Raising Roberts

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Mrsjessicaroberts x Modern Piggy

Since my post last month, I’ve been kind of lost on how I should move forward with my blog. Should I catch up on posts that I missed (and now feel out of place?) Or do I just count these past months as a loss and just start fresh? I haven’t really decided what I want to do (if you have any input, I’d love to hear!) But for now, I want to share about something fun that I had the opportunity to work on a couple of months ago.

Back in April I released a bow collection with one of my all time favorite bow shops, Modern Piggy! So I thought it would be fun to walk you through the process and show you some pictures of all of us wearing the different bows from the collection. (Psst- if you scroll all the way to the bottom, I’m sharing about the sale today!!!)

I was first introduced to Modern Piggy a few years ago when I came across one of their giveaways on Instagram. I ended up winning shop credit through that giveaway and that’s when my love for Modern Piggy began. Over the past few years, I’ve been a frequent shopper (maybe too frequent if you ask my husband 😂) because of the amazing quality, beautiful styles, and of course I can’t leave out the free shipping. In that time, I’ve gotten to know the shop owners, Becky and Camille, and have had the opportunity to collaborate with them a couple times. It’s always been so easy to work with them because we truly do reach for our Modern Piggy bows pretty much every single day.

At the beginning of this year, I got a message asking if I would like to help design a collection for the shop. I’m pretty sure I immediately texted my bff (a fellow Modern Piggy super fan 😂) because I was so excited. It was a pretty immediate “YES!”

From there, I was asked about patterns, colors, etc. that I would like to see in my collection. My first thoughts were “What did I get myself into? I have no idea what I’m doing!” But it wasn’t very long before so many ideas started popping into my head and I started bombarding Becky and Camille with emails.
I knew from the start that I wanted my collection to be fun and unique, but also versatile enough to be worn over and over again. The bows we reach for the most often are basics/neutrals so I wanted to make sure the bows in this collection could still fall under that category

After sending some ideas to them, they created a mood board and showed me some fabric swatches that they thought fit the look I was going for. They were so amazing to work with! Even though we were only communicating via email, they seemed to know the exact vision I had for the collection. All the fabric swatches they sent me were just as I had envisioned. So from there, they ordered the fabric and sent it off to their amazingly talented seamstresses. Modern Piggy photographed all the gorgeous product shots seen on their website and IG. And we went out to shoot some different lifestyle pictures. And then after months of behind the scenes work, the bows were released!

Everything that goes into designing a collection takes so much thought. And then there are so many nerves when it’s time for the release (is anyone even going to like these?!) It’s amazing to me that these women do this over and over and over again, along with everything else that goes along with owning a business (and somehow they never seem to run out of ideas!!) They truly are amazing at what they do and I now have a new found respect for all that goes into the business. I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to work alongside them.

So now I would like to walk you through each of the bows in the collection.

The Clementine bow, named after my 2 year old, is a caramel color that was inspired by the Modern Piggy camel leather bow. I love that color as a neutral and thought it would be beautiful presented in a fabric bow. It is also the color I chose for the bowties for the boys. It pairs well with so many different colors and prints!

The Evangeline bow, named after my 6 year old, is a vivid pink velvet bow. Pink is a favorite color in our house so I knew I had to include some shade of pink into the collection. Modern Piggy already has so many good shades of pink so I tried to think of a pink they didn’t carry that we wanted in our own personal collection. This color is fun and vibrant and it’s such a fun pop of color that goes with so many outfits!

The Primrose bow, named after my 1 year old, is a fun leopard print that I had already been asking Modern Piggy to create before we discussed this collaboration! In our house, leopard is a neutral so I knew it had to make its way into this collection.

The Eloise bow, named after my 2 year old’s middle name, is another “neutral” print. The simple black and white design pairs well with many other colors and patterns. It’s the perfect mixture of neutral and fun!

The whole process was just so fun and I’m so thankful to have had this opportunity! If you happened to make it this far, Modern Piggy has my collection on sale TODAY, June 25th! Every Tuesday they have a Midweek Markdown, marking down a select bow style for 20% off for one day only. So today, everything in my collection is 20% off (and free shipping for U.S. customers!!) So you can click HERE to hop over to their site to shop! Thank you so much to everyone who has already purchased from this collection and thank you for all your support!!

June 25, 2019

birthday, Blog, Primrose

Ah, Honey Honey

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Hi! It’s me! Remember me? It’s been almost 7 months since I’ve updated my blog. I wasn’t sure if/when I would ever get back to it. But I miss documenting everything and sharing more than the snippets I share on Instagram. I’ve stated multiple times that I have a hard time finding motivation to blog. But I’m hoping that once I get back to it, I’ll start enjoying it again.

Anyway, I have missed sharing numerous things over the past 6+ months so I’ll probably attempt to do some quick “catch up” posts- starting with Primrose’s birthday party…that happened 3 months ago. So if you were hoping to hear more details about the party, I’ll try to quickly share how we threw it all together so that it’s not an overly wordy post.

I’m sure it’s a repeat story for a lot of you, but for anyone who hasn’t been around for the past year, I’ll just briefly share a little backstory. My best friend, Maggi, and I both had our baby girls on the same day, February 20th, 2018. Our due dates were 2 days apart and we had spent 9 months dreaming of our babies sharing a birthday. We were both about a week overdue when Maggi went into labor. She had her sweet daughter, Sylvia, at the beginning of the 20th. My labor began around 3:45 that day and Primrose was born around 9:00 that night (in the same hospital!) If you want to hear the full birth story, like how I labored in Maggi’s room until I was about 9cm, then you can read that HERE.

Anyway, on to the party! When our girls were tiny, I mentioned that it would be fun to do a joint first birthday party. Thankfully Maggi agreed to it! So we started tossing ideas around when the girls were only about 6 months old. She suggested a honey theme and I absolutely love how “sweet” the party turned out. I feel like there are so many different directions you can go with a honey theme.

Food

So let’s talk food! I’ll link recipes as I’m able. We kept it budget friendly and decided to skip the meal and only serve dessert. Taking inspiration from The Baked Bear (one of my favorite places for dessert in St. Louis,) we made homemade ice cream sandwiches. Maggi and I each made 2 types of cookies. We had Chocolate chip cookies, Chocolate chocolate chip cookies, gooey butter cake cookies, and funfetti cookies.

Then we just had a tub of chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream. Everyone was able to pick their cookies and ice cream to create their own ice cream sandwiches. We kept it really simple but it would also be fun to include options for toppings- like sprinkles, chocolate syrup, crushed oreos, whipped cream, etc. Just be sure to have bowls and spoons on hand because it can get messy!

We also had a donut hole “hive” with the sugar bees (we got them from Hobby Lobby but here is something similar from Amazon,) gingerbread honey bears, honeycomb marshmallow treats, and this surprisingly addictive honeycomb churro crunch.

Decorations

Now moving right along to the decorations. The honey bears were collected from friends and family in the months before the party. Maggi spray painted them gold and then we just used them as vases for some small sprigs of baby’s breath and eucalyptus leaves.

The balloon arch was quickly put together about 1.5 hours before the party started! I bought this balloon arch “tape” back in August for Liam’s birthday and it has been well worth the $7! I usually just pick up some packs of balloons from Walmart or Hobby Lobby. I blow up a bunch of balloons in a few different colors and then start pulling them through the holes on the strip. I use command hooks and string to hang it to the wall. Then I tie off the end of the roll and hide it within the balloon arch. I’m able to reuse it over and over this way.

It’s an easy and inexpensive decoration that is so fun! The arch stays looking nice for a while, so you can put it together the day before the party (I don’t recommend doing it an hour and a half before the party starts, like we did haha.) And to prevent light headedness, I recommend a balloon pump or finding a few friends to help you blow up balloons.

The lettering on the wall and on the highchairs was just created with printed stencils and gold glitter poster board.

The letter board is from Letterfolk. We really only decorated this one area and I think I explained everything. But if you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask!

Maggi’s mom made the most adorable bee hive smash cakes. A little helpful hint, if you add bees to your cake, remove the bees before giving the cake to your child. Both girls went straight for the bees haha. So they were promptly removed to prevent choking.

I was convinced that Primrose would hate the mess but she actually ended up loving it and going in for it, face first. It was the perfect messy cake smash that I was hoping for!

I’m so thankful for these two girls and adore the sweet memories that have been created. Such a sweet first birthday party for the sweetest “twin” bffs! If you have any more questions about the party, ask in the comments and I’ll try to respond ASAP! Thank you for reading and I hope to be back soon!!