Tea Time

Miss C's 6th birthday was this past week & on Saturday, we had the cutest tea party to celebrate. Months ago, she started asking about her birthday. She was waffling between wanting a Frozen birthday theme and a tea party, so I steered her towards the tea party and it was so sweet. I started collecting old cups and saucers at garage sales & Kijiji. Garage sales had much better prices than the thrift stores. My wonderful sister-in-law helped me by scouring Value Village for tea pots. We found some old lacy curtains at the thrift store for $2/panel. Collecting everything was so fun. The kids were all pretty helpful at the garage sales, searching the tables for gold rimmed cups & saucers.

I finally tried out my Silhouette on the invitations.

 We made a bunch of cute treats. Those marshmallows are so super easy.

The sugar cookies were fun (and kept me up 'till 2am...) !

The girls all looked adorable in gloves, hats & pearls.

Awe, so sweet!

Miss C was excited about her sparkler.

I'll huff and I'll puff! She's so pretty.

Time to open gifts!
Our sweet Miss C is such a joy. She still has the sweetest little voice and such a charming personality. She has a tender heart, and is always looking out for others. She is so bubbly and peppy, always has a half smile on her face. We are so happy to have this cutie in our home. She brings a fun and playfulness to everything she does. We love you, Miss Muffin!

Cowgirl Shindig

 Miss A loves horses. Since it was her 7th birthday this past week, I thought I'd try to have a Cowgirl party for her. I called a couple of stables, but none were willing to accommodate pony rides for 7 year old kids, so I put it out there to my friends on Facebook. Sure enough, a friend of mine asked her parents if they would let us come out to their home for pony rides and they were willing. These wonderful people, who hardly know us, made my little girls day extra special. Thank you, thank you!

 This was her invitation.

YeeHaw! After school, we went to their acreage and the girls each got a little pony ride through the yard.

Miss A wore the vest and chaps her daddy wore as a kid, and the hat she got at the Canada Day celebration this year. What an adorable cowgirl.

Her cake was a ruffle cake with a dollar store plastic horse perched on top. It was yum. The cake, not the horse.

 Love her toothless grin.

Singing to the birthday girl.
We are so lucky to have this little sweetheart in our family. She is a joy to me and I love her. Happy Birthday Miss A.

Captain America to the Rescue!

This past week was Mr. Q's 3rd birthday. He is such a fun little guy to have around. I love his cuddles, when he stops long enough to sit. I love his laugh, it is so infectious. He loves cars, trucks (especially Mater), tractors, trains, dirtbikes, transformers, boats & pretty much anything that goes. He also likes superheroes, with the exception of the Hulk. He's pretty much terrified of him for some reason. He loves wearing his superman costume around the house pretty much everyday.

When Mr. Q asked for a Captain America birthday, I thought it sounded like a great idea.

 Not only is he an admirable superhero, who fought the Nazi's and stuff, he has a shield which made an incredibly easy birthday cake. Hahaha! The DVD case above is what Matt got out to by the inspiration for his birthday cake. I usually go all out and try to do everything on theme, but.... it had been a busy week. He got a cake, cousins, and a little party. I hope he still felt special.

The fondant was actually really easy. I followed this recipe to make the fondant. A great tip I got from my friend Sherry was to use a bit of Crisco on the counter & rolling pin to help with the stickyness when rolling it out. That helped tremendously.
 The cake is my Grandma Neta's recipe. It is so moist & yummy. I'm gonna share the recipe, since I get asked for it all the time.

Grandma Neta's Chocolate Cake

1/2 c. butter or margarine (I always use butter)
2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. cocoa powder
1 c. buttermilk (I always use 2tsp. white vinegar plus milk to equal 1 c.)
2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 c. boiling water

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease 9X13 pan (or equivalent... I often use 2- 8" round pans or make cupcakes) with a mixture of 1/2 tsp. shortening, 1/2 tsp. oil and 1 tsp. flour. This will help it to release easily from pan. I often use parchment paper on the bottom as well.
In big bowl, cream butter and sugar, then blend in eggs & vanilla. Stir in cocoa powder. Add buttermilk and blend it all together. Add all dry ingredients and stir. The mixture will be really thick. At this point, you pour in the boiling water and carefully stir till it is smooth and well combined. Pour in pan. Bake for about 35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean. If you're making 2 separate pans or cupcakes, it will take much less time.
After about 20 minutes, your house will start smelling amazing. Mmmmm....

Mr. Q was somewhere between really interested & kinda scared when it came to the sparklers. These were the only 2 pics I was able to take because, of course, my memory card was full.

Happy Birthday, sweet boy. We love you!

A glimpse through our spooky windows...

After Halloween last year, I bought some spiderwebs in the clearance area at Superstore, and miracle of all miracles, I actually remembered I had it! Last night, I thought it would be fun to decorate the house with the kids, so we got to work creating monster window decorations, while Matt had a night out building something with one of his friends.I stole the idea from a friend of mine, Niki.

We used sheets of black poster board (which happened to fit in our windows perfectly!) and tissue paper from my wrapping/gift bag stash.  The poster board was 2/$1 at the dollar store, so the total cost was $4.50.

 We had a blast doing it. The kids kept pretending the hanging monster with the arms was going to grab them, and they'd squeal and run away. Too cute! They were especially happy that I let them stay up late to see how they looked from outside after dark.

Since I last posted, we had Miss A's 5th birthday. She wanted to have a makeover party, so we invited a few of her friends from school and had a great time. Here's her invitation:

Seven little girls showed up. The thought crossed my mind to invite all the girls in her class, but I decided that I'd probably go insane, especially if parents came and brought younger siblings... my house is not very big!

I couldn't really think of any traditional games that had anything to do with makeovers for the girls, but I came up with a few weird things that went over pretty well. First I put a dollop of Vaseline on the girls nose and they had to get cotton balls to stick to them. Miss A refused to do that one because she hates being dirty, and Vaseline is sticky. She is definitely Matt's daughter. I found these super long straws at the dollar store. I put a bowl full of water and dish soap inside a big plastic bin, the girls had to blow the straws until they filled the whole bin with bubbles. Then, I had a few balloons and the girls had to use a hair dryer to blow the balloons into a laundry basket tipped on its side. The bubbles was by far the most popular of the games.

My wonderful stylist friend Jen agreed to stay at the party to help me with the hair and nails. We put hair bling in the girls hair, as you can almost see in the photo of Miss A, and painted their nails. We also stuck a little jewel to most of their nails, but those didn't last too long. I was happy that the kids managed to keep their hands glued to the table until their nails were dry, for the most part, and I didn't have to deal with any nasty nail polish mishaps. I'm grateful for those cheap plastic tablecloths.

 The cake was a sad story. I stayed up until 4:30am and the fondant was a nightmare. My first batch had to be thrown out at 11:30pm, due to the paddles on my Bosch mixer exploding into shards through the fondant. My poor Bosch. I went ahead and made my second batch. For some reason, that batch never got to the right consistency probably due to an overtired-not-thinking-straight error on my part. Overall, it was a heartbreaking mess. Finally at about 4am, I decided I gave up and threw the ugly, bumpy, crumbly fondant on the cake and called it a night. It was supposed to look like a bottle of nail polish. Not one of my best cakes, that's for sure. Oh well, at least I tried.

 We were able to go to Saskatchewan for Thanksgiving and also for my great grandma Dorothy Palmer's 100th Birthday party. Her birthday isn't until next month, but you don't want to put off a party for this occasion too long. It was nice to be able to go and see her, though she doesn't remember us anymore due to Alzheimer's. Almost all of her descendents were able to be there.
Great grandma Dorothy lived a block down the street from me when I was growing up. I can remember watching the ants on the  peonies that lined the front of her home. I used to push our lawn mower to her house to mow the grass for her. I always remember her front room had bright red carpet and all sorts of trinkets that we weren't allowed to touch. She's a hard worker. She still washed her own floors (probably on her hands and knees) when she was 90. Grandma Dorothy hated wastefulness, and has a sweet tooth like no other. She had a tin foil collection in a drawer in the kitchen. Before the Alzheimer's struck, she had a great memory for peoples names and birthdays and who they married. I didn't inherit that trait, but my grandma sure did. Grandma Dorothy is a great woman whose legacy will last long beyond her time here. She only has one daughter, 5 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, I think there are 23 great-great grandkids (my kids fit here), and I know there are some great-great-great grandchildren now too.

Thanks for everything, Great Grandma Dorothy! We love you!

My Hottie Husband

We had a swimming birthday party & BBQ for Matt and his brother last night. The weather was beautiful while everyone was in the pool. We brought burgers, hotdogs and birthday cake/cupcakes and everyone else brought salads, drinks, veggies, fruit, chips, bread and dip. It was a great feast!
Clouds, lightening and wind rolled in, as soon as we finished eating. What great timing!

 I feel so lucky to have such a wonderful man for a husband! He holds down the fort twice a week so I can get away to work out for a couple of hours. Maybe that isn't such a big deal to others, but it does mean he has given up doing things he would like to do so that I can have some time to myself on a regular basis, and that means a lot to me. He folds the laundry and cleans up the kitchen after supper. He works hard supporting us, so I can stay home with the kids. He really is a wonderful father. I just asked the girls what they love most about him. Miss A said she loves cuddles, watching shows and when daddy plays music in the living room so she can dance. Miss C said she loves it when he makes her popcorn and when she gets to go swimming with him. He makes time for them, which I especially appreciate right when he gets home from work and I'm trying to make supper and have had a rough day. I love listening to the giggles and happy squeals when they have Wrestle Mania in the living room when he gets home from work. He is always dependable and does what he says he will do and reminds me when I forget something I've said I will do too.  I love it when he kisses me in front of the kids and they (mostly Miss A) say, "Daaadddy! Don't kiss Mommy!!!" and he always does it again. He is affectionate and sweet. I am lucky to have such a handsome and loving husband.

I hope you had a wonderful birthday, babe! I love you!

I pronounce the P in raspberry.

My sister, my mom and I picked raspberries yesterday. A lot of raspberries. We were raised to be gatherers. My grandma taught my mom and she taught us. I love eating jam that I've made from berries I picked. Here's a pic of our harvest.

 Today is Matt's Birthday so we made posters for him while he was at work and hung them on the fence so he would see them when he got home. We are going swimming tonight and having a BBQ to celebrate Matt & his brothers birthday. Hopefully we have a fun time and the weather cooperates!

Calling All Superheroes!!

Today is little C's 3rd birthday. We had a fun superhero themed party for her last week. Here's the invitation.

I tried to take a picture of all the little superheroes, but it was impossible. If someone knows how to get 9 kids 5 and under to stand still, in the same place, at the same time, for a picture, let me know! This pic has the most kids in it. The birthday girl was crying inside at this point, I believe, after whacking her head on the edge of the granite counter. It was a rough day for her, all around. 

I made capes & masks for the little superheroes, instead of giving out candy as treat bags. The capes were a bigger hit than the masks. I had a hard time judging the head sizes for the kids, and hardly any of the masks fit. I used my own children as templates and they have either abnormally large or small heads, so it didn't work out quite as well as I had hoped.

Here's a shot showing the capes. The kids all had their initial on the back. I was really happy with how cute they turned out. Miss C was still grumpy at this point and refused to look at the camera. Miss A is quite the ham, on the other hand.

We had an obstacle course of sorts where the kids raced marbles through pool noodles, threw a ball through hula hoops suspended in the tree, had to bounce on a ball with a handle around some traffic cones, then I was going to have the kids walk the plank (over the kiddie pool), but in the mad rush before the kids arrived, I forgot and then couldn't get it set up in time. I think they had fun anyway!

The kiddie pool had been filled with this homemade bubble concoction, which was basically water with 5 cups of Dawn dish soap and a little bottle of glycerine I bought at the drug store. When the wind had died down, it made some nice big bubbles. Of course, C sat down in the pool and got fantastically soapy and wet. She had a blast with the big bubbles!

We had rainbow themed food, since the superhero capes were a rainbow of colours. I bought a package of rainbow licorice and my (almost 3 year old) nephew probably ate 10 pieces. The rainbow jell-o was fun. I messed up on the bottom purple layer, but got the hang of it after that. It really looked cute! The rainbow fruit kabobs were also a hit. We had hotdogs and veggies, but I only took pictures of the rainbow foods.

Instead of doing a superhero cake, I decided to make a rainbow one. I bought a bottle of pink bubblegum flavoring at a little kitchen store in town and used that in the frosting instead of vanilla. What 3 year old doesn't like bubblegum? I personally thought that the cake looked a lot better than it tasted but whatever, it was a party for my little sweetie!

The birthday girl got to enjoy the first piece of birthday cake. Her favorite was the purple layer.

My sweet little "C" has been a joy to us since she joined our family 3 years ago. She has the most adorable tiny speaking voice and is always telling the rest of her family that she loves us. She is loving and kind. We gave her a package of 3 Lip Smackers lip balm (oh, how our girls love lip balm...) today and she let her sister choose which one she wanted, without us even suggesting her share it. What a sweetie! Happy Birthday, little missy! We love you!