Monster Bash 1st Birthday

Hello friends!

Busy Busy once again and so much to catch up on, including the emails in my inbox at work I got from my nice long vacation. 

But I at least wanted to give you all a peek at baby D's, who's becoming more of Toddler D, first birthday party.  It was so much fun!!  My little monster sure did have a good time!  Here's a photo collection from the Bash.

His Green Monster Personal cake which was chocolate!

Cake and cupcake stand

Monster cupcakes which were chocolate and funfetti

My mom put this monster fruit salad together

Ice Cream sundae making station. This was a big hit!

Noah' s photo collage and the favor boxes for the kids. The older kids had the boxes to the left with candy and small toys like little bouncy balls, little yoyos, monster stickers and other goodies.  The younger babies had their own special favors.  Their little boxes had little stuffed monsters with baby cookies and mum mums in them!

Mama and the birthday boy.  We are currently trying to get him off of the binki.  I just couldn't say no to him at his birthday.

Mama D, Daddy D, and Baby D :)

One of my besties, Michelle, from Ohio came up for his birthday!  We had so much fun!  I don't know what we would have done without her and my mom and dad's help.

Noah loved getting spoiled by aunt Shell!

He spotted his birthday present from nana and papa early and just had to check it out!

He doesn't look it in this picture but he LOVES this little car!  We pull him around the house and he puts on the blinkers and honks the horn...it's so darn cute! :)

Present Time!

Here's a good view of his birthday outfit.  A litte monster which matches his shorts and the number 1 and his name underneath.

Big Bird!  He is absolutely crazy about sesame street but more importantly, big bird elmo and cookie monster!

Cake time didn't start out too well.  He wasn't exactly thrilled about his cake at first.

Then we gave him a spoon and he got his first taste...YUM!

Then he dug in..

And dug in some more!

With smiles all around!

I think he ate a little too much!  But I think cake time ended up fairly successful.

All the little ones loved the jumpoline turned ball pit we got baby D.

Especially our little monster of a birthday boy!  I think we can count this as a successful first birthday! :)



What's in the Name Challenge

Hello friends! 

I'm so excited for this post today.  This is part of a challenge hosted by my new friend over at My Colonial Home.  The challenge is to basically give you a little history as to where you blog name came from. 

Well D Family Values started a little over a year and a half ago on January 14, 2011.  To be honest, the blog existed long before the name...

When I first started this blog it was a new year and I had only been married a couple of months.  I had moved away from my family and everything I had ever known in Ohio to come up to Vermont and live in the mountains with my hubby.  It was all exciting, new, and EXTREMELY TERRIFYING to move my entire life.  So many new things were happening at once, newly graduated college, new career, new state, new husband, and my very first home.  Overwhelmed, I turned to blogs and hearing from other people all around about their trials, challenges, and day to day life.  I thought, what a perfect place to share all of these new experiences than the blogging world! 

I was so eager to start that I created an account without any idea on a blog name, what my first post would be, or even what all I would blog about.  Reading other blogs I saw some pretty niftly names and wanted something eye catching as well.  Without having any other plan, I settled on the title of "A Crazy Little Thing Called Life".  I wrote my first post and then....didn't see blogger for an entire year!  What happened?  I didn't know what in the world to write about.  I had so many ideas, my new life in Vermont, my faith, ghost hunting, or being newly married.  I couldn't settle on any one idea.   So I just decided to stop before I really got started and continued to visit blogs and be a lurker. 

FINALLY, one day I was reading a long favorite blog of mine Mabel's House.  She started her blog to focus around decorating and fixing up her first new home she bought with her husband.  But as I was reading her posts, they were not all just about her home.  She brought in her favorite books, family (including her beautiful baby girl), funny stories, and even talked about other trials and tribulations she had experienced.  A lightbulb popped up in my head and I realized, I don't need to focus on one topic.  It's my blog and there's so much I want to talk about and if nobody reads...NO BIG DEAL!

I went back to my blog and started writing my first post since I started this blog.  I thought about deleting the account and starting from scratch but decided...I want to see my first post and remember where I started from.  I knew I would have a lot to talk about regarding my family and new baby boy and that most of my posts would focus on them.  Since our last name is DeMasi, that's where the D came into play.  I am constantly learning new things about life and who I am and what I value.  Besides my family, I value decorating and creativity focused mostly on prim :) , ghost hunting, my faith, and all of the little things that pop up in life that you just want to share.  I honestly didn't know what would be in my blog and decided that I liked it that way.  So since Family is the focus of my blogs , that's where that came into play.  And since I want to share any and everything my family and I Value, it just fit.  Plus I like the slight play on words with the D hehe!  I'm still learning about blogging and I still don't get to post as much as I like.  But it sure is nice to have a safe place to share a small part of my life and get a peek at some other wonderful people and their lives and passions!

So there you go a long post not only about where my blog name came from but also my journey into the blog world.

These Past 3 1/2 Weeks...Recap

Woah it's been a while since I made a post!

What has D family been up to these past almost 4 weeks?  Well......a lot of CRAZINESS...let me explain....

When I decided it was time for AnDy and I to start a family and for me to be a mom, I had this idea of being a mom as being something like this...

Reading a nice book to my kid and relaxing having everything be nice calm and normal.

Turns out that lately everything has been completely chaotic with me looking more like this...

or this...

Crazy thing seems to happen (to me anyways) after having a baby.  My hormones get all crazy and I turn into a nutball!  Neurotic, hypochondriac, nervious wreck, and the world's biggest worry wart.  I have been feeling the complete opposite of sane lately and like I've been hanging on to sanity by a string of thread.  Luckily, I've been in the process of getting my hormones in balance and hopefully my sanity along with it (Well at least the little bit of sanity I may have previously had :)). 

Besides my craziness, little things have been going on.

I decided to move all of my Americana decor over to my kitchen from my dining room.  The dining room ends up being the coldest room in the house once winter happens, and in the summer we are outside more when we are home.  I wanted to be able to enjoy all of my Americana stuff more.  Maybe I will eventually change things again, but for now it suits. 

Here's one before picture:

You can see more before pics here.

Here are some after pics:

I still have work to do in there, like change the tops of the cabinets and some other small changes.  But so far I'm liking the change. 

This summer D family has also been watching our favorite summer show, Big Brother.  Here is a peek at 2 of my favorite players.

Dan Gheeslinga...AND...

Ian Terry.  I must mention that I love his shirt!  He's a chemical engineering student and with that being my degree, this shirt, and the fact he wore it on tv, just makes me chuckle.

We've also been getting rid of some junk with a yard sale.  It feels so good to get rid of the unnecessary clutter!  AnDy and I have given each other an early anniversary gift...2 tickets to a Halloween party hosted at the Spalding Inn by some of our favorite tv personalities, Jason and Grant from Ghost Hunters.  We cannot be anymore excited than we are about this.  We haven't seen then in a couple years and with Grant leaving the show and not doing anymore events, this is a chance to see him outside of those.  CAN'T WAIT!!!

I've been working on Noah's first birthday party.  We just got his birthday gift in the mail, a jumpoline which will be turned into a ball pit.  I am SUPER excited to put this up; I know he's going to LOVE it!  Oh...speaking of Mr. Noah himself.  He's been busy getting bigger and getting excited for his birthday party.  He still has yet to crawl.  I think he may skip crawling and will jump straight to walking.  Although he's a bit of a ways away from walking too.  He just likes to do things at his own pace I guess.  He has, however developed a love for Sesame Street and the characters Big Bird, Elmo, and Cookie Monster.  He even got a new tub that has his favorite characters on it.

He's also developing quite the personality.  He's definitely not as shy as mommy was when she was younger.  And here's Mr. Attitude himself......

So there's my up to date history of the past 3 1/2 weeks. 

I hope everyone has a great rest of their Labor Day and week!