1st Birthday Sprinkle Party

Leo turned ONE this month! This first year is so fun and full of firsts. I love watching him learn new things while he grows and changes. We got to spend Christmas with all my family this year, so we had lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins to party with us. It has been so fun looking up birthday party ideas for him. While I certainly wanted to celebrate his big day, I also didn't want to spend big bucks. I fell in love with the sprinkle cake when I stumbled across this blog, and decided to throw a little sprinkle party luncheon for Leo.

There are SO MANY cake batter and sprinkle ideas on there that the hardest part was choosing only a few of the recipes and ideas for the party. I decided to do a sprinkle-covered smash cake and cupcakes for everyone else. I used my all-time favorite frosting recipe for them. Seriously, try it. It's light, fluffy, and not overly sweet. It's SO GOOD!

We also had caramel and chocolate-dipped pretzels and chocolate-dipped Oreos. Both were easy (though a little time consuming) and super yummy snacks.

We also had two of my favorite soups, Corn Chowder and Vegetable Lentil, a strawberry spinach salad, and bread. I made a fun collage with pictures from each month of his first year. Everyone loved seeing how he had changed over that first year. It was all fairly simple, but it came together really well and we had a blast.

I also loved how the balloons with "sprinkles" inside them turned out. All you have to do is cut out circles from tissue paper, slip them inside a clear balloon (not inflated), and then get them filled with helium. The colored circles stay at the bottom for awhile, but the static builds inside and within about an hour they'll be sticking to sides. They made for a really fun decoration.

Of course, the best part was the cake smash! 

He was a little timid when it all started. 

but then then things started getting crazy

...and then he got really into it!

It was such a fun day and so special to share it with so much of our family. He sure adds a lot of excitement and joy to our lives and I feel so lucky to be his mommy.

A Triumph over Decorating Paralysis: Part Two

*To see the background for these projects, read part one here.

The first big decision was made and I was feeling pretty good. Turning the idea of a theme into a concrete plan, however, was a long and tricky process. Turning that plan into an actual room took even embarrassingly longer. Part two of my triumph was overcoming the infinite choices of fabrics and paints to get some color on the walls and some curtains on the windows.  

1.  Start with the fabric. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Sarah’s House on HGTV, you know that when decorating a room, you absolutely must start with the fabrics.

2.  Visit every local fabric store trying to find the perfect fabric (one that is both adorable and affordable). If you don’t find anything, scour the internet until your eyeballs bleed and then become overwhelmed by the millions of options.

3.  Create a digital image of the room so you can cut/paste pictures of different options. This will help you visualize your options. Mull over them for a few weeks, narrow your choices, and eventually pick one (even if you don’t ultimately follow it exactly).

Make sure you're OCD about lining up the squares of fabric
on the curtains so they look as realistic as possible.
These fabric samples are courtesy of fabric.com.

4.  Pull the trigger and order the fabrics. Stop second guessing or wondering if there’s a cuter fabric out there for a better price. If you do, you’ll wait too long and the main fabric you were going to order will be out of stock and you’ll have to pay more to order it from a different website (D’oh!).

5.  Choose a coordinating color to paint the room. I chose gray.

6.  Realize that the color you chose only slightly narrows down your actual paint options (seriously, do you know how many shades of gray there are? Trust me, there are more than fifty).

7.  Talk to the really nice lady at the paint store and let her help you hone in on a shade. The color you thought you wanted (found from a cool pin about the perfect neutral colors to use in your home) will probably look too green when compared with the yellows you plan to use. Paint Lady will have the answer and even explain the differences between the aisles and aisles of paints that they offer.

I chose Ozark Shadows from Benjamin Moore.  It's a medium gray so it's dark enough
you know it's gray but not so dark it makes the room feel like a cave.  I loved it!

8.  Watch a bunch of online tutorials on how to paint a room (some of these will contradict each other and they will most likely assume you are not a beginner who knows absolutely nothing about painting, so see step 9).

9.  Make several calls to your sister to fill in the blanks. She will also be able to provide you the moral support necessary to purchase all the materials and actually get started painting (which, it turns out, is a lot more difficult than it is in The Sims).

10.  After a few days of hard work, sit back and appreciate your masterpiece (and try not to worry about that message from your landlord telling you that the color you just used to paint the room is too dark and you need to choose a different color… but that’s a story for another time).

In part three I'll reveal the fabulous curtains I made with the new fabric! (Spoiler Alert: They pretty much look just like the curtains in the sample room pic above).

Photo credits:

paint buckets

shades of gray

ozark shadows 1

ozark shadows 2

ozark shadows 3

relaxation

A Triumph over Decorating Paralysis: Part One

Remember when you were little and everyone used to always ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up?  Like me, your career of choice probably changed many times as you were figuring out your interests, hobbies, and skills.  When I was in sixth grade, it seemed everyone wanted to be a veterinarian, a marine biologist, or an interior decorator.  At one time or another, each of these seemed to be my destiny, too.  Why, I’ll never know.  I don’t like animals enough to plan on ever want a pet, I rarely go swimming because I hate having wet hair and dried out skin, and I suffer from SEVERE decorating paralysis (it’s totally a thing; Google it).  Thank goodness we don’t have to pick our future when we’re 11. 

Marine biology does look pretty glorious.

I think I finally crossed “interior decorator” off my list the summer after The Sims came out in 2000. I spent far too many of my lazy summer days playing this extremely addicting game in which you create a family of Sims by choosing what they look like, what they wear, and their personalities.  You then use money that they earn at their jobs to build and decorate a house for them from scratch.  I found the decorating fun, entertaining, and actually pretty overwhelming.  I mean, do I start with the cool black and white tile?  Or find something that matches the fun, bright red wallpaper?  Or maybe I should decorate around the sleek and modern lime green sofa.  There were just so many options!!   And the paralysis tells me that once I pick something, I can’t change it.  The direction is decided and the only place to go is forward.  So DON’T SCREW IT UP!

See the black and white tile?  I told you it was cool.

This is the same pressure I feel when I try to look at shower curtains, rugs, and bookshelves.  The paralysis means I have a very hard time knowing how to start decorating my home.  I contemplate various colors, themes, and styles and then worry that once I start, I will hate it and be stuck with it.  So, I generally put off making a real decision for as long as I can.  And then I usually end up sticking to neutrals.  You can’t go too wrong with neutrals, right?

When I found out we were having a little boy, I was so excited to turn our spare bedroom into his nursery… until I remembered that I am awful at decorating.  The Pinterest boards were crushing me with their millions of cute options.  However, I now live to tell the tale of how I overcame those overwhelming feelings and prevailed over my paralysis to create a room that I am quite proud of, thank you very much.  In honor of moving in one week, I want to share this beauty that I finally finished just before Memorial Day (I know, he was born before Christmas!). 

It took me several months to finally settle on a theme.  I knew I wanted something more gender neutral that didn’t scream “BABY!” and came across one theme that never seemed to leave the back of my mind.  I think I fell in love with it because it always reminds me of my own childhood and my mother.  She often sang songs to me when she tucked me in for bed and throughout the day.  She loved to sing “You Are My Sunshine” and started leaving the last word of each line for us to sing.  She would sing, “You are my ___” and we were supposed to fill in the blank by singing, “sunshine.”  It was a fun game that always made us smile.  Sometimes, when my younger brothers were in a cantankerous mood, they would fill in all the blanks by shouting, “nothing” instead.  It usually made us giggle until no one was grouchy anymore.

I have always planned on sharing that song (and tradition) with my own kids, so I loved the idea of doing his room full of yellows and sunshine.  Deciding on the theme really got the ball rolling and gave me lots of ideas for the projects I wanted to complete for his room.  I was so excited to have him here.  He certainly was the bright spot of my year and continues to make me smile every day, when skies are gray, blue, and everything in between.  

Some inspiration

Love this print