Happy Saturday all! If you're in Sacramento and looking for stuff to do, I've got a couple of events for you to check out...

For all the parents out there: Head on over to Trumpette for the Sacramento Baby and Toddler Expo! Trumpette itself is a super-chic children's boutique is hosting the event and there will be vendors of all types. If you're registered, the first 100 people will get a SWAG bag filled with goodies! I went last year when I was preggo and scored some super cute socks and onesies! I also got a Howdy Cow for $10!


Trumpette is at 2020 I Street in Sacramento.


For all the Fashionista/ers: Courtney Kerr will be at Macy's at Roseville today at 2pm hosting their Spring Fashion show and doing a Meet and Greet! Courtney is the a super fashionable blogger from Dallas who had her own show on Bravo called, Courtney Loves Dallas. Go check her out!

Hello Lovelies!

I thought I'd switch it up a bit and write about baby stuff! If you don't already know (she's kind of all over my Instagram), I have a 9.5 month old little girl named Lily. As a new mommy, I'm sure all moms can relate when I say that there is just an OVERLOAD of products out there for your little ones! When I talk to my mom, mother-in-law or even grandmother-in-law, they all say they never had any of the gadgets that I talk about when they were having children.  Even before I had Lily, I was pinning all kinds of things that I wanted to get for her....anywhere from super cute clothes, products to make my life easier (like a baby food maker) or even the techiest of gadgets to keep tabs on my little one. When I started my baby registry, I was so overwhelmed because there was just so much out there. As it turns out, you don't really need everything (although a diaper wipe warmer is nice and won't wake a baby at 3am) and we've survived without all of the non-necessities.

Here are my Top 10 choices:
1. Cloud B Sound Machine Soother, Sleep Sheep: White noise around a sleeping baby is a MUST in my opinion. How frustrating is it when your baby wakes from a dog barking just as you put her down to sleep? The Cloud B comes in several different animals and has 8 different sounds (we liked the mother's heartbeat/water sound the best). It has two timers, 25 and 45 minutes and is battery powered. This has come in handy when we are traveling!

2. Marc Jacobs Diaper Bag: I looked at several diaper bags and this one by far was the roomiest and has a lot of pockets in the interior. It has a pretty decent zipper on it so I feel secure packing it to the brim with stuff and know that it won't unzip. It also has a decent sized diaper changing pad. While its a little pricey, I think that I'll be using this after we've outgrown the baby stage.

3. Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin: We LOVE LOVE LOVE this book! Its well written and the illustrations keep our little one entertained. If you love dragons and you love tacos...this book is the way to go!

4. ErgoBaby 360 Carrier (in black): I had another carrier before I purchased this one and the one feature it was lacking was the front carry but the ErgoBaby made up for it! We can even do a side carry. I also feel that the Ergo has less fabric than my previous carrier so she stays cooler when being carried. I do wish it had a small pocket though for keys.

5.  Philips Avent DECT Baby Monitor with Temperature Sensor and Night Mode: There are so many monitors out there but we loved this monitor for the range. We were able to go outside into our front yard to get the mail and it never signaled us. The battery life on it is great as well, we were able to use it for a week before having to charge it. It definitely gave us the piece of mind when we had to leave the room.

6. UppaBaby Stroller (Cruz): This stroller is AMAZING. We didn't want to get the bigger version (the Vista) because I didn't feel I was going to use all of its features like the bassinet. I think the biggest thing about the stroller I was sold on was the basket space. There is A LOT of it! When we go to the Farmer's Market on Sundays, we are able to fill that bad boy up and have room for her diaper bag. The seat also has a lever which can recline to almost a flat position and the lever feels well constructed. We also bought an adapter for our car seat (which is a Graco), (7.) the infant insert which helped when she was under 6 months and a (8.) stroller caddy which holds so much in its pockets (and a bottle of water and my iced coffee).

9. Aiden&Anais Swaddle Blankets: I absolutely love these blankies! They're super soft after washing and they double as breastfeeding covers, stroller covers, light blankets. And they come in really cute prints. I chose a subtle coral printed set. 

10. Medela Freestyle Breast Pump: If you're breastfeeding, at some point, you may need a breastpump if you'll be away from your little one for a few hours (or just for a little sanity!). I recommend the Freestyle because it's easier to use if you travel (whether it be on vacation, business or just to Grandma's house). And don't forget the accessories...and the hands-free bra!

11. Cuisinart Stick Blender: Since we make all of Lily's food at home, we absolutely had to have a stick blender to puree her food. We have another stick blender but we found the Cuisinart is quieter and feels sturdier than the other. 

12. Baby Einstein Jumper: When Lily was 6 months old and definitely able to sit unassisted, we bought this fabulous-ness. We have a galley style kitchen so it was hard to keep an eye on her if she was sitting in the living room while I was doing the dishes. So now, when i'm in the kitchen, I'll put her in this jumper so I can see her. We love the classical music it plays and she enjoys jumping around in it (for at least the time it takes for me to clean the kitchen - 20 minutes). It has 5 different height levels too! We have an older version but thought i'd post the newer. I wish we had the newer version becuase I read that it can fold flat for storage. 

13. H&M Nursing Tanks: I didn't think I was going to like these when I first opened the package because they felt flimsy to me but I ended up really liking them because they were lightweight as I was nursing in the summertime. They have great support and they were perfect to put under other shirts if we were going out. 

14. OrganicKidz Baby Bottle Tree: I really wanted a drying rack for all the bottles and this was perfect. It has varying sized pegs for different things (bottles, nipples, etc.). And it was super cute on top of the counter. The bamboo is antibacterial so mold won't grow on it.

Honorable Mention:

13. Medela Nipple Ointment: When I was in the hospital, this was the ointment that the nurses gave me when I started breastfeeding. This gave me more relief than the natural one I had packed in my bag. I ended up ditching the natural nipple butter and buying more of this ointment.

What are your favorite mom necessities?


 

I've been meaning to write this post for about a year now. But I didn't have the greatest motivation to blog back then. I was 7 months preggo and trying to set up for my hubby's 35th birthday party. So here I am... writing a year late. :)
I just LOVE throwing parties. I really like planning the menu, creating the deocrations and the invitations...and everything in between.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about making a DIY photobooth background (you can see that post  HERE) and it prompted me to write about the decor I used for his last birthday. I really wanted to do something that showed off all of his pictures of him through the years. Rather than put it on walls, I made (well, half made) a pennant with his baby pictures that my mother-in-law had given me and had it strewn throughout the living room so that people could walk around and look at each strand.

View 1 (and the birthday boy).

View 2

Here is what you need:
4 strands of plastic pennant (100 Foot Multicolor Pennant Banner)
photos cut in the shape of a pennant (you can find several on Pinterest here) 

I simply attached the images (there are pictures on the front and back sides) and attached them with a clothes pin so that it weighed down the banner (and so that I could do something different with the banner when I wanted to).  And that was it!

Hope you guys try this out! This is a great way to show off some super cute/silly pictures. Everyone got a kick out of them at the party!

Hope you're all having a fabulous weekend! Its been HOT the last couple of days and it definitely feels like Spring is quickly approaching. Time to break out the shorts, flip flops and sunnies!
Here was my week/weekend via my camera roll:

1. Our little Lily is quite the ham in front of the camera.  She loves wearing costume stuff and smiling her crinkle smile. We are absolutely loving this age (9 months) because she's so interactive and we can mostly be able to tell what she's thinking and wants to do (or not to do).

2. I wandered into our nearest Marshall's the other day and saw this kayak for sale. I almost bought it! At $169, it was a steal for an entry level kayak.  If I only had a way to get it home, it would have been mine!

3. I've never tried Evolution juices and when I went to the grocery store, I snagged one (I usually give myself a little treat everytime I hit the grocery store). While it was DELICIOUS, it was pricey ($3.79/bottle).

4. We have a Sunday tradition of going to the Farmer's Market and there is just so much yumminess on display. Since I am captain of the SS Stroller, its sort of difficult to get video the way I want so I've been taking shots the last couple of weeks in hopes of making a short video that i'll post soon!

5. We went for a walk around Midtown Sacramento and there are the coolest murals to take pictures near. I made the hubby be my model for the day so I could document all the neat areas. Fashion posts? Yes please!

6. I think this shot was taken while we were at the Farmer's Market and Lily was asleep. We like her to nap as long as possible so if we get to our destination and she's asleep, we will often sit and chit chat or if you're me, take selfies. :)

7. Today's weather warranted a trip to the driving range! I haven't touched my clubs in almost 2 years so it was good to get out and hit a few while catching up with a girlfriend and her friends.

8. After we hit some balls, we checked out Maggiano's nearby. The food was decent but I was more interested in the dessert! My girlfriend ordered this fabulous brownie with ice cream and fresh strawberries. uh-MAZING.

9. And on my way home from all this fun, the hubby (who was watching our little one) sent me this text message... YAY!!! I've been waiting for this time! She's on her way to becoming super mobile! It was a great end to my day!

How was your weekend?

Happy Friday! We've been having some seriously sunny and warm weather here in Northern California! On Wednesday, the high was 80 degrees! I was born in the Central Valley which is typically hot in the Spring and Summer months so I LA-LA-LOVE when the temperature gets above 68 degrees.

For a few years, I've had the same two sunglasses: a pair of Marc Jacobs wide sunnies and aviators from Banana Republic.

But this year, I wanted to try something new. I've seen so many fun styles come out that are totally not typically I would go for but I feel that I am in need of a makeover. I've had the same look for five years and am dying to do something new. I've been looking at new hairstyles, different wardrobe looks...and sunnies! I think sunnies can totally change the look and feel of your wardrobe.

I bought some of the sunnies from Forever 21 and am saving for the Dior's. I think that Forever 21 offers snazzy looking dupes of the real deals. Check out the Pink shades from Forever 21 and the black Karen Walkers (first row last set). They look allllllmost alike! Which ones are your faves?
Hope you all have a fantastic weekend!

Last year, my husband turned the big 35 and I wanted to do some fun decor for his milestone birthday. I ended up creating a really cool pennant with photos of him growing up and streaming it in the living room. But that is another post coming soon...

This year, our friend Noah (who's birthday is a few days before the hubby's) and Jamie wanted to hold a joint birthday party. I volunteered to create a photo booth area to try to up my game from last year. At first, I thought about ordering cut outs of the guys but when I had gone online to price things out, most websites wanted to charge $200! S.A.D.F.A.C.E.

So my second thought was to create a photobooth background. Who doesn't love a photobooth at their party! We had one at our wedding and it was a fabulously (and fairly tips-ied) good time! We have the copies of all the pictures as proof! I know that trying to print a color poster anywhere bigger than an standard sized poster (11x17) would be a ridiculous amount of money. So I thought it would be best if I tried to print out the background on our color printer and put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. After doing a test run with a smaller sized poster, I found that the quality isn't what I was looking for.

Enter Kinkos.


I went into Kinkos thinking that there was nothing they could do. After going through my options, most being $200+ (fancy vinyl poster, colored paper poster, etc), I was about ready to just plop down the $200+ dollars and call it a day. But then I had told the clerk my idea about printing it on my own printer and he said that they could print it out and it the quality would be better than a home printer. So, I gave him the giant file and he printed it. All 48 sheets. BOOYAH! Kinkos is awesome. They've helped me on more than one occasion with big print jobs but this one took the cake.
Total spent at Kinko's (with tax): $31.24

Here is what the image looked like when I took it home from Kinko's. There are 8 pages across, 6 pages down = 48 pages total. As you can also see, there is a white border around each of the pages so I had to cut each border off individually. I believe Kinko's can cut them off for you but I didn't ask at that time. Maibad.


Then, with the advice from Noah's wife, Jamie, I headed to the dollar store to buy foam board so that I could take the 48 sheets of paper and attach them to boards so that it would be easier to assemble before the party. I bought 12 sheets of foam board total. I was thinking I'd only have to use 9 but bought 3 more just in case.
Total at the Dollar Store: $12  (and some photobooth props: $8) = $20


I thought it was going to be simple after that. That I could paste 6-9 pages onto each board and then fasten them together. Boy was I WRONG. The foam boards are 20x30 and the sheets were less than a full sized sheet of paper. So each foam board had small pieces and large pieces and I had to be careful about placing them or the entire picture could be thrown off. And when you have people in the image, you want to make sure no one is missing an eye and to make sure their nose is in the right spot. I used rubber cement to attach the paper to the boards. I found it was easy to pick the paper up off the board and replace it if I used it sparingly in the corners at first. Then, when I got all the pieces down, I covered the back in glue.
1 bottle of rubber cement glue was $2.99 at Joann's.

That's me...placing each cut piece onto the foam board. :)

Voila! Yeah, I know... The strip club photobooth background was pretty funny though! The guy at Kinko's sure had a laugh.

The poster stood 7 feet across and 4 feet high. The foam boards were attached with packing tape on the backside and stapled into a 2x4 so that was it elevated. Here is the background in an un-cropped photo. The background was set in the garage and you can see that its set up high so that the bottom doesn't show.

The birthday boys!

And here it is, the final finished product!

Yes, I do this in a lot of photos I take :)

Jamie and our friend Chelsea. :) I bought fairy wings, funny glasses and all sorts of other stuff as props for the photobooth.

Total at the Dollar Store: $12  (and some photobooth props: $8) = $20
Total spent at Joann's for glue: $2.99
Total spent at Kinko's (with tax): $31.24 
 ______________________________________________________________
TOTAL: $54.33 (give or take a few dollars for tax)
 TOTAL TIME SPENT (cutting, pasting, etc): 4-5 hours done over the course of two days. 

Items needed:
7ft x 4ft backdrop = 48 tiled sheets of printed paper from Kinkos.
9 foamboards from the Dollar Store.
1 bottle of rubber cement.
Any type of heavy tape to attach the foam boards together.

Some way to hang the finished product (possible methods):
a) Staple the top of the board to a 2x4 and clamp the sides down.
b) Hang the finished image from a light stand with clamps.

Hope you enjoyed my DIY! I'd love to hear how you made your own photobooth background as well!



 

Hello lovelies!
I took a short break from the blog since we took a family vacay to San Luis Obispo to celebrate the hubby's birthday. We decided to pick up and move and explore a new place before life got real and so we lived in SLO for a year before moving back home (Sacramento) to get married and then have our little lady. SLO is a super cute small town on the coast, between SF and LA. It also has some cute little beachy communities like Morro Bay and Avila Beach.

This was our first trip back with a baby so it definitely wasn't the same. The differences being that we didn't stay out late and hit up the bars like we used to. The hubby actually got sick the first night we were there so we were in bed by 7:30pm. :(

We did do a lot of daytime stuff like walking around the Downtown area, went to the beach and hit up some of our favorite food/coffee places. The weather was AMAZING and being by the beach was heavenly.

I did take video in hopes of making a short montage but since I had left my laptop at home, I thought I'd upload the video to Google Drive from my iPhone. I lost all the footage of downtown and the beach because I was on a slow connection and I think Google Drive had timed out. Boo. :(

But I was able to salvage some pictures... Here they are... Enjoy!





1. If you ever are in SLO, go to Peet's Coffee. It is the only place I've ever been to (in SLO and anywhere else) where the scones are soft and yummy! They're baked by a local bakery there.

2. Waiting with these two while getting a boba. While we were gone, quite a few food/specialty drink/coffee spots opened up! The boba wasn't amazing (the boba itself was actually kind of al dente but the flavor of the coffee was ok) but it was good to see a boba store in that city!

3. We ventured to Avila Beach the first full day we were there and Miss Lily decided to take her first nap on the car ride. So, rather than wake her (it was only a 10 minute ride), we sat in the car eating snacks and chatting while we listened to classical music on the radio. Oh...and we took selfies. :)

4. The hotel we stayed at had daily Happy Hour. This is what we scored. Red wine and a few Coors Lights. Since it was getting close to Lily's bedtime, this was the best thing to going out. #parentswhoparty

5. When we did live in SLO, every morning, we would venture out to this little shopping area (after getting coffees and scones from Peet's) and sit on the second floor which had a few places to sit. It was nice to come back here and grab a coffee and scone and relax while people watching.

6. I found all of the drought signs on the drive to SLO interesting. This one was a series but it basically referred to the Central Valley as a dustbowl area.

7. And the infamous, Bubblegum Alley in SLO. Its rather gross, especially in the rainy season. This was the closest i'd ever been to that area.

8. And if you're ever in SLO, go to Louisa's. It's a small breakfast/lunch place and you can't go wrong with anything on the menu. We used to get their breakfast nachos all the time. Bacon. Ham. Eggs. Avocado. Sour Cream. Salsa. Chips....HEAVEN.  Its super gluttonous but we were on vacation so indulging is totally allowed.


How amazing is this field of flowers?! When we were driving through Highway 41 near Paso Robles (the Central Valley's wine country), there were hills painted with yellows, oranges and some purple. Absolutely stunning!

Hope you all had a great weekend!