Festival of Trees

You've heard all about Nolan's girlfriend Annabella, but her mom Heather is an interior designer (her site here) and my mommy entrepreneur mentor. She designed a tree for the Providence Festival of Trees that is currently on display at the downtown El Gaucho. Heather, send me a picture!

Since it was her first year doing this for this organization, her tree is not in the big auction but we took a trip downtown to sneak a peak at the trees that had made it in. Let me tell you they better watch out for Heather next year, they are going to have some stiff competition!

There were a few that were really gorgeous and inspired but most were just OK, nothing special. Here are a few of our favorites.

This one was all purple, one of my favorite colors and called "Dressed for the Holidays".

This one was Heather's favorite and one of the more inspired ones. It was called "Christmas in the Northwest" and was dripping with raindrop crystals under a metallic umbrella. From far away it really looked like it was raining.

This one was my favorite, called a "Winter Jubilee". It had so many layers and things to look at but from far away it all came together really well. I would gladly have this on display in my home. A few more years and we will go all out on a tree. We still have to keep the decorations to the top half, away from little fingers and curious cats.

Close up of all the details.

I think this one was Annabella's favorite, covered in cupcakes with an icing topper!

Both the kids liked this one because of all the toys at their height, but there was no touching at this event. This tree was of course called "A Christmas Story". See if you can figure out all the movie references, it's covered with them!

This event was open to the public and very family oriented with balloon animals, face painting and Santa pictures. We took full advantage of everything and got the kid's faces painted.

Nolan quickly turned his ornament into a chilly pepper.

It was the perfect way to spend a rainy Monday, plus it was all free (besides the downtown parking). We will definitely be back next year. Taking pictures of Heather's tree of course!

No Heartbreaking This Christmas!

The worst part of my holiday season is telling my sister that I'm not sending out Christmas cards AGAIN this year. It's like telling her there is no Santa, Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny all at once. I thought that this year would be another year of heartbreak for Emmie as I was severely lacking in the motivation and inspiration departments when it came to card making.

Although the opportunity to make something to share with all our friends and family is tempting, I would rather, well, not do Christmas cards. Shocking I know, but they are expensive and crazy time consuming! Time I could be using to design my next wreath or sewing aprons (more on this later), things I really enjoy. So as Thanksgiving approached and I still had not been struck down with the inspiration to make cards, i started to prepare myself for the conversation with my sister.

Then, I saw a fantastic facebook post from Jana (check out her adorable blog here). 50 free Shutterfly Christmas cards for bloggers! I signed up immediately! I don't have to cut anything out, clean up glitter for the next 4 months or even think of something clever and witty to summarize our year! Just find some pictures, plop them in and it's done. I guess the hardest part will be choosing just one design.

Do I go classic and traditional?

Or modern and fun?

Ugh, I can't decide! I guess you will have to keep an eye on your mailbox to see where I end up. I hope this will make Emmie happy and keep her off my back until next year! Thanks Shutterfly!

Last year for Christmas I made custom calendars for my mom and granny and a photo book for Pat's mom. They were HUGE hits and while picking out my cards I saw they had cool new designs. I'm already done with their Christmas gifts this year, but I think I know what they'll be getting come Mother's Day!

In exchange for this post I'll be receiving 50 free holiday cards from Shutterfly (woohoo!). If you would like to contribute a blog write up and receive 50 free cards, please sign up by clicking here.

Thanksgiving 2010

This year Pat and I agreed that we didn't want to commit ourselves to doing too much on Thanksgiving. Usually we try to do too much, I lose sleep, we both get grumpy and by the time the party comes around we just want it over so we can go to bed. Not an ideal situation to party planning...and I'm a professional!

Therefore we made a point to clean a little everyday, prepare food ahead of time, spend lots of time with Nolan enjoying the day and actually get through the day without picking on each other. It worked! We had everything done, got a decent amount of sleep and were able to host our guests with a real smile and not an exhausted faux smile! I was so proud of us! You can read more about the decor and other details here at my Spot On Events blog, but this post is all about family!

Nolan enjoyed himself too. We watched the parade together in the morning, he helped me set the table and he took his regular nap so he was in a great mood by the time family arrived.

He put on quite the show, dancing, running around like a wild man, squealing and giggling, and making a mess at dinner. He's quite the performer now and the family was eating it up, which just encouraged him even more. I really hope he keeps this silly, outgoing personality of his. He makes me and everyone around him laugh constantly! Here he is after dinner, complete with sweet potato hair and stained shirt. So handsome!

We had such a nice time this year. It was honestly the easiest most relaxing family dinner we've ever had and it didn't hurt that the food was all super yummy too! Everyone had plenty to eat...

Please note that this picture of Cortez was taken this morning when I was cleaning up and not anytime before or during dinner. I just had to take a picture before I pushed him off the table.

First Snow

Seattle was hit with a snow storm that practically shut down the city the week of Thanksgiving! We made the most of our surprise arctic wonderland and broke out Nolan's snow suit that I didn't think he would ever get the chance to wear.

Have you ever seen A Christmas Story? Well it was kind of like when the mom just keeps adding layers and layers of sweaters, socks, scarfs. Anything I could find I put on him. He was crying the entire time I was getting him dressed, and I simply told him if he wants to go outside he has to get dressed, a concept lost to an almost 2 year old! But I got him and I dressed, despite the squirming and ran outside.

He immediately started eating as much snow as he could (no surprise right?) but every so often he found a leaf in there too! Of course this is where my camera dies! ugh! Thank goodness for iPhone! I love the snow path he created. It reminds me of the sand path he made in Hawaii when he was still scooting. I was able to get a few photos of him playing in the snow before this serenity,

turned into this!

Oh well, he liked it for a little while. I think he was still mad about all the layers he was forced to wear. This boy hates clothes, socks, shoes, hats and sometimes his diaper. It makes getting dressed each day super fun and is the reason most of our photos are of him half naked. And don't worry, I've since found the boy some gloves. We are so ready for the next storm!

A little video of Nolan enjoying the snow.

The Story of Nolan

I recently found the notes I have been collecting to add to Nolan's baby book. Unfortunately, due to my intense lack of motivation to get that project started I have nothing fun or pretty to collect these stories in! So they sit in my closet in a little folder. I want to make sure some of the important stories are documented somewhere so what better place then the Family Blog? Please bare with me while I document these stories, hopefully you will find them interesting!

This is the story of how Nolan got his name. It was Mother's Day 2008 and we had just found that I was pregnant. That night I had a dream I was in the hospital and I could see my baby very clearly. He had just a little bit of dark curly hair and looked exactly like Pat. We were loading him up to go home and I asked Pat if he had Taylor's blanket, then I woke up. I told Pat it was a epiphany (I was pregnant and a little dramatic) and that I knew it would be a boy and we would name him Taylor. Pat immediately dismissed the name saying it was a girl's name. We agreed to disagree on that one and to wait to find out the baby's sex before we started naming him.

But I knew all along he was a boy. When everyone said girl, the Chinese gender predictor said girl and all the other voodoo nonsense said girl I knew they were wrong. It came as no surprise to me when sure enough at our 4 month ultrasound they told us it was a boy. I'll never forget my sister's response when I told her the good news, "what are you going to do with a penis?" She was convinced it was a girl!

This is when the list started. Instead of fighting over names for the next 5 months, Pat and I decided to each make a list and we would decide when we met him. In the beginning, we came up with some serious doozies! Pat wanted to name him Bass for a few weeks...as in the guitar! I liked more traditional names like Brendan, which Pat called uninspired.

The closer to the due date we got the longer the list grew until the end of December when we took a serious look at the list and cleaned it out. It was suddenly real that there would be a baby who would be stuck with this name forever so we whittled it down to 6 names that we could both live with:

Henry

Miles

Zachary (we knew this would be the middle name)

Bennett

Owen

Nolan

Nolan was the last name added to the list as I found it on the recently published social security list of the 100 most popular names in 2008. It was number 98 which was perfect for us, we didn't want his name to be too popular where you had to go by Mike C. or something like that. Plus it fit all our other criteria - not a name of an ex, couldn't be shortened, doesn't rhyme with any embarrassing words. Done!

Now his birth day is a little bit of a blur to me but after he was born he remained nameless for a few hours so we could get to know him better. I have no idea how long he was Baby Boy Clingman but in my hazy recollection of the naming conversation, it went like this:

Nurse - have you thought of a name?

Me - I think he looks like a Nolan.

Pat - Me too!

Me - Great! Nolan Zachary Clingman it is!

I might need to get Pat's input on this one as I think his memory of that day will be a little clearer. I still think back to that dream though and wonder if there still a baby Taylor in our future? I guess we will have to wait and see!

A Halloween Bash - Decor

Just a few of my favorite Halloween decorations from this weekend. I had way too much fun this year and may have gone a little overboard. Most of these things I either made, already had or were purchased from the Dollar Store and dressed up a bit to fit the theme: Family Friendly Skulls and Spiders.

It was all about details for me so I'll point a few out for you. The wreath you have seen before but I covered my entire porch in spider web and spiders. My house had over 250 little plastic spiders! Most of those were added to the chandelier which I highlighted as more of an upside down centerpiece. I strung some spiders off of the bottom so it looked like they were coming down onto the table. You can barely see them in the picture above but if you look closely at the picture of the skull you'll see a spider hanging there.

Speaking of that skull, this was a dollar store skull that I covered in fine purple glitter, it looks so much better!

For a little trickery I added creepy eyeballs (the kind where the eyeball always looks up which has always freaked me out) to the sangria. So yummy and spooky!

My most subtle addition was the miniature graveyard with a custom Raiders tombstone. My voodoo didn't seem to work this week!

We didn't ever get the chance to carve the pumpkins but I think they look pretty good there piled up with a giant furry spider to keep them company. Maybe we'll get motivated and carve them in time for Thanksgiving!

And of course no blog post is complete without a picture of Nolan. Here he is getting acquainted with our garden skeleton.

A Halloween Bash

I love Halloween and having Nolan around has only made that feeling stronger. Last year we didn't do much as I figured Nolan wouldn't know any different but I made up for it this year with a Halloween/Seahawk Bash. We invited some friends over to celebrate with us and to watch the Seahawks v Raiders game. The Seahawks lost but the party was super fun.

We had a family of bedbugs over.

The most adorable Turkey dinner ever, complete with waitstaff.

A slew of Seahawk fans, the High School version of Rachelle and The Dude stopped by. So nice to see them all!

The nice Seattle fans that we are, we even invited a representative of Raider Nation to the party. She brought the Budweiser guy and Tinkerbelle for protection.

Only on Halloween can Tinkerbelle and a Bull be BFFs.

This is the only picture I got of Nolan's whole costume, not great, but it will do for now.

And a detail shot so you can enjoy this grumpy bull in all his glory!

He did not like wearing his costume at all so I ended up taking it off him for a little while. See how much happier he is as just a Seahawk fan?

I should have known! Oh well, we had a great time hanging with friends, booing the Raiders and eating lots of food. We hope you all had a wonderful Halloween too!

Love,

the Matador, Running with the Bulls guy and the Bull (a.k.a. - the Clingmans)