April Showers, Thank You Notes, and Baby Books

Hi there! Remember me? This little gal who likes to blog and share about her adventures in life, love and the pursuit of a completely renovated home? Well I kinda took a little break this last month, mostly because, life got a little too busy! Between baby showers, work, hosting friends, and preparing for baby, I found it hard to sit down and find time to write up a post.  So sorry about that!

But I'm here to update you all on what's been going on this last month!

Lets start with the baby update! I'm still feeling good at 37 weeks and 4 days (other than it feels like someone is following me around with a space heater)!  So basically, baby Blough could come any day now ladies and gentleman! Crazy!!  The plan is to work up until he arrives, which could put us into the month of June.  We'll see! Then, I'm taking 12 weeks off work to get the hang of this whole mom thing.

The list of things we need before our baby boy gets here is narrowing.  And that is largely due to the fact that we were thrown three baby showers to help us stock our home for baby.  Each one wonderfully different from the next.

The first shower was thrown by my mom, sister and aunt.  They outdid themselves with decor to match the outdoorsman theme of the nursery.

Look they even stole our Teepee!!  And a felt play fire pit?.. please, kill me with cuteness.   Many of the things they used to decorate were gifts to us for the nursery.  How sweet is that!?!

The second shower was thrown by some very dear friends of mine and was a coming together of friends from high school, college, work and post college.  The nursery rhyme theme was adorable.

And each guest brought a book (instead of a card) to help Michael and I stock our little guy's bookcase that we built for him.


And finally the last shower, just a few weeks ago, was thrown by my mother-in-law and cousin-in-law.  These girls know me well and planned three games to play! I love games!! We got so many great items that we still needed in order to finish out our registry and I'm so thankful.  Not to mention, we got this sweet little diaper motorcycle that Michael's cousin made in honor of Michael's dad!

I love love love that!
I also loved these cupcakes they made! Adorable!

And many of you know... with many showers, comes many gifts (yay!) and with many gifts comes the writing of many thank you notes.  That has been my big task the last month.  I have really wanted to keep up with them and get them out as soon as I could.  For the thank you notes, I really wanted something that gave a nod to the nursery and our outdoorsy theme but I  didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on custom stationary.

So when I found a packet of 8 plain thank you notes at Michael's for $1.50, I wondered how I could customize them.  I found a cute little arrow stamp, bought some black ink and went to town.  Now I have completely customized stationary for a fraction of the cost.

Another little project that I am SUPER excited about is my baby book.  At the shower thrown by my family, they had a lot of my own baby memories laid out - including my baby book that my mom had diligently filled out (and that's saying something - being that I am the youngest of 3).

Going through that made me realize how important it is to write down and keep track of all the happenings of this little guy's early life.  I love reading what my mom had to say about me - her observations about me, what she found special, what she thought was funny.  I really want to do that for our kids as well.  But what I did not want to do was spend $60 on a baby book customized by somebody else - like what I was finding on Etsy!

I had a very specific idea about what I wanted in the baby book and what I didn't.  So when I saw that Young House Love shared their template for their own DIY custom baby book that you could tweek, I was all in.  And it was so easy!! (I didn't want to scrap book) I just wanted something simple, with fun prompts, and fun colors and patterns.  Voilà!

I am absolutely in love with it! I bought the 8x8 book, a pad of fun paper, some white cardstock, and extra pages - all for less than $25 total with coupons and sales.  I made little pockets on some pages and left space to add pictures and write stories on others.  So excited about it! My favorite page is an idea from YHL- it's a predictions page that Michael and I filled out about who we think our little guy will be.

I just couldn't love it more and I can't wait to add to it with each new milestone and memory.

And now, I think for today, I will leave you with all that.  The nursery is 95% finished and I look forward to being back soon with a complete reveal! Who knows...there could even be a baby in it!

Don't miss a beat.  

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