Thanksgiving 2014

Happy Turkey Day!

Every year we alternate sharing the holidays with my family and Micah's, and this was the Russell's year all together for thanksgiving. My mother in law hosted the dinner at their house in Sandy but did a really fun turkey party at the All Star Lanes in Draper beforehand.

If you live in Utah and haven't been yet, you need to go. It's located right in the old VF factory outlets off of 123rd south and State Street. They have arcades, bowling, bumper cars, laser tag.. Seriously tons of stuff for all ages. 

We started out bowling with the whole Russell fam and got a few really fun pics. 

My cute mother in law Dianne and my nephew cuddling up with Livi. Andrew loves Olive and is so sweet with her. 

Total fat face pic but so cute

Liv getting a little help from daddy 

After the first one she actually got kinda scared of the whole bowling thing. She wanted to run down the alley and grab at the flashing lights but wasn't too interested in bowling. 

Little stinker did better than I did! I'm blaming the belly though.. Totally threw off my groove!

After we bowled our games, we headed over to the arcade and played around on them. Olive loooooved it!

Loved the merry go round!

And the cars

Micah also had some fun 

We played around on some bigger kid games too and won Livi some random toys with our points. 

We met back up at Lynn & Dianne's for dinner prep and games. 

I made my fave pasta, the fiesta pasta and Micah initiated this selfie.. He neeeeever does! Thanksgiving brings miracles apparently hahaha. 

My mother in law had the best table settings, so festive! 

My card holder killed me haha!

Mama Indian with a bundled babe!

Dinner was so yummy, I can't get enough of turkey dinners!!

After dinner we did the traditional award giving process and Lynn & Dianne did too much as usual in spoiling us all with the cash prizes. 

Once those were all handed out we went into the basement for some minute to win it games that wveryone participated in and totally loved. 

Olive was obsessed with the baby!

Micah and his bro Matt tied for the longest standing jump. 

Micah and I left after the tournament ended and all of the prizes were handed out. Such a fun night with fam!

We stopped over at Target for a Black Friday deal for me.. An Xbox One! I jumped in line and waited to go in for about a half hour.. The line was super long so I was a little concerned but also given that the Xbox One's came out last year, I wasn't suuuuper concerned. 

By the time I was in the store and had found the area where they were set out there were only 6 Xbox One bundles! Sketchy! I grabbed mine and hurried to check out.. Yahtzee!

That night I put my new goodies together and played for a while. Love love love. 

After thanksgiving day we hung out with my family as much as we could while my brother Matt & sis in law Cara were in town from Texas.  They haven't seen Livi since June and were missing her tons so it was way fun to see them play together and for Olive to say "rara" and "nat". 

My mom took Cara & I out to get pedis & we all got some fun festive nails done then headed back to my parent's house for turkey sandwiches for dinner. First we stopped at Fresh Market (looking pretty amazing) for some pasta salads. 

Here's a close up of my toes

I asked the guy (yep, a guy) for just a snowflake but he gave me a whole Christmas scene instead. Umm alrighty then!

At my parent's house, Liv got some much needed play time with my siblings. 

The next day, my mom, Cara, and I went to Gardner Village for some Christmas shopping and lunch at Archibald's. Livi tagged along with us girls and it was really fun. I found some fabric for Olive's big girl bed that I have pics of HERE. 

I put Liv in piggy tails and a denim tunic.. Cutest toddler ever. 

She was plotting something sinister here muhahhahaha. 

Not long after lunch, Cara and my mom had to leave but I stayed a little while longer to shop.. And miss Liv passed out adorably. 

Thanksgiving came and left far too quickly this year, and so did Matt & Cara! It was great catching up and so much fun seeing Olive warm up to them again and play. 

Before they left, they gave Livi her Christmas gift early -- the cutest bunny sweater I've ever seen! She calls her bunny "muneee" and when I pull it out for her to wear now she goes "muneee!!" 

Matt & Cara will be back in Utah for our little man's birth in April, but goodness, that's way too far away. Lots of FaceTiming will be happening between then!

xoxo

Mandi

Favorite Crafts Night

Last year I threw a super fun and easy party, a Favorite Things Party and it was a huge hit and a blast! This time around I wanted to try a variation of it, each person bringing a craft in place of a gift of something they love.

I used my fave app Rhonna Designs to make the invite:

{I whited out my address & our phone numbers.. I also have no idea why this pic uploaded as so grainy.}

My awesome friend Misty and I sent out our invites and got to thinking of our own crafts. I, of course procrastinated and decided on my craft the day of the party!

On the Facebook event we put this as the cover photo, again I used the Rhonna Designs app. Seriously if you don't have it, go grab it!

The Decor

The party decor was pretty much my fall decor. Because this style party is so laid back it didn't call for big elaborate decorations or flair. You can certainly do that for your own, but I got lazy ;)

A little pinch of fall decor in the entry. 

Simple thanksgiving chalkboard art. 

Side note - Misty saved it from looking too Halloweeny by bringing white napkins.  :) 

Printable "happy thanksgiving" sign I made via Pinterest. 

I made these lovely fabric teepees and I'm totally in love!!! Super easy and I think I may be making more for Olive's big girl decor. 

Two different times of day pics to show the new banners I made. These big windows are sooo fun to decorate but sooo hard to take a good pic of! And in case it's a little hard to see, the two banners on the sides are leaf shaped lovelies, found that tutorial and pattern on Pinterest. And the "happy turkey day" I simply cut out of sparkly orange paper and glued to bakers twine. Love!

Give thanks banner in the kitchen that I made from another free printable on Pinterest. 

The Party

Micah took Liv on a date to hang out with her Gammy (my mother in law) so it was a baby-less night at the Russell house!

Misty and I set out the food (which I totally forgot to take a pic of) as people arrived and started snacking as we went.. A girls gotta eat, right?  ;)   I made my favorite pasta dinner, fiesta pasta. Here's the recipe:

Variations:

You can use chicken breasts instead of canned chicken, add more or less of any of the ingredients, depending on preference. Also can use regular vinegar over he balsamic. I prefer the richer flavor the balsamic gives. 

The fiesta ranch packets can be found in the salad dressing aisle at Walmart. I haven't found it at any other grocery store unfortunately. 

Misty made some incredibly addicting chocolate turtles.. Yes, she made them. Serious skills. 

Here's her recipe:

The other snacks and goodies included:

Chips and spinach dip (pretty addicting!)

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies,

Chex mix amazingness

Mixed chocolate cookies

Salsa verde chips (my personal brand of crack cocaine)

Cookie dough

EL fudge cookies

Lots of cookies, cuz lesbi-honest, what girl doesn't LOVE cookies? :)

The first part of the party we just stuffed our faces and chatted. It was so fun to catch up with some friends I don't see regularly! It's amazing how quickly you can fall back into the comfortable groove of friends that you shared lots of awkward middle school years with. Something about seeing each other in braces and horribly mismatching clothes makes you forever bonded!  ;P 

I forgot to mention, as everyone arrived we had them write their name on 3 slips of paper and put them into a bowl. So once we were done with eating (well, kind of done haha) we sat down and each drew 3 names from the bowl, making sure we didn't accidentally grab our own.  

We went around the room, starting with Meg and anyone who drew her name from the bowl raised their hand. She then passed her gifts out to each of us and briefly explained her craft. 

She gave out puffy paint sets, designed for us to make puffy paint art or shirts or really any variation of it. Seriously so fun! I still have a shirt that she made me back in high school (maybe even middle school) from puffy paint. Check out its amazingness!

So we continued around the room, each of us explaining our crafts and handing them out. 

I gave out a hand stitching set. I love the Grinch so I made copies of the pattern and put the needed fabric, needle, & strings in the bags. It's the kind of craft you can do while watching tv then either make into a pillow once the stitching is done or frame it for a table decoration. So fun!

This is mine that I am not very far on but you can see the basics of it. It says: "It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags. Christmas can't be bought from a store, maybe Christmas means a little bit more. -Dr. Seuss"

Sheridan brought yarn poofs to make into pumpkins! She included the yarn, a square of burlap for the leaves, and a little sprig of cinnamon. So clever, I've always wanted to learn how to make pom poms so this was a perfect intro to them!

Misty brought paint chip garlands, in Christmas colors to make Christmas trees, candy canes, or snowflakes, out of the green, red, and white paint chips. I've seen so many examples on Pinterest but have never gotten around to making any, so excited that I drew her name to make them!

Courtnie brought a DIY chalkboard set with red Christmas bells. She provided the picture frame & paint so you just take the glass out of the frame, paint it, and boom! You have a chalkboard! 

Totally forgot to take a pic of it, ugh fail! :(

Ashley brought paper pinwheel sets with lots of paper colors to choose from! I've seen these on Pinterest too and have saved a bunch of how-to's but never gotten the "correct" way to make them before. She included the instructions and everything. 

Brittany brought red paper lanterns with black paper and silver square stickers. I never would've thought of this, but love love love the idea. Santa lanterns. You open the lanterns and cut a strip of black paper, like a belt, then use the silver square sticker as the belt buckle. Done! Instant Santa decor!

It was such a fun, laid back party, to get to have a night of girl talk and food, then to go home with some easy fun projects was a really great break! It's the kind of party that's perfect for any time of year, on any budget, and with a large group or a small group. I highly suggest throwing your own!

I love these girls, so lucky to have them in my life!

xoxo

Mandi

Livi's Big Girl Room

With the fast approaching due date of baby #2, Olive will need to vacate her crib and switch to a toddler bed.. A bit sooner than we anticipated! 

Our house has 3 bedrooms on the main floor: the first being the master, then one right across from our master bedroom, & the other is our front room (multi-functioning that could be an office or bedroom). We chose to keep the room by our bedroom as the baby nursery and bumped Liv into the front room. It was SO nice to only have a few steps to have to walk in the middle of the night to nurse Livi, since we didn't use a bassinet and just put her straight in her crib in her own room, and I definitely want to do that again with this new babe. 

Anyway, the process of transitioning Livi into the front room and a toddler bed has two stages -- first moving her into the new room, staying in her crib for a month.. second, taking the crib out and replacing it with the toddler bed. My pediatrician told me those parameters will help her adjust smoothly.. rather than change her into a new room and a new bed all at once. 

So we put miss Olive in the front room with a similar set up to her old room. Since I'm not wanting to re-buy lots of new furniture either, we bought gender neutral colors and styles for everything and then accessorize to add fun pops of color & make them personal. So the crib will be used for all of our babies and hopefully so will the changing station/dresser and rocking chair. 

IKEA yet again had exactly what we needed so Micah set to work putting together Olive's new dresser. 

Her new room looked a bit blah in comparison to the fun bright coral stripes in her nursery unfortunately. Still deciding what to do to that big wall & how to add some color.. Without paint. I'm sticking to the coral pink, minty turquoise colors and adding black, white, & gold. SO excited!

Part Two

This came a month after her crib transition and I was SO nervous! Giving my busy little climber an open bed that she can get in and out of was terrifying. Seriously. But I know it has to happen eventually and I really wanted to get the nursery started into boy mode anyway so... Toddler bed here we came!

To add some color that wasn't permanent, I decided to make Olive's bed sheets. The IKEA toddler bed uses weird sized sheets & I couldn't just buy fun sheets anyway, so I grabbed some lovely fabric from some of my favorite shops and set to make her sheets. 

 

Pretty sure Liv fell in love with her bed. (Ps this was temporarily sitting in her old room while she was in the crib still.. Hence the painted walls)

We then moved her bed into her new room!

Bunny cuddles ensued. 

Pano to show the set up to her room. 

I made those darling little tee pees.. No tutorial or help for ya there (sorry!) but they were super easy and I used kabob sticks for the posts.  :)

I also made her pillows for the bed and a bean bag for the corner that she can crawl into to read on her own. She totally LOVES it ps. 

I found an easy tutorial for this and made it suuuuuper late one night.. But it's amazing & Livi looooves it!

We watch Gru in it almost daily. No mommy judgement!

And sometimes take naps

Totally melts your heart huh?

Anyway, back to toddler room updates.. (I get a little lost in her cuteness sometimes) I made the sheets with a panel of white on each side because the fabric wasn't wide enough to make on its own. Total bummer when I realized it at first, but I actually love how it turned out. And if you're wondering how I made them, I just found a tutorial on Pinterest where you cut squares out of the corners..  I modified it quite a bit to work with a weird toddler mattress rather than a crib. 

I also made her a new changing pad cover using the same method. It's sooo cute! 

Love that minty color with the arrows!

The first night in her new room was a bit hard.. We wanted to buy a baby monitor so we could see what she was getting into but hadn't found one yet that we loved so the first night we were blind. But before we just closed her off in there I made sure to take toys out and move things that could be dangerous out too. I want Olive's room to be a relaxing place so I only left her books for her to read if she got out of bed. 

We fed Livi a lot for dinner that night, made sure she drank all of her milk, and read a couple of her favorite books before laying her in her new bed and giving her lots of cuddles and love. Tons of smiles and reassuring loves too. 

When we left she was still wide awake and was a little confused, but I closed the door and we walked away. She cried out immediately and kept crying for a few minutes. Poor thing started trying to open the door but she couldn't turn the handle thankfully. I went in there to reassure her and smelled poop immediately, so I changed her and laid down on her bed with her to calm her down.. I sang to her and just kinda cuddled up with her. Then once she was mellow I slowly backed off of her bed til I was kneeling in front of her bed but still singing to her. I hesitated for a bit here, not knowing what I should do... I was debating whether I should wait til she fell asleep to leave or just leave then.. but I ended up leaving after being in there for about 10 min with her still awake and she cried right when I stood up, and got out of bed again once the door was closed. She cried at the door for exactly 6 min before she went back to her bed and fell asleep.. Longest six minutes ever! It was so hard to let her cry it out and self soothe, but I felt that she needed to work through it alone.. She has such a sweet disposition and is a total love, but she can also be pretty independent and need her space sometimes.. so as much as I wanted to sprint in there and cuddle her til she was asleep, I just felt she'd do better alone. 

Well after a few hours of quiet I trusted that she was asleep enough so I peeked in to see what she was doing and saw this:

Then before I went to bed around midnight, I wanted to check on her again & saw this:

Silly little babe! She must have gotten up to read a book or something and fell asleep where she laid on the floor! 

I debated getting her up from the floor and putting her in her bed, but I was afraid she'd wake up and be more weirded out that I was moving her than soothed.. So my little birdie slept on the floor for a few hours. 

Liv stayed in her room and quiet the entire night and slept in til 8:30am! She woke me up with a sad cry so I leapt out of my bed and ran into her room so that she didn't feel abandoned (and so that she could trust we would come get her) and walked in to see her sitting on her bean bag, tightly hugging her bunny to her chest. Cutest and saddest thing ever!

The following night we bought a camera called DropCam. It's amazing! It's meant to be used as a home monitor, baby camera, pet monitor, or even business camera. You view the camera on your phone, tablet, or computer.. Super convenient! It has the option (which I love) to send you a notification when there's movement or loud sound detected and you can also talk back and forth through your phone's mic & the camera's (which totally freaked Livi out when I tried it!). 

The next couple of nights/naps I sort of waited with bated breath to see if she'd lose it again each time but she really surprised me. She took her naps and slept at her regular time & length and didn't skip a beat. 

She definitely entertained us on the camera in the mean time!

I still have big plans for her room, to add some pops of color with a quilt & rug, along with a gallery wall either over her bed or dresser, but that will come once Christmas is over! That front room has a really tall ceiling -- 12 feet -- and has a little loft area for a reading nook. That will be finished when I can actually trust that she won't kill herself by jumping off of it in the middle of the night haha but the main wall that her bed is against I definitely need to do something with to make more exciting.

Overall, the toddler bed & new room transition has gone amazingly well. I'm so incredibly impressed with this birdie of mine, she's such a strong little babe. She has a very soft and sweet personality, I worried about how she would handle it, but she continues to impress me with every new milestone we come across.  My favorite tradition we've started: she stays on her bed til we come into her room in the mornings (totally her choice randomly) and I'll climb into her bed with her & she'll go grab a book (or cook as she calls them) and we'll read for about twenty minutes every morning. Cutest thing ever. 

xoxo

Mandi