On our cruise in April, we decided to rent a cabana while visiting Carnival’s “private” island, Princess Cays. We went back and forth since the cost was roughly $220 total (which I think is a great price when splitting between 4 people). But she did it in March and really liked it, plus I wanted a bit of privacy, a cool A/C spot, and a place guaranteed for us.
Follow along as I update this page with all of my blog posts about my cruise back in April!
For my cousin’s bridal shower, she wanted the food to be a “chip” and dip style charcuterie set up. She gave us a list of her favorites dips and dippers to go along with it. So most of this was not an original idea by myself. Her and her maid of honor did a good job coming up with different food.
For Brad’s birthday, Melody made him a book. It was a fun craft that Melody enjoyed making for him. I always try to come up with fun crafts for her to make for him, and it gets harder and harder. But I found these blank books at Target, and I thought they would be perfect!
I heard of popsicle baths on instagram from Busy Toddler. She has lots of great tips and tricks for little ones. We have done a few with Melody for various reasons. We have done them when she wasn’t feeling super well, and sometimes we do it as a fun treat. But they are fun and unique for kiddos!
While at Dollywood in May, we had lunch at Till and Harvest. A friend of mine had warned us of potential long lines the later you wait in the lunch hour to eat, so we arrived a little before 11. We were all a little queasy from rides, so we needed the food and the break. Not to my surprise, there was no line.
For Brad’s birthday, Melody wanted to do a GI Joe themed birthday. I was torn on how to handle his cake since you cannot really find old school GI Joe cakes at Publix. I honestly am not even sure if the newer GI Joe movies are even represented at Publix. But we wanted old school 100%. So after some research, I noticed they had a camo cake. It was not exactly how I wanted, but after some talking with the bakery, they were able to do exactly what I wanted. A round camouflaged cake with nothing extra about it. Then I made a topper using cardstock. The topper was three levels. Each level looked like the GI Joe logo and read Happy, Birthday, Daddy. I used toothpicks and wooden skewers taped to the back to keep it in place. It was perfect!
Back in August, a friend of mine introduced me to EveryPlate. You may remember last year I tried Green Chef. I loved the idea and concept, but the cost was not worth it, the produce was inconsistently bad, and the food itself was too flavorful. Normally flavor is good, but it was sometimes not the best. However, the friend of my was introduced to EveryPlate and raved about it. The cost was reasonable, the produce and meat were always good, the delivery days were great and reliable, and the taste was great.
For my cousin’s bridal shower, the theme itself was miss to mrs. In addition we were doing a chip and did charcuterie style food setup. With that, they wanted the food to all be labeled. And I was in charge of making said labels. I wanted to do something using chalkboards because I thought that would be nice. I did some searching at Hobby Lobby and Michael’s as well as online with Amazon.
September was busy as we were back in full force with school and extracurriculars. Brad also traveled some for work, and Melody got to experience her first field trip at school. I am so happy at all the “normal” things coming back to this school year. She was even able to have her grandparents come eat lunch with her for grandparents day too. What I assume is due to COVID happening in 2020, they have also implemented several “e-learning” days. It was actually really nice, and I look forward to the next one. I hosted a bridal shower for my cousin, and Melody got to try on some flower girl dresses for the wedding coming up in November. We also got down most of our Halloween decor, so Melody is having a blast trying to scare us with fake spiders! October is setting up to also be a highly busy month. Stay tuned!
The decorations for Melody’s 6th birthday party were fairly easy to do. The theme Melody picked was Doc McStuffins. I mostly used toys and books Melody already had, so I only had to really buy tablecloths and cardstock!
So this post is over a year late. I actually found this in my drafts and could not believe I had not finished it. Just a bunch of pictures. So I wanted to share it finally!
On our cruise back in August, we had some delicious food options available to us. We cruised on the Carnival Liberty for 4 nights. This particular cruise ship was larger than ones I had previously taken, and there were definitely more options to take advantage of when we were hungry. Unlike past cruises, if I were ever hungry, it was easy to find something to eat. That was not always the case before. There was such variety, we did not even get to try all of the inclusive dining options. But I did snag some pictures of most of those to share.
Melody has been asking to cheer on and off the last year or so. She has seen Lydia’s cousins cheer in a few instances, and that has peaked her interest. But cheering at our local school requires quite a bit of dedication between practice and games. Plus with her involvement in dance and gymnastics, we just do not have the time. But we found a new opportunity from a local church. It was cheer on Saturdays only for one hour. So we opted to do that. It only lasted 6 weeks, and it was great for what we needed. I think Melody really enjoyed it, and it was enough for her to do and still get to do the other things she loves too.
On our Dollywood trip, one of the quick service places we had lunch at was Red’s Drive in. We arrived around 11 am after spending some time in that area riding some rides that morning. There was not a single wait or even really a crowd when we arrived.
Melody picked out a G.I.JOE themed birthday party for Brad. It is fairly hard to find old school GI Joe birthday party decorations. So I had to make it all. Today I want to share the birthday banner I made.
We had Melody’s 6th birthday party at a local gymnastics/cheer gym. I wasn’t entirely sure how I could really decorate the walls or how much time I would have to decorate them and also look pretty. I had seen a fellow local mom who made a backdrop to help with her decor at the same location. So I decided to make my own myself. I don’t love it, but it works for now. I plan to make it out of thicker PVC pipe in the future. It is just a little bit too floppy for me.
Now comes the last day of our cruise back in April 2022. It is hard to really even classify this as a day since we were literally off the cruise ship before 7 am. But I still wanted to share a bit about how that day went.
When we went to Dollywood earlier this summer, we stayed in Sevierville, TN in a beautiful cabin. I did some research into some restaurants in the Sevierville area for us to grab dinner at after our days at Dollywood. We really didn’t want to deal with the crowds in Pigeon Forge proper every night if we could avoid it. One of the places I read about was a placed called Aubrey’s Restaurant. So that was a place we kept in our back pocket for when we needed it.
Last weekend, I helped host a bridal shower for my cousin, Ashley. She is getting married in November, and I love hosting a good event! Her maid of honor and mom help with all the ideas, but I wanted to share how adorable everything turned out. I plan to post more details later about different parts of the shower! But the general theme was “miss to mrs”.
