The Bump II {10} - A Look Back: Bump Comparisons!

A lot of people thought I looked a LOT bigger with Jack than I did with Owen. I definitely popped a bit sooner and he most certainly felt more heavy. You can see the comparison below to prove that everyone was correct. WOW, Jack was a big baby!

Here's a look back at my bumps with BOTH boys :)

Owen's Baby Book

TwoGiggles and OddPrints = best sites to work with for Owen's baby book!

I worked really hard this past month to update Owen's baby book that I ordered from TwoGiggles on Etsy. It might seem expensive at $90 but it includes pregnancy through the fifth birthday and is super adorable. With Owen's first birthday approaching, I felt compelled to at least work on it a little in early November because I was a bit behind. I was keeping up well with the blogging side of the updates but definitely not his baby book. I had to go back to about five months so I'm soooo glad the blogs were there because it was a huge help in adding notes and little tidbits from the past seven months!

That was the easy part - then came deciding on photos. I have too many and like way too many of them to put just one or two on the photo pages. So, here comes my plug for Oddprints.com. I LOVE this site. OddPrints allows you to create custom-sized prints and either have them print it out (for a price) and send it to you or download them (for free) to your computer so you can print them yourself. Once I determined how many photos I wanted to use for each month, I went to work saving each photo to the correct sizes. I opted to download them and print from Walmart. You better believe I ordered them online to utilize Ebates :) They print out in whatever size makes sense. This is a 4x6 (yes, I needed teeny tiny photos - like 1.4" x 1.4":

The guide marks make it so simple to cut out. Then walaaah. You've got yourself the room to add in a ton of photos! I was able to make a max of 15 work on a page. I'm definitely free-forming these so it's not perfect but I don't mind!

Here are a few of the pages so you can get a feel for the style. There are a lot of photos - you can see them bigger by clicking on them. Enjoy :)

As you can tell, I still have a little to catch up on but that'll come soon enough. I'm working on gathering photos from family and phones so it's a process. My goal is to have his book up-to-date by the end of January. My other goal is to have his baby brother's up-to-date before he arrives too! Yep - we've picked a name and I already have his in hand :)

Little Mr. {1st Birthday Recap}

Owen's birthday came and went by soooooo incredibly fast! It's hard to believe that just a year ago, we were spending our few couple of days at home with a teeny tiny newborn, scared out of our minds. We've all come a long way in 365 days and what better way to celebrate than with a fun and easy birthday party for the family!

It took us a little bit to figure out and agree on what theme to use but I decided on a simple monster theme for a few different reasons. One - it's not too difficult to come up with monster themed items - the silverware container, the sandwiches, the cake. Two - it was simple enough for a one year old to enjoy. I didn't want to use a theme that an older child would like or would get into a bit more (like a painting or italian themed party!) Owen is our little monster so it was a perfect fit :) I created the invite using PicMonkey.com.

I created a pretty simple menu for the birthday bash. I knew I wanted monster sandwiches and those were made with turkey or ham and either provolone or mild cheddar with green olives for eyes. We left out condiments for people to use as well. For sides I made a garlic lovers pasta salad using a store recipe so I am not going to share it for the masses. I do suggest you try it though so you can get it at Oneota Co-op in Decorah! We also had a simple veggie tray along with the punch and water. One day I will need to post the punch recipes. It's my favorite! Luckily for us, I bought way too much of the sandwich ingredients, made way too much of the pasta salad and bought twice as much punch ingredients that we're practically celebrating his birthday every single day this week!

Owen wasn't all that interested in opening the presents after the first couple so he let his Daddy take care of that while he tried out some of the new toys. I think the favorites of the evening were the chair my dad made, the lawnmower (thanks, Drew, for putting it together!) and the little hammer that's meant for an xylophone. Surprise, surprise - he could stick it in his mouth :) My guess is that if we had put together some of his other toys that those would have be huge hits as well. Right now, he's loving the noise making hammer and the little tambourine though he's using them both more as chew toys right now. Just this morning though, Owen kept reaching over to me with the tambourine in his hand because he knew that I'd shake it for him while he held on. He'll get the hang of it soon enough!

I asked a Luther student to make Owen's birthday cake. I could have created it myself but I'm not too confident even using a boxed cake. Somehow I would have managed to messed it up. Thank goodness I left this job to someone else because it turned out so darn adorable! Owen wasn't too shy but didn't really smash the cake either. He got quite of bit of frosting but I helped crumble the cake for him. Fearing a massive sugar high and subsequent crash, I took the cake and crumbles away after five minutes or so. We had monster cupcakes for everyone else. Note to self - have small plates for the dessert! They can get a little messy :)

Thank you for our immediate families for making Owen's First Birthday so special!

The Bump {17} - A Look Back

I thought it'd be kind of cool to take a look back at the bump!

Enjoy!