Last Sunday, we observed our annual tradition of making a gingerbread house! Mio was fascinated and loved watching the process of the house coming together.
Watching Daddy fill the piping bag with frosting.
Helpng out a little here and there…
She wanted to get a very close look at every step…
Building the structure of the house.
Working on the details of the house.
The completed gingerbread house!
The back side of thehouse.
Mio’s contributions to our gingerbread house came in the form of licks and bites…
She goes for the roof! Because everything was cemented on after the frosting dried, Mio resorted to licking the candy directly off the house because she couldn’t pick them off.
Mio’s been obsessed with the gingerbread house all week, saying “Ginger house! Candy!” We fear that it will not survive until Christmas…
A couple weekends ago, a couple of my dearest friends threw me the most beautiful baby shower for our second baby. After all the baby shower love we had received when we were expecting Mio, I really didn’t expect any sort of shower or celebration this time around, and I’d even read that it’s bad form to have a baby shower for subsequent babies beyond your first child. But my best friend Debbie insisted that she wanted to plan an intimate get-together on a small scale to celebrate the arrival of baby #2, especially since she wasn’t able to plan one for Mio’s birth (since we were in California at the time). She enlisted the help of one of my other closest friends, Hanna, and together they threw me a truly lovely storybook-themed baby shower! Everything was so beautiful and had so much detail and thought put into it, but at the same time the pace and tone of the shower was really cozy and relaxed, which I loved. Here are some snapshots from the celebration!
Beautiful flowers and storybooks as decorations for the shower.
Hanna, who I became close friends with while we were both studying graphic design in college, designed the lovely invitations and the printed decorations/labels for the shower.
 The front of the folded invitation: I love the detail in it, like “Misono’s Recipes” and “Mio’s Schoolbox” incorporated into the books and boxes of the design.
Back of the folded invitation
The inside of the baby shower invitation… Gorgeous!
A lovely bookmark to accompany the invitation.
There was no shortage of delicious food! Both Debbie and Hanna are amazing in the kitchen, and the refreshments and desserts they prepared were both beautiful and mouthwatering…
An amazing spread of delicious food!
All the food was labeled/named with children’s book references — it was so cute!
Strega Nona’s Chicken Alfredo Pasta and Cloudy with a Chance of BBQ Meatballs!
Charlie and the Chocolate Green Tea Cupcakes
If You Give a Mouse a Chocolate Chip Cookie with Miso Buttercream Frosting
The dessert table with the chocolate cupcakes with green tea frosting, and chocolate chip cookies.
Debbie is amazing at making homemade jam and preserves. She prepared these jars of orange cranberry preserves with grand marnier for the guests to take home as favors. Hanna designed the tags to match the invitation and the rest of the decor of the shower!
Catching up over delicious refreshments
Supplies for onesie and bib crafts! My friends know me so well. This is just the kind of activity I love to do!
Working on handmade onesies and bibs for the baby.
The bib I worked on.
Elisa’s adorable strawberry bib
With Pat. So glad she could make time to come to the shower, even as a busy mama of two! I have much to learn from her as I prepare for our own second baby.
Showing off our creations.
Hanna, Debbie, and I with our completed bibs. Loved Hanna’s sushi bib and Debbie’s giraffe bib! So creative. 🙂
After the crafting fun, it was time to open gifts! Dan and I really didn’t need anything this time around, since we already have most of our baby gear and all the baby clothes from Mio (especially since we’re having another girl — the perks of having children of the same gender!), and knowing this, my girlfriends gifted us books for the baby. Such a great idea, since you can never have enough books! I love that we now have so many more books to add to the girls’ library.
Reading everyone’s thoughtful cards and opening presents.
Thank you everyone for the thoughtful gifts! The ladies also all chipped in to buy me a beautiful baby mobile that I had been looking at on Etsy.
A group picture together. Thank you everyone for coming!
The beautiful tassel garland that Debbie made! It’s definitely going in the baby’s nursery.
Can’t thank these girls enough for all that they do for me!
Thank you Debbie and Hanna for planning and hosting such a beautiful baby shower! I’ll remember it always. Our second baby is so lucky that she got to have such a lovely celebration of her own to welcome her into the world. I’m so blessed to have friends like you in my life, along with all the ladies that attended the shower. (Special thanks to Dan, too, for staying home and watching Mio so that I could have a relaxing time at the party!)
Following this winter’s first snowfall on Sunday, we got about five more inches of snow on Tuesday morning! Dan worked a partial day from home, and in the afternoon, we got to have some fun playing out in the snow in the backyard. (Mio’s preschool was cancelled both Monday and Tuesday, so she got to stay home too.)
Winter wonderland.
Mio leaving her tiny footprints in the snow…
Making a snowman with Daddy!
“Hi snowman!”
Mio’s first snowman… though Daddy did the brunt of the work. 😉
I’d missed this kind of snowscape while we were out in California.
Everything blanketed in white.
So pretty… but it sure is cold!
Mio squinting as snow flies while Dan packs the snow. It was perfect snowman snow!
Mio hugging the snowman. I thought it was funny that we didn’t use the traditional coal eyes and carrot nose, but Dan insisted that it was an “albino snowman.”
We spotted a fox frolicking around in our backyard from the window this morning, and we tried to show Mio. Much to our chagrin, whenever Mio says the word “fox,” it comes out sounding more like a four-letter word that also starts with “f”… Oh dear.
She also often has the same problem with the word “frog”… hopefully she’ll start pronouncing them a little more accurately soon! We can’t help but cringe when she excitedly yells “fox” or “frog” in the middle of the grocery store or in a restaurant… (It has happened, and it has drawn stares.)