TODAY is the start of something new!

TODAY is Monday, March 30th, the first day of a new me. I am going to work out at least three times each week. Today I went to bootcamp for the first time, (5:15am-6:15am) and while it was hard, I loved it! I can't wait to go back Wednesday! This week is just Bring a Buddy week, so I am going with my friend Lacey from church to make sure I like it and that it works with my schedule, and then if all is good I will sign up for the next session. It was a lot of fun, again very hard, but I was able to go at my own pace and surprised myself with what I could do! I actually liked getting up that early (I already get up at 5:30 every morning to be at work at 7am), and I'm feeling pretty good about the rest of my day!

I'm also going to eat better. I've done this before, but never with such a motivating workout, so I'm praying that this time I will be diligent. I use www.thedailyplate.com to count my calories. I can only have 848 calories per day, so I have to work hard! The workout burns a lot of them, though, so I can always replace them. But ground rules are: No cokes, no caffeine, no fast food, no sweets (UGH), a lot of protein, a ton of water and as many fruits and vegetables I can eat. So we will see. I'm going to post my daily plate on a separate blog that can be accessed from this one, so that I can be held accountable for what I eat (in other words, yell at me if you see sweet tea or Girl Scout cookies on there!).

Staying in better touch with friends and family. I have been horrible at this for almost two years now, and there are no excuses. I love absolutely all of you and I want to spend time with you and talk to you all as much as I can.

Growing in my faith. I am doing a Max Lucado Bible study right now, and will do the Experiencing God study next. I'm becoming very fascinated with Biblical prophecy, so I've been reading a lot of books on that subject, and am looking forward to a Biblical prophecy speaker coming to our church in April. I'm also reading my Bible from beginning to end, for the first time in a very long time. The more I read, the hungrier I get for more. It is exciting to grow in God!

Budgeting. Yeah, I'm just bad and need to get better. We sat down in February with a calendar and all of our bills and scheduled our spending for the entire month, and it worked out really well. We totally procrastinated in March and now here we are almost in April. So we're going to get on top of this and do it Dave Ramsey's way (I was so sad to miss him speaking in Dallas this past Saturday; we couldn't afford to go). He is awesome and I know we can make it work if we just stick with it!

So those are my new goals and I'm going to be working very hard on them. I know I'll be happier if I can just get it all organized and do it. So please pray for me as I try to focus more on these things.

Oh and we took family pictures on Saturday. We should get them back in a couple of weeks so stay tuned for some really great pictures of the Nichols' family!

My First Year of Diaper Cakes

I can't even remember where I first saw or heard of a diaper cake, but I remember my first thought about them was, "That sounds like such a neat way of wrapping a baby shower gift!" Little did I know it would turn into a wonderful hobby!

I was pretty busy with my three-month-old Gracie, but one year ago, I decided to make my first diaper cake. My childhood friend Aaron and his wife Deanna were excitedly expecting their first baby, a girl named Addison. They had chosen Laura Ashley's Sally the Seahorse theme as Addison's nursery decor, so I thought it would be fun to make a matching diaper cake. Sally the Seahorse had been one of my few finalists when I was choosing Gracie's nursery theme, so I was pretty familiar with the colors. The teal blue and pink gingham fabrics were so beautiful. I bought a box of newborn diapers, a bunch of rubber bands, the matching ribbon I needed, and some extra "sea"-themed accessories I would try to incorporate into the cake. It turned out something like this:

I was really proud of it! I had ribbon in the exact blue and pink to match the theme, and hooked some sea creature teethers into the ribbon at each level. To top it off, I'd found a string of seashells that I swagged across the cake, and made a pink letter "A" with some sea themed buttons that I glued on. They loved it!

My next cake was actually requested by my high school friend Hillary, who was living in California at the time. Her little sister Laura was expecting a little girl named Lexi, and was doing a pink and brown theme.

I really wanted to perfect my layers with this one, but ended up with some sub-layers, creating a very tall cake. This time I did not rubber band each individual diaper. I'd started to, but then had to start over, and realized how much of a pain it was to cut the rubber bands off each diaper. I realized that the recipients of my cakes were going to have to do that themselves, and who wants to work that hard just to get to their gift? So I kept the layers together with big rubber bands and it worked out great! I snipped them after I tied off the ribbons and it resulted in a much cleaner-looking cake. I decided to do all my future cakes this way. That way the recipients can just snip the ribbons and all the diapers will just fall away, revealing the gifts inside!

Next, my biggest cake. Cy and Jaqueline Jones were having a girl, and had chosen a precious purple Mulberry theme. This is a pretty dark picture of the blanket in the bedding set, but I used it to choose my ribbons.

I really wanted to use much wider ribbons this time, as I knew I would be using a LOT of diapers (232 was the final count!). Instead of doing six total tiers (as in, each tier resting directly on top of the one below), I did three sub-tiers, which resulted in a more compact, but very wide (and heavy!) cake.

Since I used wider ribbon on each level, I was able to use coordinating smaller ribbons on top of them. This allowed me to experiment with ribbon charms and really give a tailored look to the cake.

I also accented a few places with a single flower, and used a garland as a cake topper. Overall, they were very pleased with it, and I was just discovering how much I loved this!

Then came Brian and Whitney Goff's shower for their baby girl Ainsley. The Goff's had been given this beautiful Tropical Punch bedding. I was so excited to work with these fun colors!

I found the perfect matching ribbons! This cake I made in four real tiers, and really liked the way it looked. I used flowers as a topper again, and this time I found some fun magnetic letters in a whimsical font that I painted pink with yellow stripes and polka dots and tucked into the ribbons. I usually keep most of the gifts inside the cake, but the yellow and pink washcloths went so great with the overall theme I just had to make a few of them visible on each layer. I still love this theme, as it fits so well with the Goff family's sunny and fun personalities!

My latest cake was for Brandon and Amber Dion's precious Kenadi Nicole, their fourth child and first girl! Amber is just about the very most creative person I know (look at this beautiful scrapbook she made!), so I wanted this cake to be very special, and to match Miss Kenadi's pink, green, and brown birds theme perfectly.

I found ribbon in the colors of the window treatments Amber had used, but I was having a hard time really perfecting the cake in my mind. After much trial and error, I finally just started building and let it come together itself.

Here it is! I did three real layers this time, but I wanted to give the cake an airy feel, so I used cake pillars that I painted brown and covered in brown textured paper to elevate the top tier. The birds were a wooden material and I decoupaged different papers onto them and accented them with ribbons and paper flowers.

I used a wide pink sheer ribbon that I accented with green skinny ribbon to display ribbon charms that say: "Smile", "Adore", "Delight" "Joyful", "Celebrate" and "Happy Day". The Dion's household is so brightened by the addition of their beautiful daughter and sister Kenadi, so I felt these charms very accurately described the occasion.

It took me forever to decide how to top this cake, untiI finally stumbled upon this little wooden birdhouse. I painted it green, and at the last minute covered the roof with the same brown textured paper I'd used on the columns. It gives such a natural feel to the whole look of the cake.

So this was my first year of diaper cake baking! =) I learn something new each and every time, and it is so much fun to use so many different elements in all of the cakes. If you would like me to make one for someone as a gift, please let me know and I will get with you about costs. I only charge for the cost of materials, as I have such a great time putting them together I don't feel right charging someone else for the fun I'm having! I have an etsy shop, http://gracenotedesigns.etsy.com/. I sell these custom-designed diaper cakes, as well as handmade memory boards and magnets and other random things. I will update it frequently so keep checking in!

I'm already looking forward to making my next one, gathering supplies and ideas all the time. Thanks for sharing a look back at my first year of diaper cakes, and look forward to many more to come!

Fun Monday (for Gracie, anyway)

Hello, all! Hopefully today is the real start of spring, and that nasty cold weather is behind us for good. Unfortunately, I'm not able to really enjoy the bright and beautiful sunshine, as I have iritis in my left eye. I woke up last Friday morning with a very red, extremely painful eye. I got to work okay (of course it was dark) and lasted about four hours at work until I just couldn't take the bright lights of the showroom any longer and had to leave. I went to my optometrist, Dr. Harrell, thinking I had another corneal scratch (this would be my fourth corneal issue in as many years). He said it was so inflamed and irritated that he couldn't even tell exactly what it was, but he treated it like a corneal scratch anyway. I got a suspension eye drop that was half steroid, half antibiotic. I took that drop in my left eye every three hours all weekend long, for the most part staying in our dark bedroom to keep out most of the light. Three days later, my eye was worse. So I went to Dr. Harrell again today, who decided to refer me to an opthalmologist, Dr. Snook (whom I saw for my second corneal scratch two years ago). Dr. Snook and his partners have three locations: Plano (where I saw him the first time), Lewisville (directly behind my work and a stone's throw from where I had my surgery in December) and Denton (close to the Denton hospital). I had to go to Denton for him to see me today, and he is AWESOME! I just love him, as I did two years ago. He looked, said I had iritis, which is just a severe inflamation of the iris, so he gave me another, much stronger steroid drop to use every two hours and to cut back the antibiotic drop to three times per day. He dilated my eyes twice (said I'd be dilated til tomorrow) and then he numbed them up with these awesome numbing drops (which are the only reason I'm able to look at a computer screen right now). I will have to miss work tomorrow, as I still can't drive yet and probably won't be able to until Wednesday morning, but he is very confident that this steriod drop will do the trick pretty quickly. He is so cool, very quick but to the point and he is so knowledgable and loves to explain things so that you really understand what's going on. I love that in a doctor. I'm going to make a list over here on the right-hand toolbar ----> so that everyone can see the great doctors we have. I research all of them and make sure they stand up to serious questions from me before I will list them so if you or someone else needs a great recommendation, just come look here.

Okay, now for some Gracie pictures! She stayed home from school today just to play and spend time with Sherrie and I. She had an awesome time! She is losing more and more of her "baby-ness" every day, turning so quickly into a little girl that I can't keep up. Her facial expressions are priceless and so grown up. She runs, jumps, climbs, bounces, and giggles all the time. Just in the past week or so she has really started to learn and say a lot of words. Her favorite words seem to be "bubble", "dog", "bath", and of course "Daddy" and "Momma". She also gives her toys sound effects, which is so funny when she runs through the house yelling, "Baa-aa-aa!" at her sheep toys! Her hair now has a soft, beautiful little flip over and behind her ears, her bangs come down to her eyes and the back of her head is a little mass of soft blonde curls. She's lost so much of the baby "rolls" all over her body, and stands so tall! She also has almost all of her teeth already, her canines finally starting to poke through. What a big girl!

Breakfast at Corner Bakery yesterday. She loves cantaloupe, and thought the juice left on her fingers would make an excellent hair-styling product!

Such a big girl, daydreaming in her rocking chair.

She loves this ballpit!

Out and about running our errands (excuse the camera strap that made it into the picture!)

She got a bucket and shovel and thought they were so much fun...

...and then there was sand!

Improvising a "sandbox".

Fabulous fun!

Spring is here!

Here are some pictures of our beautiful darling Gracie having fun out on our deck and playing in the house over the last week or so.

Yes, her mouth is full of dirt, as we discovered when she spit it everywhere right after this picture was taken!

We bought her a little Dora couch/cot to nap in. She loves to play in it with the big blanket!

Isn't she precious? A little model...

After-school snack

She'd been eating dried bananas and then got a strawberry... what a face!

So we very recently discovered that Gracie can climb out of her crib, so our barely-15-months-old daughter is now in a toddler bed ( we weren't even expecting to start looking for a toddler bed until she was at least 18 months!). We found a nice one at Ikea and got her some Dora sheets that actually match the pink and blue of her room nicely.

Here is how I rearranged her room to separated the play area from the sleeping/dressing area.