This year for Halloween, I wanted to do some fun decorations. I decided that a pumpkin vase would be fun to do,but I wanted to do my own twist on it. I looked up a ton of tutorials,but none of them ever did much stuff with the actual pumpkin. So I decided I wanted to do a glowing pumpkin. Here is my tutorial and final product.
The second to last weekend in July, we took Reese on our first road trip to Nashville. This trip should be two hours each way. On the way to Nashville, Reese slept most of the trip, and was just starting to get fussy when we made it to Kira and Andrew’s House. We had no idea what to expect with Reese. We didn’t know if she would decide to not sleep even though we have had her in the pack n play in our room when we had lots of guests, but she did really well.
Grant and I have felt so loved and blessed by how supportive and loving our families have been toward us and our baby. We have already been thrown one shower in Austin, TX that was wonderful and a lot of my family got to come attend that one. So this last weekend, was my Huntsville shower. My Mother-in-Law Gail flew in from Ohio, my Cousin-in-Law Sarah drove from South Carolina, and my Sister Kira, Brother-in-Law Andrew, and Niece Alana drove down from Tennessee. It was so wonderful to have family at this shower, and I really just wanted them to know how much I appreciated them making the effort to come and not to mention that they got us gifts too which is crazy in a good way. We also had lots of family send us gifts since they couldn’t attend the shower since it is so far away for most people. Thank you to everyone who has blessed us in forms of gifts, prayers, and kind advice! We need all the help we can get. ;p
So in the beginning of January, in the middle of trying to buy our house, I got to go visit Austin. We had my tickets bought for a while, so the timing wasn’t the best for the house stuff, but Grant managed to handle doing most of the stuff without me. Our realtor said he seemed more frazzled since I prefer to handle most detailed planning things,but he did a great job! This was my first visit to Austin in 2 YEARS which is insane to say,but boy did I love being back and getting to see so many friends and most of my family. I have been wanting to visit for a while,but needed a time where tickets were more affordable and needed to be early enough in my pregnancy to where I could still fly. So, January fit the bill there. Then my sister Tanya and a few of my friends decided to also throw me a baby shower during this time which was a huge surprise and blessing! I was able to have this visit and not use any of my vacation time as I want to save it for my maternity leave. I was able to work during the week like normal in the office, and then in the evenings see friends and family. So, I was able to fly in on Friday the 9th of January, well I arrived on the 10th around 1:30am because of flight delays so it was very nice that Wilson was still able to pick me up from the airport. Then at 10am on the 10th was my baby shower, and it was Harry Potter themed!!! I had no idea which was a huge surprise,but of course I loved it. My hostesses put so much time, effort, and love into planning this shower. I felt so loved and blessed that people wanted to plan a shower for me and even attend and give us gifts/gift cards for our little girl. It was so wonderful – Thank you again to all of my hostesses and of course my sister Tanya.
For a while now, I have been making truffles at least during the holidays. I started out hand rolling the truffles and dipping them in chocolate which works pretty well,but then I realized I could use a candy mold which I describe the process here. That worked wonderfully too,but then I found out about these truffly molds that make my life SO much easier. I bought one of the huge molds which is pretty expensive, but they have smaller versions if you prefer to make smaller batches. So here is my new system for making truffles.
I was excited to attend the Ladies Tea for the first time at our church. They were asking for people to volunteer to make some food for the event which is how this whole thing started. I emailed asking what food they needed only to be asked to decorate a table. Having never attended this event, I had no clue what to expect or how the other tables would look. I asked for more guidelines and hit two large hitches. I needed to provide my own china and 2 teapots among lots of other things. I don’t own china or 2 teapots. I emailed a lot of the girls here in the area I knew and found one lady willing to let me borrow her china, but no one I knew had one, let alone two teapots.