~Cowgirl Baby Shower!~

So I have been a busy busy lady! I am really trying to make a point to post but my weeks with work, school and life get crazy and I don't always get a chance to post every day or every week. But I will get consistent. I promise. This post is to capture all the stuff I worked on for my best friend Melissa's baby shower. This shower has been in the works for the last 3 months. I first found some of my ideas for this shower on a wonderful blog by Christy Robbins. Check her out at:
http://christyrobbins.blogspot.com

So let's start with her invitations. When my son turned one I found a great lady that does amazing work at custom invitations and announcements and she made such an impact on me that I had to use her for these invitations.

If you ever want to see her work and what she can do you can check her out here! I will be using her for all my parties in the future...at least until I learn to do as great a job as she does. So she sent me the PDF for this invite for $20 and I had a $20 shutterfly promotion card from getting Photos with Santa for Grason at the mall, so I ended up spending $20 on about 50 invitations.

So I did a dessert table with 5 different desserts, Hay Bales (rice krispy treats), Sherriff's Sugar Cookies, Buckeyes, Boots and Spurs (chocolate boots),  and miner's gold (lemon heads in mini burlap bags).

I made the bags myself by finding a template on google and using a $20 sticker making machine I purchased at Walmart. It was super easy. The signs for all the buckets were made special for me by Andrea from Etsy. To check out her site go here.
I used the candy molds for the boots and cowgirl hats and candymelts to make the decorations for the cupcakes. They were a huge hit! And it was a nice personal touch that I thought of on my own and didn't find on a site. I love getting ideas from others but it is nice to be creative and make something wonderful all on my own too!

I also did a welcome table for the shower where I displayed a diaper shower cake I made for my bestie! I will post a DIY how to on these one day. I make them often and they are really quite easy. Practice makes perfect:) Also displayed were horse die cuts for guests to write a special note to baby Kayden so Melissa can put them in a scrapbook for her and a frame for them to write a note to her. The banner was purchased from the etsy shop Cutnpaper. To check her out go here.

And here are the photos of the room with the food and seats for guests.

Maybe one day I'll be a professional party planner! I truly love to do these things and this particular project was that much more special because I got to share what I love to do with my best friend and make her special day so amazing! I truly love her and she is like a sister to me so I hope she knows that I tried to make this day so special for her and for Kayden.

Hope everyone enjoys!

~Rachel

15 Minute project to spruce up your kitchen!

So I had a little bit of free time this weekend and had just received my package of vinyl paper in the mail and thought it would be a nice time to revamp my sugar/flour/etc jars in the kitchen. The ones I have currently look like this...

And not that there is anything wrong with these, they are nice, the look good on the counter, blah blah blah, but you can't see when you are out of anything, plus I have like 4 of them and I really only use 2 (one for flour and one for sugar). So I was at Walmart getting some items for my best friend's upcoming baby shower I'm throwing (some pics to follow soon for that) and I came across two glass jars for like $4.98 a piece. So I got two.

When I came home, I took my cricut machine (I just got one from my hunny for Valentine's Day and I love it) and put in one of my font cartridges, played around until I found what I wanted and I cut the letters. Then I simply peeled and placed. And now, this is what my counter looks like! So fresh and so clean! And the best part is, I can see when I'm running low on something so I don't have to run out to the store in the middle of baking:)

Happy Baking Ya'll!

~Rachel

Count your blessings...hug and kiss your babies...cherish the moments!

So this post is pretty personal. My best friend developed Pre Eclampsia during her preganancy. She was due April 1st. At 26 weeks, she was put in the hopsital and stayed there until she was 33 weeks. At 33 weeks and 4 days she delivered baby girl Kayden via C-section. Kayden was born at 3lbs. 4 oz and 16 inches long (her daddy is 6'7"!).
I just wanted to post this because this is my absolute best friend and it brings me so much joy to watch her grow as a person and become a mother. She is already the best mom every and it's amazing to watch and see how natural it all comes.

Please send lots of well wishes out for Kayden that she gets growing fast and gets to come home soon. She is healthy and fully developed and doesn't need oxygen or anything. She just needs to gain some weight. So here's our beautiful future daughter-in-law! She's overwhelmed my heart and I've only just met her!

Many blessings,

Rachel

These kids must be hungry....

So I thought I would post a "mommy" post today instead of a project. I picked my son up yesterday from daycare and he had just been bitten by one of the other students in the class. We are required to fill out a form and sign it after the teachers fill it out explaining what happened and how the child was treated if they were injured. They do not however, tell you which child it was that bit your child, I guess because they don't want you to hold it against them or their parent or whatever. Obviously if the same child is continuously biting people then they would asked to leave the daycare but at this age kids bite.

I was just wondering if there are any other mother's out there reading this that have children that bite or have been bitten multiple times. My son has never bit anyone yet, but I'm nervous that by him being the "bitee" (this is the third time in this daycare he has been bitten) that he may develop that habit of biting because he thinks that is how he is supposed to express his anger or dislike for something or someone. I'm very interested in hearing other mommy's thoughts on this topic.

Thanks so much!

~Rachel

Love for my love....

Okay, so here is the little project that Grason and I did while daddy was out of town this week for his Valentine's present. I saw on Pinterest that this lady used a toilet paper roll and made hearts with it and red paint. I thought it would be a nice touch to make Daddy's card from Grason instead of buying one. Plus, Grason had a ball. So i took the toilet paper roll and just pushed the middle part of the top of it in and it made this funky cool heart shape. So we took some red paint and dipped it in and just started going to town. Grason loved it so much, we made cards for Uncle Joey, Nana, Other Nana and Granddaddy too:)
Here is the result!

So as for my project, again i found this idea on Pinterest and since B and I just got married in September, I thought it was the prefect gift. Very inexpensive too. I bought the frame from TJ Maxx for $7.99. I already had the photo of our first dance so I did a one hour print from Walgreens for $1.58 and then just went to town. Our first dance was to our first song called "Gravity" by Sara Bareilles. Such a beautiful song! So, I simply took my fine point marker and wrote out the lyrics around the matting of the frame until there was no more room. That's it. It was a very simple project but adds a nice addition to our room and warms my heart and hopefully his every time he looks at it:)

Happy Valentine's Day!

~Rachel

My love weekend....

Okay, so this weekend was a very busy weekend, and I promise I am going to start posting every day instead of every few days or once a week. I know that I am slacking but between school, work and Grason life is pretty crazy. Okay, so my hubby was out of town this week for work so he didn't get back til Saturday which meant we needed a much needed night out.
So I took it upon myself to plan a nice evening out to celebrate Valentine's Day early since it's on a Tuesday and let's just face it, that's not happening! Lol
We went to a nice dinner at The Barn restaurant, had a nice bottle of wine, went to see the new chicky movie "The Vow" and continued our wine drinking at home. Let me just tell you though, movie night on a Saturday at 8pm with every teenager in town is not so bueno. We did survive though!:)
So then, Sunday morning we went to church with our friend's Brent and Jennifer and had a nice lunch at Chili's and everyone came back to the house so Jennifer and I could work on the kid's Valentine's to send to daycare. So Maddy and Grason slept....err...Grason slept and Maddy hung out with me and Jennifer and the boys left to get away from craft time:)

So I successfully made all of Grason's invitations. It was very simple. I just bought the Avery 2" circle labels and with microsoft word wrote "Will you O'fish'ally be my Valentine?" and then took my cricut expression machine and cut a 3" flower out of yellow cardstock paper. I just attached the circle label to the middle of the flower and then glued it to the front of the goldfish bag. See pic below.

Then, to make it extra special, I took the same cute little foam sticker letters I got from Target $1 section and put every one of his classmate's names on the back of each one and cut a heart with the cricut and put from Grason.

Aww, I love these valentine's...I got the idea off of Pinterest! But of course we all add our own special touches! So if you have any little ones I think the goldfish idea is perfect!
Oh, and one more thing, Grason's valentine box for all the valentine's he will get tomorrow:) I didn't make this...well I bought the kit at Target for $5 and put it together so I kind of made it:)  But here it is!

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day with your kiddos and make the day extra special for them!

~Rachel

The day of Love is almost here!

Okay, so Valentine's day is just around the corner so I am busy working on all the cute little projects for the big day! My latest....personalized goodie bags for my nephews and neices. So i found these cute bags at Target in the dollar section (8 bags). I also found the amazing foam sticker letters in the dollar section at Target too. So all i did was put the names of each of my neices and nephews on the bags and filled with candy:) I'm still getting more candy to finish filling them, but hey, that's a gift for 5 kids for a total of $10 maximum for the candy and everything. Not bad! Not bad!

Love,

~Rachel

Grason's Weekly Schedule

So I have been wanting for some time to put together a schedule for Grason to keep him on a good routine after daycare and before bedtime each night. Finally I have done it. I am sure I might tweak this a bit in the future but for now this will do. All I did was go into Microsoft word and find a chore list template. Then I just changed the information to meet my needs, added some prettier font and attached some clip art that applied to one of his tasks.
Then I laminated it with my laminating machine ( love this thing! if you don't have one, get one). I ordered mine off Amazon for like $20 with a discount I found off http://www.couponing101blog.com/. She is always posting great deals so make sure you stop by and check her out.
Once I was finished laminating, I simply attached it to an extra clipboard I had handy and put a dry erase marker on top and it sits in the bathroom for me to check off when we accomplish each task.

I love this project because not only does it help me provide the structure that Grason needs on a daily basis when I do finally get to spend time with him ( I work out of the house), but it also helps me to stay focused on him and devote that one on one time to each task instead of trying to do 20 things at one time. It has been a huge blessing already and it's only been a week! Try one for your kids! Not only will you appreciate it, but they will too! Kids want structure:)

Cheers,

~Rachel

Manuals, manuals, manuals!

Okay, so my first project post! I saw this idea on some blog, I wish I could remember the name of it ( i am tracking so many these days) so I could give them credit but either way, it was not my original idea so there ya go. Anyway, I keep all of our manuals for when we buy items. I have every kid's toy manual, furniture, appliances, you name it, I have it. So I found this blog that gave me the idea to organize it in a binder so they were all together and frees up space in my filing cabinet.

I even labeled the manuals in sections so the ones I need are easy to find.

Enjoy!

~Rachel

And so it begins....

I have finally decided to attempt this blog thing. I am hoping that I can stay with it and find out more about myself as a mother, a wife, and explore the things I love to do...organize, clean, projects.

I want this blog to connect to other moms that live a busy life but have dreams of becoming more organized, more connected to their families, more humbled and more in touch with who they are as women and mothers.

I look forward to sharing my experiences with all of you that care enough to read.

Thanks,

Rachel