Review! - Little Texas Babes on Etsy!

Recently I had the joy of winning an Etsy giveaway from a wonderful little shop called Little Texas Babes. 

Click Here To See The Shop!

 

 Specializing in embroidered gifts, all of the designs you see in her shop can be made on: bibs, burp cloths, bodysuits and even blankets / quilts. They are ADORABLE and fun :)

 

Here is the bib we chose for Miss Piper:

As you can see in the photo above, she absolutely loves it. Despite the fact she has no real opinion voiced. ;)

The design is printed onto a great quality Babies R Us brand white bib. It is extremely professional quality-wise. The design is embroidered to perfection. Not to mention it gets a ton of laughs everytime she wears it. The shop owner was extremely friendly and the item was shipped quickly. I will definitely be using them in the future for baby shower gifts as my friends start to get pregnant one by one!

Thank you very much to Paula at Little Texas Babes!

Please visit her shop and show her some love, and maybe do a little shopping while you're at it!

33 Weeks!

Baby Camera Happy is 33 weeks and 1 day today.

My belly is protruding A LOT now and I feel HUGE. Like just swallowed a house huge. My lungs cannot expand, and just rolling over in bed or walking to the bathroom to pee for the millionth time in a day makes me short of breath. Baby girl is quite active, and she likes to kick and flop around, especially at bedtime. I cannot believe in under 2 months I will be able to snuggle my outside baby!! I passed my glucose test with no problems whatsoever, so it's been nice not having the added worry of that.  :)

Past Events?

October 22 - Our Maternity Photos

November 6 - family baby shower

November 13 - friends baby shower

Upcoming events?

-December 4th - Having a dinner party with a few friends and their babies 

 - December 9th - Work luncheon/baby shower

 - December 10th - Having another dinner party with a few friends

 - December 11th - Work Christmas party

 - December 25th - Christmas!

 - January 9th - First day of maternity leave!

 - January 16th - Baby Camera Happy's due date!

Check In:

• How far along?: 33 weeks and 1 day

• Total weight gain: I was up 25 lbs at my last appt.

• How big is baby?: Little one is the size of a Honeydew Melon this week

• Maternity clothes?:Oh yes. And I've upgraded to the full panel on my maternity jeans, thankyouverymuch. Got a bunch of hand me down scrubs from girls at work so that I should be able to make it through my pregnancy without having problems with work outfits.

• Movement: Baby likes to have dance parties. Upside down dance parties, where her feet dig into my ribs and her head smooshes my bladder. She especially likes bed time!

• Stretch marks?: Not yet! Fingers crossed! <--Still this! My belly is shiny and I have quite the linea nigra going though.

• Sleep?: I am tired all the time. Not just sleepy, yawn a couple times and deal tired. More like falling asleep on the nurses station at work tired.

• Symptoms?: Right now it's rapid pulse, shortness of breath, swollen hands and feet, and pregnancy induced carpal tunnel syndrome. Not to mention continuing on with restless leg syndrome and heartburn so bad that I can throw up foam sometimes. FUN!!!!!

• Food cravings:  Popsicles. All kinds of popsicles. I can eat 12 freeze pops in a sitting. I especially love the Snapple Sorbet bars from Walgreens. They are delish!
• 
  
• Food Aversions: Seafood (which I normally dont' like anyway) smells so vile to me that it can induce vomiting.

• Belly button in or out?: Still an innie, but it's completely flush with my belly.

• What I miss: I miss having energy. I miss being skinny. I feel so fat and uncomfortable right now!

• What I'm looking forward to: I am looking forward to meeting my little girl!

• Best Moment this week: This week started my new, less hours at work due to pregnancy. Love it. It also put me under the 2 month mark in terms of due date!

Monkey Baby Shower Take 2!

February 5th we hosted a baby shower for my good friend Rachel who is due on March 22nd! She registered for a lot of monkey things, like towels and blankets, so we opted to throw together a monkey themed baby shower! Sound familiar?? Kinda like this one?  

The main difference between the two is that for this one, we had to prepare all of the food rather than get it catered. Mama to be can only eat gluten free, so me and my ladies put together everything gluten free!

We reused a decent amount of what I already had from Laura's shower! Figured I would share some more photos!

Above is the first gift bag I've decorated using my Cricut Expression! I used the Create A Critter cartridge!

The setup!

Centerpiece! Flowerpot and monkey came from the Dollar Tree, Coconut bowls and ostrich feathers were left overs from  Laura's shower!

Coconut bowls filled with nuts, chocolate covered raisins, banana chips, banana runts, and banana Laffy Taffy!

For the favors we poured soy candles into Earth's Best baby food jars, and adorned with ribbons! They came out fantastical, and they smell terrific!

We hung paper lanterns for decorations and made "palm trees" out of crepe paper. The baby shower plates are from Target

These are the appetizers I chose to make! I know penguins don't really fit the jungle/monkey theme, but they were way too cute to pass up! Cream Cheese Penguins recipes and instructions found here

 Mary putting the finishing touches on her amazing deviled eggs!

and Ashley's fantastical gluten free cupcakes!

We ate, then mama to be opened her gifts:

All in all it was a great day! She loved all the little details we put into the shower, and it made her even more excited for baby Ethan to arrive!

Linking up to:

Gettin' Crafty!

For Christmas, my mother got me what I've now determined is one of the greatest toys ever...

The GREEN Cricut Expression! I've been wanting one of these babies for a while now, and I had never seen the color machines! It apparently comes in purple, yellow, and turquoise as well! Today I finally installed the blade kit, and just had a ball cutting random things out to figure out how everything works. There are a LOT of features on these machines though, so I have a feeling it will be a while before I feel like I know what I'm doing with it. 

I was feeling crafty today, so I decided to make the burp cloths I have been planning on making for my friends upcoming baby shower on February 5th. I used THIS Tutorial to do this project, and it was super easy and didn't take a lot of time, OR cost a lot of money.

Here is the end product!

Sewing in a straight line wasn't my strong suit tonight, but you can barely tell that they are a little crooked unless you're inspecting them!

Then I brought out the Cricut, and made a little tag to put on the front of them and tied it all together with a green ribbon!

I probably could have been a bit fancier with the writing on the tag, but I got lazy! I still think the bundle looks adorable, and I know she will appreciate it. 

I know it's a day early, but I'm linking up to :

Laura's Baby Shower - March 28th, 2010

After a month or so of going back and forth on decor and invite ideas, Laura's baby shower has come and gone. She absolutely loved it, and I got a lot of compliments on the color choices and the decorations. Figured I would share some pictures of it, as I found all my inspiration by peering onto other people's blogs :)

The food and gift tables as well as the banner that I had printed using graphics from My Grarfico - Alisha McConnell

Balloons - We had blue hearts saying "Baby Boy" a handful of Mod Monkey balloons, and some banana bunch balloons.

Plastic Coconut bowls filled with Banana runts

The Welcome posted I designed and printed using vistaprint.com

The favors - cleaned out baby food jars with the labels removed. Hot glued fabric and ribbon to the lid, and printed out labels. The jars are filled with pastel colored Sixlets candies, and more banana runts

The awesome frame my boss made! I didn't get a picture after we put the ultrasound picture in it though :(

The cake was delicious! Bought the sitting baby cake topper at Jo-Ann Fabrics, and the little stuffed monkey from Target's toy section

The centerpieces for the table. The planter pots doubled as prizes for the raffles we held during the shower. I wanted something that was reminiscent of a palm tree, but wasn't one of those tissue paper ones, so ostrich feathers took that place and I love love love how they came out.

A bundle of monkeys for the "head table" i.e. the family table.

Presents galore!

All in all the shower was a success! everyone had a great time and baby Luca has officially been showered! He is scheduled to arrive at the end of the month!

XOXO

-V

Progress

Baby shower #1 has been rapidly progressing! Today I went and booked a room through my city's village hall. It's actually in the basement of the village hall building, and it's a nice big open classroom. Has a wall of mirrors, and glass doors on one side of the room to let the sun shine in. It's beautiful, and with all the decorations we are going to pack in there, it's going to look amazing.

I designed the banner, the welcome sign, and the invites, and ordered them through Vistaprint.com, since I couldn't find any decorations I found suitable to match the invitations in the store.

                                                                  Invitation one side

Invite opposite side

Door Sign

Vinyl Banner

Monkey & Balloon graphics all courtesy of a purchased graphic collection from http://www.mygrafico.com

                                                                              

Overall I am very happy with how things are coming along. The next two steps? Food + cake. Then centerpieces and the remainder of the decorations.

I am also trying to come up with a cd of good songs suitable for a baby shower. Any and all suggestions are welcome!! I would love your help!

XOXO

-V

Baby Fever!

I just recently found out that I will be hosting 2 baby showers, one for each of my best friends (both were my matrons of honor at my wedding as well). I'm very excited to be an auntie x 2.

The first one will be for Laura, and is scheduled for March 28th. She is doing the Lambs & Ivy Cocoa Safari theme as the babys bedroom, and wanted a monkey themed baby shower. She also did not want much of anything blue. I know this makes her sound really picky, but she's not. Just didn't want the generic blue everywhere baby shower for baby Luca.

First off let me tell you. A monkey baby shower, not the easiest thing to find! All the monkey balloons and decor I could find were either for Luau parties, or birthday specific.

Then, in a google search, it happened.

I did a search for "monkey mylar balloons" in google, and lo and behold. Here it is. Granted, it has some blue in it. But it's more of an aqua. And it has the yellow and brown she wanted (she wanted green too).

Then for more searching.

I came across this blog.

www.hostessblog.com

And she had 2 posts for the "Mod Monkey" baby shower. One post had her decorations and setup, and the other one had a lot of downloadable pdf files for others to use (only for personal use, not for reselling)

So I downloaded the pdf files to see if I could make them use the colors she liked as well, since it was a lot of aqua and yellow.

Here is the finished product : a door sign to put on the outside of the door.

 

A HUGE thank you to Jenn at www.hostessblog.com for making a monkey themed baby shower possible for me :)

I personally love the way it came out. I think the colors all work really well together, and give me a lot of room to play with the rest of the decorations. I think she was envisioning paler colors, so I hope she will like this! Though I am still debating on taking the yellow circles out of the monkey and painting them brown to make it more uniform. I'm not sure. What do you guys think? 

I also loved her idea of using banana runts candies in the decorating, so I will probably do the same there.

Along with that monkey balloon, I also found this balloon:

So I will order a few of those for some whimsy as well. My work has helium tanks, so all I have to do is have them blown up there for $0.50 a pop. I'm also probably going to pick up some yellow flower balloons from the Dollar Tree, and then just some plain colored ones for more fun.

Dependant on the venue I want to host it at (still waiting on a call back from my village hall to see their rules and application process) I also wanted to make these in brown, aqua, yellow, and light green to hang from the ceiling.

Above picture courtesy of Martha Stewart Weddings

The part that I am stuck on is decorations more specific to a baby shower. Maybe an It's A Boy banner or a baby shower banner. I'm worried about this theme looking more like a birthday party than a baby shower.

Does anyone have any cool ideas for handmade banners? Or know of any websites that sell them? All I've been able to find is blue ones, and the occasional full on pastel one, but I want something a bit brighter.

Cut to a few hours later. I came across an AMAZING site with AMAZING graphics for purchase, and found an adorable monkey more suitable for a baby shower! If you are looking for fabulous graphics at fabulous prices check out http://www.mygrafico.com

Here is the door sign in the new design...

 

 now to choose which I like better!

Thanks!

Hope everyone is doing fantastical

XOXO

-V