Balloon Gow

This past weekend the University hosted a Balloon Glow. Tons of people showed up to see 3 balloons light up. It was the first time I've been close to one so it was a fun experience.

Taking some family pictures while we waited for the event to start.

Monkey was a little hesitant at first.

Bubbie thought it was the coolest thing ever.

gearing up for next week's game

Old School Reading Rainbow Theme

Reading Rainbow, I loved this show. When I had Monkey I immediately went to PBS to locate the show. I couldn't find it, it was gone. No idea when it went off the air, but I just loved it as a kid and Monkey LOVES books so I thought this would be perfect for her. I'm hoping there are DVDs of the series and hoping that "Greee-Ma" is reading this and locates the DVDs for monkey for Christmas. Hint hint.

thank you note

Yesterday monkey got a Birthday card in the mail from her Great-Grandparents. She's never met them, they live on the East coast, but they always send her a gift and a card. They also send the kids a valentine's card with a little cash and I think that's really cute. We take them out for ice cream with it. Anyways, Thanks g'pa and g'ma for remembering the nuggets. Hope one day you can meet them.

making head bands for you and yours

I love making these for Monkey. I love 1. that I don't have to spend a ton of money buying them from a boutique and 2. that I can personalize them to what colors my daughter has in her closet and her style. Yes, style, at 3 she has a dreamy fairy style going on. Here's how to make one for you and your nugget.

HERE

pick a pumpkin

I was thinking the other day how soon it will be pumpkin picking time. We love to go to a field and pick our own pumpkins but, can't get over how freakin' expensive they are. It's the experience I guess. That must be why a large pumpkin is $18. Making these, I think, will make you feel like your money went much farther. Although, we will still buy a fresh pumpkin for the kids to carve. Both of these look really simple to make. I think we have some random wood that would like to be recycled into a pumpkin.

Here's how to make this one above.

Here's how to make these above

broncos jammies

While in Boise we picked up some Bronco fabric to make Jammies for the kids. That was in July. Since then I have been dreading making them. I can not understand pattern directions to save my life. I can only do it visually and not try to understand the terms on the sheet. Saturday Boise State was playing and the hubsters brother and family came over to watch the game. Since I am a HUGE football fan I asked my SIL to help me make the jammie's. When I say helped, I mean, she just told me where to sew. So, we knocked out two jammie bottoms in the length of the game.

Oh, Boise won.

one thing I do miss about working outside of the home

Do you know who this lady is? You're never gonna guess because I didn't even know what she looked like since she's on the radio. Her name is Delilah and I'm not sure she's on in every city. She is here and her program starts at 7pm. She's a talk show personality. She talks to people about their troubles and really gets noisy, digging into their love life, getting them to say things that they probably wouldn't even confess to their best friend. Anyway, the hubster hates when I listen to her at night, but I like to tune in whenever I think about it. When I worked in the dorm setting at my old job when I first started I would start my students bath time routine by turning down the lights and turn on Delilah.

She plays soft rock and love songs, so it just melted my stress of the day when I did this daily with the kids I worked with. They were Deaf, but I still would dance with them and just hold them. I loved doing this every night with them. And so, when I'm doing late night grocery shopping I turn on Delilah and think about how easy that job was compared to the job I have now. Oh how I miss the simple days.

wow

This is just some of the juice that fell on his head, dripped all down his back and into the diaper. When the hubster was giving him a bath last night he thought he had a severe diaper rash and came to show me. I told him that it wasn't a diaper rash , that it was just cherry limeade. It stained his skin and tookk a good washing to get the coloring off.

OMG!

So, the whole point of "The Secret" is the laws of attraction, change the way you think. Well, after Bubbie dumped a pitcher of red juice on the top of his head and looked like a scene from "Carrie" and after I turned off the water in the back realizing it's been running for 8 hours and slipping in urine on the floor and hurting a already hurt back I just whisper to myself "It's going to be a good day, it's going to end stress free etc..." I almost want to say to "The Secret" you can just bite me.

Try again tomorrow?

cupcakes you could just gobble up!

Funny thing about this costume. Last Halloween I saw a little girl in my church wearing this costume and thought "WOW, how cute and creative is that!" But, I couldn't figure out if she made it or if it was store bought...now I know. Not sure I spend that much on a costume, okay, I would never spend that much on a costume, but it sure is cute. Last night we asked Monkey what she wanted to be for Halloween. She replied "Cinderella." That was so last year. I don't know why she just stares at me when I make those comments. She's gonna have to do better than that since her Cinderella dress has seen better days. What are your kids going as?

Mini Tiramisu Chocolate Cakes

I made these last night to try out on the Hubster's co-workers. I do this so hen I do a Pampered Chef show I know exactly what recipes to use. They're all great, but I want the best ones for a show. I also want them to be easy to do and quick, so monkey helped me with these and they were really simple to make.

Funny thing about these though. Tiramisu has coffee as one of the ingredients. We do not drink coffee and I thought that I would ask my neighbors if they have a few tablespoons I could have. I kept think about getting the coffee and putting off going next door. Going back a bit, the Hubster brought home a DVD a co-worker gave him to watch. I'm sure you've heard Oprah talking about "The Secret." If you haven't here's the cliffs notes version. It's based on the laws of attraction. If we are worried everyday about getting bill is the mail, well then, we're going to get lots of bills. If you're constantly saying I hate debt we're never gonna get out of deft, well then, you're right. So, this teaches you to think differently about how you desire to have things you want or go you're way. SO, short story long...we got the Sunday paper yesterday and right on the cover is a FREE 1/2 lbs. bag of Milstone coffee! We just laughed because it matched what we've been trying this weekend. Truly, I have no idea if this is real or not, but hey, it doesn't hurt. Thinking positively is not a secret.

Here's the recipe to try out. The hubster's co-workers said they are exquisite, and decadent. Give 'em a try.

Cakes:
1 small pkg Devil's food cake (1 2/3 cup)
1/4 sour cream
1 egg
1 tbsp. instant coffee
1 tbsp. water
1/3 coffee liqueur
( if you don't have any 1/4 c. water, 1/4 sugar, 1 tsp. instant coffee gran. and 1 tsp. rum extract flavoring. Heat in the micro for 1-2 minutes or until sugar is dissolved).

Filling and topping:
1 1/2 whipped topping
8 oz. cream cheese (room temp)
1/4 c. powdered sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract
cocoa powder for topping if desired

1. Preheat oven 350. Spray mini- muffin pan with non-stick spray. For cakes, mix cake mix, sour cream coffee granules, egg and water in a bowl. Divide mixture into the muffin tin (24). Bake 8-10 minutes.

2. Place the whipped cream in a resealable plastic bag and set aside. For filling combine cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth and place inside another resealable bag and set aside.

3. Let cakes cool for 2 minutes and remove from pan. Gently press down the tops of the cakes and brush liquid coffee flavoring on the tops of the cakes. Cool completely.

4. cut the tips of each bag off. Squeeze the cream cheese filling onto each cake. Then repeat with the whipped topping. Sprinkle cocoa powder on top for a finished look.

11th

I meant to blog yesterday since it was 9/11, but we were gone all day running errands or doing fun things with the kids. I took this picture up in Boise this summer. The hubster's Grandpa had died recently and we went up to the veterans cemetery to visit his graveside. You can see all of Boise up there so he has a pre-mo spot. Since he is in the Veteran's area they have flags everywhere and I went around taking shots of all of the flag of each branch. This one just happened to turn-out really well so I wanted to post this to remember 9/11.

sounds doable

I, am not a morning person. Many say they need their coffee before they do anything, I just need to sit on the couch for 20 minutes before I respond to life in the morning. I sit down before the kids wake-up and watch the morning news. Then, if they're still sleeping I'll watch GMA, Good Morning America to the layman. Anyway, yesterday Dr. Oz was on talking about weight loss, the thorn in my life time side and he just put out a challenge for all women to loss just 10 lbs and how just that alone will be healthy-ier. I'm always dreading thinking about the true amount that I need to lose and am overwhelmed, but 10, just ten sounds doable. And so, I'm going to change a few things here and a few things there. When I change drastically I rock for 2 weeks and slowly miss things I've bloody cut out of my life and revert. I think if I just try, try here and there 10 lbs could disappear without feeling regret or doubt. And so, this was my lunch today. I dislike broccoli gas. And once that 10 is gone I'm going finish what I started and complete the bottle of HCG that I began. More of that later.

this little lamp of mine

Here's another one of my treasures. I wanted to post about it so I had to finish up the lampshade this morning, but I'm late blogging since I had 3 other kids that I'm babysitting today (besides from my 2). Anyhow, found this at DI for $5. The lamp in our den bit the dust and bubbie's lamp in his room was just a stand in since his room needs a lamp but it didn't really look like it belonged in a nursery. This one doesn't look like it belongs in there either so I needed to make it less girly and ditch the powder blue! YUCK. Powder blue and peach, why do people keep this color in their decor? blah-ak!

Nice right? Not sure if this was suppose to be a lamp for a girls room or a boys room. Oh well, I'll fix that.

I didn't have any of bubbie's turquoise from his bedroom walls so I went for something that wouldn't fade into the walls anyway. I was talking to my mom about the lamp and she asked what color I wanted and Monkey was standing next to me so I picked this yellow from her dress to use for the base of the lamp and the trim of the shade.

Painting the trim left a weird texture. Had to get rid of the dopey flowers on the shade. I could have covered it with contact paper, but didn't want to spend much money on it. I still had brown paint left over from the circles I painted on bubbie's wall so I went with that same theme and did dots.

Ta-da!

the party's over

Normally I love taking pictures of things that I have done up or made. But, the camera battery was dying and i had to quickly take pictures before it died. I wasn't able to get many shots during the party either since I would have to turn on the camera real quick and push the button before it turned off, not paying much attention to centering or the object I was shooting. Oh well.

So the boys table was decked out in pirate decor. They put on hats and attempted to wear the eye patch. One little boy would keep the patch on but, when he would talk he'd life up the patch to talk and then lower in back down when he was done.

I made a treasure box and had Halloween black birds placed on the table. Later I realized that it's parrots that are connected with pirates, not crows.
The girls table was draped in pink princess petals and jewels. They each got a tutu, crown and wand.

I had some left over flowers from last week that the hubster bought me so I put those on the table as a centerpiece. Festive.

I had these glass jars from my reception so I used them again for the first time since then and filled them with princess punch and this one with pirates rum. Yes, it's just ice water. One of the mom's asked me if it was truly water. I so badly wanted to say, "Nope, it's really rum, is that okay?"

So, I was making the princess cake. Monkey even helped. It went south quickly from there. I cut the cake wrong for display so it looked like she had a lot of junk in the trunk. I got so frustrated that I just covered it up and waited until morning to frost it. Well, I don't know if it was the humidity or the 5 lbs. or powdered sugar I accidentally added to it, but the frosting slid off the cake faster than a California mudslide. It all ended when monkey came in and looked at the blob and said "You ruined it". Not good when a 3 year old recognizes a disaster. So, My mom came to the rescue and picked this up before she came over. Monkey google eyed it the entire time of getting set-up. And I can say this now that the party is over and everyone ate the cake, Monkey double dipped when testing the frosting of texture.

The kids had a gift box for when they went home. Boy, I would love to see the look on their faces when they got home and opened them and saw that it was just pretzel sticks!

I'm surprised I had so much M&M's left-over, but then again I put out 24 and there were only 6 kids...we're still enjoying the remaining treats.

This pirate had a splendid time and stayed in character all day. Arrrrrrrrrrh!

This party was much better than lasts years Chuckie Cheese's event. I enjoys so much more making the decorations or finding then for dirt cheap. I know I don't have to give them a party every year, but I just find it so much fun creating a theme and seeing it put together. I don't like setting it all up, but the rest is fun to me. So, probably whether they like it or not they're getting a themed party from us every year or until I don't want to do it anymore.

from this...

I got this at DI for $5. I really liked the detail on this and how old it looked. Even though it's plastic I liked the embellishments and the oval shape.

Monkey's room is pink and brown. I tend to fall into the matchy-matchy comfort zone and her room need broader color pallet. I re-did those throw pillows lime green so I decided to go with that color for the mirror too.
Wally world had acrylic paint for $1, but this came off a little more neon than what I was going for. I placed it low for her to see herself when she plays dress-up and puts on her play make-up.

...too this

princesses and pirate ships

No time to say something profound and deep! I've got a princess and pirate party to get set-up for. I don't want to be like Bubbie's party, still decorating while people are showing up. I dislike that.

Results later after the show...

I love this song and I love ASL

bread and butter

I can't tell you how many times I've tried and tried to make french bread and it comes out gross, hard as a rock or just as heavy as one. I didn't want to be known as the girl that can't make bread. Shameful. Yesterday, I ended up using less flour and babying it and success.

Tasty bread that I ate half a loaf of.

I ran out of butter and realized that I had this apple butter from Apple Annie's and so I called that dessert! One complete balanced meal (wink).