I'm a jeans, tee and flats kind of girl. 2 of my favorite colors are gray and green. I love scarves, tank tops and cardigans. I have a ton of great outfits pinned but this one is the mostme.
I also am in serious need of a new purse. I am in love with this one(and the other 20 I have pinned)
2. What is your favorite food pin? I have only made a couple of things on my food board. This is something I need. Red Velvet and cream cheese? Seriously? Yum!
3. What is your favorite wedding pin?
We were married before Pinterest was cool(or even made?) But I just searched "wedding" and love this. I love, love, love the dress I wore but I've always loved the dresses with color. This is so fun! I assume you wouldn't really see any of the pink unless you held the skirt up. I love that pop of color!
4. What is your favorite DIY/craft pin?
I don't have a DIY/craft board since I'm not a crafter or DIYer :)
5. What is your favorite quote/verse/lyric pin?
I don't have a quote/verse/lyric board but I have a board for quotes to put in the girl's yearly photobooks. Books I am seriously behind in making... They all have to do with love, daughters and being parents. I love this because I remember telling Alan this after we brought Madison home from the hospital. That it's amazing how I thought I loved him as much as I could until I saw him with Madison and how much more my love grew for him.
6. Share one more random pin you love. Pretty much.
This is my first Sunday Social. Today's is all about Pinterest. Let me preface this with... this was tough! Obviously I love everything I pin or I wouldn't pin it, so narrowing it down was hard. Here we go!
1. What is your favorite outfit pin? I am in love with colored jeans right now but I'm too self-conscious to wear them myself. I also love the dotted sweater with the button up underneath. I would never in a million years wear this outfit but I love it so much :)
2. What is your favorite food pin? I actually made these tonight too.
3. What is your favorite wedding pin?
Since I was married when I joined Pinterest, I don't have a wedding board so I just searched "wedding" and here's what I saw I liked. It's pretty horrible I had to scroll down 10 pages just to find 1 thing I liked and would actually use at my own wedding.
4. What is your favorite DIY/craft pin?
I love the tile trim and the framed mirror
5. What is your favorite quote/verse/lyric pin? "To hear laughter of a child, to wake up next to the love of your life,
to know that God has placed them on earth for you... you are blessed."
6. Share on more random pin you love. We keep talking about redoing our porch into a glassed/screened in porch. I love this setup.
There's a challenge on Instagram and Facebook during November where everyday you say what you are thankful for. I will do 2 weeks at a time so it's no so overwhelming. Here are mine so far in very random order(except the first two)!
Day 1-Madison
Today and everyday I'm thankful God blessed us
with an amazing daughter! After years of trying and questioning why,
now I know His timing is perfect. She's healthy, smart, happy, hilarious
and beautiful! We are so blessed!
Day 2-Alan
Thankful for my handsome husband, best friend
and perfect father to M. We have the perfect marriage and I don't know
how I made it so long without him.
Day 3-Coffee
On a day like this, thankful for coffee
Day 4-Family and friends
The people we lean on and trust, outside of each other.
Day 5-
Thankful my daughter LOVES to read! Ever since she was born, we read a
book at every nap and bedtime. Now she loves flipping through books and
talking.
"If you want your child to be intelligent, read them fairy
tales" ~ Einstein
Day 6-
Thankful for the freedom to vote, these tiny stickers that shows I voted and the lady that gave M one :)
Day 7-Blessed to be a stay at home mom
It does get
very repetitive and I get stir crazy about every other day but I
wouldn't want to have it any other way! I love spending my day with this
girl and our crazy animals!
Day 8-Sunglasses
After making an out of town trip this cloudless day and leaving my sunglasses at home, I appreciate them a lot more now!
Day 9 - DVR
If not for this great invention, I'd never catch any good tv and Madison would never watch Play with me Sesame since it comes on at times she's either asleep or not eating.(she only watches tv when she's eating)
Day 10-massages
I've been getting massages at least once a month for the past 13 years! I can't imagine not getting them on a normal basis.
Day 11-Veterans
thankful for all the veterans and their families who fought and are currently fighting for our freedom. They sacrifice so much!
Day 12-Pinterest
As weird as it may be to be thankful, I've gotten lots of recipes,
fitness tips, decorating tips and I planned Madison's first birthday
entirely from it. I also have a lot of ideas just waiting to be done
too.
Day 13-A daughter that plays well on her own.
Day 14-My car
Even with the rattles, dings and scratches, she's very loyal and gets me where I need to go and I feel very safe in it.
I saw this on Pinterest a while back but never much paid attention to what I was saying until recently. As a parent of a human and pets, we say the weirdest things! I'm going to start blogging them! Boring or not?
Things said recently:
To Madison while playing with her play food "Grab your chicken leg and come here"
To Madison "Stop licking Daddy's arm"
"Wilma, stop licking the furniture"
To Madison who was being pretty fussy while we were all eating supper -(Alan handed her a local Christian store sales flyer) "Here, read about the Bible and maybe you will feel better" (Crystal) "God and Santa are watching you"
(Alan said to me while we were giving Madison a bath) "Like seriously, what did we do before having Madison?" (Crystal) "I guess watched a lot of tv and rested? I have no idea!" (Alan) "Did we eat supper in front of the tv or at the table?" (Crystal) "We've always eaten at the table but sometime we would eat while watching tv" (Alan) "I don't even remember eating before having Madison, did we eat before having her?" (Crystal) "Yeah I'm sure we did."
I got a lot of compliments on some things at the party so I thought I'd share where I got the ideas!
Cake/Cupcakes
I knew I wanted to serve cupcakes versus cake at the party. I craved cupcakes my entire pregnancy and we kept my favorite cupcake place in business! I also knew I wanted her smash cake to have her name on the side of it. I went searching for pink and green and stumbled on this picture.
It was perfect! I had the pink M's on strawberry/cream cheese cupcakes and green 1's on vanilla/buttercream. I told the baker to put pink and green dots on her cake with her name on the side and a pink '1' on the top. She did perfect! Even though the strawberry didn't taste like strawberry and they weren't pink, there were strawberries in the batter :)
I also made the cupcake holder. I bought 2 cardboard cake sheets from Party City-one smaller than the other- and spray painted them white. I also spray painted a Puff container white(the tower in between layers) and hot glued it to both layers. I then hot glue a thin silver ribbon around the bottom of the container. The pink edging is pink streamers. I noticed when I got home that one side of the bottom cardboard what straight, where the other edges were scalloped. Weird! I wanted to cover it so I did this. Total cost- less than $10 versus those store bought cupcake holders that run $13-$50 and typically hold 12-24 cupcakes. I wanted one to hold all 36 cupcakes so I didn't have to man the cupcake station and refill them if they ran out.
Each cardboard was less than $1 each. The streamers were $0.99 but I also used them as decorations. The spray paint was $4 and was also used on her M wreath(seen below) The Puff container was $2.99 when they were full of puffs so I won't count that cost into it since I bought them a while back and saved the container. I also glue canning jar rims on each corner to lift the bottom layer off the table just a tad :)
Puffs
I used this video to help because I had some trouble with the first couple I did. The 3 in the window, I didn't cut the ends after folding them. The big ones, 2 on the mantel and one above the stairs/gifts, I cut into a point, like the Dahlia in the picture below the video.
For the small ones I used 1 pack of tissue paper each. I laid out the paper and cut it in half. For the large ones, I just laid the tissue out and fold it long ways. If I had to do over, I would use 2 packs of tissue for each big puff.
Ice cream cups
I decided to do this so someone didn't have to worry about scooping ice cream the entire party. Plus we didn't wait for everyone to eat cake and ice cream until the end so people could eat their sweets with their food if they wanted. This actually turned into a melted ice cream disaster. I only sat out about 20 cups(we had 30 people) and only a few were ate. We looked over and ice cream was everywhere! If I had to redo, I would either get those little personal ice cream cups or put ice cream in a small plastic cups. It was a cute idea anyway.. To do this, you just scoop ice cream into cupcake liners and freeze
them. I only have one cupcake pan so I just put them all onto 3 baking
sheets, covered them in foil and froze them.
Mason Jar drinks
I got a lot of compliments on these! One comment was "It's so simple but the liner makes it look elegant". I decided to do Hawaiian Punch in Lemon Berry and Green Berry Rush to tie in the pink and green theme. I got the straws(the are actually plastic!) and cupcake liners from Hobby Lobby. I decided to only do 12 drinks(6 each color) because we also had water bottles and now I wish I'd done 24! People actually drank them :)
To get a good hole started, I put one liner on the jar to see where the straw would go. I then cut an X with scissors in the spot so when we put the straw in it, it wouldn't rip. The day of the party we filled the jars, put the liners on and stuck the straw in them.
Mason Jar cutlery holders
Since using mason jars for the drinks, I decided to use some to hold the forks and spoons. I got a roll of really cute ribbon from Hobby Lobby and taped them to the top. It turned out cute! The ribbon tied the colors together and using the jars tied in the drinks too.
Water bottle labels
I wanted to pretty up the water bottles by replacing the brand labels with something to match the party. I found this link which has 5 labels on a sheet. I tore off the labels, cut these and taped them on with 2 inch tape. The only thing was they couldn't go in ice. We filled our fridge with 50 water bottles and sat them out. I didn't get to drink any so I hope they stayed chilled throughout the party! People thought I bought the bottles that way and they really liked them!
Veggie cups
I thought this would be a great way to keep Ranch dressing from being all over someones plate and our buffet, so we decided to do these cups. While people did eat them, I wish we had done these and refrigerated them that morning so we weren't assembling them when people starting coming over :) We just didn't have the room in the fridge, with 3 dozen cupcakes and 50 water bottles and all...I had already cut carrots, peppers and celery. We should have added some red and yellow peppers to help fill them up more. Ah well. Live and learn :)
High chair tutu
I knew I wanted to add some frilly to her high chair and found this tutu at Hobby Lobby. Luckily her high chair tray has a top tray that lifts out so you can put in the dishwasher so we just taped the ribbon under that tray. She didn't play with it as much as I thought. People loved it!
Balloon walkway
I found this picture on Pinterest and knew I wanted to do it. I didn't get a picture but we only lined up 6 balloons on one side of our sidewalk but I would have loved to fill it up like this one. I'm glad we didn't because it turned out so windy that day that they ended up laying on the ground anyway. It also started raining before the party was over and they all deflated due to the temperature dropping and the rain beating them. To stake them in the ground, I used golf tees and tied the ribbon around the top part.
Salsa
I got rave reviews on my salsa. It's always been my go-to recipe for any function I've needed to bring food to. All of those garden tomatoes I got from my neighbors this year came in quite handy! I think I used roughly 20 cups of boiled and chopped tomatoes and we had a bit left over. I also used fresh jalepenos, lime and cannded whole chiles that I chopped up. Here's my normal, small batch recipe:
3 cans diced or petite diced tomatoes (I always used Hunts brand)
1 jar diced chiles
1 jalapeno, diced (or more to taste)
1 diced onion
juice of 1 lime
1-2 tspn minced garlic (I use the jar garlic)
Mix it all up, add salt and pepper to taste and refrigerate. It always taste better the next day or after being refrigerated a while. Everything is really to taste so add or take away what you don't like. :) One good thing about making it is testing it is taste testing along the way! I have also found that Ingles sells the hottest jalapenos.. Really weird but it's true.. I've bought from every grocery store and theirs have always been hotter.
I have been thinking a lot lately of some things I want to get accomplished and/or change this year. Here they are:
1) Be a better wife, mother, family member, friend and all around person. Since having Madison I tend to feel disconnected or even distant from a lot of people in my life. I need to get back to that person I was and I will find her soon! The things exhaustion does to your attitude is amazing. Even though Madison is doing decent at night, I go nonstop during the day and by the time Alan gets home, I am wiped out! This makes me be quiet and then I am ready for bed by 9! With Madison I want to be that mom she loves hanging out with. With everyone else I will try to call, email or text more to keep in touch.
2) I took some pictures of my niece and her fiance Saturday, who are expecting a son in February. I have no idea what I am doing, so I just point and shoot. This was the one of many things that has made me really look into taking classes or at least reading the book on how to use my camera. The local college has Photography classes that start in February. I am really nervous about the possibility of taking classes. I feel like it's my first day of school! This would also involve taking a Photoshop course and getting a new computer and Photoshop.
3) Get our house more organized and decorated. I know some people think I'm already super organized but my goal this year is to get more organized.
Our pantry isn't that wide but the main goal is to get all dry ingredients into labeled jars and maybe snacks and/or like items in baskets like the ones shown here. I would also like to redo my spices. I have them all in little jars with what the spice is written on the top, in ABC order but I would like something different.
This is an easy one if I can just remember to put shower rings on our grocery list..
Along with this goal comes a cleaning schedule. I hate cleaning the entire house in one day and with me not working, the last thing Alan needs to do is help clean on the weekend. I have made a daily cleaning schedule so its something I can do daily and by the weekend, all cleaning and laundry is done.
Also, the decorating part. I have yet to put up curtains in the bathrooms since we painted last April. We also need new towels and some artwork in there, our bedroom and the kitchen. Our bonus room needs a good cleaning and painting and maybe make the beginning of Madison's play room with this:
via Chocolate Moments
such a cute way to remind someone what little things they do make you happy! A dry erase board so you can write different things everyday!
via Bryn Alexandra
I really like having hooks in the room next to the door. For purses, coats, etc.
via minimoz
Maps of where you met, married and live. Love this!
If you aren't on Pinterest yet, you should be! Or maybe you shouldn't.. It has made me want to redo my entire house! It has really given me a lot of great ideas for our house(like all of the above!), ideas for things to do with Madison, great blogs to follow and yummy foods to try, which I have already!
4) Start back exercising. We have been talking about getting a treadmill or stair climber in the next couple of months. Since Alan stopped playing tennis regularly and when I got pregnant, neither of us has really done any real exercise. I haven't truly worked out in a gym in roughly 10 years! Before getting pregnant, I would run/walk the neighborhood.
5) Scrapbooking. I haven't scrapbooked in years but it's something I really enjoy doing. The only thing is it takes me a couple of hours to do a page usually and I just don't have that kind of free time anymore, other than when Madison goes to bed and by then I am trying to spend time with Alan, cook supper(this eating at 8pm thing is getting old fast!) and am ready for bed myself! I need to try to do a page a week.
6) Use coupons more. I cancelled my E-mealz suscription a couple of months ago. I talked about it here. It was great up until about 6 months ago. They started putting things like Hot Dogs and frozen pizza on the list. I mean I understand that we all want easy meals but I paid for this site and I can throw in a hot dog meal in the other 2 days it didn't give me recipes for. Plus every week there was a seafood meal and I don't eat seafood. So that was 1 out of 5 meals I wouldn't fix so I was having to come up with another meal to replace the seafood meal. So anyway... I try to cook different things every week. I hardly make the same thing twice and when I do, it's something like tacos or spaghetti or an easy meal. I try to base what I'm cooking on whats on sale which helps but here lately I haven't done a great job with my grocery budget. I would love to keep a stock of things that go on super sale that I have coupons for like shampoo, toothpaste and baby items.
I'm sure I have a ton of other goals spinning around in my head. we'll just leave it at this. Hopefully in the next couple of months I will have all of these marked off my list! We'll keep you updated!
