In heaven!

This past weekend, we went to a get together at someone's house near a couple of 'farms'. One of the neighbors had his horse's over to give rides.It just so happens that I am a HUGE horse lover and took riding lessons for years...but when I found out I was pregnant over 7 years ago with our first baby, I quit. I haven't yet been able to get back.
So both Kalla and Zachary agreed to ride with me. This was their first experience on a horse. Kalla was so excited to try she could burst. However once on our ride she decided it was too bouncy and didn't really like it. Z after a bit of hesitation, decided to ride with me as well (he was about too big to be in that saddle with me, but we made due). He really liked it.
The other two were enamored with the goats. lol Micah wants to know when we can go back. :)

THE party

We had Kalla's birthday party this past weekend. Everyone had a really good time.

We hired a lady clown to make balloon animals and paint faces (or arms in this case). Here's Kalla with her big butterfly balloon.

The lady painted wonderful glittery pictures on the kids arms and hands.
They were very proud to show them all off!

Here's the decorations. Pretty simple.
Though I couldn't bear to put pizza boxes on the table so I put the pizza on large plastic trays.
I made the flower balloon decorations from Martha Stewart...a surprisingly easy project.
And a banner from her site as well.
Party favors were the glitter playdough (pink for the girls and bright orange for the boys) and cookie cutters and small bag of candy.

....And I'm still recovering! lol

Bug expedition

My kids LOVE bugs (well the non icky kind--by my definition). Roly polies, ladybugs, inch worms, caterpillars, etc. We found this lovely grasshopper yesterday and captured it in the kids new bug collecting toy kit. This is a cute kit that has this huge specimen container that the lid is a large magnifying glass. It came with a small collecting plastic jar, a magnifying glass, tweezers and some other bug collecting supplies.
The boys decided to go "exploring" looking for more bugs in the yard. Of course the grasshopper went for a ride on the back.

Later I went out to release the grasshopper during the kids rest time and he wouldn't hop out. So I left the container open and left him there. Later I went to put the jeep up and found him hanging out on the back. He musta liked his ride.

Glitter Playdough

I don't remember where I first saw the notion of glitter playdough, but when I did I knew it would be a great party favor for Kalla's birthday party. Super simple to make!

4 C all purpose flour

2 C non-iodized salt

4 C water

8 tsp cream of tartar

4 tbsp cooking oil

Cook and stir on med-low til forms. Careful not to burn. If coloring, mix food coloring in water first. When cooled down, knead dough and put in sealed container.

To add glitter just use craft glitter and knead into dough. Keep adding glitter til it is as 'sparkly' as you desire.

This recipe makes a ton. I got 7 individual containers out of less than half.

Rainbow chocolate chunk cookie sandwiches

I made these yummy, decadent cookies for dessert for a meal I was taking to a friend who just had a baby. Recipe follows:

Rainbow Chocolate Chunk Cookie Sandwiches

1 package devil's food cake mix
1/2 C butter or marg, softened
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 C chopped nuts (opt)
1 C colored white choc chunks (see how to following recipe) or choc chips of choice

Preheat oven 350F. Beat half cake mix, butter, vanilla and eggs in bowl on medium speed until smooth. Stir in remaining mix and choc chips. Drop dough by rounded tsp about 2 inches apart onto cookie sheet**. Bake 10-12 mins until edges are set (centers will be soft). cool 1 min, then transfer to cooling rack.

To make sandwiches use buttercream frosting for middles.
**These cookies are dense so to make them flatter for sandwiches, press cookie dough down with spatula to flatten before baking.

To make colored chunks, you can use either the colored melting candies from a cake/candy shop or make your own. Melt down white choc chips, add powdered or gel coloring, then spread on wax paper, let harden and then cut with knife into chunks.

Enjoy yourself, makes a nice gift or nice alternative to cupcakes for kids to share at school for their birthdays. :)

Next I want to try a golden cake mix and use choc frosting.

Some gifts

This is the simplest little book to make and wonderful for babies. It is bright, durable, chewable and can be personalized. I made this one for my niece's upcoming 1st birthday. I totally ripped this idea off of my sister. She made an identical book for Maressa for Christmas and she loves it.
Just need some card stock, stickers or other small pictures (I used a variety of die cuts and the above animal pics from the cow party decorations and stickers for my book. One of the pages even has a picture of the birthday girl (cleverly obtained from forwarded email pictures. You can tie these off with just standard ribbon, however I made these fabric ties as the poor girl struggles with eczema and needs only 100% cotton touching her and I figured on the chewing on the ties. :)

I made this simple skirt and embellished shirt for her too.

This is a potholder and embellished dish towel a week or so ago for a bridal shower.
I like collecting a few things off registries and then add something homemade to top it off.

Seeing Red

I did get that room done last week!From beige to tomato red! I LOVE it! I had a red room in our last house and it was my favorite. Not fun to paint, but at least in this room there wasn't much trim to go around and it's empty. Eventually it will have a sofa along the long wall and an upright piano against the short wall.

All I have left now is the dining room and hallway/foyer area...both covered in hideous wallpaper. I plan to paint the foyer and hallway a light caramel color and the dining room a light celery and all the trim and doors bright clean white.

While I'm talking about painting, here are a few good tips.

*if painting bold colors (like red that is translucent) use grey primer and put on 2 good solid coats before the color.

*remove tape from walls/trim while paint is wet (otherwise it might pull up some of your paint too).

*if you get small spots on pile carpet, it sometimes can be cut off with sharp scissors depending on the size and depth of spill (be sure to be careful not to leave a bald spot).

*if you have to stop mid painting and have to come back later, wrap roller with paint in clear wrap and store in fridge (learned this AWESOME trick from DIY channel last year).

*if have leftover paint, store in plastic sealed container with label for touch ups later.

5 years ago....

I fell in love with my first baby girl.

4 years ago, she had a smidge more hair than Maressa does now...

3 years ago she loved Blues Clues!

2 years ago she was my chocolate covered butterfly...


1 year ago she was my princess....


Here she is today. My big girl! Where did the 5 years go???

Baby Boy Shower

Just had a fun baby boy shower for a good friend of mine. No particular theme this time, just blues and greens. I made chocolate cupcakes and homemade light green buttercream icing and toothpick decorations I made with the MS stickers. And I put "It's a Boy" Hershey kisses around them (found at Walmart). Old fashioned candy sticks fill a small vase/jar for favors.
I found these REALLY cool frames at Walmart. They are plastic and come in pink, yellow, green and blue. They have tops and bottoms like Lego's and the windows are on front and back and are snow globe like (with the water and white snow stuff). For the shower, I put the name of the baby in them and gave them as part of my gift. She can use them for decorations for his room or replace them with pics.
The food was simple. Fruit and yogurt parfaits, mini quiches, mini blueberry muffins and Sister Schuberts sausage rolls...mmmmm! And a pitcher of a citrus punch and iced vanilla chai tea.

This silver platter/dish thing has been the best investment. The 3 rings are actually all attached to one base and are 3 sizes and heights. Perfect for parties. I got it at Hobby Lobby a month or so ago and I love it.

For gift I made my standard hoodie towel and included some cute stuffies I found at Target.

I have a girlfriend who just gave birth and another due any day. It's really REALLY giving me baby fever...I've never really experienced this before as for the last 7 years I've been pregnant or had an infant! So I'm going through the mourning of no more babies and it's making me crazy! I SO could go for a tiny baby boy right now! Sigh........

Cute little invitations

....if I do say so myself! I've been working on these invites to Kalla's party next weekend. No particular theme, but I did promise flowers. So lots of bright colors (and she has approved the plaid plates I picked out) and flowers and balloons. I've hired a balloon artist/clown lady (she doesn't wear the makeup though...that would likely freak out 2 middle children in our house). She will make balloon animals and paint faces for an hour on our patio. So I don't have to come up with crafts or activities. $5 pizzas, flower cupcakes and lots of decorations and we'll call it a day. I'm rather pleased with my cute invitations. I don't scrapbook, so limited supplies there. I used cookie cutters actually to trace my flowers and gingerbread man figure and added a dress and hair.

Speaking of scrapbooking, while I don't as mentioned above, I do have lots of use for many of the supplies for making invitations and other paper crafts.

So I was SO stoked to see the MS craft line at Walmart!!! I know I could go to Michaels for that stuff, but that's all the way across town! Now I have access to a small, but nice selection down the street. I picked up these adorable stickers to make cupcake decorations for a baby shower I'm hosting this Sat. Got the plaid plates (I must be in a plaid mood lately) at Target. I just love blue and green together...esp when it's not just fish and frogs!

Other crazy things I'm doing this week, only days before hosting a party in my home are making new curtains for the living room.
And it would just NOT be normal for me if I wasn't taking on a huge project days away from a party. I'm finally getting around to painting the front room (it has no name nor furniture, but I've been determined to get rid of the beige in this house, wall by wall!) This is our extra room. It's been the 'train room', storage room and 'basketball room' as when we first moved in 2 years ago, it held everything we didn't know where to put. However, this is the room right in the front door to the right, so I didn't like that for long. Then it held the kid's train table and lately it has a toddler basketball goal, which believe it or not Matt and Z have quite rousing games of basketball!
Anyway, it can't just be any color! It will be red. Which means 2 coats of grey primer and probably 2 coats of red. Wonderful tomato red with white trim (it was beige too.....BLECK!)

One day, I hope to put our khaki sleeper sofa, some chairs and end tables, a piano and nice funky trow rug in here. For now, the red walls will look awesome this Christmas when we put the tree up in front of the windows.

Slow down

A couple weeks back a lady in my bible class mentioned the 'old days' when Sunday afternoon was spent sipping lemonade on the porch. I LOVE the idea of that! I'm a person who likes to stay busy and it's hard for me to slow down. But I'm hoping that when I do make myself slow down, that maybe somehow time will slow down too and my babies won't grow up so fast.

With that in mind, I decided to do something I'd never tried. I made homemade lemonade. And there was something quite satisfying about squeezing those lemons for it too. If you've never done it, I highly recommend it. I don't know if I could ever go back to fake lemonade now! lol It's extremely simple to make too. Just a cup of sugar and cup of water and boil til dissolved. Mix with cup of freshly squeezed lemons and 3-4 more cups of water. Makes about a quart (I made double and made 2 quarts...it took a whole bag of lemons.) Made these cookies to go with it and we were in heaven. I definitely plan on spending more time on the deck sipping lemonade with the kids.


Completely different note, I got this in the mail the other day.
This tv stand from Company Kids for our playroom. Love it already. Won't be putting anything in it or the tv on it til we can secure it to the wall (it's kinda tall, esp compared to our kids and can't take the chance of them pulling it over with the tv on it.)
Definitely a HUGE improvement over our old one! ;)

post patriotic and misc stuff

Well, I guess I took a week off of blogging last week. Trying to get back in the mode. Here are some pics from 4th of July weekend. I like the above pic as you can see the outline of the flag in front of the fireworks.
We went to the river, took a picnic and watched a nice display Sat night the 5th while eating these cookies. yum!

We went with another family we are close with. Our kids all have another the same age and they paired up on this evening.

The oldest held their webkinz and discussed webkinz matters and watched the boats. The next two, discussed who knows...lol
And the youngest were up to mischief as usual.
Micah didn't have a match for him, but he doesn't seem to care.

Here is M's outfit I was working on. The bloomers came out longer than the previous ones, but that's ok.

The fan she's holding is the patriotic ones I tried from Martha's website. As usual her "simple" crafts aren't so. I'm just glad I'm not the only one who struggled with this one. One of my fav crafters did as well.

To make up for it I made these SUPER simple (and genius I do think) choc covered marshmallows...needed to do something with the leftover ones from the cow cakes.