baby name!

What's in a name?
When Abe and I found out I was pregnant with Noah, we had a bit of a hard time agreeing on a name.  I, of course, pulled out my list I had been adding to since the third grade and we started going down the list.  We picked a girl name and a boy name.

Noah was the first boy name on my list that we both agreed on.  And his middle name is Harris, which is fun because that's my maiden name as well as Abe's grandpa's name who lives next door.

As far as the girl name we had chosen, we loved it.  But as soon as we started trying for baby #2, for some reason we changed our minds and chose a totally different girl name and could not settle on a boy name at all.  Luckily this upcoming arrival is a girl... or so they tell me.  You can read about my doubts in this post.  We also decided that we liked the family name idea.

So for this baby girl that loves to jump on my bladder, we chose:

Lola Grace

We chose Lola after my great aunt on my dad's side. 

This is my Aunt Lola on the left:

She is the one pointing at the camera.  So cute!

(click on photo to enlarge)

I LOVE this picture!  Look at that fridge in the background!  And their clothes!  So fantastic!

With Lola is her husband, George Rapich, and my grandma Mildred Bosta, who is George's sister.

George and my grandma (my dad's mother) are Croatian or Slavic from what used to be Yugoslavia.  My sweet Aunt Lola hails from Rexburg, Idaho. 

She and George had such a fun relationship.  I have fond memories of them teasing each other, but always following up with a kiss or saying something sweet to each other.  My dad remembers her as always being so pleasant to be around and just a very good natured person.  She was witty with a great sense of humor.

I always loved to say her name as a kid and had a real fondness for her and George growing up.  She was such a lovely woman and I think it's a beautiful name.  Luckily Abe loves the name too!

We chose Grace after Abe's great grandmother:

She is Abe's dad's, dad's mother.  It's her bloodline that Abe gets his Jewish heritage from.

Yes, my quiet, blond haired, blue eyed husband is a quarter Jewish.  Clearly he does not take after his dad's side much.

Abe only met Grace a few times since she lived in Milwaukee.  She loved entertaining and was an accomplished artist, which was extra fun for me to learn!  She was very proper and loved to entertain.  She was also a very gracious woman and made sure everyone was well taken care of. 

Another beautiful lady and another beautiful name.

We are so excited to welcome our little Lola Grace into our home.

Now I've just got to get passed the nightmares I have that we did all this prep with girlie bedding and pink dresses and bows for a baby girl only to come home with a little boy!  And no little boy name to boot!

I guess it would make for a funny story... much later.

2011 valentines are in

Yay!  The new 2011 Valentines are in!  I fell so in love with the tiny ones I did last year that I decided to do it again!  This will most likely become an annual thing.  They are about 2.25 x 3.25 inches and come with tiny white envelopes to keep your message private and/or stick some candy in with your note.

Here are the sets:

And as I said last year, who says Valentines can't be year round??

Some possible uses for tiny Valentines include (but not limited to):

-Classroom Valentines

-slipping in a lunchbox

-tucking in a purse or wallet

-leaving around the house (ie: computer, mixing bowl)

-inlcude with other letters as a fun little extra

They come in sets of 12 (4 of each design) with 12 tiny little envelopes.
These are made from my own original pencil illustrations, then colored digitally. I have printed them on a light weight, white cardstock and hand-cut each one!

Enjoy these! They are available in the shop now!  You can pick up a set (or more) HERE!

silly christmas tradition

Before I get to our silly Christmas tradition, I promised a post with some detail of the tree decor, so here ya go...

I always thought I wanted a themed tree until I noticed how much Noah loved looking at all the different ornaments on Grandma and Grandpa Carlsruh's tree.  So I changed it up and now every ornament is different.

I have to say, I love this tree the most so far and it's so fun to collect neat little ornaments throughout the year.

Here's a few of my favorites:

It's hard to pick out favorites when the whole tree is full of them!

 

And now for our silly tradition!

I love the look of lots of presents under the tree and I can still do a theme with my wrapping paper.

You can see last year's theme HERE.

And for 2010 I used newspaper.  I know it sounds weird, but I LOVED the way it turned out!

Here it is:

It turned out to be somewhat of a challenge trying to avoid gruesome headlines and crazy pictures.  And... I still ended up with a few cooky headlines, but I loved how they looked with the bright red ribbon and the tree tags!

the silly part

So, in the last post I mentioned that we are minimalists when it comes to presents at Christmas so it must seem strange to have so many packages under the tree.

Well, Christmas 2009 I decided to have a plethora of packages because: a) I LOVE wrapping presents, b) it's fun to have a wrapping paper theme and c) it's so cute to have a pile of gifts under the tree!   So instead of shopping us into debt, I thought I'd just wrap some empty boxes.  As I was gathering the boxes, I had the funny idea to just put random silly things inside so we could have a few laughs Christmas morning.  Abe had no idea, so that's what happened.  Christmas morning, we laughed as Abe opened all the silly presents and found things like toilet paper, old Halloween candy, light bulbs, etc.  Turned out that Abe loved it and suggested we make it a tradition.  And so we did it again this year, only I gave half the boxes to Abe to fill so I could be surprised too.

So this year I got some things like soap, some quarters, old candy, a picture of a barn (that we dream of having one day) and other silly things.

Abe got some yarn, a can of tuna, some preggie pops, this lovely portrait of me that my mom painted years ago and more funny stuff.

It really is such a fun tradition for us and hopefully we'll get more and more creative as the years go by.  It's our own little white elephant gift exchange every Christmas!  Good times.

our christmas fun... a little late

We've been enjoying (and not so enjoying) a little hiatus here at home. 

Enjoying a little time off work and lots of time with family. 

And not so enjoying a house full of illness and

POTTY TRAINING!!  Eek!

With that said, I wanted to show a little of our Christmas fun from a few weeks ago.

Here's some cookie tree fun with Noah's cousins, Hunter and Zack:

Here is the night before Christmas reading of the nativity with Grandma and Grandpa Carlsruh:

Putting the oats and glitter on the lawn for Santa's reindeer:

(we didn't get more snow until the day after Christmas)

Noah got to open his traditional Christmas Eve jammies before bed:

Monsters this year.

Abe and I opened our traditional Christmas Eve game:

And now for lovely Christmas morning, puffy-eye pictures!!

Noah enjoying his stash of fun:

Abe seemed happy about his gift cards:

What pregnant woman wouldn't want a spa giftcard??

(please ignore the dark circles around my eyes... another thing to blame on pregnancy)

And Abe got us both some iPod shuffles:

Well that's about it for our gifts.  We tend to be minimalists when it comes to Christmas, so you may wonder what's with all the boxes under our tree.

Well I had a friend ask me about that last year so I'll be telling you all about it next post.  It's a rather fun thing we do and decided to make it a tradition.

But for the rest of the day, we hung out with Abe's family and had such a fun time!  I truly love this time of year!

And one last picture...

Noah sporting his adorable Monkey hat from Grandma Eve:

It's his favorite thing lately!  He wears it all the time.  So cute!

Hope you all enjoyed your Holidays!

the lights at temple square

A few weeks ago, we visited Temple Square to see the amazing Christmas lights they do every year.

It really is such an amazing display!  They wrap each branch of the trees and just make it look so beautiful!

It's such a wonderful place to come and remember why we celebrate Christmas.

We went with my sisters and their families:

As always, Noah's cousins took good care of him.

Abe and Noah enjoying the scenery:

Family photo opp by one of the fountains:

And one with the Salt Lake Temple in the background:



My not-so-fabulous photography skills:

Found this much better photo online:

(source)

The Temple grounds are HUGE and Noah and the kids had lots of fun wandering around seeing all the different displays and nativity scenes.  It was a fun night and really beautiful to see!

oh christmas tree

I realize this is a little bit late since we've had our tree for several weeks now, but it must be documented!

As I keep saying, the holidays are so much more fun with kids!  Whether they're your own kids, your nieces and nephews, grandkids, friend's kids, neighbor kids... WHATEVER!  They just make it wonderful!

We went to the tree lot that we use every year to pick our tree.  Noah loves to run through the rows of trees!

It was soooo bitter cold!

Then we brought it home, got it all set up and started decorating!

Noah helped this year which made it so much more fun!

Unlike most, we START with the star:

Abe's the only one tall enough to put it on top:

Noah had so much fun hanging the ornaments:

We had the movie "Elf" playing as we decorated.  One of our favorites!

And ta da....!!

This year was so fun because I started our collection of ornaments at some "After-Christmas" sales last year.  So it was a whole new tree this year!  So fun!  I'll have a post with a little more detail of the ornaments and my gift wrapping theme coming soon.



the giving-mood discount

The Holiday BOGO Sale has officially come to a close.

It was a fabulous success, so thank you to all who participated!

And since it's Christmas time and we're in the giving mood,

we'd like to extend another discount to our blog readers!

Use this coupon code:

"Holidays2010"

Just type "Holidays2010" when it asks for a coupon code during checkout, and 25% will be taken off your entire purchase!

This includes EVERYTHING in the shop!  Even originals!!

(discount does not apply to shipping charges)

(Discount no longer valid.  Thanks to all who participated!)

So Merry Christmas to you from us here at Pickled Headquarters!

Thank you and enjoy the holidays!

fun in the snow

Noah loves to play in the snow!  Thank goodness because last year he did not like the snow at all.  So this winter has been really fun so far. 

We get all bundled up:

Yes, that is my messy house in the background.  And yes, his snowpants are camouflage.  No one at this house is complaining about fantastic hand-me-downs!  Camo or not!

Then we make lots of footprints as we venture next door to Grandma and Grandpa's:

Then we sit and fill our bucket for a bit:

Then we climb the bushes...

...to find the perfect leaf...

...to wipe off the swing!

Then we eat some snow:

And finally head back inside for some yummy hot chocolate!

Don't kids make everything more fun?!

Yes... most of the time. (wink)