Shower for a friend

OK, so being a 'blow in' I know I'm by no means the authority on throwing a Baby Shower. I'd never even been to a baby shower until last fall and the only other shower I'd been to before that was  the one my Mother in Law threw for me before our wedding.

But, none of that stopped me from offering to throw a shower for a good friend of ours, and I actually thought it'd be a fun thing to do.... so I jumped in feet first, giving myself less than 3 weeks to plan the whole thing.

The shower is coming up this weekend - and I think it's going to be fun, I really HOPE it's going to be fun - for the Mom-to-Be's sake at least!

As someone who's career in marketing involved throwing parties and events all the time I figured I could do it.... I discovered that throwing a baby shower isn't really much different from putting together any other kind of party - design and mail invitations to the guest list, plan food and refreshments and some kind of entertainment for the guests and also it's nice to have a little treat bag or favor for the guests to take home with them as a thank you for coming.

The expectant Mom is a lot like me in the aspect that she didn't want a lot of pinky, pink stuff... even though she's having a girl. I will say, I'm glad of this fact, because I think it may have killed me to plan a OTT pink baby shower - instead I made up some invites with a black and white damask theme and a little stork - the only hint of pink is the bundle the stork is carrying. I thought they were simple and cute, and not OTT!

Treat Bags!

For the treat bags I thought it would be cute to carry the same theme through from the invites, and so I got a variety of candy and  put them into little clear treat bags (the kind you'd use for single packaging cookies etc)... then I made a little card to seal the whole thing. They're personalized and I thought they were pretty cute - but hey, I guess I'm probably fairly biased.

The food was also fairly easy to figure out, since we're having the shower mid-afternoon and the mother of the guest of honor is helping with the location and getting the food together. She's making sandwiches, veggie platters, fruit salad (I think) and pie - and since we're hosting it at their family cafe we'll have their coffee girl there making hot drinks and lattes for the guests too!

For the decoration I'm again going with  the simple theme - nothing to pinky, pink but definitely something with a splash of color. So, I'm making these tissue paper pompoms... now, they're not something I've made before and I'm not exactly what I'd call 'light handed' with things such as tissue paper, but these are today's task and I'll hopefully be able to make something that doesn't look like Edward Scissor hands was involved in.

The hardest thing was probably the entertainment part of it.... Baby Showers generally have a time for games, usually 2-4 of them and at both showers I've been to they were exactly the same games. I didn't want to do that at this shower, I wanted to have something just a little bit different.... so I'm hoping I can pull it off - I guess we'll see!

Anyway, that's about it - this "blow in" is trying to not butcher a very traditional American event, and I'm really just hoping that people will come (it seems people don't like to RSVP these days, ugh) they will eat, drink and have fun, and that the Mom-to-Be will have a great time and get lots of wonderful useful gifts and advice!

Until it's over, I'm holding my breath!  ;-)

I Dragged The Gut

As an immigrant to the USA I am constantly finding things here in my new home that are new to me or are just different...

Dragging the Gut is one of those things that is unique to the USA and here in McMinnville it was outlawed in the mid-late 80's.

It was such a wonderful evening, we had a great time dragging the gut with our 1972 Suburban and our Victory... I can't wait for next year! :)

Happy Independence America!

Well, our Independence day weekend was quite a lot of fun. We drove up to Mt Hood on Saturday morning (a little later than anticipated, but that's ok too) to meet up with my good friend Dave who is also an expat and his Oregonian girlfriend Katie.

They live in an absolutely beautiful area at the base of Mt Hood, at an elevation of about 1500 ft - I hadn't thought of the elevation being an issue but it was interesting.
After we got there we headed out to the Salmon river and did a little hike. I say hike, which is wasn't really - but it was a little more than just a walk, so I guess it was a 'little hike'. It was beautiful though and fun - except that I was hiking in my flip flops. I hadn't brought any other shoes, just two pair of flip flops, and I managed to dig another one out from underneath the back seat of our truck. Ugh.

After that we headed to the golf course and played a little lawn bowls. It was SO much fun and the weather was just perfect. We played Dave & I against Cory & Katie - England vs USA.
Cory & Katie beat us by a point, which was ok I guess - since it was Independence Day weekend... but we WILL have to rematch sometime (soon)!
We grabbed dinner out and then made a dessert run and got some yummy cakes and pies! The gooseberry pie was my favourite, and surprisingly I really liked the coconut cream pie too - something I have never been a fan of, but it was really good!
Sunday was the 4th, and Katie was snowboarding with her brother up at Timberline so the rest of us had breakfast and then headed up to check out the lodge. I'd been there before and I love the lodge - it's amazingly beautiful and the view is always stunning. It was cloudy at the house but perfectly sunny and clear up at the lodge.

We met up with Katie & Sean (her brother) for a drink and snack before heading back to the house to get prepped up for the BBQ.
We headed home as everyone else headed to fireworks - it was getting to be late and Cory had to work first thing in the morning. Swathing grass seed = early morning starts.

We got to see so many fireworks on the way home though, for pretty much the whole drive, and we made it in record time too. There was hardly anyone else on the road, I guess everyone else was watching fireworks or celebrating Independence somehow!

4th July weekend is almost here!

While this is not my first time to celebrate the 4th of July, nor is it the first where I've actually been here in the US to celebrate (that was last year), this year is the first time I will celebrate the 4th of July at "home" in the USofA.

It's pretty exciting, and seems a little unbelievable since I've been here for what seems like a lifetime (19 months, but who's counting?), but yes, this is the first Independence Day as a Permanent Resident of America.

It's kind of exciting - I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to feel some sense of pride or excitement or something, but I do know that we're going to have a fun weekend.

My good friend Dave is in town from NY - well, he's actually from 'back home' but he's now living in NYC. He's here in OR with his girlfriend Katie who is an Oregonian. So, we're planning to meet up with them for a weekend at the mountain (Mt Hood).
I'm excited - I've never really spent much time at Mt hood outside of the winter months. It's so pretty up there too!

So, it's bound to be a fun weekend... I'll let you guys know if it feels any different as a non-alien ;)

Fun 3-day weekend

So, with Cory being a farmer now it just so happens that sometimes days off for holidays have to be switched around, otherwise he'd never get any time off.... Well, the 4th July holiday is one of those days. Since Cory is almost certainly going to have to work next Monday he took yesterday off and we had a 3 day weekend. It was so much fun, and I really enjoyed having him home and getting time to hang out. I LOVE spending time together.
So, on Friday we just about finished the flooring at the rental house - which is a big relief because it had been looming over our heads like a humongous hail cloud and we needed to get the majority of it done. Also, they were having a party there on Sat, so we really wanted it to be looking good for them.

Saturday morning we made a trip to the dump - all the flooring from the rental house needed to be disposed of and it had been riding in the back of our truck for a little over a week - yuck!
After that we had plans to go up to hang out with our friend Aaron and some buddies for his birthday - we had to make an unexpected stop at Les Schwab due to a cling-on nail we picked up at the dump, but we got to watch the second half of the USA vs Ghana match on their TV while we waited so I didn't complain. Too bad the USA lost and were sent home.

So, we got back on the road and headed to meet Aaron. We were heading out on the boat for the day and we were looking forward to it. It was near perfect weather and we were in need of a relaxing day - it was exactly that. We got to meet some new people too, so that's always an added bonus. I like meeting new people.
After that we headed a friend's who is also Aaron's neighbour and had a BBQ there - I'd brought a birthday cake and some watermelon so I didn't feel too bad about showing up at their house for food. The one thing I completely hate is going to someones house empty handed.

The food was yummers! A great day all round!

Sunday at 7am was the England vs Germany match. I was so nervous. The history with us and the Germans in general is pretty bad, but in football it's so prickly that I could hardly contain myself. We needed to win, not only to progress to the next stage, but to prove a point that we still had what it took.
I was in church, working on the projection with the live stream on my phone sitting beside me on my desk. I was hardly able to contain myself. The Germans scored - NO!!!!!
Then we had a disallowed goal and I could just feel that it was all downhill from there.

The game ended just a few moments before Church started, the score was 4-1. Our boys were going home, we'd been well outplayed by the Germans, our tails were firmly between out legs.

Boo!

After church we grabbed lunch and headed home to work on the yard - it needed a fair share of TLC!
We were still wrecked from the previous day on the boat so we snuck in a little afternoon nap too. It was a good afternoon!
Cory got sun burnt though, pretty badly on his back. All day Saturday he had kept applying the sunscreen while on the boat, but something about working in the yard without his shirt on he forgot and he was suffering. The aloe was soaking in almost instantly - I felt bad for him, I'd been there before... several times!

Yesterday we decided that we were going to have a chilled day too, so we grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the coast. It was warm when we left town, but by the time we got to the beach it was chilly, grey and starting to drizzle. I kind of liked the break from the heat!
We did a little window shopping at the outlet mall, went to the beach and then hit up Mo's for an early dinner before heading home.
Oh, and on the way home we took a little detour and looked at Oregon's oldest covered bridge. It was originally built in 1914. It was pretty cool to have a look at and read the story of how it was saved and relocated. :)

After we got home we did a quick 2 hour whizz around our house and it looks clean as a whistle, it's amazing what you can do in so little time eh?

After that we chilled - watched some TV and had a relaxing evening.
All in all a great 3 day weekend...

Here's some pics: