A baby shower!

Any mama whose been nurturing a life inside her for months and months deserves a party!  My friend Becky is due next week with a little boy and the groupie girls and I threw her a shower on February 5.  It came together really well, and I'd thought I'd share some of the fabulousness.

me, Beth, Becky, Carly, Kerry

When you stick four heads together, you are bound to come up with some great ideas.  Here are my favorites from the shower:

1)  Letting go of the light blue.  No offense to you traditionalists, but we just couldn't get excited about doing a light blue shower.  So we decided to go with the color scheme Beth found on some mommy-pretty invitations--navy and lime green and white.

tissue paper poofs added a festive touch

a simple centerpiece with ribbons and pillars

 clothesline of baby boy clothes

3)  Three Words:  Fruit. Infused. Water.  Carly's mom put together this beautiful water decanter with fruit.  It tasted amazing.  I couldn't believe how refreshing it was!  (if you want to do it yourself, Carly's mom says put the ice in first, then slide the fruit around the outside.)

I want some now.  mmmmm.

4) No group games.  It was a large guest list, and the last time we had a crowd at my sister's shower it was almost impossible to get everyone in the same room, no less play a game.  And everyone would rather visit anyway.  SO, we had various stations set up around the main rooms.  At their leisure, ladies could get food, visit, guess the baby food, sign up to bring Becky a meal, sign a keepsake, guess facts about baby-to-be, and guess the price of various baby items.  After about an hour of this open-house style, we gathered whoever was interested and Becky opened her gifts.  We also announced game winners and awarded small prizes.  It worked GREAT.

guess the baby food!

5)  Fabulous food.  Everyone made something, and a few others helped too.  The menu for this morning shower:  cupcake balls, croissants, raspberry chocolate chip scones, snicker salad (do you know about the amazing treat this is???), hawaiian cheese spread, egg casserole, fruit, and raspberry bars.  Y.U.Double-M!

It was so fun to honor our beautiful friend, Becky.  Can't wait to meet her little boy!

Becky and me


Hope you enjoyed the glimpse of Becky's shower!

Gray day

 

I went for over a month without blogging.  I didn't intend to, but I kept feeling the need to get "caught up" on life before I spent my time writing.  Well, guess what?  I'm not caught up.  Oh well, I figure if I wait for that, I'll be waiting a while.

Life has been full lately.  In fact, I've decided to ease back in to blogging--with newsy little posts talking about what I've been up.  I'm calling them "Life Lately".    You can read about my life as a porcupine, and my attempt at nester-like window mis-treatments.  There are more of these riveting posts to come.  :0)

Today, I'm just talking about today.  It's Friday and I'm catching up with the Company Girls.  My day-off Friday agenda includes another visit to my needle-weilding PT, helping my mom get ready for a baby shower she is hosting tomorrow, picking up Bubba from school, accompanying Dave to his latest back procedure, and caring for Pickle who is home with a migraine.

And after a sunny week, today we woke up to fog and frost and snow flurries.   GRAY.  But pretty in it's own way.

this is actually a picture of two trees in our yard--if you look closely, you'll see that Dave unintentionally lined the trees up, and some of the branches belong to the one way closer to the curb.  :)

my frosted-on-one-side bush

For those of you following along, Dave's back procedure today is the latest idea the latest doctor wants him to pursue.  He will be getting the nerves that give him the most trouble deadened/killed.  I guess the nerves will grow back in several months, but the hope is they will grow back happy.  (I obviously don't really understand).  Today is just the first step, where anesthetic is shot into the specific place to determine if indeed they got the right spot.  He will be sedated--so I will be with him.  If you are a pray-er, please pray that they get it right and that he finds some relief.  In prep for these procedures he can't take his pain meds for 5 days--so it's been a rough week.

Well, bloggies, it's time to bundle up and get out the door with plenty of time to take it slow on the slick roads.  My mood today is not gray like the outdoors--I'm looking forward to seeing what God has in store for this day.  Each day is an adventure as I walk with Him.

***Update 6:40 pm.  Dave did fine at his procedure--however, the results weren't great.  It was diagnostic to see if they killed the nerves there, would it help.  We were to know right away in the recovery room.  He had no relief.  SO, we are back to the drawing board.  Boo.

I've been mistreatin'

Have I told you about my blog friend, Dawn?  I am not talking about myself here, bloggies.  Dawn blogs at Beyond Grace and she and I connected early on in my blog-life.  Somehow I managed not to tell you all that she and I got to meet in real life this Christmas!  She lives in FL, and we were just a few hours apart while we visited Dave's folks--so we made it happen!   We had a grand time--Dave and I and Dawn and her family.  We ate lunch at a restaurant and laughed our heads off.  What a treat! 

I tell you this as a prelude to my Life Lately post.  I bring Dawn up, cause I had to laugh when she commented on my last post about the needles, that she hoped my next post would be more "smiley".  So, for you Dawn, a much more smiley post:

I knew since before Christmas that I wanted to make a little color update in my family room when the holidays were over.  That room has had a navy couch, tan chair and dark red accents for a long time.  I had really cute window treatments my mom made--and I'm sorry I can't find a picture--but imagine valances with two fabrics, one floral and one ticking.  The colors were muted and I loved 'em for a decade.  And then, all of a sudden, I was done with them.  I wanted to add a fun color to the room--something I could mix with the dark red ( the room opens to my red kitchen) and that would work with the navy.  I chose one of my favorite colors these days--aqua/light turquoise/robin's egg blue.

I was inspired by the nester's window mistreatment ideas, and by my mom and sis who had already mistreated some windows in their homes.  I decided I could make me some curtain-like mistreatments.  With my mom's help, I bought some fabric on sale the first day I looked.  (Can I just say that is a miracle for normally-indecisive me?!?).  The next night, I did it!  No sewing, just folding and ironing and hanging and fiddling.  All by myself--like a big girl!

Ta-da! Here is how they look in my little family room.  Yes, you can still see the spots where we took the old valances down.  We'll get to painting that soon.    A very different vibe than I had before...but I like it.  What do you think?

I then (of course) needed to replace the valance in the kitchen.  I took some scraps of the fabric from the family room, and a piece of a canvas dropcloth, a little help from my mom and Pickle, and voila!--a little kitchen valance!

I'm fairly proud of myself--mostly cause it all happened within a few days (that's unusual for me)--but also cause they don't look half-bad.  I'm no nester, but it still works.  And I bought all the fabric, the rods, brackets and clips on sale and the whole project was under $90.

How's that for smiley, Dawn?  :0)

feeling like a porcupine...

Needles, anyone???

I didn't think so.

Lately, I've had my fair share of needle experience.  January and February have been full of needles.  Nope, I haven't taken up cross-stiching or needlepoint.  I've been in treatment for my neck and shoulder issues.  My doc referred me to physical therapy--to a specific therapist who does a specific treatment called dry-needling.  So, twice a week I drive a half-hour to have myself stuck with needles.  I know you wish you were me.

Apparently, my neck and shoulder issues are due to misuse and abuse for many years, and ignoring the chronic tension there for too long.  Dry-needling is a way to get very tight muscles to release over time.  Kelly, my PT (who I really like in spite of what she does to me) takes acupuncture needles and sticks them into various spots on my neck and head and shoulders.  It does not hurt when they go in--the needles are so thin you don't feel a puncture at all.  However, then she either leaves them there or wiggles them around until the muscle twitches and releases.  It is not particularly pleasant to have them wiggled.  Kelly says I "secretly like it", cause it's helping me.  If she leaves the needles in to "cook", she comes back after five minutes and "spins" them, and then removes them after an additional 5 minutes.  It's not as bad as the wiggling part, but it's achy and weird.  Then I get a ten minute heat application (also known as a nap).  That part is nice.  Kelly says, "come for the needles, stay for the heat".

She also has me making ergonomic changes to my workstation at work, and to my laptop habits at home (read here: no more blogging from my couch or bed--boo.), and doing some stretches for my posture, etc.    On top of that, every two weeks I head back to my doc and he gives me "trigger point injections" into my overtight muscles.  The injections contain some meds that help my uptight muscles to chill a bit.  Each time, I drive right from the doc's to PT for Kelly to "dig the snot out of" my muscles.  On those days--no needles from Kelly--just massage and ultrasound.  And then heat if I want.  It's a regular spa-day!

It's been almost two months and I am just starting to notice the treatments paying off.  I think I am beginning to turn a corner.  So, bloggies, perhaps you have been wondering where I was if I wasn't blogging?  Perhaps you imagined me shopping, relaxing, or enjoying the beautiful Colorado mountains.  NOPE.  Much of my normal writing time I am laying face down with all sorts of needles sticking out of me.

Like a porcupine.

A porcupine with bad posture and incorrect laptop technique--that's me.  :0)

So I wonder...

is anyone still out there?  I have taken an unplanned and way too long blog break...and I wonder if any of you might still darken the doorstep of my little blog...

Regardless, it's time to get back to it.  I love blogging, and it is good for me.  And it's a three day weekend...so if I can't jump back in now, when will I??

I am glad to report that there has been no major crisis that has kept me away.  In fact, if I told you all the little reasons I have been putting off my reentry into blogland, I'd bore myself.  I have, however, thought it would be fun to fill you all in on what I've been up to lately...and this week will post a little series called...

I know...you can hardly wait.  :0)

I'll blog at you again soon, bloggies.