first day of bakery class

if only i was talking about improving my skills in the kitchen...  tomorrow, i start an online business class.  eek.  i'm excited/nervous/scared-as-hell... this means that i actually have to get good at the business side of things.. i've been waiting and waiting for someone to magically drop into my life who is a PR person and really wants to break into the wedding biz.  well, i guess i have to be that someone...  obviously, i'm meant to do this myself.  my neighbor/good friend, who is an artist herself, told me yesterday that the artists who are pretty successful aren't usually the ones who are talented, they just know how to market themselves.  well, i plan on being both.  and it's about time, i'd say... watch out world, here i come! wish me luck... :)

little benbo

seriously. can't get enough of this little guy.

a spring bridal shower

i did these for my friend laura in fresno.  her cousin is getting married in may, her colors being shades of oranges and a hint of green.  yum.  the text was different oranges with the green flower in the corner.  it needed a little something more, so i backed them with sage, chartreuse, and poppy cardstock, and rounded the corners...

first sushi!

it is widely known amongst family and friends that i, lily stork, am a picky eater.  although i have "expanded my horizons" tremendously since my days of only eating chicken fingers (those days not being that far behind me), i'm still kind of difficult.  okay, really difficult!  i don't like salad.  i know, i know, who doesn't like salad?!  i'm a big carb person: anything with refined white flour or sugar, i'm usually good.  i do like most veggies and fruit, although don't try to put fruit with chocolate.  i won't have it..  don't like wine, don't like sushi.  two things that really, really cool people like.  i want to be cool, i've tried to be cool, but wine gives me bitter beer face and sushi triggers the ol' adams gag reflex.  so pleasant.  what is not as widely known, is that bryan used to be pickier than me.  he lived on pb&j and mac&cheese as a child, he picked the oregano out of the spaghetti sauce because it was green.  then come the crew days of needing to eat 4000 calories to be able to stay alive (oh, how i wish), and suddenly, he loved it all.  on his list of things he will not eat :: olives. that's it.  he took a trip to japan in med school with one of his best friends who is japanese, and was introduced to sushi.  and so, began his love affair with raw fish.  he loves it.  loves it.  so needless to say, he's been wanting the babes to eat sushi since they started solids.  and last week, they had their first little taste.  it was halibut, so not too strong, but it seemed to be well-received...  liam made a bit of a face, but he has issues with all food that is too hot or cold.  finn ate it just like anything else.  maybe there's hope we'll have non-picky eaters!!

eating our cheerios while waiting for our gyoza

yummy rice

what's the big deal?

t-minus one day...

whoa.  holy huge belly, batman...  was browsing through old pictures on our laptop and found this one.  this was christmas 2008.  little did i know that less than 24 hours from then, i would be wheeling back to the OR getting ready to meet my two boys!  like bryan said when i showed him, doesn't this seem like years and years ago? yep.  and if you're wondering, those are homemade (by my uncle) chimes that we all play with spoons every christmas.   my other uncle (the one who has his PhD in piano) broke down several different christmas carols and assigned each note a number.  we each get a chime that's cut to sound a different note, and then all have to learn to read music/numbers in five minutes in order for silent night not to sound like a train wreck. why? because singing christmas carols while dad plays the piano just isn't enough.  not for my family.

my first sewing project!

obviously, this is a little past the season...  but what's the fun of posting things on time?  i have twin boys who just turned one, people.  so...  onto the stockings -- my siblings and i all had hand-embroidered (by my mom) stockings growing up and i knew i didn't want to buy ones for the boys.  but i also knew i wasn't about to take on embroidering.  especially since i started thinking about them in late november.  so while reading all of my crafty blogs one day, i found a pretty simple-looking pattern over at the purl bee.  i borrowed my mom's sewing machine, had a hey-day at joann's picking out all of our fabric colors, and made these in a couple of days.  i don't think they will be the stockings they have forever, just because i'm not 100% satisfied with them, but i really do love them and am pretty proud to say i sewed them myself.  i hand-embroidered their names at the top free-hand and for a little something extra, sewed two buttons below.  i was going to give finn one button and liam two, for their birth order, but it didn't look good, so they both got two.  i also have to say that i didn't want them to end up having the same color, but i also sewed a couple for bryan and myself, and had a brain freeze when i started embroidering bryan's name into the stocking meant for one of the boys.  oops.  i had a few pictures of all of them hanging on the mantel, but i don't really like how bryan's and my names (that might not be grammatically correct) turned out, so maybe next year when i've become a lot better at sewing and have re-made all of them, will i then post those as well.  merry christmas! happy new year. :)

and maybe don't click on the pictures to make them bigger, only because then you can really see the imperfections.   the imperfections that show that they were made by me. with love. :)

SOOOO big!

ok, so i'm pretty sure this never gets old...

and jen strikes again! we had our one-year photo shoot a couple of days ago, and she worked wonders on these boys... it was actually shorter than our newborn one. she is an amazing photographer, i cannot wait to see the rest of these pictures...

my logo. done.

i'm a pretty picky person.  i'm a virgo, i can't help the perfectionist in me.  so when it came to the words/image that were going to represent me and my business, i was not satisfied easily.  i went from simple to complicated, this color to that color, all different colors, shapes, sizes, and finally realized that what i didn't like about any of it was the font.  i've been told i have pretty good handwriting, and i think it's safe to say i'm obsessed with fonts.  it's the little things.  i could hate a certain car just because of its door handles.  i said i was picky!  so i was never satisfied with the fonts of whatever i landed on.  i had seen emililie's work on etsy and decided to go with a font that wasn't a font!  i'm so super excited about how it turned out!  my business cards were printed yesterday, on natural cardstock and green thermography (so the ink's raised), i have a meeting with a potential bride today, now all i need is a business license (and more customers :) ) and i'm official!!

couldn't have gotten to this point without bryan and jen, who i'm sure so many times, wanted to pull their hair out because of me...

cookie madness!

every year at christmas, my mom bakes a zillion cookies to give to friends and have around over the break.  last year, i wasn't able to join in the festivities as i was cooking my own little buns and wasn't allowed to venture outside of my bed...  this year, i got to join and my bf jen was in town!! seriously fun times.  jen and mol also made some really sweet string/glue/spray paint/popped grenade ornaments.  sorry i didn't get any finished pics of these- they took a super long time to dry.  i tried to be professional with my pictures, but we all know how that usually turns out. enjoy!

gingerbread cookies, waiting for the oven

jen, exercising her creative side

i told you i was going to try and take fancy pictures

yeah, i mighta made a tad too much buttercream...

yum.

mocha balls and pecan crescents (balls) waiting for a powdered sugar dusting

our helpers, who actually did pretty well

the finished products. whew!

our little cupcake

was going through my old posts, trying to organize, and found that i had never published this one.  little liam, in his cupcake hat that is now permanently part of our christmas decor.

seriously.

our first birthday!

well, we managed to have their birthday party in the middle of all the madness of the holidays! and i've come up with a couple of reasons why it's a great day to be born:  they'll always be on break, the celebration goes on for twice as long, and everyone will hopefully be around because they'll be on break, too!!  it was a great time, i got a lot of help from bryan's family (life-savers!), and the boys had a great time.  i have to get used to calling them boys, and not babies... :(

i didn't want to necessarily do a theme, but i didn't want it to be like, hey everyone, come over for cheese and crackers...  bryan had the great idea of doing pairs of things, in honor of our two babes: so we did apples/oranges, cheese/crackers, chips/salsa, peas/carrots, peanut butter/jelly, and chocolate/milk.  it turned out so great, and i made two cakes for all to enjoy: a chocolate with buttercream, and a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  yummy.  somehow, we didn't get any pictures of those.  probably because we were too busy watching the babies boys devour their cupcakes.  they loved them, showing everyone in a matter of two seconds their personalities: liam dove in hands first and loved every bit, finn was a little more cautious, but once he tasted the chocolate, he was hooked.

it was such a great day, yummy food, good people - enjoy the pictures!

my worker bees, lisa and michelle

the spread

tissue paper poms, handmade martha stewart style

liam, digging in

finn eventually loved the heck out of his cupcake

opening a lot of great gifts

so many fun things

giant yoda dolls from uncle sean :)

and i'm happy to say that i didn't get emotional once, i didn't feel sorry for myself, and i didn't feel guilty.  i think i was too busy celebrating these great boys to think about it. yay for letting go.

for the perfect pair..

liam and finn's first birthday party invitation