Empty Inkwell

Change is good. Change is time consuming—big change, any­way. And change has rocked my world over the last five months. I’m still me, of course. But aside from the things that don’t really change—family, life­long friends, per­sonal val­ues, etc, a lot has changed. Cir­cum­stan­tially, lit­tle in my life is the same as it was the last time I wrote words to share with you all.

I’m cur­rently liv­ing in a small town in Wash­ing­ton State—about twenty-five min­utes from the Ore­gon border—the same town that my par­ents and two sis­ters live in. It’s a lit­tle coun­try, a lit­tle old mixed with a lit­tle new, and has tons of character.

I am work­ing full time for a prop­erty man­age­ment company—and yes, I miss my daugh­ter ter­ri­bly dur­ing the day.

Cora stays with my sis­ter while Matt and I are work­ing, and luck­ily, she loves it. She has loads of fun play­ing with her cousins, Han­nah and Stephen—so much that Matt and I occa­sion­ally have to tear her away from them at the end of the day.

Matt and I bought a house roughly five days after mov­ing our belong­ings to Wash­ing­ton, and have been liv­ing in it—our brand new, beau­ti­ful home—since the end of April. Our house is four lots down from my sister.

I’ve adjusted to the rain (to be hon­est, it hasn’t really both­ered me yet—at all—and I’m thank­ful for that), but… I am cur­rently enjoy­ing eighty-degree weather. Sum­mers are beau­ti­ful here. It feels like home.

I’m ten and a half weeks preg­nant. Matt, Cora and I are expect­ing a new addi­tion to our lit­tle fam­ily in the first week of Feb­ru­ary 2012. I can’t believe how much more quickly my preg­nancy is fly­ing by this time around!

With the help of an amaz­ing sup­port group and a Young Life area already in place in our county, Matt and I are in the begin­ning stages of start­ing a Young Life club at Bat­tle Ground High School. Years and years of thought and prayer and excite­ment about this very idea are finally mate­ri­al­iz­ing. God is so good, and I can­not wait to see what he has in store for the youth in our lit­tle town.

I am sell­ing Avon again. I took about a year off shortly after Cora was born, but have recently opened up my online store again, and am work­ing on a new cus­tomer base to get things rolling again. (For those of you who may be inter­ested… feel free to shop ‘til your heart is con­tent at www.youravon.com/jmarbrey).

And while my love for writ­ing and the arts is and always will be as strong as can be, I haven’t painted, scrap­booked, stamped, cro­cheted or crafted—anything—since I’ve lived in Wash­ing­ton. And to be hon­est, it’s been so long since I’ve opened a Word doc­u­ment on my com­puter that I actu­ally for­got where the icon was on my desk­top. Sad.

So yes, change. There’s been a lot of it. And in the com­ing months I can be almost cer­tain that more will roll my way. Change isn’t always easy, and many times can be bit­ter­sweet, but I am thank­ful that for the most part, I can still say that it’s good.

To end… In a whirl­wind of change, it’s nice to remem­ber that some things never do. I just looked at my last post in prepa­ra­tion to post this one, and iron­i­cally, I’m sit­ting here eat­ing a Lit­tle Deb­bie Oat­meal Cream Pie. Told you I love ‘em… always have, always will.

Is it just me, or are Lit­tle Deb­bie snacks sim­ply bliss­ful? And at just $1.59 per box, you really can’t beat the price. I know—they are ter­ri­ble for you, but I can’t help it. I love them—well, a lot of them, any­way. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of every Lit­tle Deb­bie treat (like the Brown­ies with the candy-coated choco­late chips on top—can’t stand them), but for the most part, I’m a reg­u­lar buyer of sev­eral dif­fer­ent Lit­tle Deb­bie delights. For today’s Fri­day short list: my per­sonal favorites. If you haven’t tried these sweet sen­sa­tions, give ‘em a whirl.

1. Swiss Cake Rolls (Win­ner by a mil­lion miles—I had one last night. So good.)
2. Oat­meal Crème Pies
3. Pump­kin Delights (If you haven’t seen or heard of these ones, it’s because they are a sea­sonal item—keep your eyes peeled around Halloween/Thanksgiving.)
4. Nutty Bars

If you are a fel­low Lit­tle Deb­bie indul­ger, I’d love to hear your favorites. If I haven’t tried them, I’ll give ‘em a whirl, too.

Have a sweet Friday.

The talk­ing about, plan­ning and even­tual par­ty­ing is done and over with (way over)… so here she is. My lit­tle one year old at her first birth­day party. A thou­sand thank you’s to my friend, Kent, for tak­ing and edit­ing all these pic­tures for us. They are wonderful!

My lit­tle birth­day girl…

…and her super cute birth­day bloomers.

.

Explor­ing her birth­day cake.

And eat­ing it, of course, too.

Open­ing birth­day presents.

Play­ing with her cousin, Wyatt.

Wyatt giv­ing Cora a lit­tle love slap, I mean tap. Too cute.

By the end of the day, she was full of cake, loaded with toys (and super cute clothes), and was absolutely exhausted.

And before I for­get, as promised… here’s a link to the Etsy site where I ordered Cora’s adorable birth­day out­fit. Enjoy.

A few nights ago, I was brows­ing through my new Rival Slow-Cooker cook­book (yes—I bought a cook­book solely devoted to Crock-pot recipes—I have that much faith in them). As I was skim­ming the pages, decid­ing what recipes I wanted to pick up ingre­di­ents for at the store, I came across a recipe for stuffed chicken. It looked good and sounded deli­cious, so I started to read the ingredients/cooking direc­tions, and saw that it called for a meat ten­der­izer to flat­ten the chicken. It noted that the back of a skil­let would also work if you didn’t have a meat ten­der­izer. I was so pleased with the fact that I not only knew what a meat ten­der­izer was, but that I even had one.

My meat ten­der­izer (that I have yet to use) got me think­ing about all those ran­dom kitchen gad­gets—the ones that get used on extremely rare occa­sions (or some­times not at all), but for one rea­son or another, you feel the need to have them. So I sur­veyed my own ran­dom kitchen gadgets.

I can hon­estly say that I don’t even know what some of the items in my uten­sil drawer are. I’m not the great­est cook—nor am I very adven­tur­ous in the kitchen—so while I can’t say that all of the attention-deprived uten­sils in my drawer can be clas­si­fied as “ran­dom”, here are a few of the yet-to-be-used gad­gets (that I was able to iden­tify) tucked away in my kitchen, wait­ing for their day to cook, cut, bake, or do what­ever they’re meant to do (I don’t know why, but ever since Toy Story, I feel the need to per­son­ify any and every non-living thing—and/or refer to them as a “he” or “she”. Is that weird?).

Meat Ten­der­izer
Zester
Cit­rus Peeler
Egg Sep­a­ra­tor (two of them—and I don’t eat eggs)
Melon Baller
Egg Holder (I think, but I really don’t know what the point is?)
A mea­sur­ing cup-looking thing with a hole in it (not a fun­nel, but I have one of those, too. maybe it’s a mini-funnel?)
Sur­pris­ingly, I don’t have a gar­lic press.
But I do have every type and size of spoon and spat­ula imag­in­able: slot­ted spoons, plas­tic spoons, wooden spoons, rub­ber spat­u­las, spat­u­las with holes, spoons with holes, spoons with short han­dles, spoons with long han­dles… that’s not an exhausted list, but I think you get the idea. (And I always go for the same one or two… favorites, I guess. Is that also weird?)

So what’s the point? Can’t say I really have one. Nor can I say that I’m against hav­ing all these semi-useless gad­gets. Actu­ally, if I had to pick a side, I’m pro-random gad­get. I’m a sucker for “sets”, or things that gen­er­ally seem to go together. And I guess hav­ing a drawer-full of uten­sils (used or not), com­pletes my lit­tle kitchen set. (Weird, again.) And in defense of some of these lonely items… how often can you really use them? I mean, are you really mak­ing fancy fruit sal­ads so often that you need your trusty melon baller on a weekly basis? Prob­a­bly not, but when you need it—it’s nice to have, right?

Am I alone? Or are your draw­ers full of this stuff, too? Do you use them? Do you have any ran­dom gad­gets that I didn’t mention?

Crazy me, I know…
From my kitchen to yours: happy cook­ing and good night.

First things first: slacker-of-the-year award goes to me. And the sad­dest part: the year just started. (Happy New Year, by the way.) I’ve taken pro­cras­ti­na­tion to a new level; I can’t believe it has been almost a month since I’ve typed a sin­gle word. That’s not to say I haven’t thought about it. I’ve had a ton of things I’ve intended to write—I even have pic­tures to accom­pany my bril­liant (or not so bril­liant) ideas. But for one rea­son or another (all of which are not good excuses), they never made their appear­ance on Empty Inkwell.

I’m still hang­ing on to a few ideas I had that aren’t nec­es­sar­ily time-sensitive, but here are bits and pieces of the last month of my life, in fast for­ward. Enjoy.

Cora’s first birth­day party was a huge suc­cess! She looked adorable, and (I think) every­one had a good time. I’m wait­ing to get pic­tures back from the party, so I won’t say any more than that for now, but there’s more to come.

I GOT A NEW CAMERA!! After hours and hours of thought, research, decid­ing and then chang­ing my mind, and then decid­ing again, I decided to go with one of the newest, most advanced point and shoot dig­i­tal cam­eras out there (right now) over an SLR dig­i­tal cam­era. Matt and I bought a Nikon Coolpix S8100. I couldn’t be hap­pier with my deci­sion. It does every­thing I was hop­ing for in my new camera—including tak­ing clear pic­tures of my squirmy lit­tle girl (sub­ject tracking—it’s amazing).

I’ve talked about my mom’s kid­die kitchen drawer before and how I couldn’t wait to see Cora get into it… here she is rum­mag­ing through Grandma’s Tup­per­ware drawer in Wash­ing­ton (on her actual first birth­day, might I add—such a big girl now).

Cora on Christ­mas morn­ing. Tech­ni­cally this is Cora’s sec­ond Christ­mas, but Christ­mas as a three-day old baby doesn’t really count… this was her first time attempt­ing to open presents (and then pro­ceed­ing to play with the wrap­ping paper).

Cousins. Sim­ply sweet in so many ways.

Have I men­tioned that Cora LOVES phones—or any­thing shaped like a phone? She holds them up to her ear and says, “heyyo”. It’s adorable. Here’s a pic­ture of Cora and Matt—she is play­ing with a toy phone her cousin, Alaiyah, gave to her for Christmas.

One of my favorite things about the hol­i­day sea­son: Fudgy Oat­meal Bars. My mom has been mak­ing this recipe for as long as I can remem­ber, and every year around the hol­i­days, I request that she makes them. This year I helped her. It was fun, and they were deli­cious. Here’s the recipe, if you are inter­ested in try­ing it out.

Fudgy Oat­meal Bars
From the kitchen of: the best mom in the world
Makes about 70 bars

Oat­meal Mix­ture
2 c brown sugar
1 c but­ter
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 ½ c flour
1 tsp bak­ing soda
½ tsp salt
3 c oats

Fudge Mix­ture
1 pkg. (12 oz.) choco­late chips
1 can sweet­ened con­densed milk
2 tbsp but­ter
½ tsp salt
1 c chopped peanuts
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix brown sugar, 1 cup but­ter, eggs and 1 tsp vanilla extract in large bowl. Stir in flour, bak­ing soda and salt. Stir in oats. Reserve 1/3 of the oat­meal mix­ture. Press remain­ing mix­ture into pan (15 ½ x 10 ½ x 1).
Heat choco­late chips, sweet­ened con­densed milk and 2 tbsp but­ter in 2 qt. saucepan over low heat, stir­ring con­stantly until choco­late chips are melted. Remove from heat. Stir in chopped peanuts, vanilla extract and salt. Spread over oat­meal mix­ture in pan.
Drop reserved oat­meal mix­ture in rounded tea­spoon­fuls onto choco­late mix­ture.
Bake 25 to 30 min­utes, or until golden brown. While warm, cut into bars about 2x1 in.

Enjoy.

Cora took her first unaided steps on Christ­mas day! Such a great day for such a mem­o­rable event. Shock of the cen­tury: I don’t have a pic­ture! I was just too excited it didn’t even occur to me to grab my cam­era. Plus, I didn’t want to make her ner­vous. Cora is not a per­former; she would have quit had she known what I was intend­ing to do.

Cora’s first trip to an arcade… behind the wheel already. =)

Cora and her cousin, Han­nah. Match­ing out­fits, match­ing iPods (not theirs, of course).

A new sea­son of great TV shows has begun. If you haven’t seen Par­ent­hood—watch it. Tivo it. Catch it on Hulu. Do what­ever you need to do. But check it out. Best show on TV right now, hands down.

So I’ve heard so many sto­ries about ran­dom toys that kids grow attached to and tote around with them every­where. I think Cora has found one. A teether, of all things. She car­ries it around like a purse, with her arm bent so it doesn’t fall off. Too cute, too funny.

And that’s a wrap… my life isn’t totally cen­tered around my child or any­thing (wink).

Have a great day every­one.

Matt and I went to Borders the other night to get a few books for our holiday trip to Washington. We just arrived here yesterday, and will be here 'til January 1st. Its always so relaxing being here, and we usually have (at least a little) extra time to do some reading (more than we get to do at home anyway).

As we were brows­ing the fic­tion sec­tion, we let Cora get down to explore a lit­tle. (Just in case you are wondering-no we are not the kind of par­ents who let our kid get into any and every­thing. I payed close atten­tion so she didn’t grab and/or knock over a sin­gle book.) She was actu­ally really good-she walked back and forth along the bookshelves-admiring all of the books lined up in rows, cre­at­ing an uncon­ven­tional rain­bow of col­ors, that-to her-seemed to go on and on.

I backed away from her for a second to snap this shot on my phone. How sweet is she?

The sight itself was sweet to me. I’ve men­tioned before (prob­a­bly more than once) that I LOVE books. It was just price­less to watch lit­tle Cora star­ing in amaze­ment at the huge wall of books. I know that she has lit­tle to no under­stand­ing (for the time being) of what books really are. She has tod­dler board books, and she loves them. But what she loves about them are the col­or­ful pic­tures, and the abil­ity to turn pages and explore what lies behind each one. The words, though, and the idea of read­ing, still mean noth­ing to her. It is my hope that even­tu­ally the words will mean some­thing spe­cial to her-that she and I will share that com­mon love for the writ­ten word, and that an end­less wall of books will still cap­ture her atten­tion, but for a new set of rea­sons.

Decem­ber is a great month. Busy and a lit­tle chaotic at times: absolutely. But it is equally as awe­some. Christ­mas. Hol­i­day fun and fes­tiv­i­ties. Cora’s birth­day. And… my birth­day!

It was a won­der­ful day. I slept in late, cud­dled with Cora. Matt brought her in to lay with me early this morn­ing, and I was actu­ally ready to get up before she was. But instead, I stayed in bed and snug­gled with her until she tossed and turned and opened her sleepy eyes to see me. She smiled a huge, happy smile at me through her binky. A great way to start my day.

Matt had already sur­prised me with my birth­day present a few days ago… another place set­ting for my slow, but steadily grow­ing china col­lec­tion. I can’t wait until I have twelve place set­tings. But then, of course there are all of the serv­ing plat­ters and bowls, the gravy boat and the cream and sugar set. It seems like the col­lec­tion is ever expand­ing. It was a sweet and unex­pected surprise—even though I had told him I only wanted china for any and all presents until I’ve got my full set—he’s good at mix­ing it up with other gifts and sur­pris­ing me with some when I’m not expect­ing it. Thank you Matt. It’s beautiful.

And speak­ing of sweet sur­prises, a birth­day present from my mom arrived in the mail today. She knit­ted me a match­ing hat and scarf—they are absolutely beau­ti­ful. And you know me—hand made is so much sweeter than store bought. I tried to take a pic­ture of them to show you all how beau­ti­ful they really are, but my cam­era (not the great­est) and the light­ing in my apart­ment just weren’t doing them jus­tice. Great job mom—I really love them.

I had a staff lunch meet­ing today at On The Bor­der (so yummy), and was treated to a brownie Sun­day, and then spent the after­noon shop­ping for Cora’s birth­day party—which is just around the corner.

Matt wrapped up my birth­day by tak­ing me to din­ner at Ruth’s Chris Steak­house (so good!). The staff sprin­kled our table with happy birth­day confetti—it was so pretty! I tried to take a pic­ture of that, too, and again… it just wasn’t work­ing out (think I need a new cam­era?). My brother, Jonathan, and his wife, Tina, babysat Cora for us, and Matt and I had a good two hours chat­ting over great food and deli­cious dessert.

Such a fun day, but just a small part of this super fun month of Decem­ber. Thank you to every­one who brought joy to my birth­day. Hugs to all.

It is Thanks­giv­ing, and I am so excited to begin a new tra­di­tion with my grow­ing lit­tle fam­ily… a grat­i­tude jour­nal. A friend of mine, Jess, who blogs at Brix­ton Lane, shared the idea about a week ago on her blog, and I absolutely loved it.

I didn’t have much time to throw one together (espe­cially since it’s not pos­si­ble for me to throw any craft together… I over think every­thing… to a fault, at times), but luck­ily, this was an easy, and super fun project to complete.

The jour­nal itself is just a com­po­si­tion book, cov­ered with kraft style wrap­ping paper (if you are think­ing of mak­ing one—it can be cov­ered with any thin, flimsy paper—wrapping paper is eas­i­est). I found the pat­terned paper at Michael’s, and then went to a nearby scrap­book­ing store to grab the let­ters and flower accents to dec­o­rate the cover. I had some brown raf­fia at home, so as a last minute addi­tion, I used double-sided adhe­sive tape (from Cre­ative Memories—love that stuff) to tack down three strips to frame the pat­terned paper. I am so happy with how it turned out!

Jess had a scrip­ture related to thank­ful­ness on her jour­nal, and I loved the idea—seems fit­ting, after all—so I stole that idea, too, and added a scrip­ture to the back cover of mine. I also added our fam­ily name on the inside front cover.

The tra­di­tion that goes with the jour­nal is this: every Thanks­giv­ing, each mem­ber of the fam­ily takes a few moments to write down the things that they are most thank­ful for. It’s a fun, reflec­tive way to look back each year and see where you’ve come from, how you’ve grown and where the Lord has lead you (and your fam­ily as a whole). It’s also a refresh­ing reminder of how much we have had, and always will have to be thank­ful for in our lives.

Thanks, Jess, for shar­ing such a great idea. I’m look­ing for­ward to keep­ing our grat­i­tude jour­nal around for many years to come.

Happy Thanks­giv­ing every­one…

Last week­end, Matt, Cora and I went camp­ing with some friends of ours, Chris and Car­rie. We spent one night at a camp­site at Sil­ver­wood Lake (located in the San Bernardino Moun­tains, about forty miles west of Big Bear Lake—I didn’t know where it was either).

Cora enjoy­ing the view at Sil­ver­wood Lake

Car­rie and Cora

As a kid—a Girl Scout, and the daugh­ter of a Cub Scout mom—I went camp­ing more times than I can even count, whereas Matt had never, in his whole life, been on real camp­ing trip. And by real, I mean tent camp­ing. No cozy cab­ins, no hotels a few miles away from the “camp” spot (Matt once told me that he con­sid­ered the time he went to Yosemite and stayed in a hotel a few miles away, camping—yeah, no).

I’m glad we went. We had a good time with Chris (we call him CT) and Car­rie. Here are a few high­lights, low­lights, funny sto­ries and lessons learned from our trip…

***

Our trip started like this: As we were set­ting up the tent, a for­est ranger (or police­man, sher­iff, some­thing like that…) pulled up to our camp­site and sig­naled for CT to approach his car. Matt, Car­rie and I watched from a dis­tance, and over­heard the first few words the offi­cer said to CT, “have you seen this man?” When the car pulled away, CT came back and reported that a pris­oner from the San Bernardino Cen­tral Deten­tion Cen­ter had escaped the night before, and that patrol cars were out search­ing for him in the area. The offi­cer ended the con­ver­sa­tion by smil­ing (sar­cas­ti­cally) at CT and say­ing, “well, have a good week­end.” Ha! What he really meant was, I’m sure I just ruined your camp­ing trip by mak­ing you, your friends, and that baby over there, a lit­tle ner­vous. But hey, try and make the best of it. And let us know if you see that pris­oner, will ya? We didn’t see him, by the way. This post would be headed a com­pletely dif­fer­ent direc­tion if we had.

***

Note to self: Camp­ing in a tent, in the moun­tains, in November—not the best way to break in some­one new to camp­ing, or the best time of year to bring an (almost) eleven month old baby. It was FREEZING.

When I say freez­ing, I mean freez­ing. When I woke up Sat­ur­day morn­ing and couldn’t feel my fin­gers, or my toes, or my face, I hopped in the car and turned on the heater to defrost (yes, I cheated). As I shiv­ered in the front seat, wait­ing for the air to heat up, I made it a point to check the tem­per­a­ture on the dash: 32 degrees. Freezing.

It was one of the most uncom­fort­ably cold nights of my entire life. Not only was I tense from being so cold, but I couldn’t relax (even after I started to warm up under the blan­kets and sleep­ing bags) because I was so wor­ried that Cora was cold. To be hon­est, I think she was fine. Con­fused, yes. But cold, not really. I dressed her in a long-sleeved one­sie, under fleece, cov­er­all, footed paja­mas, under a fleece zip-up hoodie, and put a fleece earflap beanie on her head. Then, of course, there were the blan­kets, the sleep­ing bag we shared, and the fact that she was sand­wiched between Matt and I. But because I am new mom, I was prob­a­bly a lit­tle more con­cerned and over­pro­tec­tive than I needed to be. Bet­ter safe than sorry, right?

Matt and Cora stay­ing warm by the fire on a (very) cold morning.

***

I’ve men­tioned before (prob­a­bly more than once) that Cora LOVES to be out­side. It was so fun to watch her enjoy the out­side air and scenery for an entire day. And the fact that she was bun­dled up in comfy-cute, warm cloth­ing made it that much more fun. Isn’t she adorable?

My sweet girl.

***

A few other ran­dom notes:

Camp­site bath­rooms are gross.
Par­ents who hate the out­doors should not take their chil­dren camp­ing (and def­i­nitely should not express their dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the camp­ing trip so loudly that nearby camp­sites overhear—poor kids).
The older I get (I use that term very loosely—I am not that old), the more I real­ize how silly col­lege kids can be—especially when they are up ‘til 2:00 in the morn­ing, drink­ing and swear­ing in the mid­dle of a state park, and sur­rounded by (sleep­ing) fam­i­lies with young chil­dren.
Start­ing a fire with­out lighter fluid is not easy.
It’s ok to get a lit­tle dirty every now and then.
I’d love to own a boat some­day.
I always for­get how much I love the crisp chill and silent still­ness of early morn­ing hours—away from free­way noise and city sounds—until I am in the midst of it again.
Nature is beau­ti­ful; we have an amaz­ing God.

***

It was, over­all, a fun twenty-four hours filled with camp­fires, fun talks, hot cocoa, s’mores (the BEST part about camp­ing) and new expe­ri­ences for Matt, Cora, and our fam­ily as a whole. Although it was freez­ing, Matt had a good time, and has signed off on another camp­ing trip with CT and Carrie—in the sum­mer­time. Already look­ing for­ward to it.

Ok, I’m sure a lot of you out there are think­ing… she’s just now dis­cov­er­ing the won­der­ful world of Etsy?! And yes, it’s sadly true. I’ve heard of Etsy before, but have never taken the time to dive into all of its won­der­ful­ness until recently.

My lit­tle dis­cov­ery (not really, I know… per­sonal dis­cov­ery may be more appro­pri­ate) came about while I was brows­ing the Inter­net for sup­plies and poten­tial out­fits for Cora’s upcom­ing first (!) birth­day party. (Side note: I CANNOT believe Cora is almost a year old. 2010 has, hands down, felt like the fastest year of my life.) I had orig­i­nally wanted to do a “Lit­tle Suzy’s Zoo” themed party for Cora. I used to adore Suzy’s Zoo stuff, and thought it would be an orig­i­nal party idea because I hadn’t seen or heard it being done too often. And there is a rea­son for that… I scratched the idea alto­gether when I real­ized that

a) it is next to impos­si­ble to acquire enough items (plates, dec­o­ra­tions, cake, etc.) to cre­ate a cohe­sive theme with­out spend­ing a for­tune on rare, dis­con­tin­ued pieces here and there from col­lec­tors and old retail­ers, and

b) the main duck in the Lit­tle Suzy Zoo line is a boy. Sigh…

Witsy (the baby duck) is seri­ously adorable, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do so much online search­ing and shop­ping… piec­ing together ran­dom collector’s items… all to give Cora a birth­day party fea­tur­ing a male duck.

So. It was a pretty easy deci­sion to swap themes to Baby Min­nie. Any­one who knows me well knows I love Dis­ney! I’ve had an annual pass to Dis­ney­land for the past five (maybe six?) years, I col­lect Dis­ney stuff, love Dis­ney movies, you get the idea. Cora has even been to Dis­ney­land FOUR times already in her ten and a half months of life. So a Baby Min­nie birth­day is actu­ally quite perfect.

Which leads us back to the topic at hand… Etsy. Etsy is the spot for Min­nie Mouse cre­ations. I typed “baby min­nie mouse” into the search bar on the Etsy home page… 2,161 results were returned! Yeah. Two thou­sand, one hun­dred and sixty one items! (And that’s after includ­ing “baby” to limit the 6,378 results for “min­nie mouse”.) No idea was left untouched… every­thing from invi­ta­tions and thank you’s, to hair acces­sories and jew­elry, to cup­cake top­pers and party favors. I ended up find­ing a seller who makes the cutest birth­day out­fits for young­sters, and will be order­ing prac­ti­cally every­thing Cora will be wear­ing from her. For the time being, I’m attempt­ing to keep Cora’s adorable out­fit a secret, but I’ll be sure to share a link to her site once Cora’s birth­day comes and goes. It’s a must-see site for any par­ent with lit­tle ones!

Ever since my late nights of Min­nie Mouse brows­ing, I’ve been check­ing out all the other hand­made good­ies on Etsy. Sure, there are some items that pop every now and then that I think are hideous (some down­right dis­turb­ing), but for the most part—it’s a great place to find some pretty cute stuff. There’s some­thing for every taste (which I guess accounts for the dis­tur­bances) and style. I’ve been brows­ing all the fun Christ­mas stuff the past few days—so many dec­o­ra­tions, orna­ments, and other hand­made items that you’d never find in your every­day store. How amaz­ing is this nativ­ity scene—completely hand­crafted with noth­ing but paper!

Quilled Paper Nativ­ity Scene, Cards by Cheryl

Another thing I love about Etsy is how so many things are cus­tomiz­able. Because most of the items on Etsy are hand­made, I’ve noticed that a lot of sell­ers take cus­tom orders for lit­tle to no addi­tional charge. There’s noth­ing bet­ter than get­ting to cus­tomize and per­son­al­ize your shopping—it makes for the best gifts, and you end up get­ting exactly what you want.

Like I said, I know I’m a lit­tle behind in dis­cov­er­ing Etsy, but if you’re at all into hand­made and/or per­son­al­ized gifts, cloth­ing, décor, etc, and you haven’t explored the site… give it a whirl. I think you’ll enjoy it, too. Happy shop­ping!