Baby Showers! (Part 2 - Alpha Gam Friends)

I am thankful and fortunate to have so many great friends from Alpha Gam at the University of Memphis, even though it's been 8 years since most of us graduated. (That is REALLY hard to believe!) I guess that's a perk of living in the city where you went to college - it's really easy to stay in touch with people!

Emily Fuller, Jessica Williams, Virginia Richardson and Destin Tucker threw the baby and I a girls' shower on July 15 at Stone Soup Cafe. Everything about it was perfect and I LOVED it! I'm grateful for all the friends that spent their Sunday afternoon celebrating the upcoming birth of our baby... it's such an honor to have friends excited to celebrate this happy occasion with me!

Cute invitation!

Emily, Jessica, me, Destin and Virginia

We had the upstairs of Stone Soup all to ourselves, so we went into a dining room for brunch, then a different room set up for opening gifts. The hostesses had prepared a menu for the brunch where we had a choice of breakfast or lunch meals. I had a yummy omelet, and also got a taste of Shelby's pimento cheese that was also really yummy!

Melissa, Julie and Leslie

Christi, Amy, Heather and Angela

Me, Shelby and Emily

Grandma, Mom and Me

Dessert was Strawberry cupcakes from Muddy's - Yum!!!

After we ate, everyone moved into the other room to open gifts. I received so many wonderful things and I'm very thankful to everyone! Also, during the course of opening gifts I heard a lot of invaluable advice from all the experienced moms in the room, and I'm thankful for that as well. It's nice to know that I have so many people I can call that have been through whatever experiences I'll soon have questions about!

Shelby and me. We're standing in front of a cute gift table where Emily displayed all the wonderful gifts so people can see them. Also, look at the banner with our baby girl's name - Katelyn Olivia!

Me with one of many great gifts - an adorable Memphis dress!!!

Thank you so much to Virginia, Emily, Destin and Jessica for being great friends and for hosting such a beautiful shower, and thank you to everyone that attended! 

Baby Showers! (part 1 - couples shower with running friends)

There is no better reminder of how blessed you are with wonderful friends than a shower! This past weekend we were reminded twice and I am so thankful for all of my friends that gathered to celebrate our baby!

Saturday night, Andrea West and Kelly Cates, along with their husbands Don and Andy, threw us a couples shower for our running friends. We've had the opportunity to make a lot of close friends through miles and miles of running together, both on Monday night runs and Saturday morning long runs. It's amazing how quickly you become friends with someone when you run together and have nothing to do but talk and bond over the misery of hot Memphis summers or nagging pains!

The shower was at Andrea and Don's house, which they filled with cute decorations inside and out! We had fajitas and cheese dip from Salsa for dinner, then strawberry cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes or chess squares for dessert. I think it's safe to say that no one left hungry!

Mom, Grandma, Shelby and Alex came to Memphis for the weekend, and I'm so glad they got to be there to celebrate!

Here are lots of great pictures from the evening. It was a great night and we are so thankful for our friends!!!

Cute bird cookies as party favors

Grandma, Mom and me at one of the beautifully decorated tables

Kelly and Carolyn enjoying the back patio

Andrea and me

Justin and me. I'm so glad he got to enjoy a shower since showers are typically all-girl affairs!

Carolyn, me and Kattie

The guys' table! Chip, Don, Andy and Jay

me and Shelby

Justin and me opening gifts. We got so many wonderful gifts for our baby girl and can't wait to use them all!

Painted Glass Jars

I mentioned in my last post that our guest bathroom redo is complete except for finding yellow decorations for the shelves. Well, finding yellow stuff is proving harder than I expected! I'm not dead-set on everything being yellow, but I want some bright "pops" of color in all that white. I figured I could find a yellow hand soap/toothbrush holder set and some yellow containers easily, but so far I keep striking out. 

Yesterday we went to Garden Ridge to pick up some glass containers to hold cotton balls and Q-tips. We found some pretty (and cheap - gotta love Garden Ridge!) glass jars with a crackled finish. I filled one with cotton balls and it was pretty enough, but certainly didn't "pop" against the shelves. 

I asked myself what my favorite bloggers would do... and they would paint it! First I tried painting it with a brush and it was a streaky mess, so I went to the Internet. I found several blogs and websites that showed how to paint the inside of glass mason jars and decided to use the same method. 

Squirt a bunch of paint into the jar. This was my first try, and it wasn't nearly enough. 

I ended up squirting almost an entire bottle of paint into the jar. It was an $0.89 bottle of craft paint, so no big deal. After squirting a lot of paint, roll/shake/swirl the jar to cover all the surfaces. This sounds easy, but it takes a while to get it to move around enough to coat every surface. 

Once the whole thing is covered in paint, turn it upside down over newspapers or cardboard that will soak up the dripping paint. It drips for a long time!

Finally, when it finishes dripping, I found that it helped to turn it right-side-up to dry. Here is a picture of the finished product!

And a picture of the two together on the shelves to show how much more "pop" the painted one provides. I've painted the larger jar too and am just waiting on it to dry!

Guest Bathroom Renovation - Pictures!!!

You know how one thing leads to another? Well, pulling up the carpet in the nursery led to pulling up the tile in the bathroom, which led to an overhaul of the entire Jack-and-Jill bathroom! This bathroom is between the nursery and the guest bedroom, so it needs to be functional for both a baby and for any overnight guests. We didn't HATE the decor in the bathroom when we moved in, but it certainly wouldn't have been what we'd have chosen. Between the orange wallpaper, dark vanity and poor lighting, the room seemed dreary and dirty. It's been a while since we've pulled down wallpaper and painted, so I guess we forgot how much we don't like doing it. Plus the vanity drawers had seen better days and needed replacing. Even though we knew it would be a big job, I was happy to finally brighten it up a little!

This is the view from the Guest Bedroom through to the nursery (also a work in process in this picture). Don't you know we hated to see this seashell sink go...

Once we removed the orange polka dot wallpaper we found several other layers underneath. Three are shown in this picture, but there was at least one more that we didn't capture in a photo!

Here I am busting up the tile with a sledgehammer in my cute pink hard hat and ear protection! (If I'm being honest, this is me posing to pretend like I was busting up the tile in my cute hard hat. Justin deserves all the tile-busting credit.)

We finished pulling out the sink and making the bathroom completely unusable around the end of January. Very little happened for several months until my parents came to visit and offered to help! We just about spent an entire weekend pulling down wallpaper! Then they left, and the bathroom sat untouched again. They came back and Dad did some plumbing work and installed the vanity and sink, so that was a big step in the right direction. Finally, over the Fourth of July, Mom and Dad returned and we finished the job! We are both extremely grateful for their help, because there is no telling when or if we would have finished on our own!

Dad and Justin built custom shelves for either side of the vanity (while Mom and I did the equally important work of shopping for things to put on them). They installed beadboard on the ceiling and hung a new light fixture that looks much better than the square recessed light that didn't actually put off any light anyway.

 We still have a lot of decorating to do (the fun part!) but here is the finished bathroom!

I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out! If there is any question about whether it is an improvement, here is a "before" and "after" shot side by side. It's definitely better now! 

Thank you SO much to Justin for tolerating and implementing my big ideas and to Mom and Dad for coming to Memphis several times to bail us out since we may have bitten off more than we could chew this time!