Ethan’s 1st Birthday

Hello, hello ~ Janet here!

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but thanks to my live.love.create girls, you and I have been able to see all the pretty that’s been happening with us! 😉 Thanks ladies!

I just wanted to take a moment to say that… I moved to Austin, TX! Yup yup! I’ve been out here for a few months and as you can guess, it’s been quite crazy trying to move and settle in to my new environment. As hard as it was to leave LA (and live.love.create during it’s growth), my home is where my husband is and thus supported his decision to move out here.

Settling in has been slow coming and about a month ago, Erica and a few other friends, came for a surprise visit. I was completely shocked and overwhelmingly touched. I love you girls. Thanks to their visit, I finally ventured outside of my home to see what Austin has to offer. I had heard only good things about Austin, so when I went to go and explore, I fell a little in love with the city. For a family, Austin is amazing and everyday I am thankful that Ethan can grow up here (but he will always have his LA roots… Go Lakers! Go Dodgers!). It’s not always easy being outside of my comfort zone and there are definitely moments of homesickness (family, friends and food), but it just makes me reflect on how blessed I am with an amazing community back home and excited for the community I will gain here.

Despite all the changes going on in my life, I am thankful for the things that remain constant and strong, one of them being…. you guessed it, live.love.create! Thinking back on when we began this journey to where we are now, I am amazed to see all the relationships that we have and still are forming with the most awesome people ever! Thank you brides, grooms, vendors and so forth.. You’re enthusiasm and faith in us really encourages and reminds us of why we do what we do. We love you!! These relationships are so special to us because that’s what our vision was really about – meeting and making good friends. I am sad that I won’t be in Los Angeles, to physically be a part of the live.love.create team (I miss you girls so much), but I am anxious for all that’s yet to come (and thank GOD for Google Hangout sessions)! In the meantime, I’ll be updating here and there and will be involved in every way possible. For those wondering if live.love.create is branching out to Austin…. well, we’ll see… you never know. ;P

For now, I wanted to give you guys a glimpse of Ethan and how much he’s grown. The last post was at my baby shower when I was eight months pregnant. Ethan is now fifteen months and always on the run… a sweet, but wild child! Hehehe…

Photos of Ethan when he was a newborn, just two weeks old, taken by Sam Lim

Last December, we flew back to LA for Ethan’s first birthday. In the Korean culture, the first birthday, dohl, is a pretty big deal. In LA, it’s become so big that it’s like a mini wedding reception!!! *And yes, live.love.create does dohls! I pre-planned a few things before I moved to Austin, but my live.love.create ladies helped put everything together while I was away. It was a great night of celebration, thanksgiving and love.

 

  

Doljabi is a traditional Korean 1st birthday celebration where items are placed before a child and the child picks up one of the objects. Each item has a significant meaning, which is supposed to foretell the child’s future. Ethan picked up the golf ball. Daddy was so happy.

Ethan had cake for the very first time. He didn’t really have a reaction.

He seems to favor savory over sweet.  🙂

The best kid picture we could take. Lol!

The birthday boy partied too much… Knocked out! xoxo

*special thanks to…*

Venue & Catering: Little Prince Cafe

Photography: Grace Baek

Little Prince Cake: Julie Jeon (my good friend. thanks love!)

Sheet Cake: Porto’s Bakery

Florist: Commerce Flowers (head table) & live.love.create (centerpieces)

Dduk (Korean rice cakes): Seoul Bakery

Dohl Pillars: Myself and Erica

Design & Coordination: live.love.create

Ethan’s hanbok (Korean traditional outfit): my aunt from Korea sent it 🙂 Thanks eemo!

…fall in love with baby ethan…

For those that don’t know, Eddie and I are expecting our first child. 🙂 I’ll be 36 weeks this coming Monday and we are so excited for our bundle of joy to be here already!! 4 more weeks (and maybe earlier) to go! Woohoo!! I have been really lucky to have had the easiest pregnancy ever (i.e., no morning sickness, no nausea, no vomitting, no food aversions, etc…) as well as the best group of family and friends who have been with us every step of the way, supporting us and sharing in all our new discoveries and joys….

…with that being said, my beautiful girlfriends along with my live.love.create gals, of course, hosted a beautiful shower for me and their soon-to-be nephew Ethan! 🙂 **yes, we are having a boy and his name will be Ethan**

We used a photoshopped picture of my husband’s baby photo for the invitations, which led to his photo being a running theme throughout the shower. Guests dubbed the image, the “logo.” haha.

 

As one of the party favors, we made mini apple-pies that guests could take home and bake. Instructions on how to bake were on the back of the “thanks” tag. And the “redeem for one hug” ticket was used for a diaper raffle.

 

The picnic baskets contained chips and select sandwiches from Porta Via Italian Foods which the guests had RSVPed for. The picnic baskets, along with the magnetic hearts were also favors for the guests.

We also changed the water bottle labels to say “fall in love with baby ethan” to give it a more personal touch.

 

Yummy Chocolate, Red Velvet and Pumpkin cupcakes with the “logo” on edible paper.

 

 

One of the many activities we had was for guests to guess whose baby picture was which guest. Very entertaining!

   

In another activity, we had five diapers with different melted chocolate bars and guests had to determine which chocolate it was.

 

One of the things I loved, were notes that guests wrote on diapers. I haven’t read them all yet, but it’s to give some encouragement or to crack a smile during those late night diaper changes.

There were a few other activities… but one that you see at most baby showers, which we also did,  was decorating onesies. We had a couple onesies with the “logo” screen printed on them. **Seriously, this should’ve been my husband’s baby shower! Hahaha.

Lovely Hosts

Thank you to all the loving aunties!! Baby Ethan is already so blessed with much love.

Prior to the baby shower, Eddie and I took a mini maternity shoot with a few elements from the shower. We had to have at least one photo with our first baby, our lovable and handsome corgi, Scout!

 

 

 

  

we can’t wait to meet you and already love you so much!

love, mommy & daddy

*special thanks to…*

Venue: Lacy Park

Photography: John Park

Cupcakes: Big Sugar Bakeshop

Invitations, Design & Coordination: live.love.create

Hosts: my lovely ladies

Many Many Thanks Givings

Norman Rockwell’s epic Thanksgiving painting brings nothing but warm and heartfelt feelings of family and good food. If this past thanksgiving wasn’t the most blessed year of thanksgiving celebrations, then I don’t know what is.

I usually only get one turkey dinner per year but this past one I had not one or two, but FOUR! I could have had up to 5 but stopped myself because thats just asking to get asked to play Santa for the neighborhood’s christmas play. The platinum hair + turkey belly= Christine asked to put on the red and white fur jumpsuit. But besides the fact that I have to now buy all new clothes, I want to share with you how blessed I feel to have such wonderful friends and family that have invited me into their homes to give thanks to what was most important to us that year. To some it is all about being grateful for the people we have in our lives. For others it could be for the success they’ve come across in their career or for health they have sustained or that new awesome stainless steel knife set your mother-in-law bought you. In the end, we are all thankful for something that is given to us. However, maybe this year instead of just being thankful for what we have, we can give that thanks back to the people and things we are thankful for. Maybe mentor someone in the same career field as you so they can succeed as well, or volunteer at a local hospital to help someone that is not as fortunate as you in health, or just use that knife set to cook your mother-in-law the BEST or WORST(which would be my case because I can NOT cook) chicken pot pie. Either way, she would love it, no?

Thanksgiving is of course acknowledging the blessings we have in our lives but more importantly I think its all about giving back to what we are thankful for in the first place.

Hope everyone had a Joyous Thanksgiving this year!!!

-Christine

Thank you, I love you!

Can you believe it’s already November? Before you know it, it will be December and then 2011!!!

Do you ever feel that November often gets looked over and is rushed through? We do. Think about it… once Halloween is over and the pumpkins go away, the Christmas lights and trees start to go up. Even Starbucks started using their holiday cups on November 1^st! (I find it interesting that those red Starbucks cups are an indicator of the holiday season)

[Photo: @hislittleheart]

But because it’s November and November means Thanksgiving, we try to squeeze in some turkey and ham somewhere to check off our holiday to-do list. 😛

We’ve all studied the origin of America’s first Thanksgiving festival about the Pilgrims, Plymouth Rock, the Indians and so forth, but essentially Thanksgiving was a time for the pilgrims to thank God and celebrate with their [Indian] friends.

SO, before we stuff ourselves with turkey, let’s take a moment to really stop and reflect on what we are thankful for. And there is much to be thankful for! It’s nice to know that there is a month where we are reminded to give thanks for all the Lord has done for us (because I’m sure we don’t thank Him enough in our every day lives).

For us, we are so thankful for our community of family and friends who have been a huge support and encouragement since the start up of our company. It has “officially” (as in legally on paper) only been about 2-3 months and it has been quite exciting! We realized that all our human effort is in vain without the Lord leading the way. He is constantly humbling us and He sure does work in mysterious (but AWESOME) ways! Just this week alone, we met with three new clients and the way they found out about us is always a fun and interesting one to hear!

Not only are we thankful for the amazing love from our community; we are so so so so so thankful for our incredible clients! It has been such a joy working with such inspiring people, from sweet couples who are planning their Big Day to adoring parents who are planning memorable parties for their children and from musicians and artists pursuing their passions to businessmen celebrating their hard work. The positive feedbacks we hear from them bring a smile to our face and are a true encouragement! With the wide range of events that we coordinate, we cannot thank the Lord enough for all our clients who have put their trust and faith in us! God has truly blessed and provided us with wonderful people (like you)! Thank you!

mycharity: water ~ the best birthday present ever!

As cheesy as this may sound, (and in case you haven’t noticed, we like cheesy-ness) lately, I’ve been encouraged to think about what I can do to help make the world a better place.   (Cue: Michael Jackson “Heal the World”)  I’m an optimist at heart.  I believe that each person can make a difference and do something to change things for the better.  As a collective, we can make a positive impact, whether it be through something like recycling or just by saying a few kind words.  Yes, we all have our own issues, struggles, and checklist of things to be done, but it doesn’t hurt to help out a little and do something for someone else for a change.

Which brings me to something I’ve been encouraged to do this month.  November is the month for giving thanks, realizing everything we have to be thankful for, and hopefully for giving back as well.  November’s also my birth month!  (Cue: “Happy Birthday Song”)  So I decided I wanted to do something a little different this year.  Rather than receive gifts, I’m asking everyone to donate to mycharity: water, a non-profit organization that works to provide clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.  Why mycharity: water?  There are so many deserving organizations, and it was hard to choose, but mycharity: water stuck out to me because they allow you to follow them through the whole process and visually see proof of the projects built.

Since I’m turning 26 years old, I’m asking for $26 or more from everyone I know. It’s not going to me, though. All of it is going to build freshwater wells for people in developing nations.

A billion people in the world are living without clean water – but how much are they really living? Millions contract deadly diseases from contaminated water. 45,000 people will die this week alone. The lucky ones won’t, but still walk hours each day to get dirty water to give to their families.

My birthday wish this year is not for more gifts I don’t need; it’s to give clean and safe drinking water to some of the billion living without it. I want to make my birthday matter this year.

Please join me!  Go to erica’s 26th and donate!

Of course, this isn’t the only way or only charity that you can help.  Right here in LA, and in every city, there are millions of people who could use your love and help.  I’ve linked a few other organizations below so that you can take a look and see how else you can help!

We’ve been blessed to be a blessing.

love,

erica  🙂

Union Rescue Mission

LiNK

Donors Choose

Compassion International

World Vision

please note: Because of charity: water’s unique model, 100% of all donations go directly to direct water projects costs, and each donation is “proved” and tracked to the village it helped when projects are complete.

One-Year Anniversary~!

Eddie and I had a Day After Shoot as part of our wedding photography package, which we never took because of our busy schedules. So, our Day After ended up becoming a one-year anniversary shoot instead (well, more like a one year and 6 months shoot)!!! 😛

Eddie and I met Mark and Candice at their home in Ladera Ranch where we finally got to meet baby Wyatt (soooo sweet) and see their new studio (sooooo cute)!

This is our third time getting our photos taken by Mark, so we felt pretty comfortable. It also helped that Christine and Erica joined us for the photo shoot to help me with outfit changes as well as providing a relaxed environment.

It took some tummy sucking to fit back into my wedding dress!

We took these photos in a field right behind Mark and Candice’s house!

Eddie is so cute! 🙂

Thanks to Christine and Erica for being my creative geniuses this day!!!

All the hairpieces (and Eddie’s matching boutonniere) made by our very own Christine {LOVEFORGRACE}

We ran out of lighting, so we took the rest of our shoot in Mark and Candice’s very own living room!

When Eddie and I got married, we decided not to get our TV set-up for at least one year…. this way, we wouldn’t always veg in front of the tube. 😛 Instead, we made a NY’s resolution to read at least one book a month. We brought along some of the books we’ve read and some of our all-time favorite books for the shoot! **For those that are wondering… we finally got cable TV installed about two months ago! Haha!

Thank you for the unconditional love, everlasting support and constant encouragement.

I love you, Eddie.

<3, Janet