This blog is for you Heidi!!

Okay, I am dedicating this blog entry to one of my best friends Heidi. She is the most creative person I know, and has inspired me to complete a few projects while I am out on maternity leave. (Katie, you give me inspiration too!) You can check out Heidi's stuff at the craft monkey blog at http://thecraftmonkey.blogspot.com/ . I still have several projects that I am working on, but with a baby, it gets a little difficult to be crafty. So here you go Heidi, thanks for motivating me to do something with my spare time.

These are the flower pots I made for Chloe's Baptism (more to come on that in a future post). I made really cute ones with crosses in the middle but I gave them away before I got a good picture of them.

I found this frame at Marshalls for $5.99 and fell in love. It has the same kind of design as Chloe's nursery, but it was the wrong color. So I used the same color that I used on her walls, added brown to the scrolls, and it matches her room perfectly!!

Heidi, I took this picture so you can see that I use the wipe box you made me, haha.

These are the famous mercury pumpkins that everybody was making this year. Thanks Heidi for guiding me the right direction on the paint.

This is probably my biggest accomplishment, only because my husband said that I could not do it. I originally tried stenciling a border in Chloe's nursery with regular paint and no knowledge on what I was doing. It was a disaster. With Heidi's motivation, a little research on how to properly stencil, whaaa la, I figured it out! Oh, and I totally bedazzled my wall with rhinestones, do you see them?? When David saw it he was like "I know you did not just bedazzle our wall". I was so proud that he even knew what bedazzled meant, haha. PROGRESS!!

Bad picture, but there is one on each side of the "you are a dream come true". Heidi, do you like my new rug?? It took me forever to find a rug that matched her room perfect!

Current projects I am working on is a door hanger for her room, a thanksgiving banner (very different from anything I have seen), and some odds and ins Thanksgiving projects. Of course this all depends on how much SPARE time I can really squeeze in.

Stroller Derby

Who would have ever thought that navigating a stroller through the very heavy crowds at the fair would have been so hard???? I never did. I told my husband "I got this, piece of cake" after he offered to push. I should of just let em. I think that was the most painful experience a mother has to go through for the first time. Oh, I am so ready for next time, but my first experience doing it was quite an adventure.

It all started at the entrance of the fair, where the exited mommy's & daddy's had there very own special line for the STROLLERS! When I saw how long the line was, that should have been my first clue that there were going to be TON of strollers (and people) there. Now, keep in mind, this was our first BIG outing where we had to go through a stroller check, so this was all new to us. When the security guard asked us to take out our diaper bag, I about fainted. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I wanted to ask him, "Do you know how long it just took us to get it under there, secure it, and make sure nothing was falling out?" But I kept my mouth shut and started tugging and pulling away until it finally came out. If you have seen my bag, you know what I am talking about (see pic below if you have not). It's huge and barley fits as it is. But we successfully made it through the entrance and on our way we went.

(The bag that does not fit under the stroller without an enormous effort)!

Things were going great, we visited the farm animals, which Chloe LOVED! But after that, the entire city decided to come to the fair at the same time. OMG, I was afraid to push the damn stroller. There were people EVERYWHERE! My sister and her husband were walking in front of us, kind of clearing the way. I was trying to enjoy myself, looking at all of the vendors, but they had to keep stopping, and I swear I must have ran into my sister at least ten times. (Note to self for next time, you cannot look anywhere but in front of you or YOU WILL hit the person in front of you). You would swear that all of the mommies were in a race, which resulted in them cutting us off left and right. The funniest part was when I hit another stroller. You should have seen the look on the ladies face. If looks could kill, I would have been dead. Come on lady, like you have never hit another stroller, give me a break. I begged David, my sister, even her husband to push the stroller and they all laughed at me. Talk about new mommy initiation! Here are some fun pics from the day, I wish I would have taken a pic of the crowd that I had to navigate through, but I was not exactly thinking straight.

Little Miss Photogenic

Our little princess did great at her 3 month photo shoot! She is a little ham in front of the camera. She had way to much fun taking these pictures. I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that her mommy has a camera in her face 24/7 (she has had lots of practice posing).

Funny story about her flower. I swear I need to go to bows anonymous. I have a serious problem with buying them and plastering them on my daughters forehead. It was so bad that I had to have my step mom drive out to my crack, I mean bow dealers house, all the way in Rancho before our 10am shoot. I am now calling her my bow dealer, because basically bows are like crack to me, and you gotta have a dealer. She made a custom flower to match her dress that I was willing to do anything to get before her pictures. Thankfully Ginger came through for me. Thanks for supporting my addiction!

We did have an outfit change, and yes, it was in her Halloween costume. By this time Chloe decided that she was done hamming it up for the camera. So no smiles in those, but still adorable!

It is only fitting that she is a flower for Halloween!

By this point she was so tired she was leaning and we could not get her to hold her head up

Daddy's Little Charger Girl

It's official, little miss Chloe is a Charger girl! Football season has officially begun in our house hold, and if you know anything about my husband, you know that he lives, eats, and breathes football. So when it comes to his daughter, it is only obvious that she must be properly dressed for football Sundays! Yay, another excuse to go shopping for outfits (and daddy does not seem to mind when I spend money on "sports" attire). My childhood bestfriends brother plays for the Chargers, so I am looking for his # which is 32. Hopefully I can find her size in something :).

The really neat thing is that she really likes to watch football with her daddy. She cannot take her eyes off the t.v. (at least when she really becomes a cheerleader she will actually know about the sport, unlike many cheerleaders I have known in my day, haha).
Proud Daddy

Don't cha just wanna pinch those chubby cheeks??? I do :)

and for fun, her USC outfit. Yes, my mom added ruffles to the bib and to the butt to make it a little more girly.

Oh the pain of beauty!

Unfortunately, my 2 1/2 month old daughter has learned at a very young age the price us girls pay for beauty. No, she is not breaking in a new pair of shoes or having her eye brows waxed yet, but she is sporting some sparkly new earrings. YES, I had her ears pierced! I know some of you may think I am a bad mommy for doing this to my poor little baby, but it's really not all that bad (or the jewelry stores would not do it). Just like shots, when the babies are young, they forget about what happened before they even leave the office. Yes, Chloe screamed, but it was not that bad. She stopped after about 5 minutes. My sister and mom came for moral support due to the fact that I was freaking out about it. I only cried once, Grammy held her during the procedure, Auntie Courtney was snapping the photos, then I swooped her up after to give her some mama lovin. Thanks Grammy for being the bad guy! Chloe has completely forgotten they are even there, and thankfully, they appear to not be bothering her. I must add that they are gorgeous on her! I love how Grammy is posing for the camera while her granddaughter is screaming her lungs off. We had 2 people do it at the same time to get over more quickly.


Awwww....

It's all over now If you look closely, you can see them

A "Beachy" Kind of Day!

Chloe had her first trip to the beach on Labor Day which proved to be quite an adventure. We were up bright and early, got the car loaded, and headed out to beautiful Newport Beach. Our friends, the Guerra's, kindly let us take over their beach house for the day. (I mean it when I said take over, you should have seen all of the stuff we brought for the baby for one day at the beach, haha).

We had such a great time with all of the Alpha Phi Aunties. Heidi, Manny & Noah from Louisiana were there. We also had a great time with Robin and Tiffanie too! But, I must say, the life of the party was hands down Monie, Robin's mom! She made sure we were all having a good time, keeping everybody's drinks full at all times. Gotta love her, thanks Monie for letting us invade your house!

We took Chloe down to the water, which was a feat in itself. Of course, I had to have a picture of us holding her with the water in the background. We had no idea that it would take almost an hour just to walk down to the beach (that mind you, was steps away). I had to pack up the diaper bag (duh), change her outfit (3-4 times to get the right look), get the sunglasses perfectly in place with her hat, lather her up in sunblock, Oh wait, she is smiling, lets take a picture, get the baby bjorn adjusted, get the baby in the baby bjorn, grab a blanket, send Robin back in for the umbrella, grab a smaller blanket, cannot forget the camera, and were off. Wheeew, all that for 5 minutes on the beach for a picture, and back to the house we went.

Heidi has a picture of four of us walking down the beach all holding Chloe's stuff that I will post as soon as she sends it. (In my defence, we were planning on staying a little longer, but Noah decided he did not like the beach, THANK GOD, the sun was scaring me with the baby)

Our beach trip was very fun and exciting. All of the aunties got a kick out of Chloe's 3 dress changes throughout the day (in my defence, she did spit up on her outfits). It was great to hang with the girls and hubby's, and enjoy the sun, the waves, and the crazy mommy with her diva daughter, haha. (Manny thinks I should be on a reality show with Chloe, apparently I am fun to watch and for them to make fun of, I love you too Manny!) So, until next time....

My new favorite picture!

What a proud daddy (hey, watch the sun in her face dad)

Mommy and her precious little girl
Awww.. The girls, we miss you Tiff C. and Janice

Posing in between packing everything up to head down to the beach
Robin and Chloe

Heidi and Chloe (Chloe proving she has clothes that are not all pink)

Manny giving Chloe a pep talk about her new reality t.v. show
Tiffanie and Chloe

Bows, bows, and more bows!

Okay, so I must confess, I am totally obsessed with buying my daughter bows and headbands and making her wear them with EVERY outfit, as I am sure all of you have already noticed. My fetish for bows is out of control, but she just looks so ADORABLE with them on. They totally complete her outfits!

Thankfully I have a few friends that custom make these gorgeous bows, because you just cant find cute ones in the stores. My friend Missy has a booth at the Redlands Market Night, called Karsons Creations. My friend Stefany also makes them in the Menife/Murritta area. All of the bows attach to headbands, so you can mix and match. If anybody is interested in these adorable bows for their daughters, let me know and I can put you in contact with them.

So what am I really excited about for this football season?? Chloe's Chargers cheerleader outfit, with yes, the matching bow. I had Missy make a football bow in the Chargers colors and I just love it!! There are little footballs in the middle of the bow. As always, I have attached a million pictures of Chloe's favorite bows. I am just a proud mama, what can I say.

The bow fetish started in the hospital from the day she was born.

The flowers are my favorite, she has them in three different colors. They also have rhinestones all over them so they sparkle, hehe.

David's cousins, Tim and Marci, actually sent this one. Too cute!