The Latest

I guess it's time for an update!

My AmeriCorps term has come to an end, so today is my first official day without a job. I'm really glad I decided to serve with AmeriCorps. No, I didn't make a lot of money ($12,300 living stipend over 11 months + $5,000 education award), but I met tons of cool people and learned a lot about water quality and other environmental issues.

Now that I have tons of free time on my hands, I started watching The Vampire Diaries. It's so cheesy, but it's fun. There are 7 seasons with about 22 or so episodes each, so this will fill my free time quite nicely. :) If you have any other show recommendations for me, let me know!

I am 35 weeks now and will hit 36 on Thursday. I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday. Not sure if the doc will check to see how far I'm dilated and effaced or not. I do know they'll do the strep b test. Vaginal and butt. :oP Wonderful. If I'm positive, I have to go on antibiotics so I don't pass it to the baby when I deliver. After Thursday I'll be going to the doctor weekly. I'm due September 3rd - we're ridiculously close. Sometimes I'm excited and anxious for the big day(s) and other times I freak out a little and just want time to suspend. I'm hoping those are normal feelings to have!

I'm feeling pretty good. I can't sleep on my right side anymore because my hip will hurt for several days afterward, so I'm strictly left side sleeping now. TMI FOREWARNING: I started having diarrhea yesterday. It's like anything I eat is immediately...let go. I think if it continues into tomorrow, I'll call my OB.

Here's my latest picture:

35 weeks

 It's pretty crazy to look back and see how skinny I was in the beginning:

5 weeks

We had our family baby shower at my grandmother's house the other day:

Isn't this frog so fun?!

We had red velvet, coconut, and peanut butter/chocolate cakes.

I think 'boy' won.

We also took some maternity photos after the shower. This is my favorite:

I need to crop Chris' Fitbit out. :)

Another thing I wanted to share because I think it's so cute (and I love that Chris thought of it) is what we decided to do above the crib. By the way, we got the crib at our shower and Chris was so excited he put it together that night. Love him. My mom made the crocheted mobile (sun, moon, stars, cloud), those are leftover "clouds" from our wedding, and from the clouds we hung the dragonfly finger puppets that my aunt gave us. In case you're curious, my grandmother made the quilt hanging over the back of the crib and my mom made the crib bedding.

And that's what's going on in my life right now. Many thanks to my mom, aunt, and grandmother for their tireless work on the shower. It was very fun and emotional for me since it's been a long road to this point.

Love,

Planned Pins for December's Pinstrosity Challenge

Pretty excited to try these babies out this month (click picture to be taken to website):

Peppermint Bark Cheesecake

Chocolate Cupcakes with Mint Chocolate Chip Frosting

Peppermint Popcorn Bark

Peppermint Whipped Cream

Cake Decorating

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a cake decorating class at our local community college.  There were some things I didn't like about the class...like that we didn't practice on cakes (or I would've been happy with a cake-like object), just a flat practice board and also that the teacher didn't really explain things well--at least, not to my satisfaction.  But all-in-all I enjoyed the class.  For our last class we brought in a cake we made and decorated it.  I cheated a little bit and got my inspiration from a cake online.

This was the cake I found:

http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/1759/candy-corn-chocolate-cake

I made a vanilla cake since my husband doesn't like chocolate cake very much and also added a chocolate hazelnut filling.  Yum!  Unfortunately, I hadn't set my icing out that morning so my chocolate icing was rock hard and took forever to work to the right consistency.  My teacher ended up helping me out with this.  I think she realized if she didn't help we would be there all night!  I also made my decorating icing too thin and it started to melt.  But really, I'm pretty proud with how it came out!

This is mine:

Ace of Cakes, watch out, here I come!!