We love you, Amy.

We love you, Mom.

Recent happenings

I'm back! I know, I never said I was going anywhere. It was an unplanned hiatus.
I'm going to do a little catch up here before getting back into some kind of routine.

In the time I've been away from the computer, we've:
Camped near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (We managed to get a few hours of beautiful clear sky in between all the rain. The kids thoroughly enjoyed it.)
Celebrated my birthday. (Remember last year's?)
Celebrated my baby's birthday with homemade malted milk ice cream from The Perfect Scoop.
Visited the Shedd Aquarium downtown. (Look at that cloudy, cool summer day in Chicago. Good grief!)
Made butterfly contact and witnessed a sheep-shearing at the zoo. (We got lucky and caught one of the 2 yearly shearings.)
Toured Wagner Farm.
Filmed a craft demo for the Pioneer Press Mommy on a Shoestring column. (Should appear in about 3 weeks.)
Enjoyed a week long visit from my mom and started our homeschool History co-op classes.
Whew! And those are just the highlights.

I'll try to be back here soon.

Pom pom presents

My daughter attended a lovely tea party in celebration of a friend's birthday over the weekend. She wore her fancy flower girl dress and thoroughly enjoyed herself.
We attend so many birthday parties in the spring that coming up with ideas for homemade gifts becomes a must. This little girl happens to share a blue room with her brother so we thought she might enjoy a burst of pink (one of her favorite colors) in her living space. I made three small pom poms using this tutorial and strung each with ribbon to hang. (I looped the three together for packaging convenience).
These make pretty party decorations, too, whether you make them small or huge like the tutorial suggests. We happen to be offering the pom poms strung into garland as a project option at our Craft Social this Friday and I'm excited to see how pretty they look hanging in a row. So cheerful and springy!

Happy birthday, little sister

Have a happy day, today! With love from all of us.

Happy Birthday, Nanna!

Ribbon and felt pocket bracelets

We celebrated my daughter's birthday yesterday with two of her friends and a trip to the Exploritorium. After playing, snacking, and opening gifts, I gave each of the girls one of these little pocket bracelets I had made just before walking out the door. (Why plan ahead and ruin my reputation?) I had filled them with M&Ms so they would have a little surprise upon opening them.
These were really quite easy to make and I figured the girls would enjoy having a tiny pocket filled with secret treasures on their wrists. My mistake was not making the flap of the envelope/pocket longer with the button hole a little lower, allowing the pocket to expand a bit more when filled. It still works nicely for very small treasures such as 5 M&Ms, tiny notes, spare change, small jewelry items, etc. Just a thought, in case you end up making some.
These would make sweet little Easter gifts, too.
If I get around to making a more masculine version for my son, I'll post that, as well.

Happy Birthday, Baby

Tomorrow I'll have a 5 year old

My first baby turns 5 tomorrow. We took these cupcakes to share with our preschool class today. When I asked her what flavor of cupcakes she wanted, she blurted out "M&M!" before I could spit out some choices. Okay, that's easy enough. We used a basic Golden Cupcake recipe, but tossed some M&Ms in the batter before baking. Iced them with basic Vanilla Frosting, colored a vivid pink, and sprinkled with more M&Ms. They turned out cute and playful and just as colorful as our Cuckoos!

Happy birthday, baby!

We celebrated our baby's first birthday over the weekend with cupcakes in the park. My older kids chose the cupcake: Oatmeal Raisin with Banana Coconut Frosting. They were really good.

Above: My daughter is wearing her pillowcase dress for the 2nd day in a row.
My son does everything with great expression. Including, eat a cupcake.

Our cupcake recipe came from Krystina Castella's Crazy About Cupcakes. If you want my opinion on the book, while we're at it, I have been very pleased with the recipes for cupcakes and frostings. She has included some really great and unexpected flavor combos and so far, all of ours have turned out very well. This one, for example. That banana coconut frosting was good stuff. And how often are you served oatmeal raisin, hazelnut coffee, napolean, peppermint mocha, or pina colada cupcakes? I haven't found all the special occasion designs awe-inspiring, but many are unique and attractive. A little too much candy topping for me. I'd rather have the great cupcake with yummy frosting simply, yet artfully, spread or piped on top. The designs presented in her book, however, would still be crowd-pleasers, I'm sure.

Happy birthday, baby!

S'more time, please

That's all I ask. More time. More time to finish making my own birthday cake, more time to sweep the rice off the floor, more time to wash the dishes, to play at the park, to go camping, to learn the words to that song stuck in my head, to sit and have tea with a friend, to take a shower, to remember how amazing and fun small children really are....
Yesterday was my birthday. My kids were looking forward to it, as they'd helped Daddy make a surprise gift for me and had been counting down the days on the calendar. Mainly, I think they wanted to eat cake.
With my birthday on a Monday, I knew going into it that it was going to be a pretty normal day. You know, life with kids, but with a special party at the end. I was looking forward to making my own birthday cake so I could try something new that I wouldn't necessarily have the excuse to make otherwise. Never mind that I waited until the last minute, as usual, and had to settle for my 3rd choice cake. It was still my choice and was going to be good.
The kids enjoyed helping mix the ingredients and were excited to see the three cake layers sitting on the counter, although, weren't able to understand why we couldn't yet dig in. I planned to finish it up during their "rest" time, chill it in the fridge during afternoon play time at the park, and have it sitting beautifully before us after dinner. Unfortunately, I was short on an important ingredient. Why haven't I learned to thoroughly read directions and look for all ingredients even when I think I have them? I couldn't exactly run to the store by myself so I had to wait until after nap time.
I'll skip all the fun we had when my daughter fell in the parking lot of the store, hurt her knee and screamed until I had all kids seated in one of those grotesquely huge pink plastic butterfly-shaped steering-wheeled carts, with which I proceeded to practically knock down an entire display of paper towels standing about 9 feet high and a rack of canned beans, and move right to finishing the cake at home.
My daughter hadn't taken a nap during the prescribed rest time, had remembered her knee was scraped and bloody, was probably hungry, definitely sweaty and dirty (this was to be the no-matter-what-happens-it's-bath night since they hadn't bathed after our state park trip on Saturday) when we got home from the store. Not good under any circumstances, but especially considering I was trying to assemble some sort of healthy dinner (cereal?) while preparing two separate frostings for a layer cake intended to be eaten in about 30 minutes that really required a few hours additional chill time, feeding the baby, and directing my son to stop whatever it was he was doing.
Amazingly, I kept up with things until the kids had been fed, I'd put the baby to bed, listened to my kids melt down during their bath with Daddy, and come back to the cake. Then I realized it wasn't going to happen.
At the end of this long day, we celebrated my birthday with oven-toasted s'mores. Felt sort of like Mr. Bean's Christmas sandwiches. (Except my cake wasn't thrown out the window so I still need to finish it once it firms up again from being left out too long in the heat when I attempted to pour on the ganache a while ago.) Happily, the kids ate these as if they'd never heard of birthday cake and were thrilled to help me open birthday cards from faraway, loving family.
After celebrating, my husband put the kids to bed while I ran the intimidating tower of laundry, created by my not-so-keen on toilet-training child, downstairs to wash and rode my bike to the video store to get my free birthday rental. Which we didn't watch because we were too interested in the Olympics.
I don't know when I'll have the time to finish my cake, eat it, watch my movie, wash the dishes, or do all the other things I'd like, but I did manage to find time just now to remember that the people who loved me yesterday on my birthday probably still love me today, that my kids really had fun driving that big shopping cart, eating s'mores, and keeping a little birthday secret with their dad, that I enjoyed some fresh nighttime air on my bike, and that if days were filled with all the time I wanted they probably wouldn't be nearly as interesting and the changes we see in our children wouldn't seem nearly as amazing. Hmm. Happy birthday!

Unconventional Carrot Cake

We celebrated my daughter's 4th birthday this weekend. She had specifically requested a "big cake," instead of the small cupcake variety, cookies, and a pinata. She really only wanted one friend at her party and reasoned out that they would get more whacks at the pinata and more cake if they were the only guests. Impressive reasoning from a 3-year old, I thought, but we went ahead and invited some other good friends.
I decided to go with a subtle storybook theme for her party. Mainly, because I wanted to make this cake. The rabbits in the very cute book Shall I Knit You A Hat eat a layered carrot cake with whole carrots poking out the top and sides and I think it's great. Also, I want to live in their house. I brought the book and propped it up next to the cake to be available for reading and to prove I'm not crazy.
I made M&M/pecan/raisin cookies and displayed Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons next to them.
We had a little face-painting station with The Penny Pot (story of kids using money to pay for face-painting at the fair) on hand.
I had a games corner (sewing animals, puzzles, Memory, Cariboo) with Charlie and Lola's I've Won No I've Won.
A book corner made several of our favorites available to read and produced Giraffes Can't Dance to be read aloud.
Finally, The Perfect Pinata made way for our own pinata thrashing.
I intended to have a craft project inspired by a book (much like our Alice the Fairy crowns), but didn't have a chance to make the necessary preparations. Turns out, it wasn't really necessary, after all.
The party was fun. Faces were painted (my kids did a number on mine), the games were played, the food was yummy (thanks to a couple good friends for providing some great fruit and veggie platters!), the pinata did eventually burst spilling out lots of chocolate to be quickly snatched up and several tiny boxes of raisins to be left sitting neglected on the floor for the parents to pick up. Kids.
By the way, the cake you see in the picture was dumped onto the floor by my son, landed upside down in it's carrier and managed to get away with only scrapes and scars where the icing clung to the lid. That's Krazy cream cheese gluing that cake together.

FYI: Most of these books are in our home library and are read frequently, a couple are public library finds that suited our occasion. You knitters out there may enjoy Shall I Knit You A Hat if you'd like to share your knitting love with your kids. Instructions for a simple knitting project are included with the book.

Not my birthday wish

Can you guess what's happening in our home? This was a lovely care package, left outside our apartment door this morning, from a good friend. Actually, I desperately requested a few of the items, and she compassionately added the others. Not an ideal 4th birthday for our daughter, but luckily, we have a party to look forward to this weekend.
We'll be re-energizing around here this week, so I'm not sure how much fun the ol' blog will be. But then again, it could be a much-needed break.
Good health to you!