#Giveaway Winner!

Happy Monday Morning!!

I'm sure you're still hung over from the lack of sleep and amount of food you ate while watching the Super Bowl last night :)

Congratulations on Alyssa H. who won the free Treat cards from last week's giveaway.  Please email me at mypixiedustdiary@gmail.com ASAP so I can get your free cards to you in time for Valentine's Day.

What did y'all do this weekend?  Not much happened here.  I broke my toe last Monday night with the help of my six year old so I've been moving much slower than normal this week.  I spent most of today on the couch writing UPC numbers on envelopes to submit Campbell's Labels for Education.  I know it's great for the school but it take FOREVER!  I wish I was smart enough to come up with a quicker way to do it.  Other than that, really not too much.  I've got tons to get caught up on.  Not sure why I do it, but I always find myself saying that I'll get "caught up" this weekend but it never seems to happen.  I do have to one of these weekends before the big First Birthday Bash coming up at the end of March.  Tons of yard work is waiting, carpets need to be cleaned and another Disney trip needs to happen soon.

Hopefully the week passes quickly without anything too serious happening.  We're hoping it passes quickly so we can go visit good friends this weekend and see their new home.  A little break will be very nice!

Send a #Treat with Love & #Giveaway!

Thanks to Pinterest I've been thinking about what to do for Valentine's Day this year for several weeks already.  Since it's the baby's first Valentine's Day, we need to do something super fun.  I love helping the boys write out their Valentines.  Being able to keep one for their scrapbooks and watching their little writing improve every year is wonderful.  This year though, I also wanted to send far away family and friends a little "love day" love.  Using pictures from our recent trip back up north and including a brief little note to each recipient will help to make the notes all feel personal and let the recipients know we're thinking of them.  A couple of our family members and friends are dealing with some serious health issues right now so I know something like this would bring a much needed smile to their faces.  But I just finished (ok almost finished!) hand making 75 first birthday invitations.  If I took on making Valentine's Day cards too, it may be next year before they're done.  I needed something that was still adorable but helped make the process quicker and easier for me to actually get these cards done.

Enter Treat.com.  Being a member of the Shutterfly and tinyprints family lets me know I can trust the quality of the products and that the prices will be reasonable.  Treat takes the creative process another step further.  You can choose the wording from the Message Library or come up with something all on your own to include in your card.  Another Treat bonus?  You can set up reminders with them so you never miss another birthday, anniversary or other important day to your family and friends.  For someone like me who forgets everything, this tool is invaluable.  You can even add a gift card to your card so you don't need to leave the house in search of the "perfect" gift!

Treat has got adorable Valentine's Day cards and it's not too late to get started on making some yourself.  You can even download the app for your iPhone to make it even easier to make your cards!  Take a look at a couple of my favorites:

This one's perfect for teachers since the boy's school mascot is an owl!

Perfect for daddy's young and old...

What boy wouldn't want to be a daredevil??

There are also some that don't need a personal picture

Even dads can get in on the action (and score some major brownie points!!)

Want to learn more about Treat?  Join the #SweetTreats Twitter party today (1/29) at 2:00 PM EST.  You can find Treat on Facebook as well at Twitter.  

And now for the giveaway!  One of my lucky readers is going to win five free cards from Treat!!!  Simply leave a comment for me letting me know which Treat card you'd send for Valentine's Day and your email address.  The contest will be open to US residents until 12:01 AM on 2/2/13 and a winner will be randomly selected from the comments below.  Good luck!!

Disclosure:  I was given 10 free cards from Treat in exchange for my review of their product and this post.  All opinions and views are my own.

What a Week

I kind of dropped off the side of the world last week.  Tuesday I shared my cleaning craziness and the week seemed to go downhill from there. Wednesday evening I was working hard on trying to make some Lorax cake pops inspired by Bakerella that turned into a major fail (so bad that they'll get their own post so you don't make the same mistakes I did!).  In the middle of the cake pop madness we got a call that a good friend had fallen and needed to go to the ER so I headed over to help them out for a little bit.  Thursday night I visited my girlfriend to order the Princesses birthday cake inspired by a pin I found on Pinterest.  I cannot wait to see what she comes up with!  We still have to pick flavors out but at least now I can breathe a little easier knowing the cake is in good hands.  Friday night I had a jewelry party to go to so Sis and I had a little girl time.  Saturday I spent the day watching my girlfriend's two boys while she moved and Sunday I spent the day finishing the invitations to the big party.  Doesn't that make you tired just reading that?  I'm tired just reading it and I lived it!  I'm hoping this week isn't quite as crazy but there's never a dull moment around here for sure.  This week the boys have a science night at school to go to and I have a cake to make for a birthday party on Saturday so it's already shaping up to be busy.

What did you do this weekend?  What's ahead for the week?

So Not Nesting

Every time I cleaned anything when I was pregnant, everyone was quick to point out that I was "nesting".  My reply was usually the same "I'm not nesting. I am just OCD and need to clean".  Monday was no different.  Hubby had class so the kiddos and I were home to enjoy our long weekend.

This was hubby's long weekend so he was home on Friday.  Ironically he forgot about that apparently and scheduled something for Friday so I came home on my lunch hour to watch the kiddos so he could make his appointment.  Sis napped for about an hour and a half so I used the time to get things picked up around the house while the boys played and worked on some things for school.  My Saturday mornings normally start with garage saling in the morning then trying to clean and get some chores done.  We all piled in the van Saturday morning and found a few good deals before heading to Savannah for the afternoon.  I'd been trying to make time to get over there for a couple of weeks to try and look at stuff for the baby's first birthday party.  After hitting Babies R Us (connected to Toys R Us) where Carter had a huge meltdown that ended with him telling the world no one loved him and he didn't love us followed by a spanking for not putting his sweatshirt on and having to be carried out of the store, we stopped at Golden Corral for lunch then on to Party City and the mall to visit AC Moore.  Hubby wanted to visit a sports store but it had gone out of business so he was out of luck.  Our little adventure took way longer than I'd planned and we didn't make it home until almost 6 Saturday night.  I did find some cool stuff for the party so I'll need to head back over and go shopping as the party gets closer.

Sunday was just as crazy.  We took Sis to get her ears pierced and I found her birthday shirt at Carter's.  After a quick stop at Target to get formula, my girlfriend brought her little boy over for a play date.  Thankfully all the boys played well together and Hubby spent a couple of hours outside with them.  I managed to get a few things done around the house but not nearly what I wanted to.  I even got a little bit of work for my real job done.

Monday morning we woke up and were all kind of moving slowly which was a nice change from our normal morning routine.  Sis and I had breakfast and played for a bit then she went down for her nap.  I took advantage of my time and managed to get the Hubby's side of the closet and his dresser cleaned out and all Sis' clothes hung up while she slept.  We spent some more time playing and watching the Inauguration then had lunch and Sis took another nap.  The Meanest Mom in the World made the boys clean their room (even under the beds...) while I cleaned the spare room and living room, made dinner (meatloaf and mashed potatoes!), did more laundry and a load of dishes. I love having days like this.  Getting so much done feels great and being able to see the progress right away is great motivation.  My anxiety also got a little break today since I don't have to keep worrying about when I'm going to get things done which is great.  So no, I'm not nesting...no more buns in this oven.  I just like having a clean house and trying to use my time as wisely as possible.

How did you spend your long weekend??

Wordless Wednesday

Sorry for the late post!  Apparently I saved the post but forgot to hit the "Publish" button....oops!

Happy Wednesday!  We're half way through the week already.  

I wanted to share one of the pictures from this year's Christmas card with y'all:

I got the idea from Pinterest.

Kid's Parties - For the Adults or for the Kids?

When we lived back up north, near all our friends and family, before the boys were in school, we had their birthday parties and invited our friends if they had kids or not.  The parties were just as much a chance for the adults to get together and socialize as it was for the kids to get together and play.  Now that the boys are in school, we invite their classmates to their parties and thankfully some of the classmate's parents are our friends.  Some of our friends with kids are still on the list too so it makes for a great group of kids when everyone gets together.

Because we're still kind of "new" (it will be five years this month!!), I'm back at the crossroads of inviting our adult friends (some with kiddos and some without) or just kiddos that are friends with her big brothers.  Right now, I've got a mix of friends without kids and friends with kiddos.  The current guest count (adults and kids) is 193.

Yup.

Pick your jaw up.

Because I'm about to make it drop again....

That's probably not the end of the list.

I feel terrible for not inviting people and hurting someone's feelings so I invite them even if we're not close friends.  Disclosure:  there's a good chance a number of those people won't come because they don't live near us anymore and because her party is Easter weekend.

My other problem is that I work with 100 guys.  I rarely get to meet their wives and when I do it's briefly and usually because they have some kind of problem or question associated with work.  Something about inviting guys to a baby's first birthday party just doesn't sound like it will be fun for them.  Or their wives that don't know me....

Social situations like this always make me stress way more than I probably need to.  The "right" thing always seems to escape me and never seems to be as clear cut to me as other people.  I want nothing more than my little princess and our family to be surrounded by those who love and support us celebrating her amazing first year of life.  I guess if that means the guest list is 193 people then so be it!  To me, you can always politely decline.  Offending someone by not inviting them seems much worse to me than inviting someone that doesn't really want to come.

How do you handle your parties - over or under invite?  Do you invite the adults you know you'll have fun with or the kiddo's friends or a mix of both?

I'm Back

I'm so happy to be (almost) back!!  Thankfully the full blown flu didn't hit our house (yet!) but whatever bug it was, I'm glad it's on it's way out.  It seems like just hubby and I got it this time but the baby's nose is runny so it might have gotten her too - hopefully not!  Whenever I get sick, it seems to hang around forever and this was no exception.  Hopefully we'll all be back to "normal" (whatever that is) this week.

Over the weekend, we had a little "family meeting" about the big first birthday party coming up at our house. Listening to the boy's ideas certainly brought a smile to my face.  I love little moments where we're all in bed together snuggling and having a good time.  No fighting, no yelling, just fun.  Sadly I don't feel like those moments happen enough but I'm working to change that.  I'm trying to make time each weekend (because right now I seriously don't see us having that time before or after school but maybe some day!) to just sit and talk about anything at all.

We've all agreed on an elephant/circus/carnival theme for the big party.  This should certainly be interesting.  Basically it will be a big party with some pink and purple elephant stuff and lots of friends.  We really don't need any more than that do we?  I'm excited to see it all come together but am so not ready for her first year to be behind us already.  On the other hand, I kind of am.  Seeing the boys hanging out together having fun makes me want that for her too.  I'm such a sappy momma sometimes.

In other big news, we're officially looking for a house again.  We have six months left on our lease (unless we find someone to take it over before it's up) so we need to start looking soon.  Sadly it's hard to find a house big enough for us (we're looking for five bedrooms) but I know it will all fall into place.

So share your party tips as well as your moving and packing tips with me please! :)  That's kind of a wrap up of our weekend (less the boring grocery shopping, laundry and cleaning).  How was yours?