We had the girls baptism on Saturday and it was such a special day and weekend.
Most of Kip’s family was able to come into town so it was a busy and fun weekend.
The girls are now bored out of their minds without 10 people surrounding them and keeping them entertained from wake up to bedtime.  It’s always so nice to have a million hands wanting to help with the babies but it also overwhelms me and makes me antsy to get back to our daily routine (and to have the girls all to myself again)

It’s like, love you, but BYEEEEEEE.

Do you know what people try to charge for Baptism gowns? Because it is ABSURD.
I know they are family heirlooms usually, but when it’s a twin situation you gotta start from scratch and NO THANK YOU to these $300+ dollar gowns.
So here’s an under $100 find for the win.

The girls were baptized at Christ the King which is where we were married 5 years ago, but their baptism was in the Chapel instead of the Cathedral (I wore my rehearsal dinner dress after being unable to find anything I liked).  It was beautiful and went off without a hitch! A special touch was that Father Mark did the baptism and Mark was my dad’s name so it was a nice reminder of him on the day.

old kate spade dress, love these scalloped heels SO SO much – true to size and very comfy.

many horrendous photos of us were taken….see exhibit A below…..

They were so sweet during the baptism.  Collins was truly the best listener in the room.  She just stared wide eyed at the priest soaking in every word and it was so cute.  Hadley would “talk” at the perfect time like during the Our Father and would try to grab his book when he came over to do blessings and prayers over them.  I know this is one of those things where only you think you’re kids are special and cute doing things like this but I just ate it up….

I had a really cute second dress to put them into afterwards but they ended up changing into cute #blessed onesies from a friends and we never changed them again between the craziness.

We kept the baptism + party family open to keep it small and reasonable. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible since I knew when we got home from the baptism itself everyone else would be arriving at the same time as we did from the church.  (Plus people were in town starting Thursday so I had to prep everything with a house full of guests and knew I couldn’t do it all!)
I tried to prep as much as possible Friday and Friday night so that I just had to toss some things into the oven when we got home and while everyone ate appetizers.
Thankfully the weather was perfect and it was our first SLIGHTLY cooler day with no temps in the 90’s, so we were able to have everyone out on the porch to watch football and hang all day.

For appetizers I had my Crack Cheez It’s (so good and so easy and SO necessary for any occasion), spinach dip, a cheese ring with strawberry preserves and a meat and cheese platter.
Recipe for the Cheez It’s here

I arranged a lovely cross pattern for the meat and cheese platter.
It cracked me up.  Why not?!

For the lunch my mom made two of her chicken tettrazinis (the best), I made two shrimp and rice casseroles and then we had rolls (Sister Schubert’s are our favorite) and a salad.
get ready for my always stellar food photography attempts…… 

I wanted to make my Crack Cake for dessert but again wanted to keep things simple and was already making a bunch of food on Friday so we just did petit fours from Henri’s bakery.  Easy and pretty and there ya go!

One of my favorite things for the day was using Dollar Hydrangea.
I found them through blogger Sarah Tucker’s IG (love her for all things blue + white and she is the cutest) and I was (and still am) SO impressed with the flowers.
They ship hydrangeas for $1 a stem straight to your door with a flat $5 shipping.  You have to order in quantities of 50 so it isn’t something you can use unless it’s a party (unless you’re just living the best life ever with flowers galore at your house all the time) but it was cheaper than anything else out there AND saved me a trip to Costco or Trader Joe’s for flowers.

I’m trying all of the hacks for trimming/dipping/hot water/cold water/alum powder and will report back on what keeps them alive the longest!
Today is day 8 and we are going strong.  I’ve brought back stems that were looking completely dead!