rushley & crew

I love to throw parties, but I don't get the chance (or have the budget!) often enough! However, when one of my good friends, Katie Allan, was having her second baby (but the opposite gender of her first baby), I jumped at the chance to throw her a little baby sprinkle :) And it turned out pretty great, if I do say so, myself :D I browsed Pinterest for ideas, and re-created this invitation. I was initially thinking I'd create a photo backdrop, which is why I hung the gold sheet, but then we didn't end up using it that way, so I probably would have liked the whole set-up better if I had just let the natural window light come through here, but oh well :) For refreshments, we had an ice cream bar along with a sprinkle-covered cake. The sprinkle-covered cake taught me to never work with sprinkles ever again 😂 They just bounce and fly EVERYWHERE! haha The cute mama! :) For activities/games, I just planned one game, and it was a total hit! I had guests se

A few months ago, I had literally JUST started following @knowhowmomtips on Instagram when she shared about an upcoming marriage retreat in Bryce Canyon. I read the details and decided I wanted to go. If I had been following her for any amount of time, it would have made more sense, because at least I would have had a better idea of what kinds of things she teaches. But I really didn't know anything about her and I wanted to go anyway. I just liked the idea of going away for the weekend with Russ and learning stuff to help our marriage grow and flourish. While it took some time to make the final decision, Russ and I both decided to go for it. And I'm so glad we did! The conference was two days PACKED with everything. The conference was mentally, emotionally, physically, and socially draining! But in such a good way. We learned about tools for connecting and communicating better, how to deal with solvable and perpetual conflicts, and how to move forward building a

Date night has always been a struggle for me and Russ, even before Ada was born. We've gone through spurts of date night, but nothing ever sticks for long. Part of the reason for this is that, for a long time, I felt like dinner and movies shouldn't count as dates because they were so "normal" and things that we did every day anyway -- date night should be something exciting and special, every time . Another part of the reason is that we could never nail down a way that worked for us to switch up who plans. Trading off weeks didn't work, me planning most date nights didn't work, it just didn't work. Add in a baby and it's been even harder to try to make things work! Enter Erica. Erica is one of my good friends. I should do a blog post all about why Erica is great, but for now we'll just talk about her date idea that just resonated with me, and which has been working really well for two solid months now. She said that she and her husband tr