Bridal Shower Fun

Every once in awhile, I like to do an off-children-topic post. I recently went to a friend bridal shower and I for me, I know getting married made me even more excited about these events. One of my friends, Danielle, got me a silky robe with my new name, “Mrs. Thompson” embroidered on it for my bridal shower and I just thought it was the sweetest, most thoughtful gift. I started getting gals that for quite awhile and I’ll probably do it again in the future.

For this bridal shower though, I copied my friend Rachel, who did a wine basket bridal shower gift for our friend Danae. She told me she found the idea on Pinterest, so I started poking around. Sure enough, there was lots to find. So, I read a bunch of blogs about how to make the basket and I started my project with my own personal touch.

First, Devon registered for this awesome party bucket, which I used for my base. I found this .pdf template of the poems on a blog linked to from Pinterest. I copied and pasted the text into word, changed the fonts and the color of the text, but surely you could just print them off as is as well. I had some leftover paper with different prints on it. I printed off the poems, cut them out, secured them onto the printed paper and voila, tags. I also happened to have a wine bottle punch from a previous project, so I punched a few wine bottles to jazz up the tags. I had some cute “ribbon,” so I used a heart punch I had and threaded the “ribbon” through it.

I also happen to collect corks – for no apparent reason since they just sit in vases or drawers occupying space that could otherwise be used for good. This was the perfect allocation of said corks. I dumped them all in the bottom and situated my wine bottles. I read on one blog about buying some washcloths or towels on the registry to help protect the bottles, so I did that as well.

I tried to get some of the bottles to be relevant to the occasion. For the girls night out, I picked a yummy bottle of rose (because it’s pink). For the first fight bottle, I chose a Mark Ryan bottle called Numbskull. For the first anniversary, another Mark Ryan bottle called Long Haul. For the first New Years, a bottle of bubbles.

Here’s the final product. It was so fun to make and hopefully the bride to be will enjoy them throughout the year following her big day, always reminding her of the magnificent wedding.

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Father’s Day Fun

Ellie has been such a fun baby, really getting vocal and chatty lately.  She’s discovered her inner lungs and sometimes just screams for fun.  She also sometimes screams for not fun, but those are pretty quick to solve now since she’s gotten into a pretty consistent routine.  All this fun makes it so difficult for me to think about leaving her and come July that is exactly what I have to do.  I know a lot of moms encounter and overcome this challenge, but that is of no consolation to me.  She’s just such a love I can’t imagine wanting to be around anyone else all day; no offense my fellow Blue Nilers!  We did find a wonderful nanny that we’re excited to have care for our little bundle of joy, Diana.  Diana is such a sweetheart and really adores Ellie and loves holding and talking to her.  She’s very artistic too and so we look forward to lots of fun play time and creativity, which brings me to my second fun thing to share.

We had such a great time on Sunday for Father’s Day.  It was really special to celebrate Brian and his amazing dad-ness!  Molly [Featherstone] and I put together a pretty fun plan.  We each got the guys a bike trailer for our little tikes and we rode around Woodinville wine tasting.  I really can’t think of anything Brian would have enjoyed better.  It really was such a wonderful experience and Ellie looked like she was having just a marvelous time.  Molly’s got the cute pictures to prove it; perhaps we’ll share those later.

The other thing we did that I’m actually even more excited about is we made salt dough hand and footprints for the dads.  It was ironic because when we were in Long Beach last weekend, I thought of the idea to do Ellie’s foot and hand prints in clay.  When I got back and chatted with Mols, she had already been researching the salt dough idea!  Here is a link to the recipe we followed in case you’re interested in doing this in the future: http://www.theimaginationtree.com/2010/10/salt-dough-handprints.html

Salt Dough Hand & Foot Print

On our way back from Woodinville, we went to the Barking Dog to grab a quick bite and Ellie was so happy as we were leaving to go home.  Here’s a quick video clip of her enjoyment: