Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Charlotte: Month 7


+ Almost Crawling

+ Eats "real" food- Loves sweet potatoes, avocado and banana. HATES green beans. Prefers to feed herself so we are going more that Baby Lead Weaning ( BLW) route these days over purees.

+ Had her first round of antibiotics due to a double ear infection.

+ Weighs 17.4 pounds.

+ No teeth yet but her two bottom teeth are about to break through.

+ Has the most infectious little laugh.

+ Her hair is coming in quite red these days :)

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Charlotte: Month 6


+ Sits unassisted. Now ALL she wants to do it sit up.

+ Trying to crawl but cannot get her legs going.

+ Got Baptized.

+ LOVES the dogs. Laughs every time you say " Is that your puppy"? Surprisingly, the dozes are handling her quite well.

+ Sits in her highchair with us at dinner time. Loves to eat "ice pops"- Frozen breast milk.

+ Reaches to be picked up.

 How is my little baby half a year old?

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Pink and Gray Dahlia Nursery

I started this post in December. Of course that was when I went back to work full-time so it got stuck in Draft until I could take some decent pictures. Anyway, the Nursery is DONE....finally. I had ordered  few custom pieces that took longer than anticipated but everything is hung and decorated now. It's hard to believe my last nursery post was back in July when I purchased the rug. So here is what things looks like today.

It is by far my favorite room in the house. The bedding is the Dahlia Pink Collection from Pottery Barn Kids. I purchased only 2 fitted sheets and the quilt although we are not using the quilt yet.

My work surprised me with a baby shower and purchase a video monitor for us which I LOVE now that Charlotte is sleeping in her crib overnight. Tim hates seeing wires so he rigged up the monitor to look down on the crib so that we could hid the wires behind the curtain panel.


I did not a mobile initially. My mom insisted that Charlotte have something to look at. I have no idea why mobiles are so expensive. I wanted one that matched so I went with the Bright Pink Harper Mobile from Pottery Barn. I saved some money by purchasing it off eBay though.

The chair is from Babies R Us and the end table is a Homegoods find. The lampshade and pillow are also the Bright Pink Harper Collection. I LOVE the monogram but it was one of the custom pieces that took a while. I ordered it from Etsy. I love the way it turned out and ultimately think it was worth the wait. It did not come until well after Charlotte was born but its not like she noticed. I purchased them through the shop Simplymade. The "C" & " G" are 10 inch Victorian letters with the Pink Dahlia design. The "H" is a 12 inch Victorian letter with the gray lattice stitching.

The other custom piece I had done was the small sign between the double closets.
I ordered it from CreativeTouchWood on Etsy. I had her customize it to the gray/pink color scheme and it turned out great!

We worked so hard on the nursery and I love that such a family effort. Tim and I painted the walls before we even knew the gender. Tim and my dad did all the moulding work. I worked so many hours sanding, painting and staining the dresser. Tim stained the shelves. Tim and my dad assembled all the furniture. Oh and my mom... she helped me shop! Little girl stuff it SO much fun to shop for. 




So this officially wraps up the nursery posts! I must say it is a little sad, considering they started close to 10 months ago! 

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Charlotte: Month 5


+ Has found her feet and she loves them.

+ Chews on everything but no teeth yet.

+ Got her ears pierced.

+ Can roll from back to belly.

+LOVES sitting up but still needs a little support.

+ Taking a lot of interest in the dogs as of late.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Valentine's Day 2014

This year we had a really nice, low key Valentine's Day. While I want to say that Tim and I never "go all out" for Valentine's Day, when I sat down to write this post I realized we have had a few exciting Valentines in our history together.

On Valentine's Day 2010, Tim asked me to marry him.

Last year, we announced to our family that we were expecting.

This year, we have a beautiful little girl!
Photo by Constance Avellino Photography 
Since Valentine's Day was on a Friday this year, we decided to stay in and make fondue at home. We LOVE Melting Pot but unfortunately it gets expensive! So I made a cheese trio with baguette and green apple. We also shared a shrimp cocktail. A few hours later, we had chocolate fondue with sliced banana, strawberries and red velvet cake.


Tim and I previously decided that we would not exchange gifts this year. However, a few days ago I decided to make a last minute gift for Tim. It's rather popular on Pinterest so I can't take credit for the creativity on this one!
 Basically, its "52 Things I Love about You" the whole project cost $4. All you need is a deck of cards, some embellishments, a whole punch and some glue.  I had the HARDEST time finding regular old red playing cards. I check the Dollar Tree, Party City, Publix and Target... no one has red! I ended up finding this back of pink/black cards at Target and I am so sick of looking for cards that I decided they would work.



I started by hole- punching all of my cards. I typed up all of my "52 things" into a word document. I just made a table 4 wide by 4 long and they fit perfectly onto the cards. I used black font with a red outline. I did print them on card stock to make them a but sturdier.

 I just mainly stickers to embellish the cards. I picked up a few different packs for .99 at CVS. I glued all 52 things onto my cards and then embellished them. I used a regular old Elmer's glue stick. I had planned on using Mod Podge but mine was tried up. I did not keep the same placement on each of the cards but varied them so that I could fit some of the larger stickers on the cards.
After every thing was dried, I assembled my "book". I could not find binder rings at Target so I simply used some black ribbon to hold the book together. Here is what the final product looked like.
 

The hardest part of this project was coming up with the 52 things! Obviously, there are more than 52 things that I love about my husband however,  you don't often sit down to write them all out! I tried to use a good mix of serious things and jokes between us. Here are a few examples in case you are struggling too!
Tim seemed to really like the gift! He says he is "working on" my list ;)

We also made the grandparents Valentines this year since it was Charlotte's first. We had professional pictures taken the last week of January. We simply purchased two 8x10 frames ( Buy one get one for $1 at Kohls). Then I used a small sponge applicator to apply red paint on her feet to make the V in Love. We used Crayola Tempera paint because it is nontoxic, washable and generally baby safe. I added one of the professional pictures and a few stickers to the frame. The grandparents LOVED them :)
 
Oh and while I was at CVS picking up stickers, I grabbed a tube of red lipstick for 99 cents with the sole purpose of capturing this shot...
Because what is cuter than a chubby baby covered in kisses?

Hope you too had a great Valentine's Day!

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Charlotte: Month 4



+ Still loves her Ergo. No longer needs the infant insert. Kind of bittersweet for me!

+Loves sitting up and wants SO bad to do so on her own.

+ "Talks" constantly!!

+ Loves looking at her self in the mirror. On a side note, I was reading about baby development and while babies this age typically love looking at themselves in the mirror, they don't know they are looking at themselves till around 6 months of age! There is your fun fact of the day :)

+ Can roll from tummy to back. She can't quite make it from back to tummy yet... that bottom arm gets her stuck every time.

+ Had another sick visit, her conjunctivitis caused a blocked tear duct.

+ She hasn't been weighed in a while but I am thinking she is around 13.5 pounds!



* Things have been so busy, hence the lack of blogging. This whole working mom thing is no joke! I have a lot of updates/projects to post about and I have a goal to be more consistent with this whole blogging thing!

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Charlotte: Month 3


+ Smiles and laughs constantly
+ First belly laugh
+First set of shots and first sick visit :(
+ Finally growing back some hair
+ Loves being upright and sitting up.
+ Weighs 12.5 lbs!
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