Our Baby’s First Birthday

Our boy turned one in November! We blinked and a year went by. Even though we know our baby won’t remember his first birthday, I love any reason to celebrate and have a party. This was also a day to celebrate my husband and I as parents for surviving the first year!

We invited our close friends and family over to our home to celebrate our little guy. I got this balloon arch kit from Amazon and spent the night before blowing up balloons and putting it together. Luckily I also invested in this balloon pump a couple of years ago which makes the process go a lot faster. These are never my favorite to make but I always love how they turn out and doing it yourself saves so much money (of course our dog Edgar had to get in the photo). I also order this one balloon to use as a decoration.

A girl I met in a local moms group made this smash cake and it was delicious! Our boy loved it so much that we eventually had to take it away from him. My husband and I ended up finishing the cake throughout the week because it was too good to throw away. I order these Wood Round Pedestal Risers to display his cake and now use them for plants and other items to display in our home.

I made a letter template on cardstock where guests could write a letter to our son on his first birthday. I took the letters and added them to his baby book. I absolutely love this baby book from Artifact Uprising called The Story of You and I hope this will be something my son treasures when he is older. I forgot to get a photo of this from the party but below are a couple photos of his baby book.

I also got this First Birthday Photo Banner from Etsy and thought it turned out so cute with a photo of him from each month (Several months later and we still have this banner hanging up! I think it may be time to take it down).

I found this One Year Old Birthday Crown and little Suspender Outfit on Amazon. His Birthday Boy shirt was a hand-me-down from a friend, but there are many on Etsy.

Chipotle does catering and is very affordable so we decided to go this route instead of worrying about cooking. It was delicious and we had a lot of left overs for Chipotle Bowls. Our little 1 year old loved it too.

The party ended with opening gifts and signing happy birthday. There is something so special about seeing all the people you love in your life sing happy birthday to this little guy who you adore. It was also very obvious that our boy is the first grandchild on both sides. 😄 He was spoiled and loved opening his gifts (Well he kind of opened them, I helped a lot but it was great practice for him right before Christmas-haha). It was a very memorable day and I’m looking forward to celebrating our son each year!

DIY Nursery Transformation

My sons nursery was originally used as a room for storage, filled with unpacked boxes from when we first moved into our home. When we first moved in, we ripped out the stained carpet, closed the door and let the room sit for months. This was until we found out we were pregnant and knew we would have to get this room ready for our baby!

All of our bedrooms in our home are small with limited closet and storage space. I knew I wanted to transform the closet into something more functional, especially since babies need so many things. This was when I discovered the IKEA Pax closet system. Very affordable and customizable to fit your design and your space. It took a couple of weeks to get all the parts I wanted due to supplies being out of stock but I’m very happy with the end results and happy with how much we are able to pack into this closet (The Pax systems were also easy to build and put together-I did this 8 months pregnant)! I also ended up getting the Billy Book Case from IKEA and used it on the left side of the closet since there was more space but the smallest PAX base didn’t fit. This worked out great for toy storage and other misc. items. The bins in the bookcase are also from IKEA and fit perfectly. I added wallpaper to the back to make it look more like a finished custom closet and used drawer inserts to organize clothes.

The other huge transformation to this room was the hardwood floors. My husband rented a sander and sanded them all down, trying his best to get the deep stains and paint off. He used a clear coat to finish them off. The floor transformation is night and day!

We also decided to give the walls a fresh coat of paint. Choosing a color was very challenging since this room looks completely different depending on the light and the time of day. I also have a very hard time making decisions and being pregnant didn’t help (ha!). We went with the color Evergreen Fog from Sherwin Williams which was also the color of the year of 2021 when our son was born.

We ordered some new shades for the window, added a new light fixture, replaced the door/doorknob, replaced the trim and added quarter round to cover the small gaps on the floor, added trim around the closet (we may add bifold doors one day), replaced the light switch with a dimmer and then this room was ready (we finished everything probably about a week or two before our son was due-always last minute around here but we get it done)!

We love how this space turned out for our son and feel so proud to call this his room.

On the left is my last “bump picture” before my son was born and on the right is our son in his finished bedroom!

Baby Shower For Our Boy

On Sunday we had our baby shower to honor our baby boy that is due in November. It’s hard to believe that in just two short months we will have our baby. A BABY!! Wow has the time flown by. Seeing our close friends and family made everything feel much more real and much closer to our due date. Am I feeling all prepared and ready? Definitely not! But my husband and I greatly appreciate all the love and support we received on Sunday honoring our baby boy and we feel more ready as each day goes by.

We couldn’t have asked for a better party for Baby K! We decided to have a co-ed shower (since my husband Tommy is just as important) and planned the party during the Seahawks game since we thought it would be fun to watch with our favorite people. Tommy set up one of our TVs outside and made a couple of seating areas with tables and chairs under a large canopy tent on the patio. Somehow the weather held up throughout the day right up until the hawks went into overtime. Then came an intense downpour and we ended up loosing. But for a Seahawks loss, we sure had an amazing time.

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All of our immediate family pitched in to to make the day very special. We had an abundance of sweets since Tommy and I both LOVE dessert. Cupcakes, chocolate chip blonde bars, espresso cookies, pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and the most delicious vanilla cake with chocolate filling that my mom ordered from a local bakery nearby. She also brought some sides and made endless pasta salad, her staple. My sister-in-law created and planned some fun games to play during half time (Guess Who: Mom or Dad, Baby Trivia and Who is the dad?). And my in-laws hosted everyone at their house on the patio and made some delicious pulled pork and food that was served.

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We definitely felt the love from the amazing people in our lives and are feeling so very excited to meet our son soon!

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Gender Reveal Party

When my husband and I first found out we were pregnant, we immediately decided we would find out if we were having a boy or a girl. (There is absolutely no way the teacher/planner in me would be able to wait). And we love to have parties so we decided why not have a little gender reveal party!

At 14 weeks, we did the NIPT blood test which screened our baby for the most common defects, including Down Syndrome, trisomy 13, and trisomy 18. We added on the option to find out the sex and then had the results put in a sealed envelope which we got on May 23rd. That very night we gave the envelope to our friend Amber since it would be way too tempting to sneak a peak at the results. (We had our party on June 19th and waited 3 weeks after we received the results to accommodate our schedules). Waiting was hard but also fun because during that time we would go back and forth discussing if baby was a boy or girl and why.

We invited our immediate family and some of our close friends to keep things small and intimate. I made a Balloon Arch to use as a background and love how it turned out. I also got these Gender Reveal Buttons for friends and family to guess if they thought baby was a boy or girl. We had some charcuterie boards and snacks and did a pasta salad bar with a bunch of different cold pasta salads to eat. For dessert, funfetti cupcakes! And I had to somehow include our pup Edgar so I got him a Big Brother Bandana (totally unnecessary but I think was very cute).

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For the actual reveal we used 10 Confetti Cannons which Amber ordered for us since she was the only person who knew the sex. Instead of releasing the cannons ourselves, we had our friends and family circle around us and count down while we watched under the balloon arch. This made for such a special and memorable moment. Honestly it was incredible watching the colors fly in the sky and a day we both won’t ever forget.

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And we are having a baby boy!!! We had such an amazing time and this party made us even more excited for our little babe. Now to think of and decide on a name. Any suggestions? ☺️