Oh Baby!

 Yesterday, my friend Emily and I had the wonderful opportunity to host a baby shower for my friend and Emily's sister-in-law, Ali.  Ali is due in April with a little baby girl and we all couldn't be more excited for them!

Emily and I had a blast coming up with ideas for the shower!  We based the "theme" around the baby's room. We found our inspiration in some fabric that Ali bought for an ottoman and we found a lot of our ideas for the decorations online. 

 

 

We made two different types of cupcakes - white with strawberry filling and chocolate - fruit salsa with cinnamon and sugar pita chips, cream cheese mints, a cheese ball and veggie trays.  Instead of making punch, we decided to buy bottled carbonated juices from Target.  We liked the look of the bottles because it was something different and we didn't have to mix up punch :)

 

 (Please excuse the odds and ends under the table. We didn't realize it was so noticeable.)

 

Much to Ali's dismay, we played a really fun game that Emily found.  Basically, we had list of words associated with a baby - girl, boy, twins, triplets, epidural, doctor, doctor's fingers, heart burn, breasts, etc.  Then, we had a bag full of different types of candy and you had to match the candy name with one of the words on the list.  For example, we had a Baby Ruth candy bar and it was supposed to represent "girl", a Butterfinger was supposed to represent "doctors fingers", Red Hots represented "heart burn", Lifesavers represented "epidural" and so on.  It was a group game so people weren't forced to play and it got everyone talking.

 

Matt and Ali both come from big families, so she had quite a crowd there which resulted in quite a few gifts! 

 

 

She got some adorable clothes, lots of toys, some of her baby "gear" and lots of other little necessities.  We also asked everyone to bring their favorite book to help start a small library for the new baby.  Of all of the books she received, I think she only got one duplicate!  

It was so fun to celebrate with Ali and now, we can't wait for the little one to arrive!  And, Emily and I decided we make a pretty good party planning team!  We may go into business someday ;) Ha ha!

Because it's Friday (again...)

By the time Friday rolls around, my mind has pretty much turned to mush and I'm counting down the minutes until the weekend officially hits!  So in honor of Friday, here is another random list post:

• Today has been the longest day ever! 
• I was accused of being "Country" today during lunch.  I have Brandon's truck today and he carries big rubber boots with him at all times, only he keeps them stuck, upside down, between his truck cab and truck bed.  When I walked in the restaurant, the guy behind the sandwich counter made a joke and told me that was a very "country" thing to do. 
• One of my bosses from A|S is retiring and his retirement party is tonight.  I'm so excited to get to catch up with some of my old co-workers.
• Tonight I'm hanging out with a friend finishing up things for the big baby shower we are hosting.  Lots of fun stuff to make!
• Tomorrow is the big baby shower, so I will be busy with that for a good part of the day.
• I'm hoping for a somewhat relaxed Saturday evening and would love to watch a good chick flick ;)
• I believe my brother, sis-in-law and niece will be stopping by our house on their way home from my parent's house.
• Speaking of my parents, my mom turns 60 next week and thinks us kids have been sending her random gifts in the mail, so she's been so proud of her "detective" skills and claims she has proof that it is us. 

Well, this is about all I can muster up for now.  Happy FRIDAY!!!!

Sometimes, I DO believe I am crazy!

Have you ever woken up from a dream and just laid there in disbelief about what your brain had just concocted? Wondering how you can feel so normal during the day, but then at night your mind just runs wild?

I have to let you in on a secret; I have the weirdest dreams!!!  For instance, I used to have this on-going dream when I was younger (not so much in recent years) that I was an inmate at an all-girls prison.  Every day, we would wake up, eat some oatmeal-like substance for breakfast and then we would all head to this open field for daily exercise.  But, the twist would come when all of the other inmates would start chasing me to get their exercise.  I would run and run and run and once I reached the top of this hill (because so many prisons are built amongst rolling hills) I would wake up, not ever knowing if the girls caught me or not.  This dream occurred at least a couple of times per year, but I never figured out what triggered the dream.

Another dream I had when I was in high school involved a circus that was taking place on the street one of my friends lived on, clowns walking skunks, as tall as the old trees that lined the street, on leashes, and me being stuffed in a barrel by a clown and rolled down the street. 

So you see, I have WEIRD dreams!

Well, last night I had another strange dream (not as vivid, but still just as strange) and I just can't quite figure out what triggered the chain of events in the dream.  I was at my parent's house and they must have been having some old horse show friends over for a bbq or something.  At some point someone asked me to if I would keep an eye on their baby ducks or chicks and I said sure, even though I'm not a huge bird fan.  I guess I thought it would be a good idea if I kept the birds in my parent's office and I only remember looking through the French doors at the birds.  For some reason, I had to leave the office and when I came back, they had turned into baby vultures and they were chasing me around the room, pecking at my legs. So I left the room again and went and got one of the guests to come help me.  When we returned, the vultures had morphed again into these multi-colored birds that had owl faces and monkey tails.  The lady who I fetched to help me with what I thought were baby vultures couldn't believe I could be afraid of something so unique looking and she picked them up and started playing with them and then, the dream was over.  I must have forced myself to wake up or something because when I did wake up, I just couldn't wrap my brain around what had just happened.

I haven't been able to get this dream out of my head at all today, and it just confirms that sometimes, I really do believe I am crazy!!!

The Great Pillow Fight

So, Brandon and I have had this on-going battle about how much room the other one takes up in our bed.  In my opinion, Brandon is a constant vilator of space because he always tilts his pillows at an angle to watch TV in bed and they end up touching me and getting in my way.  I've tried to ask him nicely to scoot over, but it doesn't always work.  I've also showed him, by using our head board, that he has two and half squares of room and so do I.  So, last night, I decided to turn the tables to see how he liked it!

As we got into bed, I got situated and carefully placed my pillows so they would overlap his pillows.  He pushed them back a little bit and I moved them again, covering part of his face (yes, I was trying to be a bit exaggerated).  Again, he moved them out of his way.  So, I moved them back and finally, he took them and threw them on the floor!! I think my point was made :) 

And, he refused to pick them up off the floor so I took the remote and turned it to a new show on E! called Spindustry to torture him until he picked them up.  After about 30 seconds of that show, I had my pillows and he had the remote and we were both abiding by the two and half square rule.  We'll see how long it lasts...

Starting a New Week

**UPDATE** I do not have any cavities!! 

It's Monday morning and I have a dentist appointment at 8:00 a.m. - what a way to start off the week (sense sarcasm).  I really like my dentist and he has a pretty sweet office set up, so that helps a little bit.

I will also be busy this week preparing for a baby shower that I am co-hosting.  My friend, Emily, and I spent time this weekend running last minute errands.  I promise to have pictures because it is sure to be fab!

Speaking of this weekend, I got on an organization kick and cleaned out my recipe notebook!!  I pulled out all of the recipes I've never made and typed up recipes I had stashed around and plan to print them out and file them in the notebook.  It was quite an undertaking!!  Now, maybe I will have more motivation to get on that Bohn Family cookbook I planned to do two years ago?!?!

Okay, I better get going so I can make my appointment!  Let's hope I don't have any cavities!!!

I Need a Little Twang!

That's right my friends, we saw Mr. George Strait in concert last night!!  We stood in line for tickets a few weeks ago and ended up with seats in the upper deck of the new Intrust Bank Arena, but honestly, the seats were pretty darn good.  I seriously don't think there is a bad seat there and his stage was in the center, so we had great views. 

This is a picture from right before the concert.  Leanne Womack opened the show, followed by Reba and then George closed it out.  I knew a lot more of Leanne Womack's songs than I thought I would.

 

She only sang for about 30 - 40 minutes and then they re-set the stage for Reba!  Now, I've got to be honest, Brandon and I weren't really looking forward to Reba because we don't like too many of her new songs, but she is a performer!  We ended up really enjoying her show.  From a performance stand point, she is a better performer than George, but he is still the man when it comes to music!!

 

 

 

Leanne Womack came back out to sing "Does He Love You" with Reba.  It was a great duet!

 

Reba ended her set and left the stage, only to reappear in a taxi cab, wearing a red dress to sing "Fancy"!!!   Watch her music video to understand why she did this.  I love "Fancy" and it was a great encore choice!!!

 

Finally, around 9:30 George took the stage!  Like I said, George isn't much of a performer, so he rotated around the four corners of his stage to sing. 

 

 

His band was amazing!  I bet he had four or five different guitar players, a piano, a steel guitar, drums and a fiddle.

 

 

He also came back to do an encore.  One of the songs he sang was in Spanish, so that was a little different, but then he sang a Johnny Cash song and that really go the crowd going!  We counted up the number of songs he sang, including his encore, and we estimated around 26 different songs!  Needless to say, we definitely got our money's worth with this show!!

This was our fist opportunity to go inside the arena and we were very impressed.  It is designed and decorated well, the concourses are wide so it wasn't difficult to move around and the seats are comfy, but maybe a little too close together.  When the concert was over, we really didn't have a hard time getting out until we got to the bottom of the escalator and we started piling up like dominoes.  We also didn't have any trouble finding close parking and we arrived about 30 minutes before show time.  The traffic getting out wasn't bad either.  Overall, we had a great time!!

 

Valentine's Day

We are getting ready to head to Yia Yia's for a Valentine dinner, but I wanted to take a minute to share our Valentine weekend!

On Friday, Brandon took me to lunch and when I got back to the office, I had a beautiful bouquet of flowers on my desk!

 

Aren't those perfect!  After several years of working in a flower shop (together) flowers didn't necessarily mean too much to me.  But, as time has passed, I've grown to appreciate them more and more, and it was a HUGE surprise when I received them!  Friday night was pretty low key.  We pretty much just caught up on our dvr'd TV shows from the night before.

Saturday morning, I got up and made Brandon breakfast - heart shaped biscuits and sausage gravy (one of his favorites!).  We spent the rest of the day picking up the house and running errands.  Saturday night we ordered Knolla's pizza and watched "Couples Retreat," which was a Valentine's Day gift from my parents.  It was a cute movie, but we were hoping they weren't trying to tell us something (ha ha!).

Today has been another relaxing day.  We got up and got ready for the day, opened our gifts to each other and then headed to Newton to have brunch with Brandon's family.  We ate at a little place called The Bread Basket in downtown Newton and it was so yummy!  Definitely worth the drive.  Koby was excited to play with his friends, Sam and Brutus, and he slept the whole way home!  Once we got home, we took a Sunday afternoon nap and now we are getting ready for a yummy dinner!  

Oh yeah, Brandon did a great job with my Valentine gift this year!  Not only did I get the flowers on Friday, I also got The Beat by Burberry perfume gift set!  

He always insists I don't get him anything for Valentine's Day, but I can't not get anything so I got him the usual Valentine boxers and an iTunes gift card (I can't really go wrong with either of those items).

I hope everyone else had a lovely Valentine's Day!

Humble?

Tonight in our Bible study we were discussing prayer in terms of engaging with God and really sharing your heart with him.  Yes, God knows our hearts, but he desires for us to share it with him.  After all, he commands us to cast our fears and doubts on him and he will bring us peace.  This discussion led to another topic - being humble.

We live in a world where being humble is not viewed as a positive trait.  We live in a world where personal gain, wealth, control (the list could go on an on) are what you need to possess to "be somebody".  These traits can also cause us to not be honest with ourselves and to feel like we can't have any weaknesses or faults.  God's desire for us, through prayer, is to be able to confess our weaknesses, share our deepest darkest secrets, and to ask for help.  He wants us to cast those things upon him so we can clear our heads and focus more on what he wants for us and to give us answers we are seeking.  For women, this sounds like a dream come true!  God wants to hear us ramble on and on about the things we need help with or the thoughts we have spinning around in our heads.  But, how willing are we to be brutally honest and to really confess our sins, our bad thoughts about other people, the secrets we wouldn't tell even our best friends? 

At the end of tonight's study, the author encouraged us to make a list of all of those things mentioned above and just turn them over to God because he wants to take them on for us and free us from the burden.  But first, we must be humble and confess.  So, that is my challenge this week - humble myself before God and truly engage with him and see how he answers me back.

This Is My Kind of Snow!

This is what we woke up to this morning!  Now, normally snow would make me grumpy because it would mean a rough drive into work, dealing with snow-packed streets for days and Koby not wanting to go outside for very long.  But, this snow is the perfect snow!  Beautiful, fluffy and clean snow!  The snow is wet, so it is turning to slush on the streets rather than ice. 

My drive in to work today was like a scene from a story book.  The trees lining the river looked like huge white feathers.  The snow looked like a fluffy white blanket covering the ground.  It was just really peaceful (if you looked past the traffic). 

So, today I will be greatful for the snow!  I mean, we are going on over a week without seeing the sun, so I should be greatful for something, right?

Because It Is FRIDAY!!!!

1. What is your name and do you have any nicknames?
Tessa - Tess the Mess, Tess, T-Bohn (in high school)

2. What color are your socks right now?
black

3. What are you listening to right now?
My boss's radio

4. What was the last thing that you ate?
a brownie after our office "Soup or Bowl" party!

5. Can you drive a stick shift?
Not at all!!

6. Last person you spoke to on the phone?
My husband!

7. Last place you went on vacation?
New York City!!!!!!

8. What Hobbies do you have?
Blogging, cooking, decorating and re-decorating, landscaping

9. What is your favorite sport to watch on TV?
Football

10. What is your favorite drink?
Non-Alcoholic: Soda Hot Drink: Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks Alcoholic: Summer Brew or Vodka Cranberry

11. Have you ever dyed your hair?
Yes, but I haven't dyed it in a long time.

12. Favorite food?
This is so hard. Probably steak or Mexican food. And baked goods - cookies, brownies, cake...

13. What is the last movie you watched?
It's Complicated

14. Favorite day of the year?
Hmmm... probably my birthday!!!

15. How do you vent anger?
One of two ways - I either get REALLY quite or REALLY loud!

16. What was your favorite toy as a child?
Barbie Dolls

17. What is your favorite season?
Fall - I love the weather, I love football, I love the smells.

18. Cherries or Blueberries? Blueberries, especially the blueberries we pick at the lake. I don't really like anything cherry except for in coke.

19. What is your occupation right now?
Marketing Manager at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce

20. What do you want to be when you grow up?
I'd really love to be a florist again one day...

21. What state (or country for our international bloggers) do you live and what State or Country would you like to live some day?
Currently I live in Kansas, but I would be open to moving somewhere else some day.

22. Living arrangements?
In a house with my husband and our dog.

23. Do you have any pets?
Oh yes! Koby, our Boston Terrier!!

24. What is on the floor of your closet?
Shoes, a dry cleaning basket, laundry...

25. What are three of your favorite items at the moment?
Philosophy body wash, Root Beer, our new coffee table!

26. What did you do last night?
Attended a photography class with Brandon.

27. Any news you want to share?
Umm, none that I can think of.

28. What do you like on your hamburgers?
Cheese, tomatoes, pickles, mustard, ketchup

29. Favorite dog breed?
Boston Terrier or Golden Retriever

30. Favorite day of the week?
Saturday

31. How many states have you lived in? Two - Kansas and Oklahoma for a year.

32. Diamonds or pearls?
Diamonds

33. What is your favorite flower?
I really can't limit this to one, so I'm going to give two - Hydrangeas and Dahlias and Tulips (okay that is three!)

34. Favorite meal you have ever had at a restaurant and which restaurant was it?
The red snapper I had at Bobby Flay's Bar Amercain was pretty darn good!

35. What music are you currently listening to?
I'm really loving Train's new song and the Lady Antebellum CD

36. What is one fun thing you are looking forward to in the coming year?
Hmmm.....

Valentine Gift Ideas

I got an email today from Real Simple with Valentines Day gift suggestions. Now, I don't think too many guys, other than my husband, read this blog, but just in case, I thought I would do a Valentine's Day gift suggestion list of my own! And, it probably doesn't hurt that my husband reads this blog from time to time either ;) So, here it goes:

Philosophy Body Products
These are seriously my new favorite bath products! I received the Amazing Grace shower gel for Christmas and absolutely love it. In fact, I ration it and only use it a couple of times a week so it lasts longer. It is moisturizing, it provides a great lather and it smells divine! However, for Valentine's Day, I think these lovely scents would be very fun:

I seriously don't think anyone could go wrong with these products!

A fun gift for the baker!

While this may be a little more practical, it would still be a very cute and fun gift for those who love to cook and bake!

I bet someone could really whip up something fun with these cute little Valentine gadgets and they are all courtesy of Target. Also, if you top it off with this cute apron, courtesy of Etsy and Bodumzup, you will have one sweet gift!

Vera Bradley Products
I am a huge Vera Bradley fan and I have turned many of my friends and family into fans as well. The bags are so cute and practical and not to mention durable! There are all different types - totes, cosmetic bags, luggage and so much more!

This would be a perfect gift to use on a fun romantic getaway!

Items that Begin with "P"

These are short and simple suggestions:
* Poseys
* Pedicure
* Puppy
* Performace (tickets to a performance - Intrust Bank Arena has some great performances coming up!)
* Platinum (jewelry)

Any girl would be happy with any of these items! (No, I will not be getting a puppy, even though it would be SUPER fun!)

These are just a few of my suggestions for this Valentine's Day! Maybe you will get lucky and snag one for yourself!!