Mandi

a little birdy told me

A good friend of mine recently had a beautiful baby girl! We are all in love with her already!

The nursery is adorable and has a bird theme… so it was easy to pick a theme for her shower! We wanted to get a bird cage for her nursery so we decided to have a bird theme shower focused around the bird cage! I was so happy with how it turned out!

Here is the invitation that I did for the shower…. A little birdy told me…

We had an ice cream social party and decorated with birds, nests, eggs, bird houses, cages, etc.

Here is a look at the ice cream toppings. This was so simple to do – glass bowls and inexpensive tags we picked up at a craft store worked perfectly. Gotta have pickles with your ice cream for the pregnant girl!

Here are a few pictures of the tables decorated for the shower. This was a simple, inexpensive solution to decorating a large amount of tables. All of the girls that hosted brought in things from their homes to keep the cost down. We also tossed in a few candy eggs for people to snack on at the tables.

Finally we added in some fresh cut flowers from our yards and local grocery store, and the decor was complete!

I am lucky enough to have an amazing woman I work with on all of my cakes! I trust her completely and have NEVER been disappointed! I emailed her a copy of the invitation and she created this cake and matching cupcakes…. LOVE!

My advice for your next shower… pick a theme that you can work with using pieces from your homes to give it a personal touch while saving you money.

What have you seen work well for baby shower themes?

lose it

by Mandi | creative tips

By now, you can probably tell that all of us here at Sunny Slide Up are pretty health cautious. We do the best to put good things into our body and “try” to stay away from all of those fatty foods!

This can be tricky during the summer so I needed something to help me stay on track… enter… Loseit.com

This is an app that you can download onto your smartphone and FOR FREE… you can track your weight, track the food you eat and then track how much you exercise to get more food.

Here is how it works:

1. Enter your basic information like age, height, current weight, goal weight, etc., choose how many pounds you want to lose a week- or if you want to maintain your current weight and it will tell you how many calories you can have a day.

2. Track EVERYTHING you eat. This is made very simple by their extensive library of foods including food by popular brands and restaurants. You can also scan the barcode on some foods which automatically pops up with the nutritional food.

Here is a screen shot!

3. Track your EXERCISE. The more you work out, the more you can eat! This gets me through those kick boxing and zumba classes every day! If I get through this class… I can have an extra helping on my meal!

4. Watch the weight fall off! It will… trust me… eat less, work out more… it happens!

You can see some of our healthy recipes below!

Cheesy Balsamic Cucumber Tomato Salad

A Day’s Worth of Healthy Recipes

You Won’t Be Single Long Sweet Potato Fries

Ahh-Mazing Paleo Granola

Guilt Free Recipes

Does anyone else have a trick for loosing weight and staying on Track? Weightwatchers and My Fitness Pal are some other friend favorites around here.

deal a day

by Mandi | creative tips

I am a sucker for a bargain. I love thrift stores, I love yard sales, I love auctions and I love antique yards.

Another option is all of the “deal a day” websites. Have you seen these? You get GREAT deals on anything from clothing to jewelry to home decor. Below is a list of some of my favorites.