thanksgiving week

My house has been decorated in fall things, and I love it! {the Christmas decor will be coming out tomorrow, can't wait!}

Since my 25th birthday was on Thanksgiving this year, we had a lot to celebrate this past week!

I made a "happy thanksgiving" banner and place setting cards for all of our family coming into town to spend thanksgiving with us!

Last week I told you guys about my birthday present... and here it is! A new "monogramming/embroidery" sewing machine! I have actually been putting all of my paint, bake, & create business money that I've been making lately towards this machine, and then Mike surprised me the other day and said "oh, I ordered your machine and it's coming tomorrow!" Of course, I started flipping out and waited anxiously by the door all afternoon. I still have a lot of learning to do, so I am telling myself practice, practice, practice! :) I have seriously already almost lost my salvavtion over this machine, but it is coming together and I am loving it!!!

We found out this week that Maggie Claire likes corn on the cob- just like her mama! she was so cute eating it and did a pretty good job at it too!

Will and Maggie Claire enjoying a ride in the wagon. They are so precious together, and Maggie Claire loves him so much!

This picture of MC makes me laugh so much. Since she is walking now, I always seem to catch her with this serious determined face, love this sweet girl and I am so thankful for her!

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving weekend {we sure did!} My in-laws are leaving to head back to California today, we sure enjoyed having them here! The best part is, they'll be back for Christmas! yay!

****Also- My sister-in-law, Bethany, will be having my new sweet baby girl niece, Sophie Grace on Wednesday, if not sooner! I'll post all kinds of sweetness when she makes her big debut in this world!****

party details

Party day! With all the crafting and preparation that I did for Maggie Claire's party, of course I would share all of the details with you!!

Here is her invitation made by the fabulous Traci over at punkinprints! She did the best job!!!!

{I cropped the bottom off because our address was on there}

I hung paper lanterns on the porch outside, and I had a couple of paper pinwheels too.

I made a ribbon wreath with a bag full of scrap ribbons that I had. It turned out so cute!

up close of the wreath

The kids corner at the party! On the left is the hairbow party favors that I made, and on the right is the pin the candle on the cupcake game. In the middle was bubbles for the boys.

hairbows for the girls :)

The cards said "Thank you for coming to my party! Love, Maggie Claire"

We served lemonade and sweet tea in pink cups with paper straws. The paper straws and the polka dot balloons came from The Polka Dot Market.

I made a paper pennant banner that said "happy birthday mags" to hang on the fence and it turned out so cute! I also made cupcake toppers for all the cupcakes with the same graphics.

I also ordered cupcake shaped cookies from my dear friend Anita. You should definitely check out Anita's sweets and treats! She does the best job and they are so yummy! I can't wait to have another party to order some more!!! {the stripes on them matched the paper straws}

The food table right before everyone dug in! :)

Here is the birthday party girl! Her outfit was so fun, I can't wait to put it on her again, she looks precious in it!!! Her outfit was from a local boutique in Charleston, but you can order it here.

We love you Maggie Claire!!!!

I would do a million parties for this baby girl!!!!!!

Cake time, she definitely enjoyed it!

She only stayed in my lap to open the first few presents, but she got lots of cute things and fun toys!

Thank you to everyone who came to her party! We enjoyed having you over at our house!

we're officially in!

Wow- what a crazy busy week this has been! We closed on our house on Wednesday, painted & cleaned all day on Thursday and Friday, and moved in on Saturday! We love our house, it's so much fun being a homeower. I felt so grown up parking in our garage, and I am going to spoil myself everyday by parking in the garage. ;) It makes a huge difference because of how hot it is outside, especially putting Maggie Claire in her carseat, because it's not scorching hot!!

Here is me & Mags during her lunchtime yesterday. She is such a cutie and loves our new house too! :)

Being in my new living room is seriously like a fresh breath of air. The color of the walls is relaxing and I just want to sit downstairs, relaxing while writing blogs & drinking sweet tea all day long. It is very spacey and it's nice because the little babe has lots of room to crawl everywhere. She is like lighting speed towards the stairs too. That is another whole world to her, and it scares me to pieces.

Here is our wonderful living room. There is nothing on the walls yet, and the curtains aren't hung up, but it is so nice!

I've been looking at baby gates, but I can't decide on one. I would like to just have one and move it to wherever we are. It'll either be in the hallway upstairs, or at the bottom of the stairs. I'll probably end up buying one this week after I look at a few more. Anyone have a baby gate that they love?

Here is my cute kitchen. My mom came over and organized it put all of my stuff on top of my cabinets for decor. I love having that space up there!

I got some sticky hooks to hang up my aprons. too cute! :)

On top of all of our moving fun, Mike is going out of town for a few days and when he returns we will be heading to California!!!! YAY! We are going to visit with his parents for a week, and I am sooooo excited. It's also our anniversary which is exciting because we went to CA on our honeymoon too. It'll be so nice to go back 3 years later. We get to go on our anniversary date night while we are there, so we are going to do something fun! We are kind of nervous about flying with Maggie Claire because we have a 5.5 hour flight! I'm hoping she will be her cheerful self and have a good time on the plane! :) And possibly take a nap! We can be hopeful, right?

a few more days...

...until Christmas! Today we have family coming into town from St. Louis. Mike's grandparents haven't met Maggie Claire yet, and she can't wait to meet them either! They will be here this afternoon. The rest of our week is jammed packed with spending time with all of our families, doing Christmas Eve services at the church, and celebrating our Savior's birth! What a wonderful time of year it is, and such a special event to celebrate. I always look forward to going to Christmas Eve service as a family! We are actually attending the Christmas Eve Eve service {on Thursday night}, but we'll be at all the other ones. I'm working the nursery and Mike will be doing candle lighting and whatever else is needed- probably helping with the overflow rooms.

I wanted to show everyone some of my decorations around the house... this first picture is my favorite of our three stockings hanging. Isn't Maggie Claire's stocking adorable??? I designed it, and my friend Emily sewed & monogrammed it for me! Of course, she had to have ruffles on her stocking!

Our beautiful Christmas tree! I love our tree, it is very big! It's definitely too big for our little apartment, but it was free {it's a hand-me-down tree from my grandma} I love how full it is, I get lots of compliments on it. This might be the last year we have it though... I think we might be a smaller one on sale after Christmas. This one is just really old, a pain to put together, and the needles are falling of everywhere! But don't you love the white star tree topper? I scored that last year at Target after Christmas for %75 off. :)

The reason for the season...

Our front door wreath

Of course, Maggie Claire has a tree. It's pink, sparkly and has cupcake ornaments on it. Fits her perfectly! :)

I hope everyone is enjoying this week of Christmas with all the festivities going on!

Isaiah 9:6

"For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

pretty & perfect

Yes, I have an ornament on my tree this year dedicated to my blog. I might have squealed a little too much when I saw this in a gift shoppe the other day when we were with our friends. I had to have it, there was no question about it & I absolutely love it. It's pretty & perfect! Plus, it has sparkles all over it which makes it even more perfect.

What has made you extra excited this Christmas season??

nursery ideas

I have been googling one nursery idea after another the past couple of days, and oh boy, I do love what I see, except those dollar signs! I'm sticking with the liberty of london nursery crib bedding from target. Right now it says it is out of stock and will be available for shipment in 2 to 4 weeks, so I'm just being patient. I found an inspirational collage over at project nursery, which I am loving that site!

In the picture is maggie claire's bedding that she will be sleeping in, a lovely chandelier lamp from pottery barn teen, the adorable zebra pink rug {you guys know that I'm in love with zebra}, and pretty crystal lamp from pier 1. The pottery barn mirrored dresser is a little too fancy for me, but I love how she did this collage!
The PB chandelier is way out of our budget to get for maggie's room, so instead I will either make a really cute ribbon chandelier {photo below via inspire co.} or try and find a used chandelier and spice it up a little bit to look similar to the PB chandelier . I know, you readers will all say that this ribbon chandelier is the way to go and totally fits me because of my hairbow making self, so I will have to test it out and see how I like it!

I do really like this pink chandelier that I found on kaboodle.com.

The main thing that I am on the hunt for right now is a white dresser, or one that I can paint white, and that will double as a changing table. I have found a couple on craigslist that I really like for only $35-$50, but I'm waiting to hear back on the dimensions. I would like it to be around 35 inches high, because that seems to be a good fit for a changing table, but I don't want to be too picky or anything! hehe. I love the one in this picture below {photo via project nursery}. I'm hoping to find something similar to this! Wish me luck!

for the love of cupcakes!

I absolutely love love love anything that has to do with cupcakes, if I could choose I would drive the car that's in Charleston with the huge cupcake on top! (from the cupcake store)

well, I just thought that I would share with everyone the adorable cupcake decorations that I found at Target! Well, my mom actually had these blue towels waiting for me when I came to her house the other day....

I was so excited because the Target here in N. Charleston didn't have these... or they hadn't put them out yet. so my mom said, "Well, we have got to go to Target so you can see all the other cupcake stuff that they have!!!"

See, you guys know what section I'm talking about.... the one that is conveniently displayed right when you walk in that has all the $1 or $2.50 seasonal stuff!!!

That is what I love the most. I could go to Target everyday and be perfectly happy.

i love target!!

I was able to get the little pot holder set, that you see one of, hanging on the wall!

(They came in a 2 pack for $2.50)

I brought my LOVE dishes out to set up for decorations (which also came from target... I looked at the box and they are from 2004)

I think my grandma bought them or something....

I also wanted to add more hooks for all my aprons. I rarely wear them, because I forget to put them on, but I do love them! So, they are displayed so cute! :)

Then to the table decor...
I remembered from a while back that I bought these Valentines cups (target) when Mike and I were engaged, I thought they were so cute.

I filled them with tissue paper and stuck a straw in them to make them look like they have some sort of yummy drink in them!
Then my favorite.... this cupcake rug was only $2.50! I was so excited!!!
The best part about my trip to target was that I had a Target gift card left over from a Christmas gift, that I was able to use to purchase these few lovely things. I was super excited to start decorating for Valentines day with pretty things such as cupcakes!!
I will most likely keep some of the cupcake stuff out yearly because I could have a sweets theme going on in my kitchen!

The last thing I wanted to share with everyone was this new cupcake book that Christina got me when I came to visit!! It's called Hello, Cupcake!
It has the cutest ideas on how to make different cupcakes & ways to ice them only using a ziploc bag!!! It's amazing! I have it displayed with all my other dishes & decor. Those little cupcake doggies on the front of the book are just so cute(and I'm not a big animal fan). I transferred all the candy we have into my biggest candy jar, I could not believe that we actually filled it!
{People always give us candy and we hardly can ever eat all of it!} I replaced all of the other bowls in the house with pretty fruit that we are eating in place of sweets for the Daniel Fast that we are on! (so far, so good)
I am so excited about being on this fast. I feel that God is going to do something huge in my life while I'm on it. I'm praying more daily about specific things, and I was thinking today, "why don't I pray this much all the time?!?!?"
I'm trying to not think and worry about things so much, and just pray....
and God is so good!
My life right now is kind of in a weird stage for me because of how much change is going to happen this year. I've just graduated from college, and I'm not really sure what God has in store for me next. I feel like it is going to be something so big, but I'm not quite sure what it is. That is why I'm praying. I'm so much of a planner, that I normally know what is going on at all times. I like to have every minute planned out so that I know what I have to do.
I don't feel that way though, I'm feeling so relieved and not so much worried about what I have to do during the day, but what He's going to do with me everyday.
I guess I'll just say He's got my back. :)