Summer had arrived and we really enjoyed spending time outside after being cooped up for months! This was the first time my daughter had the opportunity to play in the grass and she had a great time.

I was thrilled to be able to capture her touching the grass. Unlike me, she didn’t seem to mind that it was prickly!

This is one of my all time favorites of the little peanut. Her little smirk is so adorable and just look at those little toes!

My little ones first Christmas card photo!

My family has quite a few holiday traditions and now with my own little one I hope to continue those and start a few new ones that we can continue through the years. Last year she was only 4 weeks old so while she celebrated Christmas she didn’t get to participate in any of it. While she’s not old enough to understand Christmas I believe she does know that it’s a special time of year.

For as long as I can remember my family has had the same Christmas tradition. All morning my mom would be preparing pho (Vietnamese soup) for our after mass dinner. Before we left for mass my mom would line us up in front of the tree and take photos in the new Christmas outfits my mom had gotten for us. After mass we would head home to devour the Pho and open gifts.  We were either too impatient to wait until morning or my parents didn’t want to wake up early with us! (As a new mom, I think it’s the later one!)

After my brother was born (he’s 10 years younger then me) he started his own tradition and got to open one gift on Christmas Eve morning. After the gifts we would light a fire and play with our gifts or watch a movie. Then we would leave out the cookies and milk for santa before heading to bed.

On Christmas morning we would wake up and race out to see what Santa had left us in our stockings. To this day we still have pho and open gifts at my mom’s house after mass.

With such fond memories of my family Christmas I hope to provide the same for my kid as well as starting a few of our own traditions. Such as:

1. Buying a new ornament or adding to our snow village each year. My husband and I have been doing this since we got married.

2. Baking cookies on Christmas eve. Gingerbread cookies are one of my favorites and I love having them to munch on during the holidays.

3. Making and using an advent calendar.

4. Decorating the house and tree with home made crafts and decorations.

A few weeks ago I posted about some party theme ideas I found. In the end I decided to go with a color theme of pink and green and to save the more specific themes until our little one was older.

The color theme came about when I was making the invitations. I turned to scrapblog.com to create it because I knew it would give me the stickers I needed and the freedom to create the invitation I envisioned. Scrapblog offers printing but I had some cardstock already and decided to print the invitations at home.

After that it all came together….

From top to bottom:

The “happy 1st birthday” banner was  home-made using scrapbook paper, cardstock, and paper string. Look for a tutorial in our craft tip of the week soon!

The scrapbook pages were displayed on a wall and featured a lot of our baby’s firsts and milestones.

I wanted to share with our guests the monthly photos I took so that they could see how much she had changed. Each month had two photos tied together with ribbon and pinned up with a clothespin decorated with flower punch-outs.

No party is complete without a birthday hat! There will also be a tutorial for this in the craft tip of the week soon as well.

We started the party in the birthday shirt and tutu, which were a huge hit. The front is our little one’s first initial with a little crown – for being the little princess! The back of the shirt says, “I’m one!” with a large one underneath. The onesie was made using photoshop and iron-on sheets. The tutu was bought from Trinity’s Tutus on Etsy.

It was a lot of fun making many of the decorations and celebrating our little one’s first birthday with family and friends. I think she really enjoyed it too!

It’s been about 6 months since my daughter started watching the Your Baby Can Read videos. While I was skeptical of the program when my MIL first mentioned it, we gave her the go ahead to purchase it for our daughter anyway. Our thoughts were that if she learned to read- great! If she didn’t – well the videos would help her learn new words and actions.

We started the videos when she was about 5 months. The first month, she wasn’t very interested in watching at all so we only had her watch it occasionally. At about 6 months we tried again and this time it held her interest and we began to have her watch the videos daily. She’s almost 12 months now, but has yet to “read.”

I’ll admit that we’re not following the program to a T since there are so many components. The flash cards, sliding cards and books are hard to fit into our day and sometimes she’s more interested in playing then learning. There are also the days she goes to grandmas that she misses the videos but we’re trying!

She has learned a few things though. We’re a bi-lingual family and try to speak 100% Vietnamese to her. So when she started waving and clapping only when she heard the words in English we knew it was because of the videos. We’ve seen her touch her nose, shake her head no and do “arms up” a few times when the video says to but she is not quite at the reading yet.

Just yesterday I did the flashcard test where I laid out clap and wave and asked my daughter which one said clap. She went for both. I think the videos (and books, cards etc…) need a lot of time and emotional investment for the program to work as promised in the infomercials.

We’ll keep having her watch them and try to do more of the books and cards and hopefully soon I can report that my little girl is reading.

I’ll never forgot the day I told my husband that I was pregnant. We had suffered a miscarriage the month prior and decided to give ourselves some time to recover. Well, that recovery period was shortened when I discovered that I was pregnant again. I was extra cautious this time and decided to wait a month which was so hard! I had to bite my tongue so many times, but after having gone through the loss of our first child, I didn’t want to be too premature with my announcement should I experience any bleeding or spotting.

Anyway, a month after I had taken the pregnancy test, I went to Target to pick up a few things–my hubby was re-opening his chiropractic clinic, and I wanted to get him an “office-warming” gift. So I bought him a new tie, picture frame (and included a picture of the both of us in it), and a decorative word accessory that spelled out the word “DREAM”.

A few days later, I decided it was time to tell him and wanted to reveal my pregnancy in a really creative way. Having gone through the stuff I got at Target, the perfect idea came to me! I decided that Iwould write him a card and incorporate each gift in the note. I wrapped up each gift individually, put it all in one box and left it in his car. I instructed him not to open it until he got to the office. The note I wrote him went something like this:

Dear sweetie,

I just wanted you to know how proud I am of you. I know times have been a little stressful, but I believe things are finally falling into place. Congratulations on the re-opening of your office. I wish you all the success that you deserve. It signifies the (OPEN GIFT #1 = “tie”) between hard work and the fulfulliment of your (OPEN GIFT #2 = office accessory “dream”). I know that you will work hard for (OPEN GIFT #3 = picture frame “me and us”) and soon (OPEN GIFT #4 = positive pregnancy test “baby”) will reap the benefits of our commitment to each other.

I love you,

Mary

I was so excited for him to open it and was anticipating a call at the office from him. To my surprise, he didn’t call all morning. But around lunch time, he asked if I wanted to get together for lunch and he’d pick something up and meet me at my work place. When I went to greet him at the front desk, not only did he have lunch, but he also bought me flowers! I was quite surprised and felt like the luckiest person alive!! We were both beaming during the entire lunch while he described how he discovered the box and the note. It was so funny because he said that when he got to the last gift which was the pregnancy test, he said he had mixed feelings as he felt grossed out at first (he thought it was an old test, hehe!) which soon turned into pure excitement when he saw the date that I had written on there.

I was so proud of myself for pulling off the surprise. Normally I can’t contain such big news and end up spilling the beans but it was definitely a day to remember. I’m sure my husband will never forget either. I’m looking forward to when Isaac is older so that I can tell him this cute little story.

As a child I had a lot of lovies. There was a teddy bear that I’ve forgotten the name of but he’s present in quite a bit of my childhood photos. Then there was Christina the faux Cabbage Patch Doll my dad made me. There was also the real Cabbage patch doll I eventually got (and also named Christina). Finally there was Sally. The famous one of them all.

She was a talking doll and would say “ma ma” or cry whenever she was turned on her tummy. My sister and I shared a room at that time and after countless nights of hearing Sally babble on and on, my sister had enough and convinced my dad to make her stop. Being the inventor that he is, he hacked into her voice box and added an on/off switch. But that’s not what made her famous.

It was my short lived career as a hair stylist that did it. To this day I have no recollection of actually doing it but it happened. I cut her hair. It wasn’t pretty – as you can see in the picture! Thinking about it I wonder if I wanted her to have short hair like I did or if I had just gotten a hold of some scissors. What I do remember is making my mom wash her hair in the bathroom sink in order to make it grow back. To my dismay it never did.

After I grew out of the lovies stage, my mom kept Sally and I recently brought her home for my own daughter to play with. I think she might adore her as much as I did. My little peanut loves to touch her face, hands and feet and try to gauge out her eyes (!!!) but what she likes the most is the kisses that Sally gives her when she wakes up from nap-time. It’s sort of a routine now and the little peanut always smiles when she sees Sally.

I’ve been debating on if I should find a doll restorer in the area to bring back her pretty golden locks. I kind of like that she’s got some character (that’s what I call it!) and it’s a little reminder of my childhood.

What do you think? Should I have her hair restored or keep it as is?

Like every every expecting mother I went through a nesting phase. Unfortunately we live in a 2 bedroom condo that was converted into a large 1 bedroom and I had no space to “nest.” To curb the feeling I would go online, pretend shop and bookmark everything I liked and I soon had a darling nursery for my daughter… even if it is virtual! My husband (and wallet!) should be thankful that we don’t have the space or we’d be in a small mountain of debt.

This is just a snipit of my list… in my dream world we have a monster sized nursery that can have a small seating/reading area where the ottomans and floor pillows will go with one of the two rugs while the other rug covers the sleeping/changing area. The monster sized room will also allow me to have two walls with vinyl decals without making the room too busy.

Ahhh dreams are great aren’t they?

From top going clockwise:

1. Jcaroline 26 inch floor pillows and 18 inch ottoman covered in Jessica Jones fabric.

2. Litto Kids Manhattan dresser/changing table from Arte Bebe in espresso.

3. Litto Kids Manhattan crib from Arte Bebe in espresso.

4. Figgyandwink pink alphabet set (vinyl wall decal).

5. Name Your Design stacked digits wall art set.

6. Avalisa Bubble wool rug from Modern Nursery & Lolli trees rug from Rosenberry Rooms.

7. Figgyandwink mod tree in black (more vinyl wall decal).

As a proud new parent we always have the camera on hand for those firsts. Ideally I would love to put all those photos into scrapbooks but it’s hard to find the time – and the space – to do it. By the time I get all my supplies laid out it’s time for a feeding, nap or my own bedtime.

Enter in Scrapblog.com – an online scrapbooking website. You do everything online and don’t have to worry about cleanup! It’s great to work on during naptime (when I’m not napping myself!) or when my little one is playing nearby.

There are dozens of themes to chose from or you can mix and match from various themes. With the abundance of backgrounds, stickers (elements you can put on the page) and frames the possibilities are endless.

My current favorite are the Baby Enstine themes. They feature the puppets and stickers for a lot of baby firsts and activities. The perfect thing for making a first year scrapblog.

Just recently Scrapblog added a printing service where you can order books and cards of your creations. While I haven’t ordered any myself I plan on it once I finish the first year album for my little one.

Cathy and I are very excited to unveil embe, our online shop offering unique, handmade gifts for babies and tots! I remember one day back in May when we took the kids on their first official playdate, the idea came up to start something together. At first, I thought “it’s just an idea” but after giving it some thought, I realized that there was something there. During our first meeting, we both shared our ideas for what we could call our shop, and we both came up with embe on our own. Now, talk about coincidence!

The months leading up to our launch can be described as exciting, filled with late nights, inspiring, a learning experience, fun, and fulfilling. Starting a business is a lot of hard work but so rewarding in the process. We are both passionate about being mothers and being creative. embe allows us to combine both passions, and we hope that you join us on our creative and parenting journeys by reading our blogs and enjoying our creations for the little ones in your life!