Home updates and decorating tips!

Sorry for bombarding my blog with posts the past couple of days. We've had so many projects and they all seemed to be finished around the same time! One thing that's been driving me nuts since we moved in was our GIANT living room wall. I never knew what to do with it. At one point it looked like this...

A tiny picture on a hugggge wall! Very sad and pathetic.Well now it looks like this!!..

I was freaking out about the lack of stuff on the wall and wanted it decorated before my baby shower. My sister Richelle is amazing with home decor, so she gave me a few pointers on where I should hang things. Here's a close up of some of the photos..

(Our adorable Trash The Dress photos! I'm so glad I finally have a place to hang them. And below, why yes, of course I took that picture of the Salt Lake Temple!)

Now for the tips! Ian and I are pretty horrible at hanging things on the wall. We tend to put a billion holes in the wall before we decide everything is straight and looks nice. So, I saw another photographer post on her blog about tracing what you want to hang up on news paper. Lucky for me I have huge backdrop paper and used some scraps to trace everything.

(Notice the different color of the shelf. Ian was so sweet to stain it a different color. I thought I'd never have a need for that ugly shelf!) After I traced everything, I cut out the shapes and hung them up where I thought they'd look good.  

Then we hammed in the nails right over the paper and pulled the paper out once we hung everything up. The only thing that needed to be nailed in a couple times was the temple picture since it hangs on a wire. Other than that, this paper trick was a life saver!

Ta da! LOVE IT!

Tie-Dye Cupcakes

Saturday was my baby shower! I got so many cute gifts and baby cloths. Sadly, we didn't take a SINGLE picture. For some reason it just didn't cross anyone's mind. Pretty bummed about that.
But, for my shower I decided I'd pitch in and do some of the work. One thing I decided I was going to do was make some Tie-Dye Cupcakes! This is what you need to make them..

1 White Cake Mix
Food Coloring
Cupcake Liners
Your favorite frosting

You make the cake batter as directed on on the box. Next, divide the batter into as many bowls as you'd like. I did three. Next, use your food coloring to dye each bowl of batter.

 Scoop a spoonful of each colored batter and put it in the cupcake liner. Don't stir the batters together, otherwise you wont achieve the tie-dye effect.

Bake cupcakes as directed on box. Once they have cooled, frost them with your favorite frosting. I did a Vanilla butter cream frosting and dyed it pink!

I didn't pick out the best cupcake to cut, there were some that looked super awesome inside. Too bad you can't tell until you bite into it!

But super cute eh?! I tired to make them baby colors.. pink yellow and green. I've seen some crazy colored ones! Go nuts! I have heard that purple ends up looking pretty ugly.. so I might keep that from you choice of colors.

Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting
about 24 servings
1/2 c butter
4 1/2 c powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
6 tablespoons 2 % milk

At first I thought the frosting was SUPER thick, so I added more milk. Then when I attempted to do the swirl with the frosting (I had a frosting bag with a tip, you can also use a zip lock bag and cut the tip off) the frosting looked like it melted all over the cup cake. so I had to scrape it off and start over!

The other thing I made for my shower was my invite! I got teased a little for this, but when invites are something you do for a living, you just can't help but design your own!

 

Thanks to all of you who attended my shower and made it so fabulous!! xoxo

Baby room projects!

For the past few weeks Ian and I have been working on some baby projects for her room. After putting the crib and other furniture together I wanted some cute wall art to go with her baby bedding. I browsed the internet for some cute vinyl trees. This is what we found and both agreed on. (I loved the tree.. Ian loved the kitties! hah). For the most part it was pretty easy to put on. They're just like stickers. We unpeeled and then pressed them on the wall. I thought the flowers would be the easiest... until I realized EACH flower came in 5 separate pieces! I got it all done in a few hours though :)

My other project was some wall hanging pieces. I found a cute little set of owls and trees online, but it came in 5x7 prints. I decided I wanted some 10x10 canvas prints instead. So what did I do? I opened up photoshop and designed it myself! Here's the actual photoshop design...

Then I put a 2 inch border around each art piece and got it printed on canvas...

 We went to some art stores and bought out all of their 10 inch stretcher bars. This took about 2 weeks and 4 different stores to get 24 stretcher bars! Ian then put the pieces together and stapled the canvas to the stretcher bars. I'm so grateful for all of his work the past couple weeks. He's been so great to help me out with all of my projects despite how busy and tired he is after school and work xoxo

 Here's the final product on the wall! So cute!!

30 weeks!

Okay, so 30 weeks and 5 days to be exact. :)
Here's some pictures I took to commemorate this moment. Plus I chopped my hair up a little bit and got rid of the highlights. It takes a lot of money to upkeep bleached hair, and with a baby coming along I figured it'd be best to ditch the blonde and try to go back to my natural color. So alas, here I am ...

My mommy dear is flying into town next week for my baby shower :) I'm super excited! I just hope people show up. haha 

Things are going really well at this point in the pregnancy. I've been feeling these really annoying, repetitive "kicks" the past few weeks. I finally realized the other day that they're hiccups! She gets these crazy hiccups at least 3 times a day. Poor baby, she probably hates them as much as I hate feeling them! haha

Acid reflux also is a killer right now. I thought it was bad before, but man, it's HORRIBLE now. I probably extend the amount of tums I should have in a day, but I can't help it. It's nasty! I almost thought I was going to die in my water aerobics class yesterday. I couldn't do any movement without acid coming up. Gag! I'm excited to be done with that!! 

Anywho, 9 weeks and 2 days to go... IF she comes on her due date :)

3D Ultra Sound

I went in today, at 28 weeks and 1 day, hoping to get a 3D ultra sound done while my parents were in town for Christmas. We sort of made a big to do about it and scheduled everything around us. The family spent New Years Eve at our house so my parents would stay the night and be with us the next morning to go to the ultra sound. We even invited Ian's mom. I was soooo excited to see these 3D pictures. Then low and behold, my placenta was in the way! I guess it was laying right over the baby's face so he couldn't get any good photos. The tech tried his best to at least give us one photo... so here's our baby.. chubby cheeks and all!

This is a photo that shows her profile. The arrow is near her mouth. He said she has super chubby cheeks and I guess it's a little obvious in this photo :) Her head measures to be 29 weeks and her femur measures to be 30 weeks! I just laughed when the tech said "wow, that's a big femur!"
So, we've come to the conclusion that I'll either have her early, or she'll be one massive chunk! Or who knows, maybe she'll be as tiny as can be and they were wrong on all the measurements.
They told me to come back and try again when I'm around 32 weeks... or later. Here's to waiting a few more weeks!