short week but kiddo, Momma has been running on survival mode just to get through…
You have had a cold ALL week- runny nose, cough, fussy as all get out- it’s the whole shebang and it has not been fun. I have been covered in more snot and spit up this week than I have in the last 8 months. I feel like we have gone back in time to when you were tiny and spiting up everywhere except you are much bigger and therefore there is much more of it. It’s gross, I promise. I have hope that it is your molars giving you trouble; which means there is an end in sight but still it’s tiring. You have been clingy and needy and haven’t let me put you down much although at the same time you don’t want to be held, you want to reek havoc on everything around you and destroy anything that I have actually had the time to put away. I tried to walk with you (and Staci) this week just to get out since we didn’t go to story time because of your cold. You normally really like this but instead you cried for over half of my walk on Wednesday and for the whole 3 miles yesterday. It was indeed motivation to pick up the pace and get back sooner but it was also motivation that I surely could have done without. All of this has been exhausting, again, I promise. I have napped with you twice this week just to make it until dinner and have been in bed one night at 9:30. On top of being cranky pants with a cold you have not been sleeping or napping well (which I am sure has to do with the cold/teeth). Your naps have been shorter and you are up longer so you get tired and cranky- see a pattern? You have also learned the drop-something-and-someone-will-pick-it-up-game; which means everything and I mean EVERYTHING has been tossed at some point or another this week and while I love to watch you learn new things this game could have waited until another week…
On top of all the sick my to do list is about a mile long and it didn’t get touched this week… I have pictures to look at for clients, family and a ton that I have taken for us too. I have endless projects sitting in various places around the house in one state of completion or another, the piles of laundry are about to consume us, our vacuum has been broken and the house is a mess. The vacuum may not sound like a big deal but it has been out of commission for a week and a half and we have three furry (super-duper furry) children living in this house too and in the last week it seems like they have multiplied…
I woke up this morning thinking that if I could just vacuum the floors today (Daddy helped me to use duct tape last night as a temporary fix) that I would chalk it up as a win. I haven’t yet accomplished that BUT today has already been a huge win…
You still have your cold, you are still super touchy and cranky but when I stopped vacuuming to sit on the floor with you for a minute you crawled into my lap and stayed there hugging on me for a good twenty minutes. This an eternity for you these days but it was the best eternity that I have had in a long time. Thanks for the reminder kiddo of what’s important. The majority of my days are filled up with things and all of those “things” can be wonderful or not; it’s just really a matter of how I choose to look at them. Attitude is a choice little boy and today we choose to smile…
I love you little bird.
Love,
Momma
or monster of a mess?
On Monday, Jamie spent the majority of the day working in the yard, trimming trees, planting grass plugs, getting the gardens ready to be re-planted etc. After Jay’s second nap we headed outside to join him. Jay is into everything these days so I quickly tired of trying to keep him clean and in my arms so… I gave in, striped him down to his diaper and just let him go hog wild. And wild he was- he was a filthy mess by the time we went in for supper but he was pleased as punch with us and himself and that’s all that really matters isn’t it?
LOVE is what I have for these photo booth pictures! I am so happy we ended up doing the photo booth and after taking a look at these I am sure you can probably see why, they are so much fun :-)
By the way, this would be a great post to use the new “slideshow-ish” feature if you wanted- there is a crazy amount of pictures since I couldn’t narrow them down at all. Just click on the first image below and take a look!
I have been wanting to do a little “spring cleaning” around here lately. So Jamie and I stayed up way too late tonight (this morning…) to change things up a bit. We like it… do you??
p.s. Check out the new feature with the pictures- just click any image below to view it larger. Once you do, you can scroll your way through all the pictures on the page, kind of like a slideshow. Yup, my husband is good- I know :-) Please be patient while we update our old posts with this new feature.
Want to try it out?? Start here-
This morning bright and early I participated in my first 5K (as a runner/walker- I have helped to organize runs before but never participated). And while my time was not stellar, I finished it and enjoyed myself too! Now to run one…
your Valentines Day is extra SWEET!
Thanks Staci for decorating the cookies with me- Jay thinks the little “love bugs” are super yummy! Plus, it’s so much more fun when you get to do it with a friend!
As promised here are a few details from Jay’s One Year Old in a Flash Party. Let me just say this before going any further- the rest of this post might bore some of you. If you are not a detail person or if you don’t care about party planning, feel free to breeze through the rest of this post or just drool over the yummy food pictures :-) If however, you like the details or would like the links to some of the recipes that I used feel free to keep reading because I am going to keep writing- I happen to like this stuff and it’s my blog now isn’t it ;-)
Invitation
Nan designed the invitation for me; she is amazing and I can’t repay her for all of the design stuff she does for me!! I gave her a few pictures, the wording, date and colors that I planned on decorating with and she sent me the most adorable invite and the time capsule card along with some other digital files that I used to make the rest of the decorations that we used. Having all of the digital flies was so amazing since I got to personalize Jay’s party AND I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg to do it- thanks so much Nan!
Decorations
The decorations consisted of pictures, pictures and more pictures. We had one wall that showcased some of Jay’s firsts and another that had his month by month pictures.
Aside from pictures I had a few balloon boquets made up and placed them around the house. Jay loves balloons right now so this was for him more than anything. I made the balloon weights out of some scraps of fabric that I had around the house, some spare ribbon and navy beans that I am using for a bean bag project. I think they turned out pretty cute and I loved that I didn’t have to worry about Jay smashing them and having sand pour out everywhere in the house.
I also (with the help of Jamie) made a happy birthday banner (picture of the banner is farther down) that I patterned after this one to hang in the kitchen.
Time Capsule
I thought that it would be fun to have all of our guests and some out-of-towners that weren’t going to make the party contribute to a Time Capsule for Jay. Nan made a card that I included with the invitation asking guests to contribute along with a bunch of suggestions. It has been fun to take a look at what was contributed. I am sure that Jay will love looking at it on his 18th birthday, we only have to wait until 2028- wowzers!!
Food
I usually have a difficult time trying to decide what kind of food to serve when we are throwing a shin-dig like this… We knew that we would be expecting a fairly large crowd and planning food for that many people is always daunting. So I was really happy when I decided not to try and feed people but to have a dessert buffet instead. I got to bake up a storm (yippee) and we saved a buck or two by doing this! I went fairly simple with everything, including drinks, that we choose and did most of it ahead of time which made the set up on Saturday easy peasy. We had chocolate chip cookies, salted brown butter rice crispy treats, gooey-sweet pretzel melts, sugar cookies, mint-chocolate cookies (I used this recipe for the cookie part but winged it for the filling), homemade Almond Joys, cupcakes, and blueberries- Jay’s favorite sweet.
For drinks we had homemade Lemonade, coffee punch (a friend’s recipe that is amazing!!) and water. Notice that even though you can’t really read it you can see the banner in the background. It says “Happy Birthday JAY!”
Favors
These were baked as well. I used my new favorite sugar cookie recipe to make teal and green camera cookies. I didn’t have a cookie cutter for the camera bodies (I used a circle cutter that I had for the lens) so I ended up printing one of the cameras that Nan had sent me and used a knife to cut them out instead- it worked great! I will have to remember this for next time that I am without a certain cookie cutter. Attached to each cookie was this little saying…
I am no longer a baby,
now that I am ONE!
Glad you came to my party,
Hope you had fun!
Waving bye-bye
Now that it’s through
And giving out kisses from me to you!
Photo Booth
We set up a photo booth for the party- yippee! For months now I have wanted a reason to have a photo booth but I haven’t had quite the right excuse. Enter photo themed party and voila excuse made! Honestly, the closer I got to the party the less I felt like going to the trouble of setting it up but at the last minute I choose to anyway. Man, am I ever glad that I did! I love the pictures that we got from it and I think that it gave people something to do at the party. I had most of the props done already (I wanted to have one at Christmas so I had already painted empty frames and made chalkboard thought bubbles) which made my last minute decision to have the photo booth much more feasible. I purchased 3 yards of fabric and some white duct tape which I used for my backdrop. We have a wall outside that worked really well to hang the back drop from (it’s shaded but still has great natural light). Then I just put my props in a bin that we already had, set up our camera on a tri-pod, adjusted the settings so it was set and ready to go, Jamie set up the remote so that people could use that instead of having to push the button (I think there are some kinks here that could be worked out for next time- it didn’t always work) and then just let people have at it. The pictures are really cute- I’ll try and get those up soon- and I am going to add them along with a few other things from Jay’s party to his time capsule.
All together I spent a little over $100 for all the decorations and food with my biggest expenses being printing and postage for the invitations, the balloons and some of the baking supplies. Most everything else was put together from stuff we already had and I used some coupons for prints so I didn’t pay anything for the pictures! Not bad for a party with 35 guests…
Thanks for everyone that came- we loved having you!!
the perreault family 