Wednesday, April 29, 2015

I Love Free Stuff!

Everyone who knows me, knows I love me a good deal... and love to talk about good deals that others have found (and hopefully reap the same benefit!). Couponing? Redeeming a Groupon? I have no shame at all!! The only thing is... I wish I had more time so I could find coupons & sign up for the things that get me FREE (or cheap) stuff!! Well, earlier this month, I found myself with an overabundance of time as I took a week off for my birthday.. a "stay-cation", which I have not really taken since I started! I was bored. I like to occupy my time. But... while I was browsing Facebook, a couponing site came up that said time was limited but if I signed up I would be sent a bunch of free stuff through Samplesource. So.. nothing else to do at that time... signed me right up!


And this is all the freebies I got from Samplesource! My "special package" came in the mail this past week and all for free I got samples of these 9 products! They actually offered me 12, but I didn't take the ones I wouldn't use. I was so excited for my free stuff... a little present in the mail :)

Monday, April 27, 2015

Babies Become 2 Real Fast!

The weekend of April 18th, we celebrated Colton's 2nd birthday! I am learning from my friends' kids that I need to savour each stage with our baby because time just flies and then they're 2! Colton was the first born of our friends' kids and I remember the pregnancy announcement like it was yesterday.

An now there's another too with 5 month old Chase! Here's Colton with his Dad, Mom and little brother. A whole 2 candles on his awesome homemade birthday cake!
Colton opening up our present with a little help. We got him an extension track for the Thomas train track that we got him for Christmas along with an adorable summer outfit we got from Carters!

Colton had some friends over too that are pretty close to his age (Steph's friends' kids).
Little Colton is 2! This cake was multicoloured on the inside with red, green, blue rainbow colours!

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Pregnancy Announcements!

So... now that word is out that we are expecting, I want to share how Aleksy and I (really excitedly) announced the news to our friends and family on a few different days!

So, when I found out I was pregnant (or maybe even before!), I went online and bought a sperm cookie cutter... it was a very specific order.

I had this brilliant idea of presenting our news to our friends with sperm cookies!!
This was our very first announcement day! It  was so nice to tell someone after keeping the secret to ourselves for 2 weeks (which I know isn't long for most people, but for us it seemed long!). At 6 weeks, we invited over our friends Chels, Warren, Al & Steph and let them in on our secret (which they had guessed already anyways).
And we also announced with some sperm cookies a few days later to our friends Nikki, Jon Jon, Tabi and Don!
I made my announcement (solo... Aleksy wasn't there for this one) on Valentines day (well the day before) to my sister, Kenny, Rachel and Brandon with Valentines day treats and a card (treats for Brandon and Rachel!). It is really hard to find an aunt and uncle Valentines Day card... guess its not so popular to give Aunts and Uncles cards on that particular occasion!
We like baking announcements... we baked cupcakes to announce to my Mom and Paul and brothers when we went to celebrate birthdays on March 21st weekend! We brought our cupcakes with the announcement written in icing but we covered it in tin foil. I gathered everyone and said that I had made something that was a creation from Pinterest and had my Mom open the tin foil!
We did the same for Aleksys parents the next day since we were also celebrating his brothers March birthday that weekend! I made a lot of cupcakes that weekend...
This was what our cupcake announcement looked like!

Aleksys parents must not have been expecting a pregnancy announcement at all because when they opened the tin foil, it took a second for the message to sink in! Then Aleksys Mom had the best reaction and tears were shed! They were so excited! First time Grandparents!

That same day at Aleksy's parents place, Aleksys Babcia had come for dinner (the very same Babcia who whispered in my ear at Christmas to get pregnant) so when she arrived we had her read the cupcakes too! Her first great-Grandchild!
Our next announcement was on Easter weekend! On Good Friday, we went to Aleksys Gran's place for an afternoon gathering with Aleksys parents, brother, Aunt & Gran! Earlier that day, we coloured some hard boiled eggs and wrote our message on the eggs!

We sent our pictures of our announcing eggs to my Dads side of the family with Easter Greetings and that concluded our family & friends announcements! Easter weekend, we were 13 weeks!
Once most of our family and friends knew the news, we were ready to announce to our friends on facebook... We took this in our backyard to share the news with everyone!

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Easter 2015!

Well if I don't say so myself, this Easter was a pretty special, unique Easter for us and our family & friends. As you read on to this post, you will fully understand why (and I am the most excited to write about it!).

The week before Easter was my birthday week, so I took the short week off work! I made plans to pick my Rachel up to make some Easter treats during the week, but she got sick and so we postponed our Easter treat making until the Saturday!
Here's Rachel with her Easter carrots (rice krispies cut into triangles and dipped in orange chocolates with a green jujube candy for the leaf!).

Rachel was so good at dipping these and putting on the leaf all by herself, she didn't need me!
And our cookie birds nests: Rachel was very particular with her selection of mini eggs/jelly beans and is very colour coordinated! I did the icing on the sugar cookies and she put the jelly beans! Rachel was also very helpful with making the sugar cookies.
All of our completed treats: our Easter Carrots, sugar cookie birds nests, and chocolate birds nests (with corn flakes, peanuts, chocolate chips and butterscotch chips). We put them on a platter and Easter basket all ready to go to Grandma Ritas (my Mom) for Easter supper!

We went with Rachel directly to Easter supper after an afternoon full of baking (and a brief visit to the park before Rachel started feeling not so well).

This was our Easter egg colouring, which Aleksy and I did on Good Friday: this activity was actually without Rachel (its fun for adults too). We coloured up our eggs to bring to Aleksy's Gran's in the afternoon for an Easter get together on Aleksys side of the fam.
And we coloured the eggs so we could send a message on the eggs to Aleksy's Gran and Aunt (the rest of his family was there too, but they already received the message a couple weeks prior!). We brought the eggs to Aleky's Grans...

Our Message!!! So excited to announce that we are expecting a mini-us on October 7, 2015!!

Aleksy's Gran and Aunt were so excited! Aleksy will be the first in his family to have children (except his cousins), so his family was surprised and excited for the news!

We have now spread the word to all of our families and friends... such a fun announcement to make!
Aleksy's Mom wasted no time purchasing the first piece of baby clothing for baby! On Easter Sunday we opened this gift (which was wrapped in an old Easter egg from Aleksys childhood). In 3-6 months because we anticipate a large baby... but I 'm still crossing my fingers for a 7-8 lb er!