It's a bird, a plane, a rash, a family, a firework, a pregnant lady

Our July 4th celebration was a lot of fun this year, but also a secret! Both Micah and I, as well as our dear friends, Jessica & Curtis (and their two kids) wanted a small, uncomplicated celebration. So, we combined our uncomplicated wishes, and came up with a great way to relax! We didn't tell anyone else of our plans so it could stay low-key (and because we were sneaking into Jessica's parent's house). I put on a bikini for the first time since pregnant, and we all went swimming, grilled out, and enjoyed each other's company while watching a variety of fire-works shows.

You might be asking what the title of this post has anything to do with the above description, well, here are some photos that will help fill in the gaps. (birds was just to get the quote started and I am sure there were plenty in Tulsa that day)

I had been craving some jalapeno poppers, the kind wrapped in bacon with cream cheese, and when I saw them recently published here on the Pioneer Woman blog, I knew I was making them for the 4th. Well, apparently with my super sensitive pregnant skin, cutting the jalapenos burned my poor hands and I developed this terrible rash that truly freaked me out for a couple of days until I was able to guess that most likely the burns, blisters and marks had to be from cutting over a dozen jalapenos. And here is what it still looks like, over a week later:(I have been hiding my hands in embarrassment ever since. A day later when it showed up, we were almost convinced I had preeclampsia and were on our way to the ER. Glad we didn't go after all just to be turned away for cutting a few too many jalapenos!)

While blogging, the TV is on in the background and we are half-watching a show on France and they were interviewing a photographer. He said the art of photography is , "showing life as it is, reflecting the world in which you live." If that is the case, I live in a world filled with beautiful children and families:


So, the plane part of the title comes in with this picture. I think I could double for the plane that landed in the Hudson Bay a couple months ago. Okay, just kidding, I know I am not that big, but still, wow!Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, enjoyed the freedom we have, and is grateful for our armed forces, and God's favor which has been upon America.

Handmade Gifts

There were a few gifts from the shower that were hand-made, so I feel they deserve a special mention; especially since I dream of being crafty but just don't usually have the . My friend, co-worker's wife, and fellow blogger, Kristena Derrick is queen of home-made cuteness and she once again proved her royalty. She crocheted black booties, made a fabric daisy on a onesie, and sewed three adorable denim reversible bibs! Visit her blog to see all the creative things she creates by clicking here. But, here is a taste of her creations:



Not to be outdone, by any means, my mother-in-law had the genius creative idea of making "Daisy's First Little Black Dress." My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are both very fashion conscious which I love about them. Well, her creation was met with plenty of "oohs and ahhs" at this creation. She hand-made this out of black satin, and created matching black satin bloomers too. She purchased the pink shrug to go with it to break up the black in case it was too much black; but really, it was just so adorable and unbelievably thoughtful too. She has actually been thinking about turning this into a business, and I am already ready to order some for friends. So, if any of you are interested in getting a baby's first "little black dress" just let me know and I will be happy to arrange that for you! I have already decided that Daisy will wear this for Dane and Megan's wedding in September when we go to Europe.
Excuse the poor image quality, not sure how Micah takes such great pictures, mine always turn out a bit funny.

One more shower coming up! I will be sure to post pictures from that one too! Thanks to all my friends and family who have been so generous in their time, creativity and support for me and my growing family!

My First Baby Shower!

I had my very first baby shower this past weekend! It was sooo wonderful; our friends worked so hard to make it a beautiful and memorable event for us. We truly were so spoiled by everyone with the generous gifts too. We of course got lots of girly outfits because they are so hard to resist buying and we got a few of the items we really need too. I have one more shower later in June and then that's it! The rest is up to us!
Some of the decorations and desserts. They also had onesies for people to sign and write funny messages on. The cakes were from Ludgers; one said Daisy Barnard, and the others had her initials. Yummy!

Yes, this onesie says "ipood", not "ipod"! Too funny.

Mom and Dad to be! notice the big posters on my side on the garage? They used those for the invitations too. The colors were pink and black; even the black dog had a pink ribbon!
They had some beer to give a "man section" to the party, however, it was quickly girlified by the ribbon that was added that says, "it's a girl!"
Notice all the pink, white and chocolate colored desserts? Everything was in those colors! Really, it was beautiful!

Memorial Day Weekend Visitors!

During Memorial Day two of my best friends from Belhaven College came to visit me so they could see me while I am huge and pregnant; it really is quite the spectacle! I am 32 weeks pregnant, and due to back pain, I am pretty limited in how much I can do, so it was a mild weekend (especially considering the fun and crazy times we had together in college). It was a true testament to being at a new stage in life - the married with kids stage! We had a great time catching up, relaxing, eating good food, and looking at all sorts of adorable baby stuff! So, here are some pictures from the weekend.
This is a blurry picture of the steak dinner we made, with grilled asparagus, salad and wine. MMM, delicious!
This is Jerremy's reaction to the Renaissance Fair of Muskogee. Okay, not really, we didn't take them there, we just told them all about it.
This is to show you my largely protruding belly and how funny I look sometimes. We picked out two movies and watched both of them in one night! Traitor and Man From Snowy River- odd combination, I know.
The friends - Kendra, me and Aimee! Thanks for visiting girls! You're the best.
Another dinner at home in the back yard. We made fajitas with guacamole, green tomatilla salsa, grilled pineapple...Wow, so good. Maybe one of these days I will get around to posting recipes for all the yummy food we made! I know you want them.

Surprise!

Micah wanted to surprise me for our anniversary this year and he planned a trip all by himself and didn't tell me where we were going. I knew he was missing the mountains badly so I was preparing to go to some winter-wonderland, when the day before leaving he told me we needed to go shopping for a maternity swimsuit! I then figured we might be going to see Lindsey Weyer, my childhood best friend, and her husband Jack who live less than a mile from the beach in Jacksonville, Florida and that is exactly where we went!

Micah tried surfing for the first time ever, and he made a valiant effort. It wasn't the greatest of conditions, so we will have to try again sometime soon, and hopefully then I can do it too.

I had great hang-out time with Lindsey, so good to see her again!

Since it was our anniversary, we wanted a picture to commemorate it and show the growing belly! I did get royally sunburned, but it was well worth it.
Yeah for anniversaries and great friends! On our way back the flights were continually overbooked too, so we ended up with $700 in vouchers to use on our next vacation. Now we are thinking of going to the winter-wonderland I mentioned and go skiing after the baby arrives.

Christmas Cookie Baking

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

In celebration, Micah and I baked about 12 dozen cookies last night to make yummy cookie trays for our co-workers and neighbors.



While it was Christmas Baking, it was also most definitely a night of Martha Stewart. I was wearing a Martha Stewart apron, baking all Martha recipes, and I even purchased Martha Stewart gift boxes to deliver the sweet treats in. It wasn't planned to be a night of Martha, but well, she makes the rest of us look prepared and fancy for the holidays. My favorite part was the gift boxes, and while I hope those are noticed by the recipients, I hope they most enjoy the festive cookies.

We made Mexican Wedding Cookies (on the right), Molasses Spice Cookies (middle), and a new one for me- Buttered Rum Meltaways (left). Those were particularly spicy with the addition of the dark rum and also fresh ground cloves. You will have to ask my co-workers what their favorite was. Unfortunately, Martha Stewart no longer has the recipe online that I used for the Mexican Wedding Cookies as I pulled it off a few years ago, but click here to view one that is similar.

So, here are a few more pictures of the final product.




All in all, I think it was a fancy success and I hope our co-workers are more merry as a result.

Not Just a One Trick Fancy Pony

In case anyone was confused by the amount of times we dress up in this family, I thought I would post a picture from this weekend to help clear that up and let you know it is often. I opted out of the costume this time about 10 minutes before departing for the event for various reasons (none of which were embarrassment). So, enjoy the latest picture of my oldest brother and his girlfriend, Heather, dressed up for the square dance on Saturday night.

On Sunday, we went to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (don't ask me what I ordered, it was the most un-fancy entree on the menu). I heard my mom tell the same girlfriend that we all wear Pilgrim and Indian outfits on Thanksgiving day. I wish I could say Heather was that gullible because it would be another great fancy picture!

New Fancified Magnet Tutorial

I was looking at my fridge a while ago, and while we have already moved our magnets to the side of the fridge versus the front in an effort to de-clutter, it wasn't helping enough. Our magnets are a complete mixture of radio stations, hospitals, The office quotes...So, I decided I would try to make them a little more uniform. I still had fabric scraps left over from creating this wall piece in my living room that I decided I would use for this project to help tie the two rooms together.


So, I used a craft glue to adhere all my magnets to a different piece of the fabric. I put the glue on, let it harden slightly, and then pressed it to the fabric and let it dry even further on the fabric.


Then using a fabric blade that I borrowed from crafty Kristena, I cut out all the magnets and finally had uniform magnets for my fridge!



The fridge still looks a little cluttered, but that is more because of my refusal to take down pictures and pretty invitations than having anything to do with the now uniform and graphic assortment of magnets!

My friend Kristena, was working on her magnets with me. I love Kristena's sense of style, it is so old-fashioned, eclectic and charming. Here is a picture of what she created the same day.

You can see her tutorial on how she created these magnet on her blog here.

Fancy Baby Shower Ideas

I thought I would share some of my recent baby shower decoration items with you. One of my favorite baby shower ideas is the use of bottles for cups for all the guests. I do this quite often at baby showers, unless it is a couple's shower. The men don't seem quite as game to drink from them! Bottles can be quite expensive, but for showers, you just need the cheap kind- plain and clear. You can get them at resale shops, dollar stores, wal-mart and Targets. I cut a hole in the nipple so guests can use a straw to drink out of, and depending on the color theme for the shower, I also tie ribbons around the neck of the bottle.
For another baby boy shower, we had a ribbon theme throughout. We used a ribbon to tie on the ceiling and with clothes pins we attached all kinds of baby boy onesies, then we used the ribbon to help add decoration to the tables, they were on the metal flower buckets, on the tiered cake...It all looked lovely.

Baby Shower Baby Mommas

So, I have helped to throw a good amount of baby showers in my short 26 years of life already, and I have one coming up this Saturday. I was meeting last night with the other girls who are doing significantly more than me on this particular shower, but I did tell them my secret baby shower game I have been trying to develop for a while. I have not been brave enough to pull it off yet though, maybe because it is not quite fancy enough. But, I will share the loose pieces of my idea here and feel free to weigh in.
Well, I always thought it would be fun, if EVERYONE at the shower looked pregnant, not just the real mom to be! I don't intend it to go quite like this video as it would be obviously fake; I am hoping it will be a really silly game and more importantly some great lasting photos with black mail potential. Basically, each woman is given a balloon or a pillow to stuff under her shirt to look pregnant (if her shirt is too small she will be given an apron to fit it under, of course she is then required to be barefoot and in the kitchen if she is wearing an apron.)
The game, can then be one of many options I have thought about:
1. who can pop the other woman's balloons and be the last one standing with a fake pregnant belly (potential hazards: poking the pregnant woman's belly with a sharp object, balloons popping on non-pregnant bellies could still be painful)
2. who can blow their balloon or position the pillow to be closest in size to the circumference of the pregnant woman's protruding belly. (potential hazard: larger women may be quite embarrassed by the smallness of their balloons in an effort to be accurate)
3. We have a waddling contest to see who has the best pregnant waddle.
4. A speed shoe tying contest.

I told my friends those ideas last night when we were talking about games knowing it was really far fetched that I could actually get a group of women to ever participate in something so silly, but I was pleasantly surprised when Kelly said she would do that for me at my baby shower whenever that is. And she was pretty sure she could get Joan to participate as well. So, thanks Kelly and Joan for being real friends who will one day, don fake pregnant bellies.

Soon, I will post some more legitimate and actual fancy baby shower ideas.

The Lingerie Shower

Well, the lingerie shower that I was helping to host this weekend was a great success! We had so much fun together, the food, champagne, company, and gifts were all fantastic. So, here is a picture of some of the food we had- Mocha Bon-Bons are the mini cup-cake looking things (thanks Merle), cheese tray with brie, gorgonzola (my personal favorite), and a colby and sharp cheddar, with apples and crackers, chocolate covered strawberries, and mini skewers with a banana pepper, pepper jack cheese, sausage, and a grape tomatoe. I never said any of it would be healthy! One of these days I will throw a party with all raw food, but most people just don't know to appreciate the work, the genius, or the health benefits of it, so it makes it not as fun to do unless you know your guests will appreciate it.
My new favorite activity for lingerie showers is to name the bride's different outfits and then the groom gets to pick from the list of names we created for each one to pick that evening's lingerie. This should be pretty funny for the couple after they get married, especially with names like: "Hello, Mr. Darcy", "All that Glitters is Gold," and "Santa Baby."

My Brother, The Conquistador

I was at my parents house last night when my brother found an old costume upstairs (my mom used to create costumes for stage shows and film). all of us kids have a penchant for dressing up, and fortunately, most of us still enjoy it and will still play dress-up from time to time. And now, you too can enjoy his impromptu dressing! This is my brother as a Fancy Conquistador! If I could speak Spanish, I would say something fitting.

Not to be outdone, and so he doesn't feel so bad, I am also including some other pictures of me and my family playing dress-up in the past while. Please note, only one of these photos comes from Halloween, the one day a year adults are supposed to play dress up.

I have a fancy family.

Fancy Golf Shirts

My husband and I, along with some of our dear friends helped to throw and host a golf tournament to support an organization that does a lot of benevolence, relief, and Christian work in places like Uganda, Costa Rica, Mozambique, South Africa and Spain. We had about 75 golfers total, and many other companies donated great items like gift certificates, food and wine pairing at fancy restaurants, champagne, car detailing, etc. all to be auctioned off at the tournament to help raise funds.. The event raised over $10,000 which was a huge success in our opinion.

My husband and my friends, Curtis and Jessica, were also very excited about some special golf shirts to be included in the silent auction. These shirts were purportedly 100% Italian silk, Bobby Jones, really fancy golf shirts that normally retail for around $175 per. However, my husband and I decided we would only bid on the wine and food pairing or maybe the night at the luxury hotel offering. That conversation was quickly forgotten though when Micah did manage to bid on the super fancy 100% Italian silk golf shirt and a New Balance shoes gift certificate. Well, no one else even bid on the shirts but Micah and our friend Curtis and they were both lucky winners. I was somewhat happy Micah won a 100% silk shirt (my husband is not a silk or fancy kind of guy on normal occassions) so when we got home I opened his new prize only to find it felt like pretty normal cotton and nothing like silk! Sure enough it is 100% pure, American cotton! The money went to a great place, but I was a bit merciless in teasing him about his new cotton shirt. He agreed to model it for you, dear readers, and when he put it on we did find that the inside of the buttons do seem to have a little bit of silk, and not to be completely un-fancy, there are some golfers in that one inch piece of silk!

Raw Fooding

I wanted to introduce some new friends to raw food. As a self-proclaimed "foodie", I am however still a novice with raw food. So, I made zucchini pasta with a spinach and lemon pesto, salad, and an attempt at a fancy cheesecake for desert. The zucchini pasta with pesto was okay, not the greatest thing ever as I did do it 100% raw, whereas before I would cheat and add real Parmesan cheese with the rest raw (I figured it was better than not doing raw at all), but since I was introducing people to raw, it had to be 100% so in went the nutritional yeast instead of Parmesan. The salad I thought was great, but obviously I like salad. The dessert turned out okay; the flavor was really good in general but I kind missed the mark on the texture. I am pretty sure as I was blending it that I let it get a bit too hot in the vita mix which made it more creamy, but also more liquefied. So, regardless of the 1 cup of coconut oil, when refrigerated, it was more the texture of caramel with a delicious cinnamon walnut crust. I am not sure I made raw food converts out of our new friends, although they were very polite. As you can see from the pics though, my husband and I are at least enjoying the "cheesecake" long after my guests had left. I did make-up a strawberry sauce to go on top too- thawed frozen strawberries, a bit of cinnamon, and some agave! Pretty simple and good. I think I may try this recipe next time: http://www.rawguru.com/recipe36.html

Crafty Invitations

I am helping to host a lingerie shower coming up for one of my highschool girlfriends and I was in charge of the invitations. I think they turned out pretty cute!

A Slumber Soiree

Jeni is a long-time friend of mine (and cousin to my bff since I was born - really, that is true). Jeni and I both toured with a dancing stage production that presented an allegory of the gospel, The Toymaker's Dream. Well, many of us that toured still live in the same city and Jeni is so good about getting us all together still. So, we recently had a grown girls (+ 1 baby) slumber party! It was a wonderful time had by all, along with an incredible root soup with creme' fraiche (working on getting the recipe), and the fanciest of home-made chocolates from Burdick Chocolates in California. Since it was Halloween night, our chocolates came in an equally fancy coffin shaped box, complete with hazelnut ganache white chocolate ghost shaped bon-bons. To top off all the fanci-ness, Jeni calls all her parties "soirees", and I think I love that word.