Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A Sigh of Relief!

So, it's been 4 days since Maddy's 1st birthday party, and I'm still exhausted from it! =) I have barely cleaned up LOL...we still have streamers on our ceiling, but at least all the balloons are gone! I have quite a few pictures that I want to post, so you'll have the bare with me :)

The one thing that threw me off balance that day was the fact that I TOTALLY forgot what time I put on the invites that the party was going to start. I had been thinking for WEEKS that the party started at 5pm-7pm, and was reminding a couple of friends about the time. Well, she calls that day just to verify the time, b/c I told her 5pm but the card said 4pm! YIKES!!! How did I forget that? So, I lost an hour of precious time to cook, clean, and organize everything. Then when I had Jeff go pick up the cake, which was supposed to be ready by 2pm, they were running late, and didn't finish by 2:30, then the people at the balloon store lost the slip of when we were going to pick up the balloons. So they didn't start blowing them up until Jeff got to the store! Those just peeved me, since I really needed him to be home to help put the decorations up, etc. But everything got done, and I think everyone enjoyed the food and the cake was SOOOOO delicious! There wasn't a single person who didn't say the cake was extremely good!



I had them make the very top layer a jumbo cupcake, so I could take that piece off and give it to Maddy as her own personal cake! It worked out great! And Maddy seemed to LOVE it! She almost ate the whole thing.



And this was Maddy right before we gave her the cake...she was patiently waiting ;)







"I WANT CAKE!!! I WANT CAKE!!!"









All in all, I think it went well...but it's so hard to tell when YOU are the one throwing the party, instead of enjoying yourself at someone else's party! I had a HUGE sigh of relief when all was said and done that evening! All the kids went to bed with no complaints, which shocked me to no end, since they had so much cake and ice cream right before bedtime. But I guess all the excitement from the day just wore them out. Sam and Cora were loving the fact that they had their cousins over so they got to play all evening. Okay, here are the rest of the pictures from that day that I wanted to share with you all...





This is just the view of the kitchen and some of the balloons that were up.

I got a shot of my sister's beautiful girls on the left sitting with Sammy and Cora on the stairs.















Here are some pictures of Maddy in her Korean Hambok. If you read my previous post, you would have seen Maddy in a different dress. I actually was borrowing the other dress from my sister, and was going to get Maddy her own dress at a later date...but my mother had made the comment that that was the whole purpose of the dress, to wear it on their first birthday. And I totally get that! So, my mother went out and bought Maddy her own dress, and I really appreciated it, since it was more expensive then I would have liked to have paid for! So that is why her dress looks different. Another Korean tradition that is done at the 1st birthday is what one of Jeff's friend's son so lovingly calls "the picking thing" LOL (you know who you are!). There are four things placed on a white table: some yarn/string, books, money, and some pencils. The yarn represents long life, the books represent being a scholar, the money (big shocker) represents fortune/prosperity, and the pencils represent a writer/creativity. These things are placed in front of the baby to see which one they touch or pick up first. Maddy immediately went for the pencils!! *clap, clap* I remember Cora went for the money, and Sammy went for the pencils too.





Maddy did such a great job blowing out her candle, of course, it didn't hurt that her big brother, sister, and 2 cousins were right there next to her blowing LOL!










Okay the last 2 pictures I wanted to share were of one of her presents. It was a stuffed bear from Build-a-bear, and she loved it :)





"NO DON'T TOUCH IT!! IT'S MINE!
















Big Hugs!











Another present that Maddy (and hey, let's face it, Cora and Sammy) LOVE to play with, is a big doll house that my sister and her family got for Maddy. Sammy will play with "the boy" which is really the Dad, and Cora will play with "the girl" which is the Mommy, and Maddy chews on the baby. It's quite adorable!



Oh, a funny, yet not so funny story that happened around 2am this morning. I had just got done waking Sammy up for his 2am pee-pee time (I do this b/c he doesn't always make it till morning, and I hate cleaning up pee sheets) and I had gotten into bed, when I heard Cora start screaming and screaming. She will do this 2 or 3 nights out of the week, so I wasn't surprised. But when I got into her room she was on one side of her bed, and her babydoll was on the other side. when I walked in she immediately said "Baby's.... EEEEYYYYESSSS (eyes)!!!" "They are closed! I'm scared! Take it out, take it out! You sleep with her, mommy". I was giggling so hard on the inside, but I didn't want her to think I thought it was funny, so I held it in. I think the shadows in the room made it look like her doll's eyes were closed. And this is a doll which she's had since before she was 1, and she's absolutely LOVED this doll to death and would never go to bed without her. I'm a little sad that she's so scared of it now, that she won't sleep with her, I'm hoping after some time, she'll be okay with the doll. She must have been really scared, b/c the first thing she talked about when she woke up this morning was how scared she was about Baby's eyes! hehhehe!

Friday, August 22, 2008

Maddy in Her Birthday Korean Dress

Okay, so I promised some friends that I would post some pictures of Maddy in her Korean dress...I'm a few days late on posting (LOL sorry). These pictures were taken a few days ago, when I realized that I hadn't put the dress on her yet to see how it fit! So I finally got that done, and decided to take some pictures of my cutie pie! She wasn't too happy with me after awhile...I just couldn't get her to stand still or even sit still for that matter, grrrr! PLEASE pay no attention to the very messy house, or Maddy's hair! hahahha.



If you end up clicking the images, you'll get a HUGE view, i'm just too tired to even try to resize them :) Maddy has been walking a lot in the past couple of days. The most steps she's taken so far is 14 steps!!! YAY Maddy ;) It's kinda funny b/c Cora learned how to walk so much differently than Maddy. Cora first learned how to balance herself from the floor to getting up onto her feet without holding onto anything, but maddy hasn't even attempted to do that. She just crawls to a surface where she can pull herself up and then walks from that standing position.

After I took Maddy's pictures, I thought it would be fun to see if Sam and Cora still fit their one yr birthday outfits (they were very BIG when they were 12 months, so the sleeves and the skirt/pants were hemmed). Sammy fit his perfectly, while Cora's sleeves were way too short and and skirt was above the ground.


Maddy and Cora's dresses are two very different styles of Korean Hamboks...another difference is that Cora's dress is more of a "winter" outfit with thicker, heavier material, and Maddy's dress is a "summer" outfit made of very light/see through material. Okay, it's time for me to head to bed, and start my last full day of getting everything ready for Maddy's party! I've bought most of the decorations and gift bags...tomorrow will be the rest of the decorations and gorcery shopping for all the food to feed about 35 ppl, then Saturday is cleaning, cooking, getting the cake and balloons!! Whew! Nite!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Amazing photography blogsite

I just wanted to post real quick (since I KNOW I'll forget if I don't do it now) this amazing blog site that I just found a few minutes ago, for photoshop/photoshop elements actions. These are actions that Anita writes and gives out for free and she has tons of tutorials too.

http://coffeeteaphotography.blogspot.com/2008/08/coffeeshop-vignette-free-action.html

I also made a link to the site on my side bar, if anyone wants to check it out.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Late Night

Okay, so it's 1:35am right now. The only reason I'm still up is (other than I just finished watching the evening coverage of the Olympics) that I totally forgot that I had a load of cloth diapers in the washing maching from earlier today, and I couldn't let it sit overnight. So now I had to do another wash cycle and rinse, then put them in the dryer. I can't STAND when I do that! All I want to do is go to bed!! GRRRR!!

It's been such a long time since I posted! Recently, it's due to me watching too much Olympics on tv! I stay up well after midnight everynight watching it, so I don't get much time to do anything else. I can't wait for it to be over, so I can get back to my normal life LOL LOL! Another reason I haven't really posted was b/c I've been stressing out over planning Maddy's b-day party. I just don't want to think about all the stuff I haven't done yet!

Update on Maddy and walking...she is no where near full out walking yet! The most she's done is 3 steps before she dive bombs to the floor! LOL it's hillarious how she'll take a step with both arms up over her head...while laughing, takes a step then immediately dives for the floor! COOCOO! But that my crazy Maddy-bear. Last night, while Jeff and I were watching the platform diving on tv, Cora became so entralled with it! She kept climbing onto her rocking chair (of all things LOL) and would jump off of it, over and over and over again, like she was diving into water. It was very cute! until she got Sammy into doing it, then it just got crazy with them both jumping everywhere. Cora has been really into watching "nastics" too...that's how she pronounces gymnastics. she'll sit and watch it without talking :)

I just got all the paperwork and forms for sam/cora's preschool that I need to fill out. I'm SO excited about it! The one thing that I'm kinda bummed out about, is that I totally didn't realize that this preschool is only 3 hrs a day (when most of the places I've seen are 4 hrs a day)! LOL isn't that horrible of me to be upset that my kids won't be out of the house longer hahahhaa!! oh well :)

I know I'm jumping around a lot on subjects, partly b/c I'm not thinking straight, and partly b/c HEY that's me LOL...but I wanted to post a few of my latest digital scrapbook pages that I've thrown together in between spending the day with the kids and watching the Olympics at night!

credits:
-Ever Mine Page Kit by Tina chambers
-Ever Thine Page Kit by Tina Chambers
-"Love": Victorian Trading Card (Brush Set) by Amanda Sok


journaling reads:
Cora and Maddy look up to their big cousins,
Susan and Catherine, so much! It’s so adorable
how Cora follows them around, wanting to do
whatever they do.

Credits:
-Breathe Page kit: solid green background by Keri Schueller
-Paper Template Faded Beauty by Syndee Nuckles
-Paper Template Fancy That by Syndee Nuckles
-paper Template Fanciful_Baroque by Amanda Sok
-Brush Set 4x6 Beyond Myself 3 by Melanie Johnson


credits:
-Basic Black Paper by Angie Briggs (recolored: dark purple background)
-Textured Cardstock_Purple by Amanda Sok (mat behind the photo)
-Circle Journaling Mat from the Gaia Page Kit by Ariadna Wiczling
-Vine Paper was a blend of 3 templates (recolored):
1) Photo Template_Paints by Valerie Randall
2) Paper Template Jen_edging by Valerie Randall
3) Paper Template Cheri5_Vines by Valerie Randall
-Paper tear Action by Melissa Renfro
-Beautiful Distress Brushset by Thao Cosgrove
-4x6 Brush set_Word Frames (LOVE) by Syndee Nuckles

journaling reads:
I just love it when I am able to catch a perfect, tender moment on film! I pray that you continue to love one another forever, as you do now. You may fight and argue, but a family based on love will never grow apart!

Well, I'm so hoping that I've killed enough time for the laundry to be done!...but at least that gave me an excuse to get my bloggin done :)