Gender Reveal Party: Boy or Girl Theme

We decided to do a gender reveal party to properly celebrate this little life inside of me.  This may seem like overkill to some people but we have waited so long for this baby, 40 months to be exact!  It was so fun to find out the gender with our friends who have prayed with us and walked with us through this journey.  G's brother and nephew were there, but the rest of the family lives too far away so we videoed the moment for them.

For dinner, we had a selection of five soups.  I made one and four friends brought the others.  It was the easiest way to feed so many and still make it interesting.  70 people RSVP'd and I think around 60 ended up making it.

We had a couple signs where people could cast their votes on whether it is a boy or girl, and also a list of names.

There were some small touches of pink and blue, as well as the boy or girl theme.

I couldn't find pink and blue m&ms so I decided to just go with plain or peanut, and thought it went with the boy or girl theme nicely!

Teeny tiny bathing suits for a baby due in June!

Posing with the baby bump at 22 weeks.  People could wear pink or blue if they wanted to display their vote that way.  I attempted a blue dress but it just looked like I was indecisive.  I wasn't though, I was definitely feeling boy!

I made a banner that says "Boy or Girl" to display the theme for the party.

I couldn't stop gazing at the cake when we picked it up.   They are just tiny baby shoes on top from Janie and Jack.  The cake was huge!  We had 60 people there and still had half left.  It was wonderful and I highly recommend Take the Cake if you are in the Houston area-best cake ever.

This is the long version of the video with my speech included.  Below is the short version.  I hate seeing myself talk, but I wanted to share it here anyway just to share our story.

We could have found out 9 weeks ago, so this culmination of anticipation was palpable to me.

 Surprised!

It's a girl!

Shocked!

Hope you enjoyed the pictures and videos!  Have any of you had a gender reveal party?  It was so fun and I think even doing a simpler version would be sweet.  

-xoxo

Jennifer

Due date is June 21, 2012

Dreams Do Come True

Psalm 103:1-5

  Praise the LORD, my soul;
   all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
 Praise the LORD, my soul,
   and forget not all his benefits—
 who forgives all your sins
   and heals all your diseases,
 who redeems your life from the pit
   and crowns you with love and compassion,
 who satisfies your desires with good things
   so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Project 333 Updated and Over

If anyone was wondering how Project 333 ended up, I'm here to report my experience with it.  I'm afraid it might be a little anti-climatic though because it wasn't a very earth shaking experiment to me.  I just want to highlight a few points that I learned during the three months.

The most helpful exercise was putting away all the other clothes that I wasn't going to wear.  In doing this, I noticed that I needed a lot of storage space to do so.  I thought I didn't have that many clothes to begin with, but apparently I was wrong.  Clothes can hang there and be invisible to me if I don't wear them.  They really are wasted space, hanging and stored.  After the project I felt a renewed vigor for cleaning out those things, which is a great benefit!  I opened my eyes to the excess.

For the first two months I was breezing along wearing mostly summer clothes, but when winter hit, I stumbled a bit.  I had saved some of my 33 items to add in winter clothes, but I found that I got bored very quickly.  If I were doing this on my own rules, I would do less clothes each season, but change them out after the weather changes.  The majority of my shirts were summer because I live in Houston and I was very limited with sweaters.  I managed through until we went home for Christmas and I got a couple of new things while I was there.  

The jewelry, shoes and coat limitations didn't bother me at all, except I felt that I was neglecting some pretty things that I could have been wearing.  It actually felt a little wasteful to me not to wear them.

Not shopping had an interesting effect in my mind.  On one hand I was happy to not be looking for anything, but at the same time I missed not being in the pursuit of something.  It felt like I was letting go of a task that kept me entertained to a degree.  It's not like I'm a huge shopper, but I find it fun to browse online or be hunting for the perfect something or another.  

Having lived in NC, I am four seasons kind of girl.  I religiously change out clothes for each season.  Since going through this challenge, I realized how nice it would be to have a year round wardrobe.  I'm not sure that I will do this, but I feel that the key is to have so little that your closet still doesn't look crammed with all your clothes.  Giving up this ritual would be a little strange for me though so the idea is there but still in the back of my mind.

Overall, I do think that this is a beneficial experiment for learning how much you really need in your wardrobe.  Even though it sounds extreme, 33 items is really quite sufficient for a season of clothes.  Haven't you secretly wanted your closet to look like those at the Container Store?  I have and this was my chance!

Image from Container Store.