And Baby Makes 3

I have talked about my wonderful cousin who lives in Chicago before.  She and I were such great friends as kids, and have continued that friendship into our adulthood.  Nearly 5 years ago she told me that she was engaged to be married, and I was so thrilled for her.  She had an amazing wedding; she and her husband are such good people; I am lucky to have them as family and friends.  She and I text on a fairly regular basis, so a text from her this past January didn't seem out of the ordinary, until she sent me a picture attachment of a sonogram.   I literally jumped up and down for her in excitement.  So excited that she and her husband were starting their family.  They are going to make great parents, and I can't wait to watch them go through this process!

Cori has a lot of family and a lot of close friends, so I was so honored that she was going to let my mom, sister, aunt and I throw her a baby shower.  Everyone knows that I love planning showers, hosting parties, making the experience memorable for whomever it is for, so I was stoked to start working on the shower!  Because Cori and Brandon are awesome, they didn't find out the sex of the baby, which made planning the shower that much more fun.  Cori wanted something simple, fun, and summery.  Challenge accepted. Etsy here I come!  

I found the most adorable invites ever.  Simple, fun and summery and gender neutral without being just yellow or green. Behold the invites:

As something special and to help build their library for little baby Niskala, we added an insert into the invite that asked people to bring their favorite book instead of a card.  This was such a fantastic idea that we borrowed from another cousin of mine's baby shower. I was a bit nervous that there would be a lot of duplicates, but amazingly, there was only one duplicate!

After settling on the invites, we ran with these colors!  Here's a look at all the work it took to put this together.

HILARIOUS!  I put Cori and Brandon in charge of putting the banner together.  Ha, hopefully baby Niskala gets their spelling skills from their grandparents!   They assembled the banner backwards, spelling 

"Stargnoc Iroc" in stead of "Congrats Cori" 

After many months of hard work and quite a few laughs in the days before the shower, the final product.  What an amazing shower it was. It was so great to see Cori surrounded by those in her life who are the most important to her, and those who love her.  She and Brandon, and certainly Baby Niskala are surrounded by so many people who would do anything for them!

Congrats to Cori and Brandon!  Can't wait to meet Baby Niskala!

What Is This Man Cave Thing?!

So apparently there has been a request to have a post that talks about nothing but B's Man Cave.  I can't imagine why anyone would be so interested in the thing, but alas, I will appease those who follow and read the blog with a post dedicated to nothing but B's man cave.  I have to be honest with you, since I am writing the post and not B, it's going to be short and sweet!

Although there have been posts about the man cave, I think that they have been sandwiched in with the house, so I am going to repost some of the pictures again.

Prepping the area for the future man cave!

The sides are going up!

Roof trusses and windows going in!

The siding going up.

Garage door installed!  Yea!

After living in the house for a month or so, we finally were able to get concrete poured in the shop.  It was a multiple day affair in getting the concrete poured since there was so much space to cover and a rationing at the concrete plant.  After the concrete set long enough, we finally moved everything from the house garage out to the shop.  So happy to have my car living in the garage!

Here are some pics of a very messy inside of B's shop.  He's amazing in trying to balance setting up his shop how he wants and so he can go back out and start working on his cars, and my never ending "honey-do" list.  This winter I will be great for him.  This winter the house will be good and he can't do any landscaping, so this winter we will have to do some update shots on his man cave!

B also put up some really cool lights over the two windows that face the house.  Our future plans are to have a little patio out between the windows as a nice place to sit and watch the kids as they play on the playground.  Here are some shots of the lights.

I have said this before, and I am going to say it again.  I am so happy that B and I were able to make this shop work so early in the process.  This was one of the main reasons why we moved to acreage, and I would have been so sad for B if we wouldn't have been able to do this so soon.  It has turned out amazing and even I like it!