Danielle's Baby Shower

Christian's cousin Danielle was pleasantly surprised on Saturday afternoon to walk into a room filled with women who love her and all wanted to shower her with baby gifts for the soon to be new Mommy. It was a fun lunch with wonderful women, many of whom are expecting their own little bundles of joy or have recently brought them into the world and had the new Mommy glow.

Danielle's nursery for her baby boy is going to be a jungle theme, so her closest girlfriends brought the jungle to the party and created a really cute baby shower theme.Everyone at the party was truly amazed at the cake that Danielle's friend Vanessa made. Vanessa is a mother of three little boys, and seems to have so many hidden talents. She never ceases to amaze me. Look how adorable this cake is, with the sleeping baby under the leaf on the top. It was so cute!
The Mommy (Carol) and Mommy-to-be. Both looked so beautiful and couldn't stop smiling the entire afternoon. My beautiful family. Mother-in-law and sister-in-law and niece were all smiles, and look stunning with their touch of animal print. (Kathy wore a zebra inspired dress, Shayla stylin' in her animal print faux fur, and although I didn't get any pictures of her shoes, Krysty wore these amazing leopard heels.)
Let the gift opening commence!
Among a few cute baby items that I just couldn't resist, my main gift for Danielle's little one was a personalized name plate. He will share the same name as his grandfather on his Dad's side, Joseph. This was my first boy name plate and I really enjoyed making it. It seems that all the women around me are expecting little boys, so perhaps I'll have a few more chances to create different styles of a name plate for the little guys! So fun!
Danielle is a truly beautiful woman and I know that her little peanut has picked a remarkable family to join, and in April we'll all get to meet him face to face.

Look at my floors!!!!

Our contractors are not 100% done as of today with our upstairs (We're still working on our bathroom, therefore our hallway has not been stained due to high traffic and bathroom fixtures threatening to damage a polished finished floor), but the four bedrooms now have newly stained floors that look simply stunning. I was going to wait to post these photos till the walls were painted and trim was up so you could see the finished product but I'm too excited and can't wait.

In the collage below, the photos display the transition that our floors have undergone in the last month or so. The first photo I call the "Oopsie color." Unfortunately Christian and I didn't care for this red color, so our contractor spent close to two weeks stripping the wood and then sanding the floor by hand. By the time he was done sanding the floors, which are close to 200 years old, they looked brand new. (Great work Konstantine!!!) The third photo is of our tester color, which we picked out and LOVED so we gave the go ahead and they stained each bedroom, applied three coats of varnish (You see coat one and coat two in the last two photos in the collage.).....

And then... drum roll please..........
Finally our finished floors look like this!!!!! Sooooo beautiful and really breath taking. The floors were something we fell in love with right from the very beginning and we knew we wanted to restore them to their original beauty. Konstantine and his Uncle Andrew did a wonderful job! I can't wait to post more photos of the work they're doing. But for now I love gazing at my gorgeous floors!

How Peculiar!

I only caught the tale end of this. The birds flew back and forth for a good two or three minutes before it dawned on me to get my camera, and then of course, once I had the camera it was as if the birds knew they were caught in the act, so they all fled. But still, how strange!