party planning

matson turns one (can you believe it??) in a mere two and a half month!  being a planner, i've already started brainstorming what kind of first birthday party i want for him.  philosophically, though, i'm not into crazy huge extravagant themed events.  okay really, i'm not into themes in any facet of life - even with his nursery i really just wanted a cozy, cheery space and decorated it accordingly.  nor do i have any intention of doing a big birthday party every year for him (or any kid) - i think a big celebration for the milestone birthday like 1, 5, 10, 13, etc sounds good, with the in-between years just being fun, special days.

but i digress.  what do i want in a first birthday party?  i want it to celebrate matson making it to a year and all of the firsts that we got to enjoy with him this year.  i want it to be fun, festive, cheerful, but not stressful, over-the-top, or expensive.  i want it to be a celebration of his life, not a venue to get more toys.  i want it to be personal and colorful and exciting and to be a way to show our friends and family all of the things we love about our little man.  he's curious, and active, and sweet, and charges head-first at life.  he's our little dinosaur!  (he actually responds to dino as much as he does to his own name - haha.)

so ... how do we get from here to there?  we have friends over all the time, and while that's fun and all, i want to make this somehow separate from that.  some pinteresting, some googling, and then i discovered young house love's post about their girls' first birthday party.  perfect!  it's festive, it's personal, it's cheery and fun, and it's theme-free.

my takeaway ideas from yhl:

• post our matson-by-the-month pictures for viewing pleasure
• balloons!  colorful balloons!  (okay, i had this one down without them.)
• finish his first year video before the party to share with everyone
• share foods that are special to us - like pizza since that was my major first trimester craving, or steamed peas since that's matson's favorite food.  (hmm, might need to figure out a more fun food for him!)
• work the dino thing in there somewhere fun but subtle ... maybe little plastic dinos as a party favor for the kiddos?
• start a simple tradition that we can carry forward even in non-party years

so much brain food!  now to go get my real dino some real food.

two quick notes

first, another matson funny:
last week, scott was laying on the floor playing with matsy (he had mats laying on his tummy) while i made dinner.  suddenly, i heard a squealch, a laugh, and scott spluttering.  (sounds promising, right?)  i come into the room to see what's going on, expecting that mats will have wiggled down onto scott's neck and have tried latching on or something - it really tickles.  no no.  apparently, mats did his usual wiggling trick, but this time ended up with his mouth completely covering scott's nose ... at which point, he stuck his tongue up scott's nostril!  if an adult found himself with his tongue in someone's nose, either by dare or accident, his reaction would be to say, "eww!" and remove it as quickly as possible while trying to suppress a gag.  our little dino, on the other hand, was fascinated by the new textures and tastes and tried to wiggle his little tongue up as far as it would go!

________

in other news, i have found a new blog with which i am 100% smitten: young house love.  i happened upon it while looking for design ideas for our living room - actually saw a picture from the blog on another site and loved the picture, but then days later found the blog and realized that the picture i loved so much had originated from them!  it's a young married couple with a baby who are total diy-ers and spend their days frugally updating and redesigning their house.  according to the about me, both of their full time jobs are the blog, which i find both crazy and awesome at the same time.  anyway, i've been through quite a few design blogs in the past few weeks and might find an idea that i love, but then realize that the blog's overall style is just totally not me.  this one, on the other hand, i have already wasted innumerable hours perusing and loving and totally connecting with.  they almost have me convinced to paint all of my lovely black picture frames white!

more baby preparations

this has been the month of preparing for baby - we started off the first weekend of the month with our childbirth class, have taken infant/child cpr and breastfeeding since then (and have a baby care class this upcoming saturday), signed up for a doula, had my work baby shower, began weekly doctor appointments, packed my labor bag, and have finally begun to finalize nursery decor plans.  i think that's about it.

regarding the baby classes - i think we're both glad that we're taking them.  as i've said before, we've been reading through "natural childbirth the bradley way", so there wasn't a ton in the childbirth class that we were surprised by, but nonetheless we found it both helpful and affirming.  some of the things that the instructor talked about, such as relaxing through contractions to manage pain (even for women who are planning to get an epidural), are right on par with what the bradley book talks about.  we came out of the class feeling like we've been doing the right things in preparing and that while some parts of the book are outdated (which we recognized already), others are right on track.  breastfeeding and cpr both gave us a little more confidence with things that neither of us is familiar with, which i think will be helpful.  (hopefully no need for familiarity with cpr, though!)

we signed up for a doula through our hospital a few weeks ago, and i finally got to chat with her on the phone for a bit this weekend.  from her website, in which she offers crystal healings and features a photo of herself at her wedding wearing fairy wings, i feared that she might be a little flaky - but after talking with her, i think she'll be great.  she worked as a nurse for 12 years and has been doula-ing for about 2 years, so she's been through a ton of births and seems like a great source of experience and calm.  she was excited that we're planning to do a natural (pain med-free) birth, but is supportive of whatever clients end up doing and says that her goal is to make sure that however baby comes out, that we're happy with the experience.  i'm down with that!

you'll notice, by the way, that i earlier said "begun to finalize nursery decor plans" - i don't yet have any nursery decor completed, and changed my mind on half of it last friday, but i do have plans!  i think it'll be cute when it's done, but you'll have to wait until then for pictures.  (and by the way, mom, i finished the ottoman cushion!!!!  i'm going to stop at joann's tonight to pick up some sturdier thread/cord to adhere it to the ottoman - but the cushion itself is done and looks great.  i actually did it last monday on my day off, but slacked on picking up the thread all week.)

am i really so demanding?

answer: probably, yes.

for our fourth wedding anniversary (yes, way back in 2009), i had the brilliant idea of creating an anniversary memory album for us - a book that would have, for each year, a spot for a photo, note on how we celebrated the anniversary, and memories from that year of marriage.  i am a huge lover of tradition, so i thought this would be an easy project leading to years of happy tradition of filling out our memory album on our wedding anniversary.

my general vision (in a microsoft paint mockup - probably without a wedding pic on our one year anniversary):


not so easy!  at first i tried prefab anniversary albums, and was soundly disappointed.  they were either completely and utterly hideous, had lots of awkwardly specific categories rather than room for us to detail our own memories, or skipped through later anniversaries by decade. 

then i thought of making a photo book that we could paste pictures and write in in later, but found them pricey, or using a "self-publish" site to make a book with the same thought ... but realized that in either case, pasting a picture a year for 50+ years would probably not work too well with a hardbound book.

i turned to scrapbooking/photo albums, and love kolo's albums so i browsed their website.  i was considering the trivino, which is a glorified binder - i could just design and print what i want on 8.5 x 11 pages and slip them into sheet protectors.  problems: it's an inelegant solution (but a potential), and they don't say how many pages will fit in the binder ... i don't want to get to 30 years and have our binder filled up.  i like the newport, and with the larger size could fit the picture and memories on one page, but the formatting and headers would all be by hand rather than printed since their pages are bound.  and inserts to add extra pages add up quickly - $18 for another 10 sheets/20 pages.  (yes, you can create a digital photo book version of the newport, but that gets really pricey really fast - especially that larger size, yikes!)  i saw the geneva and thought that if i was going to compromise and do handwritten rather than printed, it was perfect!  blank spot for a picture on one side, lines for writing on the other ... but i don't like their album color options, and it's a 30 page max.  sigh.

end result is that we're now rapidly approaching 6 years of marriage and i still haven't gotten an anniversary album together for us.  any other brilliant ideas on where to look?

the glue gun incentive

i've been on a want-to-be-crafty kick for the last few weeks.  at least i am during working hours when i can dream big but can't do much about it - i seem to lose motivation at night when i'm at home!  the same holds true for working out.  between 10am and noon, i can't wait for evening to roll around so i can go to the gym and hit the running track, but the motivation and energy steadily dwindle over the afternoon, til by 5:45 when i get home i'm pretty content to sit on the couch, eat frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls, and watch "house" on tivo.  which i may or may not have done earlier this week.  (for whatever reason, i feel the need to defend that decision by stating that i did get several lovely workouts in this week.  i'm not a total sloth.)

anyway, i found this crafty project that has, for the first time in my life, made me wish that i had a glue gun.  (i know, it is a little surprising that i haven't acquired one to this point.)  making the wreath cost that blogger a grand total of $2, and she said that she was inspired to make it after seeing one in a flea market stand for $40.  lo and behold, on the sidebar of her page is selections from her etsy site - including that very wreath, selling for $50!  i have toyed with the idea of making something to sell on etsy, and i'm sure there are plenty of people who do quite well with it, but i feel like most things (other than, say, clothes, graphic design, and jewelry - none of which i do) on there are easily replicable with a little crafty knowhow, and that most people who visit are window shoppers like me who see stuff and get fun ideas of what they could make.  ah well.

happily, i was able to not take a three hour sunday afternoon nap today, and instead set up my sewing machine in the basement and got a pair of jeans shortened!  it's really remarkable how the length of your pants being right makes the rest of the pant fit better.  still on the sewing to do list: shorten my other pair of too-long jeans, sew together my picnic quilt top.  and then on to fun home decor things like making curtains and a slipcover for the glider i got on craigslist a few months ago.

late night and future fun

poor scott worked 15.5 hours yesterday.  8am to 11:30pm.  not fun.  he's actually been working long hours for the past few weeks, but i've been trying to adapt my schedule to it and hang out with girlfriends in the evenings so i'm not sitting alone at home.  it has been nice - i got together with girls a few times last week, and had goo and miranda over to watch "post grad" (which was awful, but really so bad it's funny) and have dinner on tuesday.  last night was my first night with scott working super late and no outside plans for myself, so after watching tv and sitting on my butt for a while, i actually managed to motivate myself to do the dishes, clean the kitchen, put away laundry, and wipe down the bathroom vanity.  i was pretty proud of myself, not going to lie.

not sure what his night tonight will look like, so i'm trying to brainstorm more semi-productive activities for myself.  maybe i'll finally get around to cutting the fabric for my picnic quilt.  speaking of, how cute is this quilt?  i love the circles on the edges of the squares.  all those round edges seem like they'd be a bit of a challenge, though, so i'm trying to limit myself to straight edges for now - i can work up to round.  and i guess i do have some jeans that need to be shortened too ... cutting fabric sounds more fun, though.  we'll see.

very exciting on the planning front - denver has an event called 5280 restaurant week every year.  (5280 being denver's official elevation in feet: 5280 feet = 1 mile.)  technically it's two weeks (feb 20-march 5), but a bunch of restaurants across the metro participate with a pre-fixed menu, usually three+ courses for $52.80/couple (or $26.40/individual).  some of the restaurants, you have to wonder who goes during 5280 since you'd likely spend less there on an average visit (like the overpriced gourmet pizza place we went to on saturday - each got a little pizza and a beverage and spent $30).  some of the restaurants, however, are smokin deals.  last year we went to a place called rodizio, which is a brazilian steakhouse, so they come around with giant skewers of fresh meats and cut a little bit of whatever you'd like off for you, all you can eat.  so we spent $52.80 on that, whereas normally it was like $35/person + $5/ea for salad bar (although i just checked their website and i think they've lowered their costs, as it's now only $33/person including salad bar).  this year, our small group is getting together and going to the restaurant kevin taylor, which is the only four star restaurant in denver, and as such is supposed to be absolutely amazing.  two of my coworkers have gone there with their spouses, one ended up hitting it at the tail end of 5280 last year and said it was amazing, the other went during a normal time and said they spent close to $200 on dinner, with just a glass of wine each.  crazy!  (just checked the menu, and the appetizer and entree together are about $49/person, plus a dessert ... all of which we will be enjoying for $52.80 total!)  anyway, we're doing that opening weekend of 5280, and since my birthday happens to fall the monday after the closing weekend of 5280, i managed to swing a second fancy dinner from it this year.  as we typically celebrate my birthday with some sort of cultural event (since we've been married: symphony, ballet, underwhelming lifehouse concert, and art museum/night out downtown), i was looking around to see if anything struck my fancy in the local theaters - no ballets or operas, and the denver theater company downtown was doing mary poppins which i don't think i'd be able to drag scott to if i tried.  then i remembered that littleton has a theater company downtown, and it turns out that they're doing "guys and dolls" that weekend - perfect!  not to mention, there's a fondue place a few blocks away that i've been wanting to go to since we moved here, and it's a part of 5280!

actually, now that i think about it, we actually have quite a bit of fun stuff coming up on our calendar: night skiing with friends next weekend, suns v. nuggets game with goo and the guy she's dating the week after that, a baby shower for a friend from grad school (fun for me, and fun for scott in that he doesn't have to go), restaurant kevin taylor, kinley's 2nd birthday party, another nuggets game on my boss's tickets, and then my birthday date!  whew.  i'm feeling much more content with staying home and cutting fabric now.  (although i do still feel bad for scott having to work such late nights.)