Surprise! shower

My awesome coworkers threw me a surprise shower last Saturday. I headed over to Michaela's house for what I thought was just going to be a girls' hangout night, and instead I found this! Tons of pink cupcakes and pink presents. We had lots of fun. Here's a rundown of the night:

We ate cupcakes and other bad-for-us snacky food like cheddar popcorn and Cheez-Its. Yum.

We drank delicious fruity, sherbety punch. Some of us also drank wine.

We played the "guess what baby food this is" game. Surprisingly the green beans, which appeared to be the scariest, weren't as bad as the "carrots." I've never tasted carrots as bitter as these baby food carrots. The bananas were quite good, though.

Then we opened presents. We got lots of fun stuff, like bibs ...

Organic onesies ...

And Boudreaux's Butt Paste. I think my look says it all here. Here's a close-up look at the butt paste:
Then we headed outside to sit around the fire pit, where we drank hot chocolate, made s'mores and had a good old time. Fun stuff. Here's me with Michaela and Brittany toward the end of the night:

So this weekend's an off-weekend, then I have showers the next two Saturdays in a row. Then one more weekend off (that Saturday we're planning to throw a housewarming party) and then my last shower will be the weekend of Thanksgiving. And then I hope to just chill out till the baby comes.

Shower season

I'm a little less than two months away from my due date now, which means I'm right in the middle of complete baby shower craziness. My female coworkers threw a surprise shower for me over the weekend, which is going to bring my total shower count to FIVE. Which we can all admit is little ridiculous, though I certainly won't complain about people being eager to buy me (well, OK, the baby) presents!

The first shower was a few weekends ago, thrown by my mom's sisters at my Aunt Donna's house. As you can see in the top picture, we had a lovely, fancy brunch (with delicious apple and blueberry French toast) before moving on to the main attraction of opening presents.

Here's a photo of most of the guests, including my cousins Katie and Audrey, who came in from Chicago and Indianapolis, and my Aunt Linda, who came in from Evansville. Grandma Carol seems to have stood this photo out, and grandma-to-be Becky was taking the picture.

Me with my mom and Jason's mom, the two future grandmas.

And now, the presents! We got so much great stuff, including a crib, stroller and car seat. There are multiple photos of me opening every single present, and that's going to get old around shower number two, so I'm just including a few highlights.

Here's the pretty quilt for the nursery (how cute are the little birds?), and I also got sets of pink and green sheets to go with it.

We're all very excited about the stroller.

Hooray! A Boppy.

And last, these were two Christmas dresses I wore as a little girl. So ruffly! I think we've finally settled on the name Scarlett (well, for now, at least), and everyone agreed these dresses are very Gone With the Wind-esque.

All in all, it was a great day, so thanks to everyone who helped out, and to everyone who made the trip into town.

I'll try to add photos from my work shower tomorrow.

New couch!

Here's our new couch! Anyone who knows me knows that I've been coveting a new couch for years now, so I'm really excited to finally have one. After looking at lots and lots of furniture stores, we found this one at World Market. The fabric is a light brown chenille, and it's very comfortable so far. I'd originally wanted to get a sectional, but all the ones we found were way too big for the room (not to mention way too expensive). So I like that this gives you a little more seating with the chaise but it also doesn't take up too much more room than a regular couch.

EDITED TO ADD: Good news! When I looked the couch up on the World Market website to find out what the fabric was, I noticed it had been marked down by $200. So today I took my receipt in to the store to see if they'd give me a price adjustment, and they did! Even though the receipt said they'd only do adjustments within 10 days, and it has been three weeks since we bought the couch. I think the guy felt sorry for me. But hooray for a $200 refund!



And I made one last furniture purchase to round out the living room, this light purple velvet chair, which I got for $25 on Craig's List. It looks really pretty with the area rug we have in there, which has a couple of light purple stripes in it. And I swear that's really all the furniture I'm going to buy!

Now, for fun, a brief history of my couches:


Jason and I used this couch as our main couch in our first apartment, and then we had it in the living room in our house in Georgia, where we didn't really sit on it all that much. It doesn't look too bad in this photo, but it was old and the cushions were really beat up. Plus, I inherited it from my ex-boyfriend, so I think it's for the best that I didn't keep it forever. Here it is in its new home, Ben's apartment at Ohio State:


And then we had this lovely set, which Jason got from a friend of a friend and used in his first apartment in Lorain. We used it in our TV room in Georgia. Besides the fact that it's, let's admit, pretty ugly, each sofa had two recliners built in, so it's some of the heaviest furniture you can imagine. I swore we would never move it again after we moved into that house, and thankfully, we didn't! I sold the entire set on Craig's List before we moved for $300.