Sugar, spice and everything nice

Such a fun color combination for a soon to be baby girl!  In addition to the color scheme and chevron pattern, used my silhouette to cut out a custom drawn stroller for a special touch.  Shelia, thank you so much for asking me to create your friends baby shower invitations, hope everyone had a wonderful time and enjoyed the nail polish favors!

12 month round-up

A wise cousin of mine told me that that he believes God would not give us something we could not handle.....this prediction was prior to the boys being born.  Fast forward 12 months later, he just joined us just last weekend at the boys first birthday party and continued to say, he does not know how we do it…something that Scott and I get told often.

It’s funny, while life is definitely challenging in a completely rewarding way, this is our normal and we love it!  The past 12 months have been a complete whirlwind, but we made sure to take the time to enjoy every single moment.  I'm so thankful that we have so many adorable photos of them to help us keep the special memories and milestones near and dear to us.

Happy birthday my boys:-)  0-11 month rewind!

One smasher, one viewer but no sweet toother...

The boys are ONE and what better way to celebrate their birthday than with a smash cake....just one of the fun things we planned for their special day!

We started the morning out with lots of questions from Kyleigh now that the boys are one, she was so interested and curious to know what being one means....

   "can they talk now?"
   "can they walk now?"
   "can they get dressed on their own now?"

While I did my best to explain to Kyleigh, we spent the morning inside eating breakfast and then playing around.  During the boys morning nap Kyleigh and I got to work making 2 cakes, one for each of her brothers.  We decided to make a baseball cake to get us in the mood for their upcoming party.

Caleb LOVED getting his hands dirty and smashing the cake but had no interest in eating it, Christian didn't want to get dirty but took a few small calculated bites.  Next up was the clean-up, I volunteered to give the boys their baths while Scott focused on the floor.  After their bath a little impromptu dance party to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with their sister Kyleigh, a family bike ride and then out to dinner.  All in all a great day celebrating our boys.

Next up a post on the boys party!  We had such an amazing time with our family I don't know where to begin:-)

Nathan's First communion

Happy Communion Day to Nathan!  As always Tim and Heather, thanks for choosing me to make the invites for such a special day in your son's life.

Alligators oh my...

I'm in full wedding season, but you would likely never know it with the amount of growth charts I've been working on and posting lately.  The weddings will start hitting the blog around June, but for the time being I hope you all enjoy the custom growth charts I have been sharing.

I particularly love this one which was inspired by the Pottery Barn Gator Madras bedding collection.  My boys have the matching towels that we received as a gift from one of my friends, I love the primary bold colors and stripes (my personal favorite next to a chevron pattern).

Elephants and balloon's

I'm loving all of the collaboration and creativity with my Kinetic co-workers outside of our day-to-day client work.   Lauren on my team asked for a custom growth chart as a gift for baby Madelyn.  She sent me the bedding as inspiration...the Nursery is decorated in gray and they have the Harper Gray bedding from Pottery Barn.

Lauren mentioned Madelyn's parents are hopeful to add  pink accents to the nursery.  With that direction, I opted to keep the gray chevron pattern but add a cute elephant design that illustrated for my the boys room as the perfect addition of a cutie animal and the color pink.  

Sydney's Scare House

Karen, you sure know how to throw a fun party for your girls... I absolutely LOVE the Monsters Inc theme!  The minute the invites were complete the party could not come quick enough for Kyleigh to celebrate Sydney's 3rd birthday with her friends.

First up the invitations, I wanted to make it girly but include the friendly monsters....this was my first attempt to illustrate my version of the 2 characters!  Karen also asked requested signs for some fun activities such as custom made monster face treat bags, pin the eye on Mike Wazowski, a photo booth and a pinata filled with treats!

Also Sydney was as cute as can be in her cute tutu and Sulley shirt....she looked absolutely adorable:-)

All in all I loved the creativity and all of the decorations as much as the kids did!  Karen.....I think I need  to call you for help for the upcoming boy's first birthday party.....you definitely have an amazing talent for throwing AWESOME parties!

11 months ~ keeping us on our toes!

As I assemble the boys 1st birthday invitations for our family celebration I honestly can't believe that Christian and Caleb are less than one month shy of 1. While I'm excited and have been having so much fun watching them grow and develop unique personalities, I do get a bit choked up wondering where the time went?

The boys are the perfect combination of sweet and mischievous all wrapped into one, which definitely keeps us on our toes. Christian and Caleb love giving hugs and kisses to everyone including their big sister....but when they spot an opportunity to climb or get into trouble they will absolutely take it.  The boys are not only crawling, but crawling faster than Scott and I can catch them!  The minute I open up a non safe kid zone such as a bathroom, closet or garage door they are off to see what is inside.  Then when I move one boy out, the opposite brother crawls back in, it truly is a funny cycle that has Kyleigh in giggles watching the entire experience!   Additionally, they both know how to climb up into Kyleigh's toddler bed, but think they can dive headfirst out of it.....so supervision in her room is a must.

Caleb and Christian's 11 month shoot went a little crazier than the last as they are truly on the move.  The only pics I was able to capture of the two of them together was in Caleb's crib. From what I'm remembering ironically enough Kyleigh was the same way....looking at her pics below we had her in her bed as well @ 11 months. 

As I finish editing this post I came across an article in the Huffington Post that I can relate to oh so well.  A mom of twin girls and a toddler boy talks about the 12 lessons her twins taught her in 12 months….she has inspired me to write my own lessons next month!  

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/5143521

Fun times all around, see you next month as the mommy of (gasp) twin 1 year olds!

Pre-School Party Time!

This year I'm really ahead of the game for Kyleigh's Easter School party.  We both went to Michael's about a month ago and found these cute and practical water bottles.  Her school has a no sugar/sweet/preservative policy so we are always looking for ways to be creative and to find things her friends can have fun with!  

I used the bunny name tags I illustrated for Kyleigh last year and made a happy easter text graphic to cut out on my silhouette.  While the boys were sleeping this past Saturday, Kyleigh could hardly wait to assemble that she pulled me out of bed at 6am to finish!  My job was to tie the ribbon, Kyleigh took care of the rest, picked out the ribbon color, paper color and taped on the easter bunny message!  

Hope she has fun at her party tomorrow, off to bed tonight…...

If I could only time-stamp this photo you would see she is all smiles at 6am this past Saturday!

Frozen....& 6!

Frozen has taken over, and how fitting for Kennidie my cute niece to ring in Chicago springtime with a wintery party…..hopefully Kennidie can bring back summer!

Happy birthday my sweet goddaughter.