Sandy's Baby Shower

How cute are the invitations?! 

They were made by my sweet friend Ashley :) 

My sister in law Lauren and I threw a baby shower for Sandy (our sister in law) a few days before Christmas. Since they do not plan on finding out what they are having, we went for the perfect neutral colors: light yellow and green. 

We did these in lieu of games!!!

 (find them here- i get mine printed at UPS)

    

We had Crystal Light Mojito and Lemonade (keeping up with the theme here)

Enjoying the yummy brunch food.... We had banana bread, egg casserole, 

chicken salad and egg salad sandwiches, cupcakes, chips, cookies, and fruit salad. 

My mama in law made the cupcakes and cute duck cookies! 

(everything she bakes is so yummy!)

Time to open gifts!

Mustache pacifiers and Clemson items

Laughter at some of the "suggestive" clothing

A snugglebug (of course)!!

(The shirt says "Mommy and Daddy's Future Running Buddy")

Proud grandmas/mothers? I'm not sure they have names yet......

We had a fun time showering Sandy with love, gifts, food, and prayer! 

We are excited for their new adventure in parenting!! 

And we look forward to meeting baby Pepin at the end of March/beginning of April!!! 

Ugly Sweater Party

I said goodbye to my VW Beetle the morning of the party. We shared 10 years together (through learning how to drive in high school, to college in Kentucky, dozen of road trips in between, moving with me to Nashville after graduation, carting around several children, and eventually moving with me all over the first two years of marriage, to finally be sold here in SC) !!!! While it drove me crazy with it's expenses and smallness most of the time, I still loved it all the same.... 

I hope the teenager that bought it will enjoy it as much as I did! Plus, it didn't hurt as it was being driven away that the new owner has the same last name as my mom's maiden name! My parents joked that it is staying "in the family"
....and I did shed a few tears.

(for the record, the color was "Midnight Blue"- purple in sunlight and dark blue in shade)

After living in our house since August, Matt and I felt it was time to have a little housewarming party. Even though our home is FAR from being finished, we are at able to have overnight guests and visitors. The party was an "Ugly Sweater" Party and guests were allowed to drop in at any point and stay as long as they wanted. It was nice to host several people including both of our parents!! 

Shout-out: A HUGE thanks to my dad for helping Matt rake leaves and make the yard presentable, to my mom for steaming curtains, sweeping, and making food, to Kendra to vacuuming and washing the Bug, to my mama in law for bringing food and my father in law for getting last minute things!!!!!!

drink station

 

my sister K and I

We had a "photo booth" wall set up with props we used at our wedding :)

 

       

 

I had fun and I hope everyone else did too!

Did everyone read this before coming?!

Merry Merry

 

Praying that everyone has a wonderful holiday season remembering the birth of our Savior!

MERRY CHRISTMAS from the Pepin family!!!

This was supposed to be our Christmas card picture this year, but Matthew was quite embarrassed to be kneeling on this vintage retro quilt (I guess it's a little more feminine than masculine) while several cars were driving by, that I decided not to use it. So, needless to say, I haven't even made a card yet to mail out to everyone!! Sorry! (which is kind of sad because we bought a house & our old forwarding address from last Christmas has long since expired). So, instead I decided to put it up here for your enjoyment! It's ok to laugh.... Hopefully I will get a better picture out for New Year's cards!

{How to Wear Tacky Christmas Sweaters}

Hi readers! My name is April and I blog over at The Striped Flamingo. 

Can I talk to y'all for a second about tacky Christmas sweaters? 

Mmmkay. So, there's this store near where I live, which shall remain nameless, so as not to incriminate those who shop there for actual clothing. It kind of sells grandma type clothes. Well, for some reason, this store seems to be the tacky Christmas sweater mecca. For real. Every year, they come out with a fresh crop of terribad sweaters. It really makes you wonder if there really is a market for this type of clothing. 

Note to readers: apparently there is. Whilst shopping at said store for a tacky Christmas sweater to give at my work White Elephant gift exchange, there were at least 5 little old ladies animatedly combing through the tacky Christmas sweater racks, wearing, of course, tacky Christmas sweaters.

Something that has gained popularity in the last few years are tacky/ugly Christmas sweater parties. The main idea is to invicte people to wear these horrible sweaters/ensembles and revel in each other's Christmas tackiness.

Sounds fun, right?

So, besides the obligatory tacky Christmas sweater, what does one wear to this type of party? Well, I'm a firm believer that there is such a thing as over-accessorizing. And, these sweaters...well, they should be treated as an accessory. (Because, in all honesty, most of them contain no less than 7 bags of seed pearls and sequins anyway...) So, when Jamie asked how can you rock a Christmas sweater and still look "cute" (which I took as meaning "not like you shop at said old lady store on the reg") I figured others might benefit from my answer. 

As mentioned earlier, treat the sweater/vest/etc. as the accessory. You want to keep everything else you wear very basic. Obvi, the main attraction of your outfit is the sweater/vest, so don't mix a lot of other prints with it. I like the idea of a pop of color in a bag or shoes, but keep it to one color, balanced out with neutrals. 

Try to keep the rest of your outfit as modern as possible. I loved the idea of doing a tacky Christmas vest with black skinnies, a black t-shirt and red booties. The jewelry is very minimal with this outfit. For the other, more casual outfit, I like doing jeans and navy accents to balance it. (Navy Toms, um...yes?!?!)

All this to say, it IS possible to look "cute" while wearing one of these tacky sweaters. 

SO......Have you ever been to a tacky Christmas sweater party?

Thank you SO much April for the fun post for any upcoming holiday ugly sweater parties!!! I can't wait to post photos from our holiday housewarming party!! *I had previously emailed April asking her for some fashion advice before our party and that's how this guest post came about!! :) 

Please go check out her blog! I've been following April's blog and her Instagram for some time now and she writes about tons of great outfit inspiration, (this page here) crafts, photography, home decor, Christianity, and more! She also loves to sing (check out this song here)!!! Just a peek into a little more about her (how cute is this?!)......

Thanks again girl!!

Christmas at the Pepins

After lunch at my parents, we drove over to Matt's parents. His grandparents and aunt and uncle had arrived the day before and everyone was just relaxing.

We had dinner and then opened stockings.

This year, we decided to draw names for one person to get them a "big gift" ($50-100) and everyone else in the family would receive small gifts ($5-10) from you as well....

It was fun to see what people got :) 

Gizmo in her Mrs. Claus outfit

Grandma making the annual Happy Birthday Jesus cake!

Matt finishing up one of Paul's gifts: A shaving brush & soap holder

I found Pixie! (Think Elf on the Shelf) 

Papa & Brian working on a puzzle

What a cheese!

Time to start opening stockings!!

We took a short break in between stockings & gifts

Silly kiddos

One big happy family!

Present opening tradition: everyone opens their first gift and we start from youngest to oldest and then it's a free for all. 

A huge pile of paper, bows, and boxes

ALL Done! Yay! Thanks for all the presents!!