Weekly Pregnancy Photos

In honor of this day last year when we found out we were pregnant, I wanted to share all my weekly pregnancy photos. It seriously does not feel like that was a whole year ago... time just flew by!

One week after finding out I started doing these weekly (so that's why it starts with 5 weeks pregnant) in the same spot in the room we made into the nursery. Part way through you can see that the wall got some samples on it and changed colors when we painted the nursery aqua in week 27. The aqua even looks totally different in different lighting. You might notice the last two photos are a little different... well I had planned on taking my traditional weekly photo at 35+1 day but I went into labor that day and never got the planned photo so that one will have to do. I had no clue when we took my photo with the Are You My Mother book that I'd have a baby in my arms a week and 2 days later. Also I wanted to at least round it out to an even 36 since I missed some weekly photos with my little boy coming early so I decided I could take a final one at the would-be 36 weeks mark and he could join me! He was just 5 days old then!

Big thanks to Eric for putting up with taking photos every single week! We just took them all with the phone since that was the easiest. I also had weekly photos taken wearing the same white shirt and black leggings which are neat to look at the difference but I like these since I'm wearing different outfits like some of my cute pregnancy dresses!

Our first Knights game in Uptown

A few weeks ago we went to a Knights game with our friends Elisabeth and Tyler on Thursday night. The Knights, Triple-A team for the White Sox, ballpark was previous in Fort Mill, south of Charlotte. They built a nice ballpark in Uptown Charlotte and moved the team there this season. So far a lot of weekend games have been sold out.

Elisabeth and I grabbed some "bar bites" for dinner and drinks at Aria. We hadn't been before but it was an awesome deal... great food and good portions for the $5 each price. We ordered 3 things (brussel sprouts, mushroom goat cheese pizza, and caramelized gnocchi) and it was enough for the 2 of us (oh and you always get bread with white beans in olive oil). And they have this bar bites menu every night starting at 5pm... even Fri and Sat night! I'll definitely be doing bar bites again.

Then we met up with our husbands near the stadium. Every Thursday is Thirsty Thursdays, $3 Domestic beers which draws a big crowd. After grabbing drinks we went to our seats out past third base. They weren't the best seats but we didn't get them that far in advance so probably after some of the hype dies down we may be able to find better seats. The most expensive seats (including where we sat) are $17 but there is a standing room only section for just $8 which could be great for hanging out.

I was able to get some pretty good shots of Uptown from that side of the ballpark. The first two are with my DSLR and the last one is with my phone... no edits to any of them.

The Knights ended up losing 6-8 but it was still a great game and a fun outing. Glad they moved the team into the city!

Custom Design Heat Transfer Vinyl Pillow

I cannot believe I forgot to share this pillow I made back in September until now. My friend Brittany, the awesome photographer I have talked about before who teaches the best Intro to DSLR class was opening her own office space in Charlotte so I decided to make her a custom pillow for her couch.

For the pillow part I cut two square of beige lightly speckled textured fabric (they sell this with all the white and beige fabrics in varying thicknesses in most fabric stores). I don't remember the exact size I cut but I think it was probably 10x10. You can of course make it whatever size you desire.

I've used freezer paper stenciling on pillows before but never the t-shirt vinyl. First I made the design in the Silhouette software. One design is this camera with the word moments that I got as a freebie in the Silhouette software store awhile back and then I added some extra text to the design. Another design I did was Brittany Lauren Photography's logo. I just picked the font and spacing that was the closest to her logo since the images of her logo I tried to pull online weren't of high enough quality for the software. I got pretty darn close. Then it was really simple to add in the dots.

I cut the designs using black heat transfer vinyl from Expressions Vinyl and then ironed them onto the beige fabric for a double sized pillow. I will say that next time I use the vinyl for a pillow I will make sure the design does not have such thin or skinny pieces to the design like the logo did. It was difficult to weed the vinyl off and then also gave me a hard time when ironing it to stick to the fabric. The camera design side had no issues except for the "this" since it was thin. So that is my advice for working with heat transfer vinyl.

Then I sewed the right sides of the pillow squares together with a 1/4 inch seam allowance leaving a small opening. Next I turned it right side out and stuffed it with fiber fill and hand sewed the opening closed. The hand sewing is my least favorite part... I feel like it never looks as good as I want it to.

I love the way the pillow turned out! It is so fun to make something custom or handmade that you know cannot be bought and really means something to the person you are giving it to.

And Brittany really loved it too! It was a great addition to her fabulously decorated new office.

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Hope this inspires you to try using vinyl on pillows if you haven't yet. A pillow with a person's monogram or wedding date in vinyl would make a great gift too. 

Late Summer Early Fall weekend happenings

Here are some fun happenings around Charlotte I've been meaning to do a post on. I've left out anything that has it's own post such as the New House Party.

More fun at the whitewater center river jam with friends. With the quick arrival of cold temps this week, I'm wishing for warmer days so we can go to these again (and also because I don't like cold weather).

My friend Gen and I first saw a poster about the Lion King in June 2012 saying it was coming in August... well she called about tickets and turned out it was for August 2013, not 2012 so this was definitely a much anticipated show! It was fabulous! 
 

Housewarming and Clemson vs. UGA viewing party at the Bowden's new home. Go Tigers!

I got to help out at Brittany's DSLR Photography class, Lights Camera Manual. I was an attendee last January. She got to hold this one in her new office space.

I had so much fun helping the ladies out with their cameras so they could learn all about aperture, shutter, ISO, light metering, etc. And I was able to snap some photos of the class in action. Seriously it was a blast.. I love practicing with my camera!

Yep that's a spider underneath a wood board on a bridge.

 

Eric's company's had an outing at the whitewater center on a Sunday in September for employees and their families. There are so many more obstacle courses and zip lines than when they first opened up which was really fun.

Not a weekend happening but Eric spoke at Ignite Charlotte about teaching computer languages to young kids. Yes his slides had kittens..

And also not a weekend happening but my friend Brittany opened her photography office in Charlotte (the place we had the class) and had a office warming/grand opening event. As I've said before she is super talented!

My parents visited prior to the Clemson Wake game (which deserves its own post) and brought with them some of my childhood toys after cleaning out their attic

Anyone else have waaaay too many beanie babies?

Weekend in Chicago: Day 2

Don't miss Day 1 in Chicago first.

On Sunday July 21st, we woke up and decided to start off with a little shopping on Michigan Ave. We didn't end up buying anything but it was fun to look and walk around on such a nice morning.

 

Then we hopped on the L to the Lincoln Park area. I really really liked this area. We walked past parks and shops on the way to lunch at Floriole Bakery where we had some great sandwiches.

After lunch we went to Sweet Mandy B's which was just a few doors down. How convenient! This place was so cute and it was extremely hard to choose what to get. I wish I could have sampled everything. We settled on their staple, cupcakes.

We got a vanilla with vanilla icing and a chocolate chip with chocolate icing and split them. They were both amazing.

The chocolate chip had a chocolate chip cookie baked into the bottom! If I lived in Chicago I would want to live within walking distance of Sweet Mandy B's, although that could be slightly dangerous. Seriously though it was my favorite neighborhood that we saw on our visit.

It also has DePaul University (not to be confused with DePauw) right there. Still in Chicago (short ride away from downtown) but more of a neighborhood and family feel. I'm sure it can't be cheap to live in Lincoln Park either but it sure looked nice.

That afternoon we wanted to go to the Museum of Science and Industry. Yeah were nerds. Eric more so than me though. It was on the opposite side of Chicago so we looked up the best way to get there by public transit. We took the L for a bit and then hopped on a bus. Did I mention our transit pass worked on buses too? Google maps was really accurate with the schedules and stops of the Chicago buses too.

So we spent several hours exploring the museum. We saw the IMAX of The Last Coral Reef, explored the storms/natural disasters exhibit, the entrepreneur exhibit, toy making exhibit, the embryo exhibit and stayed at the baby chick exhibit for awhile. We could see some of them cracking their shells, it was amazing. I would have stayed until another one completely hatched or they closed for the night, whichever happened first so Eric had to drag me away since we still had other things we wanted to do.

waiting for the IMAX to start

baby chicks

We caught the bus back towards downtown and hopped on another bus to take us to the Navy Pier stop.

From there we walked to Olive Park and spent some time relaxing in the park and taking pictures.

There were a ton of people in boats and yachts anchored right nearby the shore (and lots of people on the beach area where we were the night before).

At one point we saw a guy on a paddle board pick up a man on one of the boats and they paddled toward where we were where it clearly said no entry and no climbing on the rocks. The man got off the paddle board, climbed up the rocks and jumped on a bike that was at a nearby tree. The police boat immediately approached the paddle boarding guy for doing what it clearly says not to do while the man had taken off on the bike. Well that man that the paddle board guy brought to shore was John Cusack! I would have loved to hear what the paddle board guy's explanation was to the police. Sadly it all happened so fast and by the time we knew who it was on the bike he was long gone so I did not get a picture but made for a entertaining moment in Olive Park.

We stayed as long as we could since I really wanted to capture the skyline at sunset but it was kind of cloudy and we needed to make our dinner reservations.

We boarded the bus again for a little bit and then got off near one of the L lines to take it up to the Lincoln Park area again for dinner at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba, a tapas restaurant. Keith has just flown into Chicago that afternoon (he was going to the conference too) so he met us for dinner.

They had bazillion different Sangria choices. Their classic white Sangria was tasty don't mind if I do! and all the food we ordered was fabulous. Another point for Lincoln Park! It was dimly lit in there so the pictures are a bit dark.

After that we hopped on a bus to take us close to the John Hancock building. We went up to the 96th floor to have a drink and take in the views of Chicago at night. I read in many places that it is the same price as buying a ticket to the top viewing deck (tourist attraction and only a few more floors up) as it is to go to the bar and get a pricey drink or dessert (and the ticket doesn't include a drink or dessert so obviously there is a clear winner). Plus the view from the ladies room is amazing as well.

Then we called it a night as the boys had to be up early to start their conference and I had to be up early to work from the room.

On Monday I made a lunch run for Eric and I (he came back to the hotel to practice his speech... he was speaking at this conference) to the Corner Bakery and on the way stopped to grab a few more shots of "the bean" when it wasn't as crowded as it was on Saturday. I was trying to capture some of the buildings reflection in the bean.

After lunch he was off again to the conference. Doesn't he look cute in his monkey space lanyard.

Monday evening I took the L back to the airport and flew home to Charlotte. Eric joined me a few days later. We had such a great quick trip exploring Chicago. I had been several times before for work and Eric came once in high school but we had never been together for fun. There is certainly a lot to do and lots of fantastic restaurants so I can't wait to visit again!