Show Us Your Life-Baby Shower Ideas

I'm linking up over at Kelly's Korner again today for her Show Us Your Life post of the week.  This week's topic is Baby Shower Ideas

Let me just start off by saying I had the worst luck with my baby showers.  I have the sweetest family and friends who have thrown me beautiful showers and sprinkles (or at least planned to have them). For those that don't know, both of my girls were born 5 and a half weeks early.   My showers for Kiley were planned for when I was 34 weeks pregnant.  My friends threw me one on that Saturday and my sister and mom threw me one on Sunday.  That Thursday before my big shower weekend, my blood pressure got pretty high and I was admitted to the hospital for monitoring.  Luckily though, I was able to get released Saturday morning, and was able to make it to the showers, but on bed rest.  I am really thankful that I was able to make it and I got so many wonderful gifts for Kiley.  I swear I didn't have to buy clothes for Kiley until she was like a year old.  My friends at work had also planned to throw me a shower, however, I had Kiley a week before the planned shower and was gone on maternity leave, so I never actually had that one. 

With the sprinkle that was planned for Ella, my friends tried to plan ahead (and even moved the date up after we thought that I might go even earlier than anticipated).  It was a suprise sprinkle, which was so sweet of them, but what do you know, I came down with bronchitis three days before it.  As part of the suprise, Kevin's job was to get me there.  So when he suggested we go to brunch on that Sunday (while I am hacking up a lung), I knew something was up so it wasn't much of a suprise anymore that something was planned, but all of the details remained unknown to me so that was a success.

I had an awesome time at all of my showers and sprinkle, but they definitely didn't go exactly as planned, but then again, nothing with my pregnancies went exactly as planned.  So is life, I guess. 

I don't have a lot of ideas because I haven't planned a baby shower for anyone yet, but a couple things that I have done or seen done that I like are. . .

1.  Thank you gifts
I had 5 girlfriends that went in on planning one of my showers and 2 that kind of "took the lead"  For all 5 girls, I got them personalized note sets. That looked like this

I got them from Swoozie's.  This is a great site that has a lot of fun personalized stuff with pretty good prices and they shipped really quickly as well.  The fun thing was that they have different styles to choose from so I was able to pick a style and font that I thought fit each girls personality.

For the two girls that took the lead on planning, I also got them gift certificates to Mario Tricoci so that they could enjoy some pampering. 

My mom and sister threw my second shower.  I wanted something special for them for all the love and support that they had given me through my pregnancy and when I found this necklace.


It's from Red Envelope which is another store that I really like.  They have quick shipping, plus they have a lot of jewelry that you can personalize with the receipent's birthstone, name, etc.  I liked this necklace because for us it symbolized Kiley entering the world and becoming the third generation of our immediate family. 

2.  Books

A fun gift that my friend Jill always gives at baby showers is a fun basket filled with some of her favorite childhood books. 

I think that this is a really cute idea because you can never have enough books. 

Another cute idea that I have heard of, especially for a shower that is out of town and you don't want to have to ship a lot of stuff back, is to have a book shower where everyone brings their favorite childhood book.  This would be fun to do for a sprinkle as well, since most of the time, you don't really need a lot of stuff for a 2nd or later baby, but usually most people want to bring something. 

3.  Onesies

A gift that I thought would be cute but I haven't actually given yet is to buy 12 onesies for the first year and then the month onesie stickers to put on them to take pictures each month.  I bought some of these

 for Kiley from this etsy site http://www.etsy.com/shop/pickysticky.  Granted I only took the pictures for the first 4 months (I was bad about this), but I have seen people do really cute things with these pictures as decor for 1st birthdays. 

How cute is this little peanut of mine

So those are my ideas- nothing mindblowing by any means.  I am pretty tired today after a busy week with Grandma in town and I have a really busy weekend ahead of me so I need to take a nap when Kiley is napping to gear up for it.  Tomorrow is Kevin's birthday and then I have Jersey's Bachelorette party tomorrow evening.   While I love busy weekends and seeing friends, I am also looking forward to having a couple of weekends coming up that we have nothing planned. 

Happy Friday and be safe if you are on the East Coast.  Kevin and I took an awesome trip to the Outer Banks a couple of summers ago so it is near and dear to my heart, so I hope Irene doesn't cause too much destruction. 



Back to School Traditions

So, as most schools are getting ready to head back to school next Monday, I am linking up today to Kelly's Korner for her weekly Show Us Your Life topic.  She picks a different topic each week and people can link up their own posts on the topic.  This weeks topic is Back to School Traditions. 

Since neither of the girls are in school yet, and we don't have any so-called traditions for them yet, I had to think back to the back to school traditions that I can remember doing each and every year.  The only one that really comes to mind is the quintessential Back-to-School picture.  Now, trying to find some of these pictures for this post proved to be a little difficult. I guess my mom must have most of them, but I did find this little gem. 

If my memory serves me correctly (based on the broken leg) this is me going into the 2nd grade which was the year that I started at Hunting Ridge.  I assume that Abby was starting junior high based on my quick 5 year addition (but I could be wrong, it's early).  There's a lot that can be said about this picture--mainly Abby's outfit because how cute am I, you can't make fun of me, but this post is about school traditions not bad outfits.  What I really wish was in this picture was the goose that my mom had on the front porch.  It was one of those big statue geese that my mom would dress up for different seasons, events, etc.  The goose had it's own closet for geese outfits that of course you can only buy at one of the zillions of craft fairs that she would drag my dad and I to (thinking of that, how did Abby always get out of going to the craft fair?) because what store would sell outfits for geese.  So, this leaves me to wonder, what was the goose wearing in this back to school picture?  I miss that goose and now I realize that I have to get something similar that my girls can remember and make fun of me for when they are older.  Love you mom :)

Other than that, I don't remember to many other back-to-school traditions.  Yes, we did the back to school shopping trips.  Of course, my favorite was always the shopping trip to get new school supplies.  If you know me, you know my love of office supplies.  It's a little sad that I don't have much use for them anymore, but you better believe that when it is time for the girls to go to school, they will have the best school supplies out there.  Let's hope that when they go to school an Ipad is not of the school supply list--why do I have a feeling that in a couple years that may be the case. 

The one thing about traditions is, obviously, you have to do them every year and you have to start them early on.  So, now I am left to think of the things that I want to be traditions for my family.  What back-to-school traditions do you remember as a kid and which ones to you think that I should do with the girls?  I need some good ideas. 

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  I have some fun posts planned for next week, so get excited!  I am leaving you on this Friday morning with a little video that I shot this morning while writing this post.  It is entitled, "Kiley is thirsty." And yes, I did stop her from doing this--after I shot the video :)