Trucks Go Birthday Party, Jack's 1st Birthday Party

Other possible titles for this post:  
Birthday Mania or This Birthday Brought to You by Pinterest

That title was actually suggested by my brother-in-law. Thank you Robert. Most of my ideas were actually from other blogs, not Pinterest, but Pin Boards do tend to drive this mania to have a great, well-crafted party. Though I was planning/organizing/creating stuff like this long before the advent of Pinterest.

Plus my sister, Angela, does over-the-top, creative birthdays for her kids, so I have that to live up to, right? Daniel would emphatically say, "NO."

Thankfully Angela also volunteered to help me out since I always help her the night before her kid's parties... we typically stay up way too late doing things like blowing up balloons and sewing together streamers to make cool-looking decorations.

After going through the birthday party creation as the one in charge, I have come to the conclusion that I go over the top with food while still having fun decorations, while Angela goes over the top with decorations. Between us, we make a pretty good team.

The week before the party, Jack came down with a bad cold. Running nose and cough. He would wake up every night coughing. So for an entire week neither he nor I actually got a good night's sleep. By the time the party rolled around, I was running on fumes. Thank goodness for my sister. We have teamed up for so many of these kind of get-together's that I know she will make decisions like I would want without me having to tell her what to do. I think everyone needs someone like that it their life.

Anyway, we decided to have a Truck themed party. I have been taking monthly photos of Jack with Daniel's childhood Tonka truck for the past year and I knew I wanted to incorporate that truck into the theme. Then I came across this cake idea on Pinterest and I knew we would go this route.

I designed the invitations around the truck. I also created 5x5 prints that I mounted to foam board and hung on the wall to show how Jack has changed over the last 12 months.

From there I scanned the words from a favorite book, Trucks Go, and pulled out letters to make a sign that read "Happy Birthday Jack." I sewed the letters together to form a banner. I also used construction paper to make the pendants for the banner.

We decided to use CAUTION tape instead of streamers. For balloons, we just blew up a bunch and let them lay on the floor -- the kids had a blast playing with the loose balloons, so that worked out.

One other thing I did was have engineering prints made at a local print shop (one 3x4 foot sheet cost me $3.50). I printed 12 of our favorite photos on one sheet and then mounted them to 12x12 inch foam board. I painted the edges of the foam board black and hung them on the wall. The whole project was super cheap and was a great way to display photos gallery style. I got this idea from the blog, Bower Power, though I modified it for what I needed.

For Jack's first birthday, we opted to only invite family -- which was still a pretty big party. We were sad that my parents and brother were unable to attend, though we did Skype my mom for the cake eating. We will have another celebration with them later.

Jack's two cousins were in attendance and many of Daniel's family were there. Jack is one loved little guy. We feel blessed to live closer to both of our families. 

Confession #1: The night before the party I had a panic attack that we didn't have enough food, so I went to the grocery store and picked up more ingredients. Note to self, don't panic, we had way more than enough... stick with the original plan!

Confession #2: I ran out of icing sugar while making the cake... I read that you could substitute granulated sugar, if you ran it through a food processor with 1 tbsp on cornstarch for 10 minutes. FYI -- I was able to ice my cake, but the icing was kind of sandy. This was ok since I was doing a dirt-style cake, but I wouldn't do it again.

I'll let the cake pictures speak for themselves:

The party was a success, though we do need to work on Jack's sharing skills... He loves his cousins, but does not like sharing!

Cloth Diapers

When Daniel and I first learned that we were expecting, one of our primary concerns was how much this kid was going to cost us and how we could combat any of these costs. Since I am currently a SAHM {who sometimes freelances from home} I thought that using cloth diapers would be a great way that I could help save us money.

About the time we started to consider CD, I had a friend write a great post about how she decided to use CD. I also came across in-depth posts about CD on Bower Power and Young House Love. All of these first-person accounts got me excited.

After much research, Daniel and I agreed that we were definitely going to give cloth diapers a try. We loved the idea of saving money and the green factor was also nice. We weren't sold on buying the most expensive diapers but wanted to try a couple of options before we fully committed. 

To start out we tried the Kawaii, Just Simply Baby and Rumparooz brands {we have one-size-fits-all in all three brands}. Below is a recap of our experience with each.

Kawaii are by far the cheapest you can buy {$6-$12 per diaper} and they work well. However we found that the quality isn't quite as good as the other two brands and they seem to take longer to dry {especially the Minkys}.

The majority of our diapers we bought were from Just Simply Baby. They are fairly cheap {$10-$14 per diaper} and a good quality. We started out buying the Halfway In package – it is $80 for 8 diapers {you reference boy or girl but you don't get to pick your diaper patterns... we ended up with some crazy patterns}.

Just Simply Baby also sells the detergent we use (but we found it cheaper on Amazon) – Rockin Green Detergent. It seems to work great. More on washing below...

Also, Just Simply Baby's return policy is the best by far, which is why we started with them:

Returns - If you are not satisfied with your diaper purchase, you may return them at any time within 30 days of invoice date. Diapers returned in 30 days do not have to be new in package, and can be used, washed, etcetera. Any packages received after 30 days of order date will NOT be refunded, so please take shipping time into consideration.

And finally, some friends gave us a Rumparooz – they are about $24 per diaper. This is our only diaper that has velcro instead of snaps. It is fairly easy to adjust the size and it has a double gusset to prevent leaks. I am not a huge fan of the velcro because my baby likes to pull it open while I am changing him. Snaps have been better for us.

If you are curious as to how modern cloth diapers work {like we were}, here is a brief overview:

Each diaper has two liners {inserts} that you stuff into it. The inside of the diaper is soft and absorbent. The outside is also soft, but is backed by a waterproof layer that prevents leaking. Come wash day, you pull out  the inserts out and throw them, along with the diaper cover, into the washer. You soak the diapers for an hour in cold water, wash them in warm water, then do an extra rinse in cold water. You don't even have to touch the poopy part. It is all really easy.
 
When the poop gets more solid (once you introduce food), then you have to knock the poop off into the toilet or a trash can. *I will probably write an update on washing when we reach this stage with Jack.

We currently have about 30 diapers so we do about one load of diapers every other day {this way there is time for them to hang dry}.

The different kinds of inserts are microfiber {this comes with the diaper and works well, but is bulky}, hemp {this insert is very thin, but costs extra and takes longer to dry}, and bamboo {this insert is thin, costs extra and takes longer to dry}. We have a few of all of these inserts. We actually like the microfiber the best even though it is bulkier.

The covers come in Minky and Regular. We have some of each. The Minky's are very soft. We don't really have a preference between the Minky and Regular. We have a variety of patterns and solid color diapers. Daniel's favorite are the Just Simply Baby Spider Man pattern and I really like the Just Simply Baby Moo pattern.

 

Blow outs have been almost non-existent, and definitely less than disposables, and diaper rash has rarely happened with CD. When Jack has had a diaper rash from disposables, we temporarily left him in disposables and use Desitin until the rash clears up, then swap back to cloth. *Note that Desitin can not be used with cloth diapers as it ruins the absorbency.

We received a couple of diaper cakes from baby showers that kept us going on disposables for the first few weeks until Jack reached the minimum 8lb weight required for the CD to fit properly. We tried the diapers a couple times before he reached 8 lbs, but his legs were too small to fill out the holes so they leaked out the sides.

In terms of savings: we have spent $300 upfront on our cloth diapers. Our water bill is up ~$2 per month {no sewer charges since we are on septic, so that keeps it cheaper}. According to some friends who have a one year old, they spent $1000 in the first year on disposable diapers, or about $83/month on average. So unless Jack is potty trained at age 4 months or less, the cloth diapers will save us a lot of money.

Projects

I have been working on several projects over the past week. Just little things to get ready for Jack's arrival. Keeping busy helps keep me from being too overwhelmed by the pregnancy thing.

After painting our crib, I made a baby blanket, crib skirt, matching pillow and cover for my boppy. The pillow is actually for our rocker recliner until Jack gets bigger.

Another project I did was to create a piece of art to hang over the painted dresser. 

And finally I made burp cloths with leftover fabric.

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Pinterest Challenge:
Sherry of Young House Love and Katie of Bower Power are hosting a Pinterest Challenge today. My baby blanket and burp cloths were inspired from Pinterest so I am linking up with these girls. Check out their blogs to see what kinds of projects other bloggers are working on.

Inspiration for baby blanket:

{image via}

Inspiration for burp cloths:

{image via}

Other Priorities and Things We Should Probably Discuss SOON

Besides outdoor life, here are the other things on our mind prior to having our first born...


Diapers

We have also discussed whether we plan to use cloth or disposable diapers. This conversation stemmed from blog posts by Young House Love, Bower Power and The Organ Family. Mostly we agreed that our frugal selves are all for cloth diapers. Reality suggests we will use both – i.e. we aren't going to drop our kid off at a church nursery or with a baby sitter and insist they use cloth.

*Update: We used cloth diapers for the first 1.5 years ago) and it was one of the best decisions we made.

Things we have yet to discuss:

Baby Names – we are waiting to find out the gender before we put a lot of energy into this...

*Update: We eventually decided on a name – Jack Grayson

The Nursery – besides agreeing which room will be used, we haven't put any thought into this since gender is an important factor.

Registering for Baby Crap Stuff – not really on our radar. I don't think either of us are ready for our house to be taken over by baby things.

I feel like baby web sites and books have all of these lists of things you are supposed to be planning for and thinking about. We just aren't there. We have until November, there is no huge hurry to jump into this parenting thing. We are enjoying our life as it is right now. Yeah, we talk about stuff but we aren't making concrete plans or worrying about the future. We are taking life in stride. We will get around to the important things like finding the right car seat soon enough.