Sugar and Spice Baby Shower

On Saturday, I helped host a baby shower for my sister-in-law.  She is having a little girl in May, and the shower was for all of the women in Bradley’s family to celebrate with her.  Because of the guest list size, we held the shower at his parent’s church.

In order to try to make the environment a little more homey and less white-industrial-box looking, the other hostesses and I searched for inspiration high and low.  We settled on a Sugar and Spice theme, you can see my pinterest boards here.  The original inspiration photo included soft pink and blue:

The turnout was much lower than expected, so we had a ton of food left over.  But Bethany left with a lot of great gifts and I think those that were able to make it had a good time.  Here are some of the shots from the day:

Food Table Setup – we had veggies and dip, Lemon Cream Cheese Thumbprint cookies, Chick-fil-a Nuggets, Chocolate-dipped pretzel Sticks, Sugar Donut Muffins, Strawberry Cupcakes, and Strawberry Punch.  Above the tables we hung blue and pink pom poms.

 

Guests signed in with colorful fingerprints


Tara did an amazing job on the Chocolate-dipped Pretzel sticks

 


Table Centerpieces (these were the bowls I used for centerpieces at Bethany’s wedding rehearsal dinner)

 


Mom-to-be


My first ever baby sock corsage!   I was very pleased with the way it came out.


Gift Time!

This book was part of my gift to Bethany.  This is the story book I remember most from my childhood.  It was printed in 1984, so I had to do an ebay scavenger hunt to find a copy for my little niece.

*I try to always link the pictures in my posts to the original source.  If you
would like to link to any source, simply click on the picture in my posts.  If
you would like to pin a linked picture, please pin from the original source *

New Shrubs

A few weekends ago, Bradley and I decided to pull out the azaleas that we tried to transplant last year and start fresh on the right side of the house.  We shopped around and settled on Golden Euonymus.  They are full-sun evergreen shrubs that tolerate heat.  On this side of the house, that is important because it gets the scorching afternoon and evening sun everyday.  It took me a while to get a picture of them for the blog, because I was waiting on Home Depot to put their cypress mulch on sale, which they did over the weekend!  Here are our tiny new shrubs living it up in the new mulch:

I think the only other things I have left on the yard installation list include a Crape Myrtle next to where we cut down the pear tree and some sort of evergreen tree at the corner of the house in the shrubbery bed.  We put down 40 bags of mulch over the weekend, so everything looks fresh and manicured right now:

A little fun with Paintbrush to give you an idea of where I want the future trees:

Hopefully I didn’t kill any of them, but after the daffodils quit blooming, I transplanted them from in front of my new dwarf bushes into a bunch around the old pear tree stump.  Fingers crossed – they survived one transplant already, so I may be on borrowed luck.

Bamboo Sheets

After reading this post, I talked to Bradley about the seemingly wonderful traits of 100% bamboo sheets.  All it took was mentioning the special weave of bamboo fabric that wicks moisture away, and he was ready to try a set.  I took a trip to Tuesday Morning on Thursday and picked up a set of pale champagne colored sheets.

We have both noticed a significant difference over our 100% cotton sheets.  The bamboo set is much softer (and is supposed to get softer with each wash), keeps us much cooler, and the generous dimensions keep the sheets tucked in much better.  Also, it doesn’t hurt that bamboo is 100% biodegradable and does not require pesticides to grow.  I think we are sold on this switch.  It was about time to replace one of our cotton sets anyway, but we will still keep one set of cotton sheets in the rotation until it’s time for another new bamboo set.

Update 4/9/12:  We have been sleeping on these sheets for over a year and still love them!  They have only gotten softer as we’ve washed them.  We stay cooler under these than cotton.  Pretty quickly, we ended up buying a second set to replace the last of our cotton sheets!  The only possible downside to these sheets would be that they get really wrinkly, which doesn’t bother me in the least – but I know it might be more annoying to others.

Camera Display

Over the past year, I have been buying vintage cameras that I find at Goodwill for Bradley.  He wanted to collect them and display them in his office.  So far, they have been residing in his office closet.  Last night, we began researching creative ways of displaying them.  Here are a few images I found:

His final decision was to display them mixed in with other things like what is shown in the fourth picture.  We are going to try out the Expedit shelf from the guest bedroom.  It has eight cubies that he can fill with books and cameras.  If it works out, we will need to figure out what color to paint the shelf.  Then I will need to find another storage solution for the guest bedroom.  I am thinking two nightstands with drawers versus one dresser.

*I try to always link the pictures in my posts to the original source.  If you
would like to link to any source, simply click on the picture in my posts.  If
you would like to pin a linked picture, please pin from the original source *