Home Projects & Birthday Celebrations

Hi Ladies! It's been a week or two since I've dropped by this little blog of mine. Things have been super busy in the Holt household over the past two weeks but I couldn't be more excited with things that have been, are happening, and will be happening in the Holt household in the near future! So let me fill you in with five things for this Friday.

1. Harper's First Easter
We had a blast celebrating Harper's first Easter last Sunday. She loved every minute of it and so did we by watching her take it all in for the very first time. I'll share more details and pictures of our Easter next week but for now I'll leave you with a picture from the night. Can I just say though that she went to the shoes first... proud mama right here!

2.  Home Projects
You may remember back in February I blogged about some home projects that Kevin and I had decided on for this year (If you don't remember or you missed it, you can read about them here). The biggest project we decided to tackle this year was to pull up all of our carpet upstairs and replace it with hardwood flooring. I'm happy to report that as of yesterday that project is officially underway. I couldn't be more excited to get the 63 packs of hardwood flooring out of our garage. Currently our house is in complete disarray and my OCD self may have nearly had a panic attack when I arrived home to all the mess yesterday but after seeing the completed work in our master bedroom, spare bedroom, and hallway I'm realizing it's all worth it. I can't wait to share the before and afters when all of the upstairs is finished.

And while we're still on the topic of this project can I just say that when I got home yesterday I came home to find all of the furniture from our spare bedroom and master bedroom shoved in either Harper's nursery or our master bathroom. Needless to say men were clearly in charge. I could not get to Harper's bed much less in her closet or drawers. Thankfully I'd washed some of her clothes and hadn't put them away yet. Same goes for me. I may or may not be wearing a pair of jeans today at work that I wore just a few days ago. And I may or may not have literally crawled on my dresser to get into our bathroom, stepped on the tub, then tried to lay on top of our chest of drawers just to get to my toothbrush this morning. How I survived without breaking my neck is beyond me. Just let the pictures below speak for themselves.

3. Harper's First Birthday
In two weeks our precious baby girl will be one year old. Her 11 month update is sitting in my draft folder waiting to be published and I'm having a hard time posting it because it's the last update in which she's an "infant". How this happened so fast I'll never know. Harper's birthday planning is in full swing. Her party date has officially been set for Saturday, May 10th. We've sent out the invites, planned the menu, ordered the cake, had her outfit made, and I'm in the process of putting together most of the decorations. I haven't felt this much excitement for party planning since planning our wedding. It's super exciting. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't lost too much sleep over running the whole event through my mind over and over at night!

4. Family, First Birthday, and Cake Smashing Photos
We had a photo session at a local park with our new favorite photographer yesterday afternoon. Of all days, Harper started running a low grade fever just a few hours before our appointment. Hating to cancel last minute we decided to try doing pictures anyways. We started with family photos since they were the most important to me as we don't have pictures of all three of us together since our pictures that were taken last fall. Harper did great for those and offered lots of cheesy smiles. But that's as far as it went. Sarah did her best at getting some shots of Harper smiling by herself in her cute pillowcase dress but she didn't volunteer many while alone. We saved her cake smashing for last thinking she'd be excited over all the sugar but it was an epic fail. She was done. She cried the whole time and didn't bother smashing her cake. After seeing the crocodile tears roll down her face, Mommy had to call it quits. On the bright side we'll have some great family shots and we have a smash cake that's only missing a tad bit of icing. I'm thinking I'll just freeze her smash cake and have the side that's a little messed up face her during her actual party. No point of dishing out $25 again when this one wasn't even hardly touched. Here's to hoping Harper will feel better the day of her party and we'll get some good pictures then!

How cute is her smash cake?!

5. Birthday Presents
Harper is getting a fairly large birthday present this year. Unfortunately it requires quite a bit of planning, preparation, and shopping and is more than likely not going to be ready for her birthday. We'll be converting Kevin's "Man Cave" to a playroom for her. This was one of our big projects we had planned for the year and we couldn't imagine a better time to do it than for her birthday. We purchased a new couch for the space yesterday and have picked out a few things from various places to add to the space. I'll be sharing some of my ideas and inspiration for the space in the next few weeks. So be sure to check back soon!

Hope you ladies have a fabulous Friday!