Yard

The kids were doing a bit of yard work, and by that I really do mean a little tiny bit. Our backyard consists of pool, concrete, and fake grass putting green. There are two trees in planters and two little flower areas. The front yard has two topiary trees (at least that is what we call them), some roses, a big climbing "paper" tree, and a weird grass like ground cover stuff. So, it is a pretty low maintenance yard. But, between the front walkway and the driveway is this odd little strip of ground that was full of flowers which had been taken over by weeds and snails which was causing the flowers to die. Whatever. I wasn't super attached to the flowers anyhow.
In anticipation of needing to park 3 cars in our driveway the space needed to be more user friendly, Hugging the side of the suburban while getting in and out of it with little girls in tow was really annoying. So, I solved the problem. Around 50 flagstones and a few flats of moss and a lot of work and it is so much nicer! The moss will spread and fill in all of the space between the flagstones. It will be much easier to give a kid the job of pulling weeds because anything taller than 2 inches gets pulled. They can totally figure that one out without getting confused between a flowering plant and a weed. Hahaha!

So, now we can walk in the area and I still have a splash of color from a few pots of flowers. The sprinklers water the moss and the flowers. I'm loving this new solution!

Princess Party

What little girl doesn't want a princess party? So far all of my girls have wanted one, so I kind of have things figured out by now. So daughter #3 had her princess party on Saturday to celebrate her 4th birthday. She had informed me that Cinderella was her favorite princess, so she starred in the party.
Decorations were pretty simple. Pink crepe paper streamers all over the place with pink balloons that we taped up with the streamers. I'm not a huge fan of regular balloons because I am fairly paranoid until they are all in the garbage and away from little people who think that they want to "help" blow them up. But, on the other hand I am too cheap to buy the fancy balloons. You know the kind, they are $4-$8 apiece at the party store or grocery store. Well, the other day I stopped at the dollar store and discovered that they sell them! So a helium filled "fancy" balloon is $1. I can do those sort of prices. So, we got several princess balloons to add to the party atmosphere.

We asked that all of the princesses come dressed in their finery. My two little girls loved getting dressed up for the party. The birthday girl was of course Cinderella and the little sister wore a princess dress I had made a few years ago for Halloween. Add the tiaras and they were perfect!

For the cake I decided to do the traditional doll cake. We found a Cinderella barbie at the store and then I used my Pampered Chef mixing bowl to bake the cake (it takes two to get the height needed). Add some frosting, color and roll out the fondant, stick the doll in, and then finish off with some frosting and edible pearls.

But then I got to thinking, where would I put the candles? So, I made some cupcakes to go around the base. I found some cute cupcake wraps, picks, and then the perfect candles. For the frosting I tried the jello frosting that has been going around Pinterest. I got the perfect pink color with a yummy flavor from strawberry jello. It is a pretty good frosting, but not for everything.

I had plenty of games and activities to keep little girls entertained and busy. We made necklaces.

 Had a royal ball freeze dance.

 

 

 Played Pin the Kiss on the Frog.

 We colored princess pictures, played poison apple (hot potato, but with an apple), and find Cinderella's slipper (hot and cold). It was a lot of fun to introduce the girls to traditional party games. Most of them had never played them. Lots of fun!

Then we opened presents and had cupcakes (we ended up saving the cake for the next day which was her actual birthday).

 It was a wonderful party. The birthday girl had a great time, and we heard that the visiting princesses loved it as well. Yay!

Matching outfits

One of the joys of having two little girls is being able to dress them super cute and matchy. I'm sure I've said that before, but I really am thoroughly enjoying it. I loved it the first time around with my two big girls. But, this time it is even better. Why? Well, I have more time to sew for them. I have more money, although not excessively so. And, I realize that eventually they refuse to let you dress them the same. Just the thought of trying to get my 14 year old and 12 year old daughters to dress "matchy" is cracking me up. Hahahaha!
I sewed these pants and shirts for the little girls the other day, but I'm just having Alissa model it this time. I didn't even get her hair done or the hair pretty put in. Ugh! Oh well, at least you can see the outfit. I think that they turned out really cute. I'm looking forward to some warmer weather (yes I know, I live in Southern California, it is pretty much always relatively warm) so that they can wear them together. It really needs to be in the 80's to be comfortable in these very summery outfits.

A day of love

Valentine's Day is kind of a funny holiday in my mind. It does feel a little contrived and it can put unnecessary pressure on loved ones. When my sweet husband and I were very first married we were of course poor college students. When Valentine's Day rolled around we were just coming up on our 2 month anniversary. I opted to make sugar cookies for my love and make a nice dinner. We decided that Valentine's Day would be a stay at home sort of a holiday and a tradition was born.
Every year (although I am sure I have missed a year or two over the past 20 years) I make sugar cookies. The kids usually help me decorate all of them and we have a great time. The other tradition we have is that I make a super fancy dinner. We get out the nice dishes, champagne glasses, fancy goblets, eat by candlelight, etc. In other words I pull out all the stops for this particular dinner.
This year I decided to do steaks, baked asparagus, mashed potatoes, homemade rolls, and king crab legs. Oh, and of course you can't forget the sparkling apple cider. These crab legs were absolutely enormous. We had to put one of the claws on the plate for the picture because the legs stuck off of the plate by about 5 inches on either side. So yummy!

Valentine's Day to me is a day to tell not only my wonderful husband how much I love him, but also my fabulous children. We don't do gifts, and rarely even do flowers (I can't stand that florists double their prices for the few days before and after Valentine's Day!). It is not a stressful holiday. It is all about family, and for that reason it is one of my favorite holidays.

I didn't disappear!

I knew I was getting behind on my posts, but I didn't realize it was this bad! Despite my lack of posting I actually have been creating like crazy. I've been on a serious sewing kick. And by that I mean, I've been doing almost nothing else. Have I mentioned before that I think I get a little OCD about things? Yeah, I get going on something, and if it is something that I like doing, I get a little out of control. I obsessively continue in whatever the activity tends to be. Too bad I don't like exercise or house cleaning, or at least not yet. I suppose there is still hope for me in those areas.
I've been buying fabric of course, but I've also been trying to use up some of the fun fabric that I already had on hand. With that in mind I made two almost matching skirts for the little girls. They are made with 3 coordinating black and cream fabrics. I had Alissa wear her skirt to church with some Persnickity (dang I love their clothes! Many of my creations are inspired by their things.) lace ruffled leggings and lace t-shirt. She was too cute for words. Oh, and of course she was sporting the matching hair pretty that I had made as well.

Here is where I promise to do better. Hahaha. I guess time will tell.

Raspberry and Lime dresses

I love to sew. I've been sewing for pretty much as long as I can remember. I remember sewing when I was 6 or 7 I think. Well, I love to make pretty things, and my two youngest children are the primary beneficiaries of that effort. Dressing two little adorable girls is just the best. I came across this fabric at the store and knew I wanted to do something bold and fun with it. I wasn't exactly sure what, so I bought a generic amount of fabric. Well, I ended up having enough fabric to make 4 dresses and several elaborate hair pretties. I made 2 of each size of dress, so each little girl gets one dress and the other will get put up on etsy sometime soon.

Getting ready for church this morning I had enough time to go snap a few pictures of them in their dresses and hair pretties. I think these dresses turned out pretty well. I opted to fully line the dresses because the fabric is thin, and that of course adds to the brain workout as I altered the pattern as I went. There were so many yokes and shoulder pieces and such. Oh my! I don't know that I will make this pattern again any time soon.

 

Two adorable sisters!

 

The big sister hair pretty

 

 The baby sister hair pretty. She wouldn't let me take a picture, so I snuck up on her as she was going inside. The things a mom has to do to get pictures sometimes!

Mythbusters birthday party

My 4th baby turned 10 the other day, so today we had his birthday party with 10 boys over to help us celebrate. Due to extenuating circumstances he hadn't had a friend party since he was 6 or 7! I don't even remember the last party, yeah let's all vote for me as mom of the year. Ugh! So, I went all out for this party. I had a hard time coming up with a birthday party idea for 10 year old boys, until I hit on the Mythbusters idea. My son is a HUGE science and math guy, they are his favorite subjects by far. If he gets control of the tv he always watches Mythbusters. So, the science route is the way we went. Last night I made the cake.

It was a 4 layer alternating white and chocolate cake. I opted to go for a caution tape style with fondant. Then as an attempt to recreate the sign look that the tv show does with sawdust I used crushed graham crackers to go around the letters.

I kept some of the elements of the party a surprise. As the boys were arriving we had the Mythbusters show playing with the mini myths show. Then I welcomed all of the boys and told them that we had some special guests to help us with the party today. Just then my husband and oldest son walked around the corner and the birthday boy fell over laughing hysterically. Why? Here ya go:

My husband is mostly bald (he keeps his hair cut to a very very short buzz). I got him a black beret and a nasty looking huge mustache and he made an amazing Jamie Hyneman. Absolutely recognizable, it was awesome. My son has red hair, so he has been growing his facial hair the last few weeks. This morning he shaved it into a goatee, added the thick black nerd glasses, and became Adam Savage. They looked amazing. I think it was my favorite part of the whole experience. I may have them use these as Halloween costumes.

I had purchased safety goggles for all of the boys from amazon (dang I love amazon, but it isn't always the best that ANYTHING I want practically I can buy with just a few clicks - LOL).

We started with "Jaime" helping all of the boys make tubes for doing the mentos and diet coke experiment. They made them out of 2-liter bottle caps, pvc pipe, pvc cap, epoxy putty, and a couple of drilled holes out of which the soda would explode. 10 year old boys tend to like to build things and blow things up, so it was a pretty good combination.

Then we moved on to making homemade gak (thank you Pinterest for some great ideas!) and exploding snow. I had purchased a package of 10 small plastic containers at the dollar store so each of the boys could go home with a little bit of the gak.

I sent them outside to build a toast dropping machine. They tested the myth that toast always lands butter side down. By this point we were starting to run short of time a little bit and the boys started eating the toast rather than dropping them. So, that was a big clue that we needed to get lunch on the table pretty quickly. I brought out the ballistics gel and a pack of cards so that they could test whether a playing card could cut into flesh when it was thrown.

While my daughter was cooking the pizzas I took the boys back out front to do the elephants toothpaste experiment. That is always a big hit.

One problem with running a crazy party for 10 boys is that there just isn't time to take pictures. It is all you can do to keep on top of everything!

We did the gift opening thing, ate pizza, and served up the cake and ice cream as their parents started to arrive. I sent them all home with a goodie bag that included:
A folder with all of the experiments we did and some more that they could do at home.
A container of gak.
Their pvc pipe contraption for the mentos and diet coke experiment.
Mentos
A tootsie pop with a note asking how many licks it takes to get to the center (does anyone else remember that advertisement from their youth?).
A package of pop rocks with a note directing them to youtube to watch the pop rocks and soda myth that the Mythbusters did on their show.
A bar of ivory soap so that they could do the ivory soap explosion (which was included in their folder).
And finally a package of gum, because that is just fun. :)

I think it was a smashing success. 

I got a bunch of my ideas, and most of what was in each folder from:
http://www.cometogetherkids.com/2012/02/super-science-birthday-party.html
I added the mentos and diet coke experiment and the recipes for gak and exploding snow as well.