Thankfulness Day 24 - A Beatrix Potter Baby Shower

 Around this time last year, my DH and I went back to our hometown for Thanksgiving, thinking it might be the last chance we would have to see family before we headed off to Italy. During this time, my grandmother graciously let my mother and sister take over her house as they cohosted a baby shower for us, and it was awesome! My mother and sister, as with most of my family come to think of it, do nothing half-baked and always go above and beyond when committing to something. Most often their generosity borders on absurd and insane, and this event was no exception as they single-handedly furnished the baby nursery! They also spent countless hours decorating and planning, and as such, I am going to show off the fruits of their labor below.

            The main theme was Beatrix Potter. I have been a huge fan of the books and movies ever since I was little and have always wanted to theme the baby nursery as such, regardless of the gender. However the color scheme of blue and green worked particularly well for the garden/Peter Rabbit theme as well as our baby's gender. (yay for little boys!) 

          My mother and middle sister both work, and due to the holiday season they had particularly long hours and decided that they may need help decorating. I love decorating and was more than happy to come and assist, and it was easy because they already had all the supplies needed. 

  

    
          As you can see in the picture to the left, even the dining room joined the happy theme! We hung the balloons from the ceiling at various lengths to add dimension. A marble inserted into each one helped them stay in place. We also mixed plain with polka dot and had different colored ribbon tied to each. This took a lot of teamwork and we had an assembly line going to be most efficient. My sister would insert the marble (so the balloons would hang nicely), while I blew them up and tied the ribbons to them, and then my other sister would hand them up to my tall hubby who was on a ladder and attaching them the ceiling. It looked great and was really fun to walk under! Snippets of the curled ribbon decorated the floor so nothing was left untouched for festivity.


I was also in charge of lemonade! With a little help from my family and friends of course ;) I found some unique lemonade recipes online and my hubby and sisters helped me make them. They were sooo good!

Squeezing the lemon juice! So many people pitched in to help, thanks everyone!

We tied cute/themed ribbon my mom found around the mason jars.

I made the mini labels so people knew what they were getting into! The Honey Vanilla Lemonade was the very best of them, which I had not anticipated. 

Food! Family also brought delicious dishes to share. yum! back when I was allowed to eat anything and everything... ah those were the days ;)

My mom made these delicious dirt (oreo pudding) cups complete with fake flowers and gummy worms. 

And of course it's a carrot cake because it was a bunny/garden party

We played a lot of fun games and won plants as prizes. Here people filled out cards of advice for us as parents. Most of them advised us to "get sleep!" (And yes, I still have the cards. They are tucked into the baby book)

Such a beautiful toybox!

Family on both my and my hubby's side showered us with gifts for our upcoming little one, and we really have been in need of little as far as baby supplies go. A year later and I still have unopened bottles of baby soaps to work through! We managed to transport it all back to our apartment in Arizona, where it was packed up by movers the next weekend and shipped off to Italy. Just over two months later, in mid February, the shipment arrived (all in one piece! and less than a day before the baby made his appearance! What timing!). After the weeks in various hospitals for his PKU, we finally got to be home and set up the nursery. Although it's changed a fair amount since the spring, here are the pictures we took when we first got it set up:

This picture was taken before we learned how to hang things in the concrete walls, so the pictures, cross stitch from his great-grandma, and beautiful mobile my mother-in-love made aren't here.

  




Today I am thankful for family and good memories, for the one's who help you and celebrate with you. We are very blessed!

Thankfulness Day 16 - Thankful for Teachers

I could be wrong, but I’m guessing your thoughts probably go directly to schoolteachers. I am thankful for those people as well; we need teachers and it’s a big undertaking I’m not sure I would want to do, so I’m glad that others do. However, the sort of teachers I interact with currently aren’t necessarily designated teachers. Everyone has skills and talents unique to them (or at least, unique to a smaller group of people) and I appreciate when those people take the time to share their knowledge and help others learn. Perhaps it means more to me because it’s not their designated job, and they are freely giving of their own time in order to teach someone else how to improve. 

            Today the photography club organized a pin-up style photo shoot in order for photographers to practice their skills and have some fun. The people in charge of the club don’t get paid to be there, but they have a passion for the craft and they choose to take time out of their day to teach their skills to others. And I certainly learned a great deal from their shared knowledge! I also had fun playing with the photography accessories they were eager to share.

            The shoot was good fun, and we had various models arrive and they were done up by several makeup and hair stylists. The models then kindly let the photographers then got to boss them around and ask them to pose in various locations. We started in the studio and then went outside to explore an abandoned building next door. I find I much prefer shooting outdoors and interacting with a more live setting. Here are some of the shots I took today.

Working in the studio. We got to practice with the various umbrella flashes, posing, and use of backdrops. 

Here we had moved to the abandoned building next door. 

This shoot also gave me the opportunity to explore ways to edit photos.
Not sure how much I like this soft/glow sort of edit, but it's fun to mix it up.  

This is really just a shot of her hair. I like the styles! If only they weren't so time consuming to do on oneself...

Certainly not professional by any means, but it was neat to get the opportunity to experiment with new settings and people. And bonus, my hubby got some quality time with our LO at a nearby park while I shot.

Thankfulness Day 15 - Thoughts on Time...

This is supposed to be one of my days of thankfulness, but my thoughts have been concerning time. Cancer is a race against time. How fast can you heal and battle it before it consumes you? How quickly can you get a hold on it before it is too far-gone? Having been diagnosed with cancer at the last possible stage, time is truly of the essence for me, and there is no room to be lax. No matter how much time I have left, I am so thankful for the time that came before, the time I have been given on this earth.

I got married at 22 and had my son at 23. My husband and I had a lot of support in our decision to marry young, but there were also some nay-sayers. I had a good handful of people tell me no, don’t get married. You’re young, go and live life. (Because having a family isn’t living life?) Have a career and make something of yourself before “settling” down. (Because without a career you can’t make anything of yourself?) No, don’t move overseas to Italy. Stay near to the people you already know. (Should I never meet anyone new ever again?) You have plenty of time to travel. (Did I? Do YOU?) And for heavens sake don’t have children so young! Wait until you’ve both worked for awhile; save, prepare and plan for the perfect time. (Because life is so in our control that we can schedule perfect times for things like that…)

For some reason time has always been on my mind, even before my diagnosis. I knew our time on earth is uncertain, and I knew what I needed to do. As such, I knew they were wrong, and I am so glad I didn’t listen to the nay-sayers! I have lived a life of great adventures and chased after my dreams. Yes I married straight out of college at 22 and had our Little One at 23 and somewhere in there I moved halfway around the world. But who would have known that at 23, I would also be diagnosed with the most advanced stage of cancer? Turns out all those people who had to put in their two cents were wrong. Turns out I may not have had the time to marry, may not have had time to have children, and may not have had time to travel the world. And see that’s just it, NO ONE knows how much time they have left. So what are they waiting for? What are YOU waiting for!?

YOU ARE DYING! You, yes you reader. All of you and everyone else is currently dying. Some slow, some fast. Some know, some don’t. Perhaps I am the lucky one. I may know when. You don’t. You may think you are in good health and life is lovely and rosy, however you could hop in your car tomorrow and never arrive at your destination. You could go to the airport and some crazy shooter will decide your life is worthless and end it in the blink of an eye. Or you could be like me, and a darkness will seep inside and slowly eat away at your life and health before you can catch it. No matter the cause, you are currently closer to dying than you were when you started reading this post.

             

So why isn’t everyone seizing the day and living life to the fullest?! (And no, please don’t think I am advocating YOLO. What could have been a very positive trend seems to have become an excuse for the poor life choices of the youth…) And no, I don't mean you should marry whomever you're with right now or procreate at this very moment, obviously one must utilize some wisdom... I mean more of a perspective shift. I know it sounds totally cliché, but if you were to live like you were dying, would you be on facebook, or reading to your child? Would you watch tv, or go walking with your friend? etc etc. If it wasn’t a perspective you were living with before, it will certainly change and redirect your priorities now. What really matters will sift to the forefront and I believe you will be doing the things that truly make you happy and fulfill you. Prior to having cancer I would wistfully wish I had more time to hang with God, to study his word and meditate, etc. Well now that I have cancer and sit on the couch for my electromedicine therapy three hours a day, I now spend three hours in study and prayer. It's awesome! Somehow, I now have the time... where was that time before??

The thought of leaving my loved ones behind isn’t a happy one, but the idea of never having them at all is even sadder. (Rather like, “Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”) So I am thankful for the decisions I have made, I don’t believe I would have done it differently if I had to do it over, and I am thankful for the time I have been given.

Now I bid thee adieu, for although I like to keep everyone updated on the blog, someone small is awaiting snuggles. Good night. (Priorities! ;) ) 

Yes, all the right decisions <3

Thankfulness Day 12 - Hooray for Coupons!

Today I am going to express my gratitude for coupons. I wasn’t a “couponer” before coming to Italy, however after I was informed of a program that sent military members coupons, I decided it really couldn’t be easier, so I might as well give it a go. I signed up for the program and was matched with 5 people from the states who volunteered to find, clip, and mail coupons to me overseas. Wow! How cool are those people? Well now I carry my coupons with me to every shopping trip and I usually save around $10 a trip with them. (And we make our trip once a week). Being overseas, we are limited by the food they ship over here, but we still manage to save a lot of money with the coupons.

The coffee store on base also has a huge file system where people can go and put the coupons they don’t use and pick up one’s other people have discarded. Sometimes I will sit in the coffee shop and dig for specific coupons I am looking for. Our savings with coupons definitely dropped with my new diet. Coupons for fresh produce doesn’t seem to exist… however we still save on frozen veggies, dairy and meats that my hubby eats, as well as cleaning supplies and soaps, etc. I find that most of the coupons seem to be for the unhealthy foods. Sugar cereals, ice cream, cookie packs, sodas, etc all seem to have an abundance of coupons available. Healthier food options have fewer coupons. Regardless, we still save enough money to make it worth it, and I’m very thankful to have coupons, and to have people stateside who spend their spare time clipping and mailing off their coupons!

If you happen to be a couponer and would like to donate your spare coupons to military members, go here: http://www.couponstotroops.com/ to sign up!

Thankfulness Day 11 - Dehumidifiers!

Mold was a non-existent problem at our last place, here in Italy however, the mold is rampant everywhere. Nearly every spouse I know battles with it in their houses. Italy is a humid place, and someone told me the paint here isn’t permitted to have the chemicals it does in the states and as such it is less hostile for mold growth (but I don’t know if that’s a fact as I haven’t researched this thoroughly). When I spoke with the landlord, his solution was to paint over it. OVER it?? I shudder at the thought of how many layers of mold are underneath these layers of paint…

The mold is terrible for one’s health and we’ve tried all manner of things. We used to spray and scrub it, however many people told us not to bother with the scrubbing, as it will only make it worse the next time it comes back. We’ve sprayed vinegar on it, and that definitely worked, but it always came back within weeks. The interior of the house is not so bad, but anything with an exterior wall flares up with mold. Our son’s room is terrible with it and we felt badly putting him in there so we moved him into our room with us and hardly utilize his room. I read on the military spouse facebook page of other spouses who found stuffed animals molded through, and while it has stuck to the ceilings in our place, we wanted it taken care of.

            Today a painter came and scraped off layers and layers of old paint, and repainted the problem walls. We also purchased dehumidifiers to place in our problem rooms, as we’ve been told they are a huge help. The landlords also said we had to open the entire house for 15 minutes a day (yes, even in the freezing of winter! Every time I open the windows and feel the cold rushing in and the warmth out, I have flashbacks to my childhood and can hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head, scolding me and telling me he’s not paying to heat the whole neighborhood! haha). We must also open the windows during showers and when running the laundry.

            We also got a humidity reader that sits on the wall above the thermometer and lets us know what our humidity is at. I’m bummed we didn’t get this running/installed the day we started the dehumidifiers! We don’t know how bad it was when we first started the dehumidifiers, but when we did get it up a few days later, it said our household humidity was 78%. Eep! The recommended household humidity is between 40-50%. Our house is now consistently in the 50’s, and on occasion we’ve been able to get it as low as 38%. The mold is still present in the locations the painter didn’t get, but it hasn’t increased/spread. So I am thankful that these dehumidifiers seem to be working, and that the house is a healthier place for us to live in!

Thankfulness Day 10 - Automatic Cars

Today I am thankful for Automatic Cars. Do we have one? Yes. Do we drive it? Currently, no. The insurance is through the roof over here, so in order to save some dough, we parked it and got an Italian beater. And while it is more compact (which is good for squeezing down Italian roads!) it is a manual, and I really dislike driving manual. Perhaps it’s because this is my first manual car and it’s the car itself I don’t like… Something new breaks on it every week. From the window to the lights to the stereo to the air or heat… And the struggles to run in higher gears if you have other things, (like the heat) running at the same time. The windshield wipers seem to make the rain on the glass worse, and yes they are brand new… But no, I think it is the manual driving that gets me most. I messed up my knee playing Ultimate Frisbee while in college and pushing the clutch over longer drives becomes a quick pain. And although I’ve been driving it for months, I am ever stalling out, and in all the wrong places! Sometimes it is definitely my fault, other times, I am quite certain I did nothing to cause its untimely lapse in life. This sounds more like a complaining post, and that’s truly not my intention. I am merely attempting to depict why it is that automatic cars are worthy of a post, and for my daily stress levels and myself, I realize automatic cars are a blessing for me. I was appreciative of our little automatic car, prior to owning this manual car, however I am now very thankful someone bothered to invent automatic cars! They are much more suited for people like me.