Posts made in May, 2014

How we announced some really big news (about a teeny tiny little person)

Posted by Joy on May 26, 2014 in Babies | 6 comments

Sweetie and I were pretty secretive when we first found out we were expecting (despite that I wanted to tell absolutely everyone – the mailman, random children, the lady behind the counter at the gas station, stray dogs, etc – about our very happy news.)  It had taken me quite a while to get pregnant (but that’s a whole other blog post for a whole other day) so we were both really cautious about spreading the news to too many people too quickly, before we were out of the scary anything-can-happen first trimester.  (Translation: there was a lot of breath-holding and positive thought-thinking going on around here during those first few months.)

But once we reached our comfort zone (shortly after our 12 week ultrasound showed that baby was perfect and squirmy and had a good strong heartbeat) we decided to finally tell the future grandparents.

Being a rather monumentous and life-changing announcement, this wasn’t something I wanted to simply blurt out over dinner, mid-french fry.  I wanted the announcement to be as special as the news itself.  Unfortunately, I’m not an overly creative person.  And while Pinterest showed me hundreds of amazing and elaborate and creative announcements, none of them felt like us.

Here’s the card I finally designed to spread the news…

(Please don’t giggle too much at my obviously lacking graphic-design skills.  A graphic-design guru I most certainly am not, and the whole thing was put together using – gasp! – Microsoft Word.)

We printed the card on basic cream-coloured card stock that I had left over from some other random DIY project, and then I tied a ribbon around the card (so that the card wouldn’t accidentally flop open and ruin the surprise before the recipient had a chance to finish reading the cover.)

When the time came to hand out the cards, there were happy tears from one set of grandparents, high-fives from another (who apparently had speculated, a couple weeks prior at Christmas, that something baby-related might be up), and stunned silence from the third set of future grandparents we told (which quickly erupted into squeals of joy.)  All in all, the announcement (and this announcement method) was a huge success.  :)

And now, several months later, all of the grandparents are eagerly anticipating the arrival of this new little one.  Who is currently way bigger than a lime.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a happy little eggplant or butternut squash or watermelon rolling around in there now.  (A really, really, cute one!)

Pink polka dotted placemat perfection (alternative title: a little table linen love)

Posted by Joy on May 5, 2014 in Dining Room | 0 comments

Hello!  Please humour me while I get irrationally excited about something really rather insignificant for a minute, k?

I bought new placemats for our dining room table yesterday.  Yay!  They were a HomeSense buy (and not at all what I went into the store looking for) and I looooove them.  Love them!  They’re adorable and dotty and pretty and perfect.

See?

Pink polka-dotted perfection, if you ask me.  :)

If we didn’t constantly leave our placemats sitting out, this would, of course, be a non-issue.  But, truthfully, I’m lazy.  The placemats stay out because we use them all the time.  So why bother putting them away?  That’d just be an extra (albeit, two second) step added to my day.  And, with baby stuff looming and last minute renovations on the horizon, that extra two seconds is precious, precious time, if you ask me.

Plus, when you have placemats this pretty, why stash them away?  :)

(Is it normal to get this excited about placemats?  Likely not.  But I’m excited nonetheless!)

They’ll look even better once the walls are de-greened.  Until this de-greening takes place, however, I’ve decided to completely ignore the green.  Kinda like when there’s a bee following you around, and someone (inevitably) says “Ignore it and it’ll just fly away.”  (Which, by the way, never seems like particularly good advice.  I’ve ignored many bees in my lifetime.  Few have flown away just because I’m not giving them enough attention.  In fact, I think they thrive on indifference.  I personally prefer – and often employ – the run-screaming-with-wildly-flailing-arms method for ridding myself of random flying insects.)  Similarly, I’m hoping that if I show enough disinterest in my walls’ blatant attempts to irritate me with their overt green-ness, I’ll blink one day and – poof! – they’ll have fluttered away to wherever bad paint colours go.  With or without screaming and arm-flailing.

But I digress…

Yay!  Pink polka dots!