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!

Aaargh Matey! A Pirate Party for Miss A

A few months ago, Miss A requested a princess pirate party for her birthday. I wasn't too sure how to blend princess and pirate, so I just went with the pirate theme and made sure there was a pink sparkly jolly rogers on the invitation. She was happy with that! I was inspired by these invitations I saw on Etsy, and my super talented friend Lori helped me make something similar.  The party was from 3:30-6pm, so I had to have everything ready at home so I could pick up 4 little excited party goers from school. My in-laws came over to watch the younger two children, so I'd have more room in my SUV for extra booster seats. In all, there were 13 kids at the party, which was a fair bit of chaos, but they were kept fairly busy, so it went well and there were no injuries other than Miss A starting off her party by being head-butted and getting a wicked bleeding nose. There were also a few moments (when the kids were all pretending that the girls bunk beds were a pirate ship and almost all the kids were on the top bunk) that I got a little nervous, but all was well. Thank goodness!

The highlight of the party for Miss A was opening her presents (At least she was honest, haha) and then the treasure hunt. I handed the little buckaneers the first clue and let them figure it out from there.

The kids divided up the treasure with some help and got to take home their chocolate gold doubloons and dress up jewels. 

They had pizza & fruit to eat and Pirate Pops instead of cake. We put a candle in the head of Miss A's pirate pop as we sang happy birthday to her, but of course the camera was nowhere to be found at that point.

I love planning fun parties for my kids. I love them all everyday, but it's nice to have a special day just for themselves. If I had to pick one of Miss A's defining traits, it would be her compassion. She has a tender heart & I love her for it. Happy 6th birthday Miss A!

Campers: Natures way of feeding mosquitos

I am way behind, and hoping to catch up, so I thought I'd post about Miss C's 4th birthday party. She wanted to have a camping party, but since I was unwilling to take a crew of 2-5 year olds camping, we chose a camping theme & held it at a park instead.

I found these super cute invitations on Etsy, that I had every intention of ordering and handing out, but I had a hard time nailing down a day & it was too late for invitations by the time I finally did. Grandma & Papa were also able to be there, along with 2 friends, Auntie Shelly & 3 cousins. We were sad that Nana & Bampa weren't able to be there, but we celebrated with them a few days before. The party was on a long weekend & the park wasn't nearly as busy as I thought it might be. Thank goodness!

It was a beautiful hot day. The party was held in a spray park downtown. The kids had fun with the water, but I didn't get too close with my camera.

Miss C & daddy have birthdays a day apart. Love you both!

Matt built a fire. How is it that one match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box of matches to start a campfire? It rained the night before & everything was pretty soggy & smokey, but he got it going anyway! Lunch was hotdogs, chips, watermelon & veggies. I brought stuff to make S'mores, but I think the kids were just having too much fun playing to eat.

We set up a tent together. Three and four year olds waving tent poles around probably wasn't the best idea! The kids had fun crawling in and out of the tent in their soggy swimsuits.

Miss C had a campfire birthday cake. The flames were made by crushing hard candies and melting them on a baking sheet lined in tin foil in the oven. The logs were those long round wafer candies with chocolate on the inside.

 The gifts.


I sure love this sweet little girl. She is so full of laughs and giggles. She has the sweetest tiny voice that gets her out of trouble all the time. On Miss C's actual birthday we went around the table at lunch and everyone said something they love about Miss C. There were a few mentions of her sweet little voice and also her hugs and cuddles. She likes to play make believe games and she is really good at puzzles. Her favorite game to play is Mommy & Sweetie. The girls think little girls are called sweeties because I often say, "Come here sweetie..." It makes me smile to hear the girls deciding who gets to be mommy & who gets to be the sweetie.  I love that the girls are such good friends, most of the time. They have the occasional spat, but for the most part, these sweet girls are good little amigas. I'm so grateful to have Miss C in our family. She is such a joy! Happy Birthday, munchkin!

Terrible Twos - One Day In

Yesterday, my baby turned two! Mr. Q's birthday fell on a very busy week, so I'm afraid he got a last minute birthday of sorts.

He enjoyed his tiger cupcake.
Hopefully next year I will be a bit more organized and do something fun.

This was the jungle themed cupcakes.

 Which is your favorite? Quinn chose the tiger.

This morning, I was folding a mountain of laundry in our bedroom, when Mr. Q came in, covered in chocolate. This is a pic after I cleaned him up, before they had to clean the cake out of the carpet. I love how he is looking at Miss C with this 'she made me do it' look on his face. They just picked the big hunks off before I took over. I'm pretty sure they would have done more harm than good. I love cleaning chocolate cake out of my carpet. So. much.

At least they had the courtesy to lick the frosting off before tossing the rest on the floor. How do they learn this stuff? It was one of those days where it was one thing after another. So was yesterday. Tomorrow has got to be better, right?

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!