Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Tutorial Tuesday: Basket Labels

The nursery is almost complete, I’m waiting on just a few items to arrive at my house and then I can show you the final reveal. But until then, I have a little tutorial for you on how I created labels to try and keep the nursery organized. We have been VERY blessed to have been given so many wonderful items for our little girl, it’s like the room and closet are exploding at the seams. I need to be able to keep it all straight – enter my love for baskets and organizing.

In addition to the many pieces of clothing that fill our little girl’s closet, I needed to find a way to store all of her socks, bibs, headbands, hats, blankets and more! With only one chest of three drawers in the room, I had to get creative. So I purchased some black baskets from Bed, Bath and Beyond and filled them with all of the goodies that we need for our little princess. Then to be able to identify the contents of each basket, I created these fun labels.

Here are the items I used:

-white card stock

-pink/white polka dot scrap book paper

-pink ribbon

-glue

-sharpie

-circular items to trace

-pencil

-scissors

1.) I started by deciding how large I wanted my labels and I found some circular items in my house that I could use to trace - the bottom of a glade candle worked wonders! I just placed the candle on my paper and traced multiple circles.

2.) Since scrap book paper by itself isn’t that strong, I traced the same size circles in both the pink/white polka dot paper and the white card stock. This way the card stock could help keep the labels lasting longer without ripping or tearing. Once my circles were traced, I cut everything out. I also traced a smaller sized circle on the white card stock to use for the labeling area.

3.) I then glued the large circles together, followed by gluing the smaller circles in the middle. I let them dry while placing them under a heavy object to make sure everything stuck together (and to keep everything flat).

4.) Next I determined where I wanted the labels to fall on the baskets and cut my ribbon for the appropriate length.

5.) Using a single hole punch, I punched an oversized/double hole in each label so I could pull the ribbon through.

6.) Almost done – it was time to assign a category to each label.

7.) And finally, I tied the ribbons and labels to each basket so I can easily identify the contents.

I thought this would also be helpful when other people are dressing or changing baby girl. That way they wouldn’t have to search for anything! This is just a simple how-to, but I’m very pleased with the results. An organized room makes me very happy.

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Monday, June 10, 2013

Shabby Apple Is So Generous! (and a weekend wrap up)

Hey lovelies! I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. I’m coming off quite the amazing one myself; my parents were here for the weekend and helped us with some projects around the house (such a HUGE help!), three of my best friends threw me a baby shower (I will post pics from my last two showers very soon!) and I got to watch the most amazing theatre show – the TONYS. As a side note because I’m feeling very proud and sentimental, I was at the TONYS in person last year! Yes, the theatre I work for won the Regional Theatre TONY Award for 2012 and I got to attend along with some awesome co-workers for a weekend to remember.

The best TONY date ever, my girl Marcy!

Anyways, remember when I introduced you to Shabby Apple? Well, if not let me remind you: Shabby Apple is an online dress boutique that specializes in vintage and retro dresses. Click this link to see their awesome selection. They have so many pretty offerings, including a maternity section. I am completely in love with so many items and I am ready to buy up some awesome dresses for myself post-baby.

Go figure that I'm in love with this dress!

But for one lucky reader, you don’t have to wait for anything to snatch up an awesome dress. Why? Because Shabby Apple is giving away a very generous $50 gift card to one lucky Pursuit of Pink reader. How awesome is that? It certainly makes for a great start to a Monday, huh? All you have to do is enter using the super easy Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck everyone and happy shopping!!!

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Friday, June 7, 2013

High Five For Friday

The weekend is here! My parents arrive today! Life is good!!!

Here are five awesome moments from the week.

1.) Tolar found this sign on iFunny. Hilarious! We might need to put this up at our house, or better yet my brother in law should.

2.) People are showering us and our baby girl with gifts. Tolar’s Aunt sent us some books to add to baby girl’s growing library. We can’t wait to snuggle and read to her.

3.) Speaking of baby girl’s belongings, while Tolar was out of town I had a little fun trying on some of her headbands. My sister so lovingly told me that I was going to stretch them out with my huge head!

4.) Look at my nephew! He’s so big and already interested in having control of the remote. And just look at him with his legs crossed, I’m melting.

5.) Even though we are having a baby and preparing the nursery, I’m trying to add a few updates to our house when and where I can. I found this awesome grey striped shower curtain for our guest bathroom this week.

Did you have a good week? I sure hope so! If you want to read other High Five For Friday posts, hop over to Lauren Elizabeth to see everyone who links up there. See ya on Monday!

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I have another fab lady to introduce you to who just so happens to have one of the cutest families ever! Please head over and meet Quinn from Kimchi & Sweet Tea. First I must say that anything involving sweet tea makes me want to click the link. I’m a true Southern girl at heart who loves sweet tea, just not all the calories that come with it. So get to clicking yourself!

Anyways, back to Quinn. Her blog is full of awesome pictures of her family and her incredibly cute children. You must watch this video that she created to announce that she was pregnant with her second child. Seriously, it’s adorable and definitely makes me wish I had video editing skills to show you here on this blog. But I don’t so check out Quinn’s video instead!

Since I am only 5 weeks away from becoming a mama to a newborn myself, Quinn’s post on studying her babies’ faces really struck me. I can’t wait to see which features our little girl inherits from me and which ones from Tolar. I of course know I want to snuggle and be with my baby all day long, but I never even considered just studying her face, such a great idea! Oh and Quinn is full of great ideas, in fact her oldest daughter’s first birthday party was featured on Apartment Therapy – super cool! The Korean Dol Towers are amazing, I can tell a lot of work went into creating those!

And while you are visiting Kimchi & Sweet Tea be sure to pop over and check out the awesome Etsy shop that Quinn runs as well. I love that she has an option of 52 weeks of baby photos, what an awesome memento to keep from your baby’s first year. I sure hope you enjoy your time clicking around on Kimchi & Sweet Tea; there is so much goodness to soak up!

Blog / Twitter

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Thursday, June 6, 2013

Does This Post Relate To Pretty Little Liars?

Some of my goals for this blog are to be open and honest and to also have some fun and hopefully make you laugh. I also want to show you that I’m not perfect! As bloggers and with so many social media options, we have a tendency to put our best foot forward and only show you the good stuff. No one is perfect and I’m far from it.

Yep, definitely not perfect!!!

I’m taking you back to when I was 17 years old as a teenager with an extremely overactive imagination. Over the summer I had gone somewhere in the morning and was returning to my house in the afternoon. When I first turned onto our road, I saw a police car pulling out. I didn’t think much of it because the entrance to our road was hidden and cops used to park there to catch speeders. But as I made my way up the hill, I noticed that there were TONS of police cars across the street at our neighbors’ house. This didn’t sit well with me and as my luck would have it, my whole family was out doing other things so I was coming home by myself. Instead of going inside, I walked over to my neighbors’ driveway and was greeted by a cop. He told me that a man had escaped from the Bedford County jail which was about 20 minutes away from us and he had been spotted in my neighbors’ back yard. Ok, my 17 year old self was freaking out at this point. The nice cop offered to walk me back to my house and check all of our entrances to make sure I was safe.

After the search through my house (and I must add I stayed right on top of the man, I certainly didn’t want to walk through my house alone!), he confirmed that everything was fine, that all entrances were secure. He told me that the man was wearing an orange jumpsuit and if I saw anything to call 911. Once he left, I felt fine and pretty safe. Plus it was almost 1 p.m., time for Days of Our Lives, I had to catch up on my soap opera! Priorities y'all. While I was home alone, another neighbor called to check on me. She told me that she had a baseball bat with her in case anyone came into the house. I told her that I was fine, but I’d let her know if I needed anything and immediately went back to watching Days.

As the afternoon creept on, my mind began to wander. I thought “maybe I should get something like a baseball bat…just in case.” Well, we didn’t have a baseball bat, but I was a member of the colorguard so I had a sabre that I could use. I quickly found my sabre and set it beside me on the couch. But of course, I realized that I didn’t really know how to be violent or hit anyone. “I better practice,” I told myself. So I started slamming the sabre into the living room floor (sorry about that Mom, thank goodness there wasn’t any damage). You know, I had to make sure I could hit someone really hard. Afterwards, feeling content that I could smack the crap out of some intruder with my sabre, I decided to just be cool and hang out. Well that didn’t last long because I started thinking about every window and entrance in our house and remembered that we always kept the windows in the garage open (nice safety precaution there Mom and Dad!). I figured I better close and lock them because anyone could cut the screen and sneak in. Luckily we had a peep hole in the door leading out to the garage, so I looked through there first just to scan the garage and make sure everything was ok. And then I saw it…

…or should I say I saw him. Over on the right side wall I saw someone in an orange jumpsuit pressed up against the wall not moving. He must have heard me walk down the hall and approach the door, because he was standing very still. I didn’t waste a second, I quickly ran to the phone, dialed 911 and told them that the man who had escaped from the Bedford County jail was in our garage and I was home alone! I must tell you, those were the longest few minutes of my life waiting on the police to arrive. I stood beside the front door, heart pounding out of my chest praying they would arrive soon. Luckily they did and they brought a lot of backup. They even brought police dogs with them!

I immediately opened the door and let three police officers into the house. I pointed to where the garage was and followed them over to the door. The three of them all pulled out their guns, assumed the stance you see on tv and pulled the door open. I was so scared!!! They walked all through the garage and even looked in my car to see if anyone was in there, but they found nothing. This of course scared me even more because I thought he probably left the garage and might be lurking around behind the house.

Well, the cops couldn’t find anything, but on the way back into the house one of the cops noticed that a reddish/orange jacket was hanging on the coat rack to the right of the door. He so politely pulled it down and placed in on the deep freezer inside the garage. And that ladies and gentlemen is the story of how I got the crap scared out of me by one red jacket!

Everyone was so nice and didn’t say a word about what an idiot I was, but I’m sure they laughed the entire way back to the police station about this young girl being scared to go into her garage because of a jacket!

See I’m sure not perfect! But this story just makes me laugh remembering my innocence. I hope you enjoyed it and be sure to watch out for any errant red jackets that cross your path.

[via]

To answer the question from today’s title, no this post doesn’t really relate to Pretty Little Liars, except for the whole red coat thing. I CANNOT wait for the summer season to begin next week; I’m totally excited about it. So there you have it, I somehow added Pretty Little Liars into a totally random blog post. Score for me!

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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Waterfalls and a Baby Bump

As I told you in my High Five For Friday post, Tolar and I took a Baby Moon to Glen Allen / Richmond, VA and had an absolute awesome time. We so enjoyed catching up on sleep (which then eluded us both as soon as we got home), waking up and having no set plans and being able to do whatever we wanted and then just enjoying the company of each other.

At the recommendation of our friend Pastor David G, we decided to go tour Maymount while in Richmond and had a great time. The estate is right near downtown Richmond and full of beauty! We toured their house, which at the time it was built was state of the art (and quite gorgeous). I simply adored that there was a huge Louis Vuitton trunk in one of the bedrooms, I so wanted to try and smuggle that in our car.

The grounds were breathtaking, there were flowers everywhere! I enjoyed just being outside, on a beautiful day and taking in all of the wonderful views that we are lucky to have here on earth. There were fountains all over the place, several ponds and a gorgeous waterfall. We walked down to the waterfall, but I didn’t want to get too close. Trying to navigate rocks while almost 8 months pregnant didn’t seem like a good plan to me. But it was awesome to stand back and admire.

I have often said that I’m not much of an outdoorsy girl because I would much rather be inside in the air condition without the elements (ahem Mr. Wind and Mrs. Rain – I’m looking at you!!!), but walking around Maymount made me want to forget all of that. Next time we go, we will certainly pack a picnic lunch and just spend the day relaxing and enjoying all of the beautiful scenery.