I am all about making sure the parties I throw follow the basic Andrea party rules, this first birthday would be no exception:1. Party should have a theme 2. Invitees must have a great time (have activities) 3. Must serve great food. 4. Make sure party stays on schedule so people can leave if needed! Overall, I think I acheived my own expectations and surpassed many peoples expectations of a baby’s first birthday!

The theme came to me when I saw a friend’s little girl was having an Alice in Wonderland tea party. I thought that is brilliant but I have to make it my own, thus Ainsley in ONE-derland was born! I knew exactly what the picture should be, the classic Alice at the tea party. And the parTEA had to be ONEderful! I figured since Chris and I didn’t have a large wedding, why not have a GINORMOUS birthday celebration for Ainsley Jane!

We used Stillwater’s own Peacock Productions for the amazing invitations, and they were fabulous to work with. They had the white rabbit on the return envelope and a watercolor pic on a gorgeous light blue card that opened like a flower.

The CAKE: I made the cake from scratch and used the Wilton boxed icing sets for the icing & fondant. The chocolate cake was fabulous but the vanilla was too dense. The cakes were to be two mushrooms and a grassy area. I ran out of time but overall they were cute and creative! I used frosted rice krispy treats to cover the columns that the mushrooms rested on.

The FOOD: Part of the menu was with the help of Martha Stewart’s Living Magazine, the rest was my own & friend’s recipes. The open face toasts were: Ricotta with grated lemon peel, basil, & local honey on french baguette, Pesto, Buffalo Mozzerella, & basil on sourdough, Capers, Roasted Peppers, Kalamata Olives in a red wine vinegrette on french baguette, Roasted Garlic & Goat Cheese with an olive tapinade and red onion on french baguette. All the toasts were labeled with Alice in Wonderland characters announcing the ingredients for the inquisitive! The table was stuffed with other goodies like; Shortbread cookies that read “Eat Me”, a veggie tray with ranch(from Mazzio’s of course), peanut butter cookies, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, playing card covered chocolates, ginger peach cold tea, pomegranate & earl grey hot tea, coffee, & sherbet punch.

The DECOR: Themed decorations included: An Alice in Wonderland tablecloth, tea pots and tea sets of all shapes all around the house and main table, heart shaped fans, plastic flamingoes, a croquet set, large mushrooms, giant flowers, fun kiddy toys to play on, and a Cheshire Cat on our playroom chalkboard welcoming everyone in! Other decorations were the actual invitations, a ONEderful wall of pictures of Ainsley’s first year, and many brightly colored balloons!

The FAVORS: Favors were by age group: adults received hand stamped Alice tea cups or bowls with tea and cookies, big kids got a Mad Hatter TOP HAT filled with coloring books, candy, stickers, and a fan, little ones got felted wool balls, board books & a sun protection hat for summer time.

The BABY: Ainsley was dressed in her custom “Alice” dress and looked adorable. She smiled and was so excited while the whole room sang to her for her birthday! She LOVED the cake, well really loved the fondant and wanted to eat all of it. I had to keep peeling it off and throwing it out for fear she would have a complete sugar overload! She received amazing presents and had awesome party guests! Her grandma & Aunt Mandy drove from Indianapolis with cousins Elijah & Katie. Great Great Aunt Helen drove from Bartlesville & many other friends and family members spent their Mother’s Day helping us celebrate!

I was so blessed to get to throw a party of this magnitude and I thank everyone (especially my husband & his mom & sister & my friends Tori & Heather) that helped me clean up afterwards and set up before! It was a ONEderful Party and Ainsley will love these pictures when she is older!

-Freckles (aka: Andrea)

I became a mother this year and that make this the best year of my entire life.

No matter the pain, weight, stress and other factors this year had I will always remember when I became a mother!

Thank you Lord, thank you hubby Chris, and thank you Ainsley Jane you’ve made my dreams come true! I look forward to all the years to come and hopefully all the brothers and sisters for Miss Ainsley Jane!

My Challenges: The biggest change is that I need to become healthier! And as mentioned above I would like to be blessed with another baby after Ainsley turns one!

My husband Chris is always up for supporting me through whatever I want to do, and when it involves more fun outdoor activities he loves it!

My Accountability: I of course have my husband Chris, daughter Ainsley, my mom and dad, and I have enlisted a new Canadian Twitter friend Julie to be my comrade. She is a new mom as well and we will be guest blogging on each other’s sites! She runs a great cloth diaper store out of her home in British Columbia (Little Monkey Store)! She has a son that is two weeks older then Ainsley and we definitely rely on each other for mommy tips and trends.

So that is that! Challenge and Accountablity.

Next step the plan. It’s real now!

Remember the song that was so very winey yet stuck in your head for days, it makes me laugh and drives me nuts at the same time? So there are only 13 days left until Christmas and I have not finished my holiday shopping. I have been doing research and here are some items I think are on a family’s must have Santa List! They are definitely on my list!

First off all babies love cloth diapers, who wouldn’t they are soft and squishy! They make your little squiggler look adorable and they are easy to find. Why would I buy cloth diapers? Well they are great for baby and good for the earth! There are so many cute ones but I especially love the red and green ones for the holiday season! There are many retailers out there! I am hoping to someday soon be set up to take orders but for now check out these shops!

Sugar Dipes
Little Monkey Store (based in Canada, but has unique products to USA stores)
Cotton Babies
FuzziBunz

*Accessories that are good to have for cloth diapers are detergent, dryer balls, diaper sprayer, reusable wipes, wipes solution, and pail liners.

Other ideas for a newborn is easy; soft swaddling blankets, durable burp rags, and support supplies for the mommy! (frozen dinners, gift cards, help with laundry/cleaning, massages, & money)

More baby ideas; Some wonderful music for baby to listen to and some black and white patterned toys to work on tracking with their eyes! Talking and Singing with baby are important by now and reading is a great gift. Our daughter loved looking at the bright pictures in Eric Carle’s “Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see?” book, And she liked the rhymes of Dr. Seuss books like “There’s A Wocket in my Pocket” and “The Foot Book”.

Older children love to use their imagination! Find some great homemade dolls/action figures/monsters/puppets on Etsy or Artfire websites. You could also get them superhero capes, tutus, or soft blankets to cuddle up with. You can also have a personalized bookmade for them, this has been done for years! I got one when I was little and it was so special! (We ordered an X-Men version for our nephew! I will update on how he likes it after Christmas!)

For the rest of your family there are countless ideas on etsy and artfire. I tried to buy or make all our gifts online this year so that I could support “local” crafters/artisans! For our family we made calendars via iPhoto, ordered scarves and monsters from etsy, ordered diapers from various places, and we got some geeky stuff like iPhone, iPod accessories and apparel! (geek must haves: GriffinTechnology, Radtech, Think Geek)

I hope this might help you in finding some “new” ideas for gifts!
Good Luck and Happy Holidays!

“I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas is a Christmas novelty song written by John Coctoasten and performed by Gayla Peevey in 1953. It is a Dr. Demento Christmas staple, and is currently available on Dr. Demento’s The Greatest Novelty Records of All Time Vol. 6: Christmas.

Here’s an interesting fact about the popular Christmas hippopotamus song – in 1953 a ten-year-old girl from Oklahoma, Gayla Peevey sang the song as a way to raise money for the Oklahoma City Zoo’s first hippopotamus. It became a nationwide hit after that, although John Rox wrote the song “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” in 1950! The song was not written specifically for the Oklahoma zoo, its just that when they needed the hippo the song came out so the Christmas hippopotamus song just fitted in.” * This info foundhere

My husband and I recently went on an eight day excursion to Indianapolis to visit his family for Thanksgiving. Being new to cloth diapering I wanted to try and use our cloth diapers as much as possible so that I could encourage others to do the same.We used our Flip diaper with disposable inserts for our plane rides and first day! They did a great job and they were easy to change and dispose of in each airport’s bathroom.

During our visit we used our complete stash; FuzziBunz Perfect size Mediums (2), FuzziBunz OneSize (1), BumGenius AIO (1), a Bummi’s WhisperWrap (1), the Flip (1), 16 disposable Flip inserts, and one Prefold. I did laundry every other day to keep our cloth trials going. In between the cloth we did use disposables and I did only bring disposable wipes. I brought a small bag of Rockin Green Soap to launder the diapers in and my Mother-In-Law’s washer/dryer did great! I used a ziplock bag for a wetbag and a trashbag for our pail liner in an old trash can.

Moral of the story, it can be done! If you have access to laundry services or a large cloth diaper selection you can travel and fully cloth diaper your child. I would say that we had Ainsley in cloth at least 50% of the time, which saved the Indianapolis land fill from getting about 40 disposable non-green diapers! My husband, Ainsley and myself feel pretty good about that!

*We bought these diapers and none of the companies paid us or asked us to write this. None of the websites above asked us to list them, it’s purely from my own experiences.

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We have updated our photo gallery and will continue to do so throughout the year so make sure to check out upcoming weeks and months of our family photos!

Last weekend Ainsley got to meet her other Grandparents and just fell in love with them, it was great to have Chris’ parents here in Stillwater, OK. We also had Ainsley’s baptism since Chris’ folks were down so we have added those photos as well to our gallery!

My brother Philip and his wife Aleia are expecting in July and unfortunately I had to miss her shower last weekend but I will make sure to get up to Kansas City once they welcome their new baby into the world!

We hope everyone is doing great and we will try to keep you updated!

Love,

Andrea (Freckles)

Here is the photo gallery for Ainsley’s second week of life and freedom.

Some very big thanks are in order to those who have helped us along the way.

First, our Lord, for bringing our wandering paths together. Second, both of our families who have given us their full support. Espeacially Grammy Maciula who has been cooking us some amazing dinners. (Andrea got tired of frozen dinners fast).

Finally, our friends who have helped us. Either getting Ainsley some cute outfits or just hangin with us and having fun.

Our life is about to change and I am so glad we have you all with us.

Let’s go.