Archives for March 2019

Addilyn’s Donut First Birthday Party

March 22, 2019 2 Comments

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You truly are never quite as “extra” as you are when planning your first-born child’s first birthday party. I happen to be living proof of that. Entertaining and party planning are something that I thoroughly enjoy, but this one takes the cake for me! Everything was DIY and everything turned out exactly how mama wanted it. Did I bite off a little more than I could chew? Sure! But my baby girl deserves the very best and I intended to give it to her!

The entry table is probably my favorite part of the decor! I created each little donut decoration by hand and am so happy with how it came out. We had some treats, favors, her birthday stats, and a box for letters from her loved ones. Our plan is to add to it each year and gift it to her on her 18th birthday!

I will be sharing how I made the balloon garlands with you all very soon! I just love the whimsy that they add to the overall look! Addie was enamored with them.

I loved the idea of tying inflatable donuts to the chair backs. It was a fun way to dress them up and add a little impact! These ones, my sister’s boyfriend actually won for me at an arcade, but you can get some really cute ones here. I had intended to purchase those exact ones until he got me these for free!

You can snag the “1” balloon just like mine here. It worked out perfectly as a contrast to the gold shimmery curtain!

Initially, I had arranged for Walmart to dip me custom colored donuts, but when I went to place the order (the week of the party) they told me that they no longer can dye the icing. Cue my freak out moment. After a minute of panic I realized that I can just buy some plain donuts, make my own glaze and dip them myself! So at 11pm the night before the party, this is what my Mother-in-love and I were doing. I am so happy with them!

Since she was born, I have been planning this photo garland in my mind! I knew that I wanted to display them at her birthday party, and I staged a picture each month to correspond to it. Then, to tie it all together, I created this gorgeous sparkling banner to attach them to! You can get your very own DIY kit at my Etsy shop! (I have actually put my shop on an indefinite hiatus, but you can find tons of cute Donut Party banners HERE!)

For the favors, I ordered these cute little glass bottles off of Amazon. Then I just used a funnel to fill them with sprinkles and made a sign with my Cricut. You could totally do these with whatever color sprinkles you want! There are a ton of cute boutique ones out there!

You can grab this adorable custom milestone poster HERE!

I created this highchair tutu and it turned out exactly how I wanted. I am hoping to add these to my Etsy shop soon!

**Again, shop on indefinite hiatus! But there are SO many cute highchair banners on Etsy! Click here to browse.

I opted to keep drinks simple this go around- some water, lemonade and a pot of coffee. Those super cute tassels? I absolutely could have made them from scratch, but mama was running out of time! I Amazon’d those puppies (here is the exact one!) and spent about 20 minutes putting them together! Easy peasy! Then it was just a matter of stringing up some of my donut garland and I could call the kitchen done. The food is the star here, anyway!

More dipped donuts, my custom sugar cookies (recipe here), white chocolate pretzels and a DIY cake were on the menu! I threw in some chips and a veggie tray to add some savory options to all of that sweetness. I love an easy spread for afternoon parties…you don’t have to do a full meal! Just some snacks is usually sufficient. The table had some cardstock donuts and also some royal icing donuts that I made when I did the cookies for a little extra sugar (as if that is needed).

These little guys, and the cake, were my absolute favorite part of doing her party. Baking is my favorite thing to do and I always love learning new techniques. I had never made this type of cookie until I started prepping for her birthday and I feel like I can confidently say that I conquered them! (Recipe here)

As for the cake, I went with my tried-and-true vanilla pound cake and buttercream frosting, but I tested out something new with the white chocolate ganache drip! I was super nervous, but it came out exactly how I wanted it to! I didn’t take photos of the process because I was in full-on-panic mode at this point (I finished it the morning of the party), so I will have to do another post to show that technique!

My sweet girl had a blast!

The smash cake was just the top tier of her big cake. She was more interested in the sprinkles than the cake itself, but she did eventually dig in! Her onesie is custom, from my Etsy. And her fabulous sparkly shorts are from Bailey’s Blossoms!

She was just living her best life, and I couldn’t let her donut party go by without letting her sample a donut! She was up until 10pm that night but oh well. You only turn one once, right?!

There you have it! The most wonderful donut party for the sweetest girl! The very best part of it all? The family and friends who came from near and far to celebrate her and the joy on her face the entire day!

Browse TONS of Donut Party supplies on Etsy! There are seriously so, so many!

While you’re here, check out my favorite meal planning hack that saves me hours every week!

“Just a Mom”

March 22, 2019 Leave a Comment

I was talking with one of my very best friends last night, and something that she said struck a chord with me. She confided in me that she feels down on herself sometimes because all of her friends have gone to college and gone on to start their careers, and she is “just a mom.” A fantastic mom, mind you. It got me thinking.

Our society pushes so hard for women to “make something of themselves,” “do everything a man can do” and “chase their dreams,” but seldom does it slow down and tell women that it is okay to want to be “just a mom.” That It’s okay if their goals and aspirations are to snuggle sleepy bodies and wipe runny noses. It’s okay if their ambition is to make sure that little people are happy and entertained, and to pick up the same toys for the thousandth time in a day. You don’t have to be a mom and something else. You can want to be “just a mom” and that is okay. It is a beautiful and worthy calling, and much harder than anyone realizes.

On the flip side, it is okay to be a mom with a career. It is perfectly okay to have goals and to crush them in the workplace. To be everything that you want to be. It is okay to trust your children to spend time with someone else and allow them to play and learn. That is completely okay, too.

We need to stop mom-shaming on either side! The most important thing is that we as women become who God designed us to be and pursue whatever calling it is that He has placed on our lives. And that our children know that they are loved and cherished, no matter what.

The BEST No-Spread Sugar Cookies

March 21, 2019 Leave a Comment

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I have always had a serious love for baking. Its my love language. If I bake you something, it’s because you are so special to me. And I have always wanted to make those fancy sugar cookies that you see in bakeries, but mine always spread and turned out looking like the fat cousin of the cookie that I intended to make (ya feel me??).

After doing a ton of searching, I found this beautiful cookie blog, LilaLoa! Her stuff is fantastic, y’all, and her cookie recipe did NOT disappoint! The cookies stayed soft and chewy, even after I froze them, thawed them, and decorated them almost a full week prior to the party. No one likes a rock hard cookie. Well, maybe you do….but you’re weird. I kid, I kid.

It definitely took some practice, but I am beyond excited with the way that they turned out! I literally followed LilaLoa’s Recipe to a T and it was magical! (I am inserting it below, but want to give credit where it is due!)

First, I rounded up my ingredients and set them out:

I mixed according to the recipe (make sure you pay attention to the part about how to add the flour!), but instead of adding that last half cup of flour in the mixer to firm it up, I opted to put out my dough and knead the flour into it instead. I felt like it made it less lumpy, but maybe that’s just me! I love that you don’t have to chill this recipe before cutting, because ain’t nobody got time for that!

It’s super important to roll your dough to as uniform of a thickness as you can, so that your cookies don’t bake unevenly. I am ordering myself one of these rolling pins because they make that so much easier! I made sure I kept a thin layer of flour under the dough so that it didn’t stick to the counter once I cut them.

I personally like to get as many cuts into one roll-out as possible, so I typically do it like this and then peel the excess from around them before lifting to my pan. I did find that it is good to break up your dough into smaller batches and roll this way to keep things manageable. I also learned (the hard way during my trial run) that re-rolling a lot will make your cookies bubble a bit. If this happens, put a sheet of parchment paper over them right when you take them out of the oven and then place another cookie sheet the same size on top of it to flatten them out. I put a bag of brown sugar to add some weight. It definitely did not smash the cookie but it gave me a nice, flat surface to work with when the time came to decorate! After a few minutes you can lift it off and let them cool.

Once your cookies are cooled, you can either begin decorating right away, or you can freeze them! They hold up beautifully in the freezer! I made this particular batch for Addilyn’s birthday party about three weeks in advance and thawed them to decorate the week of. They were perfectly delicious and chewy!

I’ll be sharing the icing recipe that I used later this week, so stay tuned! Scroll on for the cookie recipe!

LilaLoa's Vanilla Sugar Cookie 2.0

Time: 30 mins
Difficulty: moderate
Print

Seriously go check her blog out!

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup slightly softened unsalted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
4 (or 4 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
Cream the butter and both sugars together. If you have any brown sugar lumps, you should crush them up or pull them out. They make weird dents in your baked cookies.
Add the eggs and the vanilla and mix thoroughly.
Add the salt and baking powder and again with the mixing of the dough.
Before you add the flour, let’s have a little chat. Different altitudes need different amounts of flour. Differences in humidity will the change the amount of flour you should add. Is there a storm coming? That changes things. Add only 4 cups to begin with. Then add additional flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is no longer sticky and pulls away from the side of the mixing bowl. (This happens at about 4 cups of flour for me…except in the winter time when it happens at 4 1/2 cups flour.) That’s when you should stop if you are going to chill the dough overnight, or just wait for another day to bake it. If you are going to roll it out right away, add another half of a cup of flour so it will be thick enough to move from the rolling out surface to your baking sheet.
Bake at 350F. If you roll to 1/4″ thick, bake for about 7 minutes. If you roll to 3/8″ thick, bake for about 10-12 minutes.

Here are the links to the cookie cutters that I used:

While you’re here, grab my viral Royal Icing Recipe!

And my viral Chocolate Buttercream Icing Recipe!

How CUTE are these Hysterectomy cookies??

The Practice of Gratitude

March 20, 2019 Leave a Comment

It is so easy in our busy lives to get caught up in the negative. To let the hard rule our thoughts. With our never ending “to-do” lists in our faces and our phones pinging as constant reminders of things we need to get done, we can very quickly spiral into a place of feeling completely ungrateful, to put it bluntly.

God has really been speaking to my heart in this area and convicting me. We have all seen the quote floating around: “What if the only things you had tomorrow were the things you thanked God for today?” But how much truth is there to that? How humbling is it when you really sit back and let that sink in? Do we sit down and thank Him enough or do we go through our day and take all of the good things for granted?

I have been challenged in my quiet times to begin each day with gratitude. And if at any point in the day I begin to feel overwhelmed by my “burdens,” to stop and refocus with gratitude. So what does this look like in practice? I have a prayer journal that I use each morning and it has a section in it for things I am thankful for. I commit each day to filling that section in. To be honest, sometimes its hard and sometimes I feel like the things that I am thanking Him for are trivial things (like coffee). Other times they are big things, like an area that He has provided for in a major way. It doesn’t matter what you are thankful for. The important part is to start each day with gratitude.

On the other side of that, and the biggest conviction for me, is to be thankful in the hard stuff. When I am feeling grouchy because my list is long, I stop and thank Him for providing ways for me to care for my family. When I am overwhelmed by laundry, I thank Him for a family to love that creates the need for all of this laundry. When I don’t feel like fixing dinner, I thank Him that we have food to eat and that I have my people to cook for and clean up after. Rather than being mad about messes, I focus on gratitude for the maker of the messes. When my spouse makes me so angry that I am shaking, I am thankful that I have him to do life (and argue) with! Do you see the perspective shift there?

Putting gratitude journaling into practice has been such a game changer for me and my attitude! Do you keep a gratitude journal? If not, I want to challenge you to focus on being intentionally grateful for the next 30 days and come back and let me know how it went! I am going to be doing it right alongside you!

Post-Partum Must Haves

March 18, 2019 Leave a Comment

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There are SO many things that you need and that are useful in those first weeks and months as a new mom, and I plan to share it all with you! Today, however, I am focusing on those specific things that I truly needed for myself right after giving birth and got a lot of use out of. Hopefully, if you are overwhelmed by working on prepping your home and hospital bag, this can be of some help!

1. Good Dry Shampoo

I personally love the Not Your Mother’s Unscented Clean Freak brand. It doesn’t have a smell which can irritate new little noses, and it doesn’t feel heavy or greasy! You just spray it on and brush a bit, then you are all set! I took this with me to the hospital and it was great for a quick refresh for pictures or before visitors came. But I do know that I would go days without washing my hair once we were home (because who has time with a newborn?), and it was a lifesaver then. Heck, I still use this 4 out of 7 days a week!

2. Makeup remover wipes.

Trust me, less is more when it comes to your beauty routine in those first weeks postpartum. Immediately after Addie was born, I was still numb from the epidural and couldn’t walk, but I had been laboring all night long and just wanted to feel clean. It was so amazing to be able to just grab one of these and freshen myself up a bit!

Once we came home, I loved the ease of being able to just take off the makeup (if I actually put any on) with a quick wipe and never have to take my eyes off of my baby girl! These Neutrogena ones are my absolute fave!

3. A Comfy Nursing Bra (Even if you aren’t nursing!)

I cannot stress the comfy part enough! Everything hurts after childbirth, its just the honest truth. Your lady-parts hurt, your boobs hurt, your back hurts, your eyes hurt, your head hurts…just keeping it real! At least for me and my sleep-deprived self. I lived in these super soft Nursing Bras from Target. They are enough that you won’t be embarrassed if guests stop by, but you don’t have to deal with underwires. And if you are nursing, they are a super quick, pull-to-the-side design which I loved.

4. A Good Robe

This was hands-down one of the best investments that I made for my hospital bag. Post Peanut nursing robes are my favorite (I own about 4) and they have super cute and soft matching swaddles too! I loved having this to put on after her arrival and of course loved coordinating with my girl. It is perfect to wear around the house over a nursing tank too! I was a fan of anything that allowed me to feel a little put together for drop ins but still be comfortable, too!

5. Witch Hazel

This stuff is amazing for helping ease the pain in the lady-parts. I highly recommend keeping some on hand! I used it on pads for the first week or so to help with discomfort.

6. Dermoplast

This is an absolute need. Like seriously, go ahead and order yourself a few bottles. I used at least one can before I even left the hospital. It numbs everything which you will want, especially if you have any tearing/stitches like I did. You can go ahead and Prime it right to your house and stock a couple bottles in your bathroom too!

7. Stool Softener

You guys, no one warned me about the first postpartum poop. (sorry if that is TMI. Men, you probably don’t want to read any further because I am getting real with my ladies from here on out). It hurts. It hurts bad. And you want that sucker as soft as humanly possible before it comes out. In fact, I recommend that as soon as your baby is out, you ask your nurse for some. And then keep taking it on the regular until you are fully healed. Colace is what I used!

8. Hemorrhoid Pads

Another unpleasant truth. These are helpful for the entire region down there, not just for hemorrhoids. At the hospital they told me to line my pad with them and they would soothe things. As someone who had a few good tears, I needed all the soothing I could get! I kept a few containers of these at home and used them frequently. Let’s be honest, you probably have a hemorrhoid or two that need help as well.

9. Extra. Long. Maxi. Pads.

There will be blood. It will be unpleasant. You can’t use tampons (boo, hiss). So you will just have to deal. Pads are a part of the gig! I personally loved these Always brand overnight maxi pads. Stock up before you go into labor and have them waiting for you when you get home, that way your poor husband doesn’t have to go guess and buy the wrong thing. Trust me, you don’t want to skimp on the coverage here! Order you some extra mesh panties (some hospitals are chincy…mine was not!) and rock them, girl!

10. A Peri Bottle (or 2 or 3…)

These guys are super handy! Toilet paper hurts (and isn’t recommended if you have stitches or tears) for the first little while after having a baby. Unfortunately, you still need to keep everything clean. A peri bottle filled with warm water is awesome for that (and really soothing) and these little Frida Baby ones are super handy. I kept one in each bathroom on our main floor so that I wouldn’t have to carry one around with me, or be stranded if I forgot it.

11. Swipe some wipes.

Yep, steal from your sweet baby! When you finally do that post-partum poop, you will need to be able to support your perineum. And then you will also have to clean things up a bit which is also not fun (I told you guys, TMI train over here right now- just keepin’ it real with you). Honestly, baby wipes are the best for the job! I use Huggies Natural Care for Addilyn and they are unscented which makes them a great choice! I kept a pack of those in my postpartum bathroom basket too!

These items have all been so useful to me! In fact, these little postpartum “go bags” are my new favorite baby shower gift for this reason! Rather than giving someone their 100th wash cloth or onesie, bless them with the stuff mama needs! Trust me, she will thank you!

And a little money savin’ hack! If you create an Amazon Registry (more on why I think these are amazing later!), you can add 95% of this stuff to it! That means either people can gift it to you (winning!), or you can buy it for yourself but it will count toward your registry rewards. And the registry rewards are amazing with them! Highly recommend, but that is for another post!

One of the hardest parts of postpartum life for me personally was juggling mom-life and handling meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking. I WISH I had known about this when I had my babies, but I know that it will be a great burden-lifter if we have another! Go check out my meal planning hack that makes my life way easier (and gives my family more variety, too).

Tips for a Smooth (and Quick!) Labor

March 18, 2019 2 Comments

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Celebrating Addilyn’s first birthday has had me reflecting a lot on this time last year. I remember a lot of being super pregnant and super anxious for her to come, trying everything that I possibly could to get things moving along. Turns out, my little stinker had other plans. You can read her birth story here, but the gist of it is that she had zero intentions of coming out on her own, and there were circumstances that made it necessary to help her along. After much discussion, we decided on an induction.

The day of my induction, my doctor checked me and I was 0% dilated, 0% effaced, 0% going into labor at all. I truly expected my induction to be a 2-3 day process, as did Dr. Jackson. Turns out, baby girl was earth-side within 16 hours of starting the process! That being said, I am a firm believer that the things I am going to tell you below really work!

Red Raspberry Leaf Tea (This is the best kind!)

I cannot sing the praises of this stuff enough! You’re going to want to go ahead and get the big pack, just trust me. I had read a lot about using it to induce labor and honestly that was my goal in trying it out. I was very leery of drinking it until I was well into my third trimester, although I know a lot of women drink it in small amounts for their entire pregnancy. I started drinking 1-2 cups a day at 37 weeks, and by that 39th week I was doing the strong “Labor Day tea” brew. Basically you put 10 tea bags into a gallon of boiling water, let it steep a few hours, sweeten it and drink it throughout the day. Did it induce my labor? No. But, as I told you guys in my birth story, my labor was incredibly fast and my contractions were strong and productive. I cannot help but think that this little tea conditioning my uterus had a lot to do with that!

*I definitely recommend running this by your doctor before you do the stronger brew.

Birth Affirmations

I shared my go-to affirmations with you guys in this post. Use mine, find your own, whatever. The important thing is that you find some words that you can focus on and that comfort you when things get hard.

A Labor Playlist

Similar to the affirmations, music that calms you or energizes you (depending on what you need!) is a great thing to have on hand. We chose to play worship music in the room and I can tell you, the peace in that hospital room was palpable. I was told by several nurses that the vibe walking into our room was completely different than the vibe in any of the other labor rooms that were there at the same time. Our playlist included songs by Elevation Worship, Bethel, Hillsong, and a few others in that genre.

Relax your jaw and unclench your fists.

This may just have been the most helpful advice that I was given and I reminded myself of it constantly, especially during the pre-epidural contractions. When you clench your hands, it brings tension to your whole body. Medicallly speaking, your jaw is directly linked to your pelvis, and during labor you absolutely want your pelvis to relax and open up. Much of the time, we don’t even realize we are tense until we make a conscious effort to relax, so being mindful of these two tension-carrying behaviors during your labor will help tremendously! It may even help to have your birth partner massage your hands to relieve some of the tension.

Focus on your breathing.

When you are just focusing on making it through the contraction, it can be so hard to be self-aware. I found that I would hold my breath without meaning to and have to remind myself to take deep breaths (see my birth affirmations).

If you haven’t, you absolutely should find and attend a childbirth class in your area. There are a lot of great ones online too, or you could even search YouTube. Bottom line, learn a few breathing techniques ahead of time and use them! I was very fortunate to have a fantastic labor nurse that coached me as I went and reminded me of what I had learned. I would assume that most hospitals will also coach you through it, but it never hurts to do your homework ahead of time!

Watch the clock.

During active labor, contractions will typically last for about 1-1.5 minutes each. I found it to be super helpful to stare at the clock as soon as the contraction started and just focus on that one small stretch of time. I told myself that I can endure anything for 60 seconds and it would be over soon. It seemed to really help it to pass more easily. When you can see the end, it makes the middle a little less hard.

Be nice to your nurses.

They really are the lifesavers here. Our doctor is amazing and we appreciate him and all of his help so much, but let me tell you. The nurses are the ones who are with you for the hard parts. They are there for you when you arrive, anxious and nervous. They are with you when the scary things happen. They are checking you and encouraging you. They are the ones running around to keep you comfortable; answering your pages when they have been on their feet for 12 hours. They monitor your baby’s heart rate and track your contractions. They listen to your screams and wipe your forehead. They are the ones that leave a room where a mother and baby are in distress (or even more heart-wrenching things have happened), and yet they put on a brave face and enter your room confidently and reassuringly. They are the ones that hold your hands while your epidural is administered. They are the ones that coach you and guide you, reminding you that you can do it. They are the ones that gently help you to the bathroom and clean you up after you give birth. They are the ones that teach you how to change your pads and care for your lady parts. And in our hospital, your L&D nurses are also your Mother-Baby nurses, so they helped teach me to be a mom and took my infant when I just needed a break. They do the hard, thankless work. Be kind to them. Remember them.

We chose to go in with a big box of treats for them because we know how hard their job is (I come from a family filled with nurses). I knew that I may not be the easiest patient with all of my anxiety, so I wanted to do something kind for them. And hey, it never hurts to become a nurse’s favorite patient! (I kid, but seriously…). I asked my sister, who is a labor and delivery nurse, what kind of gift would mean the most and without hesitation she said, “food and caffeine!” It is not uncommon at all for a nurse to completely forget (or be too busy) to eat, so things that could easily be grabbed on the go are best. We made sure we hooked them up and they were so very appreciative!

There you have it! All of these things added together helped me to have the most amazing labor and delivery. As a first time mom, I could not have asked for it to go any better! Let me know if you try any of these!

Mamas with babies, tell me what helped you?