Our Summer Party

A couple of weeks ago we had our fourth Seasonal Season Party, celebrating what we love about Summer. If you are new to the blog, I'd love to introduce you to our little Toney family tradition: Last fall, we decided to have a party at the beginning of each season, inspired by our favorite things of that season. We select a decor theme, discuss what foods remind us of that season, my husband picks out a playlist of the perfect seasonal songs and we get together with our friends and enjoy it all! You can take a look at Fall, Winter and Spring.

For summer, I wanted something laid back and easy (and not just because we were moving the next week!). We had a pool party complete with BBQ (hamburgers & hotdogs), otter pops & ice cream sandwiches and lawn games. It was so fun to just relax with our friends enjoying the beautiful weather.

Friend of ours graciously offered a family home that has an amazing backyard which overlooks a local lake:

Here is a look at our decor (my favorite part!):

For tablecloths for the food tables, I used cheap towels that coordinated with our color scheme:

I made two different styles of paper pinwheels and stuck them into sand pails filled with sand:

I also utilized the sand pails (from the Target $1 section!) to hold the plastic utensils (just stuck upright in sand):

I 100% stole this next idea from little tags I saw at a scrapbooking store:

I reworded them a bit to my liking :)

Mason jars for drinks (frozen margaritas, horchata and lemonade):

One of our good friends works for an up-and-coming upscale water company, Kiawii, and they graciously offered to sponsor our party:

It is really great water... and I'm not just saying that because we got it for free! And... get this- it even matched our decor!!!

Plates and napkins were all from Target:

I made these fruit kebob sticks by cutting out small circles with my cricut and taping them to the end of bamboo skewers. Not only was it cute, but it made a great holding spot.

Lots of delicious summer junk food:

And, finally, a cute frozen margarita (with umbrellas that I found on clearance at Pier One in december!):

All photos were taken by my good friend, Jenetta Penner Photography. Thanks so much Jenetta for always working a bit while attending our parties!

So, my question for you: now that you have seen all four seasons, which seasonal party was your favorite?

Maybe he is trying to tell me something...

It was cute at first.

I normally don't let Isaiah play with my iPhone, but he was just so dang cute walking around holding it up to his ear and babbling away. For a good 5-10 minutes, he paced around our downstairs pretending to talk on the phone. It cracked me up.

He came and sat next to me, sat my phone down and started playing with some times. Next thing I knew, he was racing up the stairs, which happens about 200 each day. He usually goes right to his toys and books in my office/loft, so I gave him about 30 seconds before I went up after him.

I got to the top of the stairs and hear a strange sound. "Bloop". Oh no- Isaiah had gotten into the bathroom, lifted up the toilet seat and was playing with the water. I rushed in. What I did not expect was to see my iPhone floating in the toilet. Shocked, I watched as the cute picture of Isaiah that is normally my background flashed to black before I could get to it.

Isaiah stood next to the toilet with a proud grin on his face.

I told David that maybe he was trying to tell me something. That maybe I should not spend so much time on my phone or rely on it so much.

Goodbye iPhone. Goodbye $200 to replace iPhone. Goodbye letting Isaiah touch my phone. But, he is still so dang cute when he pretends to talk on the phone.

Happy New Year Everyone! New year, new phone! And, a plus: it is a newer version of the iPhone so it  is faster and more stylish. Thanks Isaiah *kind of*

A Christmas post will be coming once I can find my camera battery charger. Not the best week for electronics in my world.

Our Christmas cards

I love paper. I love crafting with paper. Not scrapbooking (maybe if I had more time), but just creating things with paper. At Christmastime, I get so much joy out of creating my own Christmas Cards. Now, it is almost always a bad idea. Making 100 Christmas cards in the midst of the crazy season usually leads to stress, lack of time and sleep and many "why am I doing this" comments. However, when I am in the moment crafting and when I look at the finished product, I love that I handcraft them.

I tried to simplify this year: no eyelets, stamps, brads or sewing. Just paper, tape, glue and a few embellishments. And, of course, a super cute picture of my little man taken by the lovely Jenetta Penner .

They all were a little bit different, so I took a picture of a few different options:

When I ran out of paper, I came up with another quick design, using my Cricut. 

We added in our CD, stuck in the envelope, and off it went.

The cute address labels were a free download from Chewing the Cud . They are actually gift tags, so you can use them for wrapping your presents!

I also participated in a  Holiday Card Swap, for which I made 5 fun cards. Here is what I came up with:

I had so much fun making these and also receiving a few cards from random people around the word. That being said, I am glad that I am done making cards. Now on to gift wrap!

I would love to hear which design you like the best!

Life will never be the same

Today, it finally clicked and Isaiah has officially become a toddler!

He has been working on his walking skills for a month or so now, taking a few steps from the coffee table to the couch. Today, in a matter of minutes, it all came together, and off he went. Literally, in between 4:00 and 7:30, he went from taking 5 or 6 steps back and forth from David to me to walking on his own from room to room. It was so crazy to see! He gets so excited. We got some great video last night that we will post soon.

I tried to get a good picture of him standing in front of the Christmas tree, but it was not very successful a) because he kept wanting to walk to me b) because it was night and my flash was stinking c) it was past his bedtime and he was a little out of it and just wanted to play with the camera. Here is what I've got for you:

I am more sad than I expected to be. Don't get me wrong, I am very excited and I love seeing him waddle around. Yet, at the same time, I feel like this is one of the first big steps in his independence and I feel like it was just yesterday that he was swaddled and lying in my arms. I hear from many moms that this is how most milestones in kids development are- exciting and fun, but at the same time a little bittersweet because your baby is growing up.

I have a feeling he will be running tomorrow. Watch out world!

And, yes, I know he needs a haircut :)  He was called a girl 3 times this week by strangers. It was nice.

And, since I am posting, I thought I would throw in a few more from the weekend:
Drumming with his daddy after church:

Dad cuddle time:

Two of my closest friends from Orange County came down to celebrate my birthday yesterday and it was such a sweet time. Lunch, drinks, watching a movie while Julianne highlighted my hair- I was definitely spoiled for a few hours. Love you girls!

I love my hubby

He knows me well.

Confession and update

confession: I have been eating peppermint ice cream for over a month now (my favorite. ever.) and yesterday I broke our family's "no christmas music until the day after thanksgiving" rule. I had to confess to David. He was disappointed in me. I just couldn't resist! I am getting so excited!

On the agenda:
*Today: thanksgiving soup dinner at our home church with the fam after practice with some cute kiddos for our church's women's Christmas tea.
*Tomorrow: work and then two meetings for the Christmas tea.
*Tuesday: It's someone's birthday ;)
*Wednesday: Heading up to orange county for birthday party with my family, spending the night for:
*Thursday: Turkey day! I even get to visit with one of my bf's from college, Brittany :)
*Friday: Shopping  I have my last wedding of the year. It will be really cool & unique. We even get to put out a Christmas Tree during the reception. yay!
*The next week: Christmas tree luncheon & Christmas tea!

And then it's full blast Christmas time! Yipee! I have so many fun projects and ideas in my head. I am over halfway done with my shopping (I cannot believe this!), so hopefully that will make it a less stressful and more enjoyable Christmas season.

Enough about Christmas, on to health: I'm doing well finally! Praise the Lord, Isaiah did not catch the flu from us. He did, however, wake up with a stuffy nose today, so we'll see how that goes. I realize that I never posted a 1 year update on him. We'll do that this week.

Happy sunday everyone!

Cha-Ching!

    Okay, so still no labor day weekend pics... I'll get around to it soon. Well, maybe not so soon. Wedding tomorrow. Worship team retreat sunday. Working monday. Leaving tuesday for anniversary/birthday getaway with David. Meetings & Sara B/Maroon5/Counting Crows concert thursday. Meetings and photo shoot with J* friday. Meetings in the morning saturday and then... what? Some free time- amazing!

and I had been telling people that things would slow down after this weekend.

Anyway, the point of this picture-less post is to share my joy with finding some great deals today. I ran errands for about two hours and in that time the following happened:

*Isaiah and I were on a date at the mall. I went to get some dinner in the food court. Ordered my pizza, salad & diet coke, only to find out that I only had $5 cash on me and my total was $7 (Oh ya, my wallet got thrown away last week. That is another story for another day). I ask the cashier if I could pay with a check, explained what happened. After telling me that they do not take checks, he presses buttons on the cash register for a good 30 seconds then smiles and says "That will be $3.65". How awesome is that? It made my sub-par pizza and flat diet coke taste incredible because of his unnecessary generosity.

*Found a black dress I loved at Macys. Yes, black. As if I need another black article of clothing. But it was on sale and I decided I really would wear it a lot. So, I take it up to purchase it- even cheaper than it was marked. A super cute black Hurley dress for $14. I'll take it!

*My purpose in going to Macys was to find David a pair of jeans. *note- this is extremely necessary. He has 1 pair and it has a large hole in the knee. He thinks it's cool. I think he is retreating back to the 90's. I did not have much luck, then decided to go into American Eagle for one last chance (NOTE: I have not been in American Eagle since my freshman year of college. What lured me in? The big sign that said "free movie tickets if you buy any pair of jeans. I figured it was worth a shot). Found a pair in his size that are somewhat stylish for $14.95. Plus a free movie ticket. That makes them about $5 :)

*I then later realize that I have to run to Target because we are out of diapers. I also find out that I have to pick something up for my wedding tomorrow. As I was rushing through the baby section grabbing diapers (rushing because our wonderful friend Jon graciously offered to stay at my house with sleeping isaiah so that I could get these things done while David had a concert), I saw a cute pair of jammies, which Isaiah really needs. $6, not too bad. When the cashier rings them up, it is not reading it. So, she does what all lovely Target employees do in this situation, manually enters in that the cost of the pjs is $2.99. Score!

While this was a nutty evening, I thoroughly enjoyed these little treasures. May you run across little bargain gifts in your shopping this week :)

high school english teachers of mine: please ignore the fact that I changed tenses frequently throughout my rambling. It's late and I'm the mom of a 10 month old during a wedding weekend. Grammar is forgivable at this point, I believe!

Big money, big money!

My friend Jenetta has two fun blogs called Frugal, Sweeps & Deals & Frugal, Freebies & Deals. She lists sweepstakes, coupons, freebies and deals multiple times per week. If you are in to this, definitely check them out.


This logo button makes me laugh because we just spent the weekend up in Bass Lake with my family and some friends. My brother's business partner, Chad, frequently said that he was going to "get his ____ on" *enter anything in the blank. Common ones were "snack", "lake", etc.

Small history fact about me: In college, I often procrastinated by entering sweeps online. David would always make fun of me. I never won anything...
There have been a couple of nights in the past couple of months when I've been sucked back into my old habits *maybe I'll win one now!* Don't tell David though :)

Lots of pictures and updates coming this week, once I download pictures from our camera.

Is it really September already?

~Courtney