Lifestyle

This year for Easter we decided to make a day trip up to Santa Barbara. We absolutely love Santa Barbara! We lived there while we were going to school, we got engaged there and we’d move back in a heartbeat if we ever got the chance. With Storms due date quickly approaching we thought it would be a good idea to go up and spend the day soaking up the last bit of time being our little family of three.

The first thing we did when we got there was go to our favorite church, Christ Presbyterian. It was such a wonderful service filled with so much joy of our risen Lord. After church we headed over to one of our favorite lunch spots C’est Cheese. They are a little cheese shop that also has breakfast and lunch items. But unfortunately they were closed, totally understandable! We decided to try out a new place we had never been to, but is always packed called Andersen’s Danish Bakery and Restaurant. I had the eggs Benedict and Ryne had the croissant French toast, both were delicious!!!

After brunch we were stuffed so we walked around and shopped on State street for awhile. Then we walked all the way down to the beach where they do an art walk on Sundays. Unfortunately it was a little chilly and gloomy so we didn’t spend to much time down by the water. Once we started getting tired we walked back up State street to the mall area Paseo Nuevo and sat down and had some boba and let Sky walk around a little bit.

We ended the day with dinner at another restaurant we hadn’t tried before called Casa Blanco on lower State street. They have really yummy Mexican food, I totally recommend this place to anyone visiting the area.

Once we were done with dinner we headed home. It was a pretty amazing day. Even though the weather didn’t turn out to be typical sun shinning Santa Barbara weather I still wore my beautiful Pink Blush maternity dress. It was so comfortable to walk all around in and I loved that it had all the bright Easter colors in it. When it got a little chilly I just threw a little sweater over it and it was perfect. Had I known it was gonna be a cooler day I could of also added some booties with it! If you’re in the need for an occasion dress Pink Blush will always have you covered, pregnant or not. You have to check them out!

With April quickly approaching, I keep going back to my pregnancy with Sky and all the things leading up to her birth. One of my most favorite memories was her baby shower. It was absolutely beautiful and perfect in every way. I wanted to come on here and share a few of my favorite photos from the day!

We had the party in the backyard at my in laws house, which is actually also where we had our wedding reception!

One of my favorite things about the decorations at the shower were these big balloons! I thought they were such a fun added touch!

We did a guest book where my guests could write their sweet messages but we also added a Polaroid camera so that they could also add a fun picture. I think this will be such a fun keepsake to look back on with Sky someday!

I wanted there to be fun activities for the guests to do while at the party so we set up a headband making station and a alphabet book coloring station. I ordered the headband making kit on etsy and put out instructions for the headbands. For the alphabet book I printed off letters A-Z and put out some coloring pencils and stencils (for the drawing challenged lol).

My wonderful, talented husband made the cake and my mother in law put together the beautiful display of cupcakes. I ordered the cake topper from a shop called Midnight Confetti on etsy.

We had a lemonade and mimosa bar that was a huge hit! I had been craving lemonade my whole pregnancy so it was a must have. Also not pictured was the AMAZING nacho bar, which was my favorite part of the whole day if we’re being honest 🙂

We played a few games, most of the classics like the size of my belly and which baby food is which. It’s always so fun for me to see how everyone gets so into the games.

It was so great to have all of my friends and family there to celebrate and shower (I mean it was a down poor) Sky with so many amazing gifts!

This was such a fun day and it couldn’t of happen without my mother in law, mom and this handsome guy working his butt off behind the scenes. Love you tuts <3

Photos Taken By: Gabi Adams Photography

About a month or so ago I shared of photo of my meal plan/grocery list on my Instagram story and I had a lot people asking me how I put it together and how I keep it all organized, so here I am to show you! This is the perfect time with the new year starting to get more organized and this will save you so much time during the week and also while you’re grocery shopping. Let me start by saying that it’s taken me a lot of trial and error to figure out the best way to organize meals for my family while also keeping a budget, so don’t be surprised if it takes you a few times to figure out what works for your family. Ok, let’s jump in!

First thing I do is pick out what we’ll have for dinner. Dinner always seems to be the most time consuming meal of the day (especially with a toddler running around trying to “help”) so I like to choose the meals ahead of time so I don’t have to think about it during the week. I go through my Pinterest boards of dinner favorites and I also like to look at other apps like Tasty or Yummly for new recipes to try. I usually pick between 4-5 dinner meals depending on what we have going on during the week. I don’t choose 7 meals because I know we’ll probably go out to dinner a night or two and we’ll probably have left overs for a night or two so there’s no point in buying all the food for 7 meals and having it go to waste. Once I pick the meals I write them at the top of my list, I personally don’t choose which meal we will have on each specific day because I don’t know what I or my husband might be in the mood for that particular day.

After I have all my meals picked out, I pull up all the recipes and start adding the items I don’t have to my list. If you have your recipes on your phone, ipad or laptop it helps to go into the kitchen while you make your list that way you can see what you have and don’t have. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been thinking, “oh I need that” and adding it to my list and later realizing that I did have it, what a waste! I organize my list by categories, I do this to save me time at the grocery store because like I said before, toddlers! I’m not super crazy with the categories but I do try to keep in mind where things are located at the grocery store in hopes that I only have to go down each aisle once. Anyone out there who’s that shopper that goes from one end of the store to the other and back again like five times?? Well that’s me without my list…

Once I get done with dinner I move on the breakfast, lunches, and snacks. We keep things pretty simple with breakfast, usually a mixture of eggs, cereal, oatmeal and pancakes. For lunch we usually trade off between a couple things ranging from sandwiches, salads, burrito bowls, pretty much whatever we’re in the mood for that week but I’ll try to narrow it down to two things just to make things easy because I know we’ll go out to lunch a couple times and probably have left overs some days. After that I’ll jot down some snacks that I’ll need to pick up, mostly for my daughter Sky, things I know shes run out of.

Last thing I’ll do is add the necessities to my list, the things I have to buy almost every week like milk, eggs, bread, or treats that I might be craving that week because hello, preggers problems! Once my plan and my list is complete I’ll head to the store, I usually do my shopping Mondays when my husband gets off work because #teamwork.

I hope that this has been helpful to those of you that dread the thought of meal planning, or that find themselves eating out way to often because they don’t have anything planned.

I have attached a free printable of a super simple meal plan and grocery list to get you started! If you use it, tag me on Instagram with @featherssky, I’d love to see what meals you have planned for your family this week 🙂

Click link to download —>  Meal Plan & Grocery List