Alice in Wonderland Birthday!!!

We joined up this weekend for a Mad Hatter tea party! :) I apologize, I was slow taking pics and running around like a chicken with my head cut off since you see Bobo tearing up the food table already, and me neglecting Little Miss's guests doing their craft in the kitchen (to which I didn't take a single picture of!) Anyway, we had a great time and it was nice to have a small party for a change!

Now, you are BOUND to notice the AMAZING cake and cupcakes we chose for this party... while I WISH I could say I had such incredible talent, alas, I have to give credit to Lisa over at Create it with Cake! She also did Bobo's cake 2 months ago for his birthday too.

In addition, the ADORABLE custom Alice dress was made by Polly at Apron Envy!!

Now, I did make the paper flowers....LOL like this even compares with Lisa's cakes (you can see her assembling in my kitchen in the picture below) or Polly's mad sewing skills :) And I designed the tags on the tea cups that were inspired by a fantastic designer I found online. The idea was not my own.... just wanted to point that out :) I forgot to take any close ups, but you can see some a few posts down when I talked about the Wonderland Jar Cookies.

Happy Birthday, beautiful princess!!! :) I love you so much and can't believe I have blessed with 5 fantastic years with you! I can't wait for a lifetime of more memories :) :)

Here are also some pictures from her 5 year portrait session I did this weekend!

This little girl is OBVIOUSLY the daughter of a photographer... she climbs up to this little spot, poses herself and says, ok Mommy, this is a great spot with my Alice dress :)

Wonderland Jar Cookies

More and more projects for our wonderland party. I haven't done this many crafts in quite some time. I have made large hanging flowers (stemmed from large pom pons) small flower on pipe cleaner stems, I have designed lots of danging charms inspired by this wonderful blog and now comes our "Wonderland Cookies"

I got the idea and the recipe here and took it in a different direction to fit Little Miss's party theme. All of these blogs are so wonderful and I have gotten so many fab ideas. As usual, I'm already thinking of ideas for next years parties before this one is even over! Depending on how my pregnancy and moving situation is going, I hope to host a Halloween party too :)

Anyway, to the pictures... I think these turned out to be super cute. We also made a batch and they are YUMM-O! Also I appologize in advance for the crazy white balance in all of these pictures. My under cab lighting cast a yellow look in the images I will turn them off next time ;)

Ok, here is what I started with. I decided to go with a regular bag of m&ms and seperate them myself since buying them presorted cost about 4-5x as much. I decided to do a two color combo of the colors in each jar omitting brown.











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DIY Cupcake Stand Tutorial!

So, I am totally stuck in Wonderland as I prepare Little Miss's Very Merry Un-Birthday Tea Party for her 5th birthday. I've been having a ton of fun trying new crafts and projects to put a handmade twist without breaking the bank.

I decided that cupcake stands would be a fabulous touch for our snacks and treats for the party! Like I said I was keeping cost in mind when doing this project and am happy to report that since I used most things from around the house, I only spent about $7 for all three stands (for the spray paint) and have most of the cans left!

I will also admit that this was a trial and error process, but with the help of DH we figured it out. I am sure there are several other ways to achieve the same end, some of which may make more sense, but this worked for us!

On to the tutorial....

Supplies you will need....

Wood (about a 1/2 sheet)
Closet Dowel
tape measure
jigsaw
miter saw
bowls (to trace circles)
hot glue gun
screwdriver
screws
primer
spray paint (your choice of colors)
Ribbon (your choice)


Step 1: Start by giving your DH a big kiss on the cheek and bribe him into helping you cut and assemble your project. If you are hand with power tools, you can skip this step.

Step 2: Measure dowels to your preferred height (I used 5 inches) this is personal preference but make sure it is tall enough to clear whatever you will be putting on the stand....no one wants a smooshed cupcake! Cut one for a two layer stand, two for a three layer stand etc.



Step 3: Trace different sized bowls on to your choice of wood to give you a template to go by for each level of your stand. We used plywood because we had some left over from DH fitting the windows for hurricane season (woo hoo South Texas) if I were to do this project again I would fork out the extra money for better wood, but this works for our $7 project!



Step 4 (not pictured): Use a miter saw to cut the wooden dowels, tell your DH to be patient as he teaches you to use it.

Step 5: Get DH to cut the circles with a jigsaw. Please note that my husband is extremely daring, and sometimes reckless. I don't recommend using patio chairs to balance the wood, or putting your hand in front of the blade!







Step 6 (not pictured): Primer and Spray Paint your stands in the color of your choice.

Step 7: Screw the bottom layers of your stand together. Do this by measuring to find the center of each piece.




Step 8: Hot glue the top layer of the stand to the top dowel (you can screw this in but we used glue to avoid an unsightly screw in the top.



Step 9: Hot glue ribbon around the edge of each layer of your stand. Again I used ribbon I had at home and may have chosen something else but I wanted to make this a cheap DIY project.



Step 10: Glue ribbon around each dowel.

Step 11: Give your DH another big kiss and thank him for his help with your project!



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Bobo turns TWO at his Carnival Party!

So I am behind on blogging this....whats new? :) But my little man turned 2 last month!!! :) We had a carnival themed party and it was a blast!!!

A little side note before we begin....
photographs were taken by Zander and Breck Photography
cake was made by Create it with Cake

THANKS LADIES, you were AWESOME! :)

Most of the party was held indoors, since we live in Texas and his birthday was in June, you just can't keep the kids outside the whole time. The eating and presents were inside and the games were outside. We had a ball toss, bean bag toss, pin the nose on the clown and water balloons. Then to keep the kids cool part way through we did giant pop ice. One of the events that we did that was a big hit was the face painting. I hired our babysitter to come and paint faces as the kids were arriving. We also had popcorn along with dinner and that was the favorite among the parents and kiddos!

The cake was amazing!!! Lisa from Create it with Cake made this adorable Carnival themed cake that matched our decor and really was the centerpiece of the party. EVERYONE loved it... not only did it look amazing, it tasted amazing too! :)

Moving on....

So we have decided to move after all. Since there are so many questions and ideas floating around in our heads for what we want to do permanently, we have decided to rent a house until we make up our minds. If we do decide to build, renting in the mean time would be our option anyway. We just need more room now for this new little guy we have coming and we don't want to rush into anything...

If you know of anyone looking for an awesomely awesome house, let me know!! :) :)

Some news :)

First....this post may be TMI for some readers, so skip it if the joys of fertility treatments don't appeal to you ;)

As you all know, my husband went through cancer treatment this past year. Lucky for us we had two great doctors that stressed the importance of sperm banking, which we did before Dave started chemo. And just as we suspected, the treatment has left him (at least temporarily) sterile. We decided to try the IUI (intrauterine insemination) route in March. I have PCOS and have trouble conceiving so we started with me, injections of ovidrel, ultrasounds several times a week and tons of poking and prodding. We went in for the IUI on March 28th. After getting ready for the procedure the doctor told me that almost all of Dave's sperm had died. He said that can happen when there is an underlying condition like Cancer.

We had banked enough for 1 IUI and a few rounds of IVF (invertro fertilization) - which is SUBSTANTIALLY more expensive and invasive. So he said that we had about 100,000 sperm out of the 10 million they suggest for a successful IUI. So we were down to 1% ONE freaking percent of the amount they like you to have. So while tears were streaming down my face we finished the procedure, went home and basically wrote off the whole thing. Two weeks later when i started bleeding we knew it was the end and that we would wait a few years before trying again. It was about 3-4 weeks after that I started not feeling well... thinking it was the flu bug that was going around I ignored it. When it persisted and felt oddly familiar I ran to the dollar store and picked up two pregnancy tests. When both tests came back instantly positive I was shocked and confused. I thought perhaps Dave's sperm count had come back up in the mean time. I called him and he didn't believe me. I made an appt with my Fertility doc and went in. He too though that I must have gotten pregnant in the cycle in between. Typically they do a blood test following IUI but since I had assumed I started my period I cancelled the appt. No sense in going in and torturing myself when I already knew the truth.

Well, we did a blood test and when that came back high for levels of HCG we did an ultrasound and sure enough, I was already 9 weeks pregnant :) My doctor is just amazed.... this simply doesn't happen with the odds that were against us.

We are so excited to welcome this baby BOY into our lives :) We found out a couple of weeks ago that its another boy and we couldn't be more excited!! :) He is due December 19, 2010 :)

Baby Boy at 9 weeks!

Our 16 week ultrasound at Baby Image in Sugar Land. They were fantastic!!!

Summer is almost here :)

Well, it has once again slipped my mind to keep my blog up and running. My business (Nena Metcalf Photography) is keeping me extreamly busy, and I love every minute of it! The kids are doing great, Little Miss is wrapping up prek and Bobo is about to have his second birthday!!! I can't believe my little man who was once so sick in the hospital is such a big rough and tumble guy!

We've been having fun with playdates, mini vacations and hanging out with great friends. We think we are going to wait a bit on the moving thing... we just can't seem to make up our minds and we don't want to make the wrong decision. Sometimes I want lots of land and to be able to have a studio in a seperate building on my property and other times I want a big house with a bigger yard but still in a neighborhood with my studio in the house. There are pros and cons to both and until we can decide we are staying put. I am going to try some redecorating and figuring out some inovative storage solutions for the mean time to keep me sane!

So the weather is already HOT HOT HOT, thats what we get for living in Southern Texas, but now that we have been here for over 3 years - WOW THREE YEARS! We've gotten used to it. I still hate the fire ants and muddaubers but I'm learning to manage.

And what is a blog post without some pictures??? Here are some family pictures we did recently :)

Playing Catch UP

So things have been pretty crazy, good crazy, I never thought that I would be this busy this quickly with my photography.....and I love it! I sometimes forget, however, to take pictures of my monkeys!! We went to Old Towne Spring one afternoon before I was shooting a wedding near there and got some shots of the kids. I wish we had time to get more (plus we were there on a Saturday....busy busy!) But I do love the ones we did get! That little Bobo is a difficult one to grab, but I did get some smiles :)

R-E-M-I-S-S-I-O-N and Christmas

FINALLY! Dave is in remission!! I feel like our celebration is a bit tainted because they believe that Dave has some sort of auto immune disorder that they can't seem to diagnose. It could be nothing, it could be serious, and it would be nice if we knew what it was!! :)

His hair is also starting to come back :) He is getting some hair on his face and his head is starting to feel a bit picky :) We have been meaning to go do some pictures of him, maybe the rain will let up this weekend and we can do that! :)


Also, I never posted any pictures from any of our Holiday activities. They weren't as excited as we wanted them to be because we almost thought that Dave was going to be getting chemo over Christmas. Santa called after he heard the news and said that he would come and do an early drop off :) So nice of him!! :) Here are some pictures from some of our festivities in a new video slideshow feature that I use with my photography :)

My little Bobo

He is 19 months now! He is getting so big and doing so many new things now, it just amazes me. Its like his personality exploded over the past month or so. He is now saying all kinds of words and just is growing so fast! Nite nite was a new one today :) He usually just says "bye bye" to me but actually said nite nite today. One of the funniest things I think he does is he thinks that saying bweeese (read - please) gets him whatever he wants, like that is the magic word and that gets him my cell phone, Little Miss's littlest pet shop or a turn to bang on daddy's laptop. I love him :)

He also had his 18 month check up two days ago. He is right were he was before 50% for weight - 26 lbs, 75% for height - 33" and 50% for head circumference 19"

Update

Well, Dave is wrapping up his second round of Chemo. This time around we had friends watch the kids, and our foster son. It was a little stressful, both for me and the kids, but we made it through! We get to pick Dave up from the hospital later today. This round has made him a bit more nauseus and this time they are sending us home wtih a Nulasta shot to hopefully avoid the week long stay he had last time because of his lack of white blood cells.

So that is where we are at right now! Here are some pictures I have taken of the kids latley too! :)