Two.

My girl turned two over the weekend. Can you believe it? I hardly can. It feels like just an hour ago I was waiting and wishing for her to come and then poof--she was here and my life was forever changed, to the point I can barely remember what my days were like before her.

We had her birthday party on Saturday. The party wasn't really themed...I just went with a bunch of bright colors and fun food. I tried to keep it as laid back as possible with fuss-free everything. I ordered cupcakes from my favorite cupcake friend, Alyssa's Cupcake Confections. We went with chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting and strawberry shortcake cupcakes. Yes, they were as delicious as they sound :)

The birthday girl ate plenty of sweets and opened more presents that she could believe. She loved everything, but her favorite present was actually a pair of shoes. A pair of green, sparkly Toms shoes, to be exact--courtesy of her aunt and uncle. 

Then on Sunday, her actual birthday, we spent the day doing all her favorite things. We went on bike rides, went to the beach and walked in the sand, got ice cream, went on the swings, and had macaroni and cheese for dinner. The list a two-year old comes up with for their dream day is so sweetly simple and adorable :)

In the morning she got to open yet another crop of presents, this time from Chad's mom and sister who sent her a bunch of fun things from Maine.

Like this box:

Also, an art easel:

Literally as I'm typing this I can hear the commencement speeches happening at the high school football field behind my house. Just a few minutes ago I peeked outside to see all the graduates filing in, boys in navy caps and gowns and girls in white. I'm sure every parent sitting in those stands is feeling a mix of pride and sadness, for it must be a bittersweet moment to fully realize your baby is no longer that. They are probably all wondering where did the time go?. The speed at which time passes is something I notice more with each passing year. It is not lost on me, not for a second.

But today I remember that for now, I have a little person who still wears jammies with attached feet. A person who gets excited to sing her ABC's, to count to ten, and to try to put her shoes on by herself. A person who tells me, every single morning, that she wants waffles and "na-nas" for breakfast, like it's something new and exciting and different. Someone who watches Elmo's World with rapt attention and sings "wheeee! Mommy's riding a bike!" every single time we take a bike ride (which is pretty much every day). A person whose worst injuries can still be fixed with a kiss and a Candyland band aid. A person who just really loves her Winnie blankie, kitty cats, swings, cookies, and playing outside. For now, I still have my baby and perhaps sixteen years from now I will look back on this post and will hopefully be able to say that I made the most of it; that the years may have passed quickly, but boy were they great.

Happy 2nd Birthday, baby girl.

~Stacy

Inspiration Boards

If you love DIY, sewing, and crafting blogs as much I do then you've probably heard of the blog I Heart Naptime.  The site is full of ideas and tutorials for everything creative, along with recipes and decor projects. Their goal is to make creativity and the DIY mentality a priority while paying close attention to costs and saving money. A couple weeks ago, the creators of I Heart Naptime came up with an amazing new site called The Inspiration Board. At first glance, you might wonder how that could be any different from another little site called Pinterest. Ah, allow me to explain.

Like Pinterest, The Inspiration Board is all about creating collections of images and ideas that fit into a similar category and can be used to get ideas or to find inspiration for something--anything: cooking, building your dream home, remodeling your kitchen, taking your dream vacation, etc. The Inspiration Board is a way to use those images you've collected from Pinterest, your own personal photo gallery, or literally anywhere else on the web and create one cohesive idea board. You can add text, frames, and other embellishments to prettify your board and then you have the ability to share it anywhere. I've been having a lot of fun using it because, for me, it brings my various ideas I've found on Pinterest together and lets me create a more complete picture of what I'm looking for.

So here's what happens when Pinterest and The Inspiration Board have a baby together:

Click on each number for image sources: #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5

This is a board I made based on ideas for Charlotte's birthday party (yeah yeah, I know it's not until June and it's only going to be a small gathering of people but still). I had pinned a bunch of ideas to a board with pictures I liked and ideas I thought were cute but they weren't all centered around the same theme. I had ideas for the milk & cookies party, a vintage-y fair/carnival theme, and another set of pins focused on a girly looking farm theme (I say girly looking because if I just looked for "farm themed party" I got mostly pictures of John Deere tractors and other farm equipment. Um, no).

Here's the board I came up with for the county fair/carnival theme:

Click each number for image sources: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #7

After doing the first two boards, I realized I'd included a lot of the pins that were related to the farm idea (there weren't many), so I didn't make a separate board for that one.

So I think I'll come up with a way to use the milk & cookies with the carnival idea. I love the colors in the carnival board--all the reds, aquas, and yellows. The colors in the first board are pretty, but a little too pastel/pink overload for my liking...my favorite idea from that board is the glass bottles of different milk flavors. I'd like to find mini Mason jars (or something similar) and serve those, since most people probably don't want a large glass of milk on a summer day (except Charlotte).

Thoughts?

~Stacy