If things didn’t go as planned, try try again.
That is all for today.
Lots of love & light,
Jessy
My older sister, Courtney, is having a baby girl!!! It’s the first grandchild on either side of the family so you can only guess everyone’s excitement. I am lucky enough to say that I will be the Godmother of this little bundle of cuteness and I cannot wait another second to meet her.
Last Sunday, my mom and I threw her a baby shower and I thought I’d share some pics and how-to’s. I wanted it to be a beautiful baby shower– one that was classy, cute and chic all at the same time. Since we know it’s a girl, I obviously wanted to have lots of pinks and make it super girly. However, I didn’t want it to be so over-the-top that it was ‘too much.’ So I settled on a ‘Vintage/Rustic’ theme.
Color theme was pale pinks and creams with pops of dark, richer pinks. I wanted it to feel like an elevated country theme (without the ‘twang), so I went with distressed woods, mason jars, homemade drink stirrers, cardboard straws, and “vintage” baby clothes strung throughout the room. Below are some pics from the party!
My mom saved some of her favorite outfits from when each of us were babies, so we took those and strung them across the present table to add a personal touch.
In order to spruce up the bar, I got wooden skewers for grilling and wrapped pink washi tape around it to make little pink flags for guests to add to their drinks!
We placed this sweet sign on top of the bar — best part is that it acted as a great decoration as well as a nice gift for my sister to take home for the nursery.
As for the tables, I bought $1 mini-sized easles and painted them with chalkboard paint in order to write out what ‘activities’ we had going on during the shower.
I purchased plain mason jars and printed out some adorable ‘it’s a girl’ cut-outs and used modge podge to adhere them to the glasses. I loved this because it had multiple purposes– decor, water glasses, and our guests party favor.
For the one of the ‘activities,’ I printed out baby images of each of the immediate family members. Guests then had to fill out a sheet guessing who was who. I made them all sepia tone to give it the rustic look (plus, it made it harder to guess who was who). At the end of the party, we revealed who won from each table and the winner got to take home the centerpiece (an oversized vintage milk jar with two pink roses inside). We also had plain white onesies on each table and asked guests to decorate it as a table–they came out adorable and my sister is planning to put them in the baby’s baby book. Lastly, we had pink cardstock cut up and placed on the table when guests first walked in and asked that they make a wish for the baby. These will get given to her when she’s older and should be very special.
Last but not least (this was my favorite), when guests were responding, I requested them to bring a cute headband so that I could stack them all together and showcase during the party. I took a large candle and wrapped it in pink tights so that the wax wouldn’t come off onto the bows. I loved the way it looked and the bows people brought were just darling!
Less than a month until our little princess is born and I am so excited to meet her!
XOXOX,
Jessy
I really like tuna but I hate that it typically comes smothered in mayo. However, at the salad bar at work, they started putting out this tuna salad that was delicious and had no mayo. SO I tried recreating it and (if I do say so myself) did a pretty damn good job.
Mix together the following ingredients:
– tuna
– chopped kalamata olives
– artichokes
– red onions
– parsley
Toss with lemon juice and olive oil and serve on a wheat pita with original hummus and cucumbers. Drizzle with balsamic vinaigrette, if desired.
The beauty of this recipe (beyond the health benefits) is that you can make a big batch at once and keep using the leftovers for lunches the rest of the week.
Hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did! Let me know what you think!
xoxo
Jess
As with a majority of girls my age, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little on the obsessive side about my size. Don’t get me wrong- I’m by no means huge but I’m also definitely not the girl at the party who has one slice of pizza and a vodka soda water. I LOVE buff chic anything—love pizza, love pasta, obsessed with nachos and can drink just about any beer there is. SO, weekend cal intakes are FOSH not my best friend. Lucky for me, I don’t completely despise working out. However, as of a few months ago I was feeling over the treadmill and elliptical and decided to buy some classes for heated yoga (not to mention, at the time it was March and as far over the treadmill I was, I was even more over the cold—I needed warmth). So I attended my first class and to my surprise, I didn’t hate it—hinted at really liked it. After I began going on a weekly basis I noticed a few things that I thought I’d share:
– A. they should explain what the hell ‘ommminggg’ is and why you have to do it. I loudly laughed my first class—unknown to me, people take this ‘oming’ bit extremely seriously and I got nasty glares.
– B. there is an ALARMING amount of men that attend these classes. None of which that I’m overjoyed about looking at without their shirts on and sweating profusely for over an hour
– C. the instructors can either be awesome or awful. And by awful I mean the WORST. When a bro MY age is trying to give me wordly thoughts and tell me his feelings about the meaning of life, I’m bound to get a weeeee bit irritated.
– D. I get that breathing is a really important part of yoga—HOWEVER, there is NO need for panting and exhaling as if you’re having the most amazing sex of your entire life. It’s a small room and that makes me feel EXTREMELY uncomfortable. To top it off, it’s mostly ALL men that do this and if you go back to point ‘B’ you can guess where my feelings are towards hearing those noises. It not only creeps me out to no end, it also irritates the beejesus out of me and during an hour that my heart rate is supposed to go down and my ‘chi’ to go up, all I can hear in my head is me yelling STFU!
– E. Lastly, I still don’t know what Namaste is. Really, I just need to Google it—probably would be a simple solution. But every class I continue to smirk and feel like a complete ass clown when I bow my head and say outloud a word that I have NO CLUE what I t means. Point being- there should be a sign on the wall with the definition of this word. That would be mighty helpful.
Other than those absolutely on-point points—you should give hot yoga a try. It’s not as dreadful as people think it would be and honestly, you feel a few pounds lighter and tighter at the end of class. Something we can all appreciate the beauty of.
Have a wonderful day lovebugs— and NAMASTE
p.s. here’s a funny video of yogis. It’s not new to the scene in the slightest- but I got a good laugh out of it- last year—so you should now too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IMC1_RH_b3k