Nina's Sweet Pea Baby Shower

Our first weekend back, Nina had her baby shower. I was in charge of the decorations, while Matt's cousin was in charge of food and games. It was a lot of fun and she had a good bunch show up. Even Cristy (her best friend from Miami) came!

The theme was "sweet pea." Nina is having a baby girl (in about a month now - crazy!), but really isn't into the pink and purple stuff. So she asked me if we could do orange and green. And this is what we came up with! I had a ton of fun taking pictures with Nina's nice camera. Wish I had my own DSLR! 

Prizes for game winners

Favors

Nina received a ton of cute gifts, but my favorite gift was the 3-pack of girly BYU onesies. 

Nina with Michelle, Matt's cousin.

Steph came, too! We're so glad that she's back from Memphis.
We missed her!

Nina & Cristy

The Florida girls! Oh, and Star is also pregnant :)

I am so excited for Nina and Matt. It's so strange and crazy to think that they're going to be "mom" and "dad" soon. But it seems like that's what everybody is doing these days. Almost all of our married friends are pregnant! But anyway, I'm even more excited to meet little Luna! I've been helping Nina here and there ever since she's been pregnant and I feel like the wait is forever! Pregnancy would definitely test my patience. I want to see how she's going to look. I'm sure she's going to be all sorts of beautiful! If I'm excited to meet her, I can only imagine how Nina feels. March can't get here any quicker!

Blaine's 25th Birthday

Last Friday, Blaine turned 25. He's a quarter of a century old. Isn't that insane?! He'll be 30 in 5 YEARS! Crazy! Usually, I spoil him a lot throughout the month, making it his "birthday month." But we've been so busy this semester that I really didn't have the time to do that (and he didn't have the time to be spoiled!). So we began his official birthday celebrations on Thursday, by going to Tucano's for his free birthday meal. I was stuffed pretty quickly, and although the food was good, I felt that it was too salty this time! I just sat and watched Blaine eat for a couple of minutes. He really loves Tucano's! 

On Friday morning, he woke up to presents from friends and family (a big thank-you! to all those who sent cards and packages). He received gift cards galore, Blu-rays, video games, Redskins gear, and golf novelty items (the Hoffmann's gave him a golf grilling set) and a bunch of other little things. He loved it all! We had breakfast together (which rarely happens). I made Blaine birthday cake batter oatmeal. He loves anything and everything cake batter and we've been on an oatmeal kick lately. It didn't turn out as pretty as I thought, but he said it tasted great. 

On the day of his birthday, Blaine had to take a midterm for his supply chain and global management class at the testing center. Taking a test on your birthday is no fun, but at least the testing center gave him a free happy birthday pencil! I guess it's not such an evil place. Blaine did well on his exam and got an A. As if taking a test on his birthday wasn't bad enough, Blaine was really sick. He had the flu. I had made reservations at The Chef's Table for his birthday dinner. We have been wanting to go forever. But Blaine just wanted soup from Olive Garden, so that's what we did instead. We were also going to go watch Comedy Sportz - an improv show in Provo. But he really wasn't up for any of it. We stayed home, watched some of our favorite shows, and went to bed early.

On Saturday, Blaine was feeling a little better. I guess it was just enough to go to Fashion Place quickly to pick out his new watch! Blaine received several Nordstrom gift cards from my family. He lost his watch this summer and wanted a nicer one. He was so happy with his watch! We went back home as soon as he got it. When Blaine wants to leave the mall that soon, you know he's sick!

That night, I had planned a golf-themed surprise par-tee for Blaine. It was a lot of fun to prepare. I really enjoy planning parties and just decorating. I was able to use my Cricut for the banner (I have a love/hate relationship with banners) and I think it turned out nicely! Unfortunately, not a lot of people came! I was so bummed and I felt bad for Blaine! At the last minute, a lot of our friends got called in to work or just didn't show up. But of course, Matt and Nina were there as well at Matt and Amber! Bubba and Jesse Jordan also passed by. Blaine really liked all of the golf decorations. He said that he was kinda happy that a lot of people didn't show up because he still wasn't feeling great. So we ended up having a small little party with close friends. We've had junk food (chips and donut holes) in our house since there was so much leftover. We never buy chips and those kind of snacks! But we've had leftover red velvet cake batter ice cream cake from Coldstone! :) We can't complain about that...

Blaine loves Coldstone's cakes!

Make a wish!

Blowing out 25 candles! 

So my dear husband is 25. I feel like the years are passing by so fast! I'm so excited for many more birthdays together and for all the wonderful things we have yet to experience. I felt that Blaine and I were more emotional on this birthday than others. This will be his last birthday in this stage of our lives. There is so much ahead of us that is unknown. But we're both so excited to go through all of it together.

I never imagined that I could be this happy being Blaine's wife and having him for a best friend. My love for him grows each passing day. I consider myself so lucky and blessed. Getting older doesn't seem so bad when you have the love of your life by your side forever! Love you Blaine! 

Things I've Made (So Far in 2012)

I have a Cricut, but have barely used it (due to my lack of cartridges). It was my friend, Stephanie's, birthday in January and decided to give her a vinyl to put up on her wall. This was my first one and I was very nervous. But it turned out fine and she really seemed to like it! 

Earlier in January, my stake had a Super Saturday Relief Society Activity. It's a morning full of classes about everything. They had craft classes, cooking classes, home enrichment classes - that type of stuff. It was pretty cool. I went with my friend, Kailyn (thank goodness she's in the ward!) and we ended up going to a felt pillow class. It's a tiny pillow but it was fun to make. It doesn't really match with my apartment, but I do love the color purple! It was fun learning how to make the flower. It was pretty therapeutic. 

Like I mentioned earlier, Nina's birthday was on the day of our anniversary. I didn't know what to get her and finally decided to give her some decorations for her apartment. She had mentioned that she liked The Family: A Proclamation to the World that I had, so I made her one too. I've lost count of how many of these I've made. They're so nice, cheap and easy. I love them so much! 

Aren't they cute? 

So since I practiced my vinyl lettering with Stephanie's gift in January, I gathered up the courage to try making a sign. It really wasn't that hard at all. I'm just a chicken. I'm scared of dimensions, proportions, and having everything centered. I'm not good at measuring things. But it turned out better than I expected.

Now that I feel more confident with the Cricut, I might start investing in more cartridges. I want to make a sign for our apartment about family. Hopefully, I'll get to that soon! 

Cricuting

I mentioned in previous posts that Stacey gave me one of her Cricuts. I haven't used it much because I've been crazy busy with school. But this past month, I was able to play around with it for the first time. At work, we have this bulletin board right outside of our office. We use it to put helpful information for students about off-campus housing. For spring/summer, we had a sea-themed board. The office manager, Garry, loves Cars, the movie. So when we were thinking about a theme for fall/winter, he suggested Cars since the new movie was coming out. I thought this would be hard but we do anything to please the boss. So a light bulb went on in my head and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to familiarize myself with my Cricut! I knew that Stace had a Cars cartridge and asked her to send it to me. As soon as I got it in the mail, I brought my little Cricut to work and started to play! (It was awesome getting paid to craft...)

My first successful cut.

At first, I was a little frustrated because I didn't know how to work it 100%. I'd press buttons and it'd give me some messages that I didn't understand. I was about to give up when Chris, the only boy in our office, decided to give it a try. He was great at it! Once he got the hang of it, he explained to me how it worked and I was so happy! It was so much fun to see it cut with such detail. It really is an impressive machine. 

The final product.
(Don't mind the ugly handwriting on the upper right hand corner).

So I thought that the board would take about a week to make. But with the Cricut, it only took a day! I never want to cut anything with scissors again! We made a mountainous background with a winding road as the setting. After we assembled all the cars and little figures (my favorite were the traffic cones), I realized that the board was more decorative than informative! Oh well. Hopefully it will grasp students' attentions! 

I'm now really excited to work on my own projects. I have a couple of wall vinyls that I want to make, a scrapbook about Blaine's mission, and some cute wedding gift ideas. I probably won't start Blaine's mission scrapbook until we return from our summer vacation (we are going to get some mission memorabilia when we're in Delaware). But I do hope to do something before our summer is over! If you have any project ideas, please let me know!