Surprise Baby Shower

At our company people love a reason to have a party. One of the guys in QA is having a baby soon so some of the women in have decided to throw him a surprise baby shower. For a man. Strange, I know, but I'm always up for a reason to make baby gifts so here is what I came up with for his soon to be baby girl: a knit hat of the softest yellow yarn and pink ribbon, a matching pink and yellow tutu as a photo prop for when they get pictures taken, and a pink onesie from the GAP. Here are some photos of the goodies:

Dallas Tourney

In case you didn't know I love soccer. Love love love soccer. I play as often as humanly possible. So when I was asked by one of my Gilruth teammates to play with her other coed team in a Dallas tournament I said yes immediately. Tournament soccer is especially exciting, higher intensity, and tons of fun. The coed cup was held in Plano, TX right outside of Dallas. We did quite well for a first out of town tournament together (especially considering we got bumped up a division for no reason). We won our first two games, lost the third of the round robin play. That put us in the playoffs and we ended up losing our first playoff game to the team that won our division. Not a bad showing! also exciting: this was my first trip to Dallas, or any Texas city other than Houston for that matter. We got turned around on our way back home and ended up driving past the Grassy Knoll! Very fun! Some pics:

Team Dinner at Saltgrass:


Mark and Nathan showing off their impeccable table manners:


Leslie and Steph at dinner:


Team pic of The Zoo:


Silly pic:

Something Chocolaty

Within my group of friends here in Texas, we all usually go out to diner, happy hour, bars for each others' birthdays. I always make the cake flavor of the birthday boy/girl's choice. So, for Christine's birthday I asked her what she wanted and she said something chocolaty. Since it is also fall and fall means pumpkin I came up with: Chocolate pumpkin cheesecake cupcakes. Quite the mouthful, and sooooo delicious. Here's a shot of some fresh out of the oven last night:



Lucky for my co-workers there were 3 that didn't fit in the big Tupperware I had to bring to dinner so I brought them in this morning for a taste test. Tim says they are the best thing I've ever brought into work (and I've brought in a lot of stuff!). They are made by making a chocolate cookie crust, pumpkin cheesecake mixture, and melting semi-sweet chocolate to swirl in the middle. Baloo is a good helper (dish washer):



Hope Christine likes em! Happy 25th Teeners!

My Favorite Holiday

Well I completely failed at picture taking this Halloween. As it turns out, maneuvering a cape, basket, beverage, AND trying to take pictures is rather difficult. I saw lots of costumes this weekend including the stack of money you could be saving with GEICO (with the song playing), a completely painted yellow Marge and Homer Simpson, Billy Mays (too soon?), swine flu, and one picture of a baby in a Where the Wild Things are onesie like the pj's Max wears. Lots of great ideas out there this year. I was Little Red Riding Hood if you remember and here is the only picture I have where you can see my full costume:



Kristine in the middle was a ketchup bottle (her mustard was taking the picture for us), Roxy is wearing a t-shirt reading 'Professional Heartbreaker", and Christine was Tinkerbell. I'm very proud of Christine and her costume because she made the entire thing by hand! Even the shoes! Very nice, most people thought she bought it :)

Little Red

So my favorite holiday is Halloween and I generally have a costume picked out way in advance. This year is no exception! I'm going as Little Red Riding Hood and I have my costume mostly assembled. I sewed up a red cape and hood from satin fabric and attached a satin ribbon for the closure. I am wearing a navy blue and white dress underneath because I couldn't get a good consensus on the stereotype dress for Little Red. All the illustrations are different! I have a basket for grandma's goodies and some red pointy-toed wedges that I'm not sold on yet. Here's the ensemble all laid out:




What are you being for Halloween 2009?

Halloween is Here!

Ben is visiting Houston this weekend so Christine and I decided to get pumpkins and carve out some jack-o-lanterns while he was here. We selected our pumpkins from the Kroger 'pumpkin patch':



Our selections:



I found a design from Extreme Pumpkins by Tom Nardone (book found here: PUMPKINS!). I really like his cannibal jack-o-lantern, although all of his designs are pretty awesome. Since I didn't want to spend the big bucks on a giant pumpkin, I had to modify the design for a smaller scale. I found the biggest regular sized pumpkin at Kroger (Christine and I emptied all 4 cartons of pumpkins looking for 'the one') and got a mini pumpkin for the victim. Here are the results:



Happy Halloween! Now on to the costume...

Race for the Cure

Race for the Cure was this past Saturday. There were about 30,000 runners participating in the Houston run, downtown was madness! Team Bippity Boppity Boobs met at the Houston Library before the race to get our team picture. By the time everyone was assembled and our photos were taken we had missed the start of the Competitive 5K, whoopsies. Start line:



We got to the start like to join the back of the non-competitive 5K. Needless to say there was lots of weaving and dodging involved with so many people, but the race was still fun. I even stopped to pet a baby bulldog who was walking along Allen Parkway, so cute! Here is a team picture after the race:



I want to thank everyone who donated to our team and supported breast cancer research! Team Bippity Boppity Boobs raised over $1400! After the race we decided to go to Crave Cupcakes in Uptown Park because they were selling cupcakes for a cure!



100% of the proceeds from a 6 pack of pink ribbon cupcakes goes to the Baylor Cancer Center. needless to say, I bought a box plus a delicious pumpkin cupcake for the road :)