We love love love our UPPAbaby stroller and today they are on major sale over on GILT. Go check it out!

Tropical green smoothie success today. Some days I don’t get the ingredient ratios right, today I did!

Update: here is what is in it!
About a cup of orange juice
2 heaping spoonfuls of vanilla greek yogurt
About a half scoop of vanilla protein powder (I get mine from Trader Joe’s)
About half of a banana, sliced and frozen
A handful of frozen pineapple
Four or five frozen mango chunks
A handful of spinach
A splash of water

I found that a whole scoop of protein powder makes it too grainy, and that the extra splash of water makes it a bit smoother, allowing for usage of the straw!

With the family party behind us it was time to start planning party number two, the friend party! Declan has six or seven daycare buddies ranging in age from almost two years to three months and  we also have other school friends that are a little bit older (pre-school to second grade or so). Keeping kids in that wide of an age range entertained with the same activities is nearly impossible so we decided to do a super low-key play date at a local park this upcoming Saturday. I wanted to do a cute invite but was low on time so I put to use some of the extra striped straws and some of my washi tape to make little flag invites. These were taken as I put them together on my pump breaks at work on Friday. When I picked the little man up from daycare that afternoon I placed a little flag on each child’s clipboard for their parents to find Monday morning. Easy, fun and free!

I took the type from his family party invitations and re-worded it for this party. I created a little pennant template with four to a page and printed them on card stock.

I used double sided tape to adhere the flag and cut the ends.

Green striped washi tape was added to the edges to help hold it together (and add some cuteness, of course).

And viola! Little flag invitations.

Hello! I hope you all had a nice weekend! We are starting to feel winter here with cold weather and a little rain on Saturday. Once it cleared up I took Declan to an antique store and then for a quick trip inside the San Juan Capistrano Mission. On Sunday Bryan took Declan out for a few hours, giving me some much needed alone time with my sewing machine! I finished a lot of cards and once I photograph them I will be restocking my etsy shop! To top it off the Giants won, which makes Bryan happy. All in all it was a good weekend!

Party one: the family party at our home. Guests were welcomed with a few balloons and ONE in white letters. I saw this on Pinterest and loved it. I found the letters at JoAnn’s and Bryan spray painted them white for me.

I displayed most of the weekly/monthly photos that I can have taken over the last year.

I made party hats using this fringe tutorial. I had grand plans of making 25 hats and everyone wearing them. I ran out of time, made 12 and only two were put on by guests. The rest served as very cute (if not very time consuming) centerpieces. I will keep them and maybe use them at party number two, the kids party! I also cut up streamers to be fringy, used streamers as table runners and cut some up for confetti.

(notice the mini cake stand. His cake sat on that, but I didn’t get a picture of it. Those little sticks were also going to become a mini banner, but time got away from me and it didn’t happen. So bummed!)

Looks who’s walking! I tied a few balloons to his highchair and set his crown there until he was ready for cake. I whipped the crown up in one night using felt I had on hand and I love how it turned out! I could have added a backing but again, I just didn’t have the time. Stupid full time job!)

I set up a little drink station including cups with cute striped paper straws. Of course only three cups were used. Looks like I will be drinking out of really cute straws for a little while!

We ordered Mexican food from a local spot and enjoyed cake afterwards. Following in suit with the cake banner and striped straws the cake didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to in my head. I wanted to make it from scratch for two reasons. One, because it was going to be Declan’s first real taste of sugar and I felt better knowing exactly what was going into him. And second was pride. I felt so bad when I bought him his first halloween costume rather than made it, and am having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that working full time means not having the time to devote to all of the crafty mom things I want to be able to do. So making him a cake from a box seemed to me like I was failing him. (I know, I know. Silly.) So I found this cake recipe, which my friend Jessie made for her son’s first birthday the week before and said it was great so I went for it. (Just gonna say it, I am not the best baker and Jessie is an amazing baker.) I completed the cakes feeling pretty good and then it was time for the frosting. Maybe my melted chocolate was too cool, maybe the sour cream wasn’t quite at room temperature. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. I called up my sister who was on her way to help set up and asked her to run to the store for some chocolate frosting. Which is the only part Declan ate anyways. So much for controlling what was going in him! Next year I will make a boxed cake. Or maybe buy a cake. I gave it a good try, right?

All in all it was a success! Now on to planning party two, the friends party!

With round one of Declan’s first birthday celebrations behind me I am feeling pretty good! The family party went well and I will have all of the pictures from it tomorrow! Today I wanted to share the invitations I created. This first party was a family party which meant I was only sending out about ten invitations. This allowed me to be a little more creative and include the candle on the outside, with the entire thing going inside a bubble mailer.

If you follow the Pinterest board I created for Declan’s birthday you saw all of the Noah’s ark pins. I really wanted to go in that direction but just didn’t have the time. Instead I focused on the colors green, blue and yellow, party hats and crepe paper. Since Christmas was less than a month ago I let guests know that they didn’t need to bring a gift, but that if they did to bring a favorite book or movie.

I am very pleased with how they came out!

Declan’s first birthday party (round one: family) is this weekend. Here is a peek at the preparations going on over here.

I’m participating in a photo a day challenge! Here are my images from the first eight days.

Me

Breakfast

Something I adore

Letter box

Something I wore

Made me smile

Favorite

My sky

(10 months, taken in New Jersey while getting dressed for a day in the city! This was the first layer.)

- Sleep: Still in his crib, with one wakeup a night, ranging anytime between 11 and 2:30. Then he wakes up around 5:00 and I bring him into our bed, nurse him and he falls back asleep for another hour or two. Although in the last week he has woken up every night 30 minutes after I put him down. It takes about ten minutes to get him back asleep and then we are back to the regular schedule. Not sure if this has to do with teething, but I am hoping it will end soon!

- Teeth: Six fully in, with a new one popping up on the bottom.

- Food: He has become quite the picky eater!! He loves to feed himself but is really picky about textures, so banana, avocado, apple… basically anything that isn’t dry he won’t put in his mouth. Which means he eats a lot of Joe’s O’s! His other favorite are the blueberry waffles from Trader Joes. I just pop it in the toaster and he will eat the entire thing. He will eat pureed veggies once in a while, and will only eat pureed fruit from a pouch, and barely even then.

- Milk: I am still breastfeeding, and feel very blessed to have made it this far and for it to still be so easy. I feed him once in the morning right when he wakes up, he takes two bottle during the day (I pump at work) and then I nurse him to sleep. I have always said that at a year we would switch over to milk but I have a feeling the weaning will go into his first year, especially with his sensitivity to dairy.

- Movement: We got up to about five steps this weekend! He is being super cautious about it and will sit down before he falls down. I am thinking he will be there by his first birthday.

We celebrated Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas morning at our home and it was incredibly nice to have the four day weekend to enjoy the time with our family. Declan was more into eating the paper than his gifts, but we had fun opening all of his presents!

We finally moved the sewing table out of his room and now he has the run of the place. It is so nice having an entire room that we know he can just enjoy, rather than constantly saying ‘no’ when he tries to pull out my fabric or plays with the sewing machine peddle!

I can’t believe that it has almost been a year since Declan joined our little family. It feels like just yesterday we were driving to the hospital, and at the same time it feels like he has always been here. I am looking forward to month 12 and all that 2012 will bring!

Happy New Year!

Declan and I spent the last day of 2011 down at San Elijo State Beach where my parents were camping for the weekend. Bryan had had the last two weeks off with the baby and I wanted to give him some time to himself. Declan napped on the way there (it is about an hour drive), we enjoyed some sushi for lunch and crawling in the dirt, and then he slept on the way home too. Yay! Bryan made us a delicious chicken dinner, topped off with a little champagne and then I called it a night! I tried to watch the ball drop to celebrate the New York new year but couldn’t find a live showing of it on our channels. Maybe next year we will do something a little more crazy, but this year all I wanted was some rest. We spent the rest of the weekend being lazy. I came down with a bad migraine Sunday night and it lasted well into Monday, but Declan was a trooper and even napped with me on the couch. We spent some time at the park and made our first cardboard house, much to Declan’s excitement. Tomorrow it is back to work with a new schedule of 7am – 4pm for me so that I can pick up Declan from daycare while Bryan coaches lacrosse. It should be an interesting few months, with our normal routine completely thrown off by practice and games. Here is to hoping that we all get used to it quickly!