Whatever happened to February….

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We started out the month with two of my son’s getting chicken pox within three days of each other so we were someplace and were exposed.  Thankfully this particular son weathered it very well and was only mildly discomforted.  The other son only had about 20 on him, Praise the Lord….I did my best to make sure the other four would be infected but would have to wait another 15 days to find out.

Master J with the doughnut celebrated his 7th birthday.  As his breakfast request was doughnuts I went ahead and made homemade!

 

Dad enjoyed a doughnut or two as well before leaving for work that morning and you can see that Master T. enjoyed the chocolate ones!!

 

Looks as good as store bought I say!!  We had chocolate, old fashioned, and cinnamon/sugar!!

  

For dinner that evening it was to a restaurant in town and there was a nice peanut butter chocolate pie to be shared…..I am one of those that thinks peanut butter and chocolate only belong in a Reece’s cup and that’s it so I gladly watched them share it!!

 

Once home it was time for cake.  That’s a big deal around here, they start pulling out the cookbook with all the pictures at least a month or two in advance and start picking out all the ones they want me to make.  We settled on a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and the Oreo's in the shape of a number seven.  Upon finishing, the birthday boy decided he wanted maraschino cherries on the top as well with sprinkles so we added them on of course!!  I don’t recommend the intense blue frosting…it seems to get everywhere but on the cake!!!!

Master A, had his second front tooth come out on the top row and managed to win the race to lose a tooth with his sister!!

We invested in a new house servant!!!  This one is so sweet and quiet, just does the job and works like a charm.  The old one was rebellious and refused to wash the dishes after having run for a full cycle.  There is no sense having a dishwasher that you then have to wash all the dishes by hand!!!

Our neighbors down the road have small herd of goats and several of them gave birth several weeks ago.  I had my own names for these two…Cinnamon and Sugar….

My husband picked up the one so I could get a close up…I almost had my parents fooled for a second and said this was the new family pet!  Right, just what I need…A GOAT!!!!

As an update….I found out last weekend that this little cute one passed on :- (

Then it was round two for chicken pox with three more children and you can see that these two little guys suffered much worse than the first round.  My oldest son went through the sick feeling but never had a single spot on him!!! So we will see how he does throughout the rest of his life.

Then towards the end of the month, Master M up there in the blue pajamas had a birthday and turned three!  He wanted French Toast with Cinnamon and Sugar on top.

For lunch we all partook of grilled cheese sandwiches and picked him up a balloon while doing our grocery errands that morning.

I couldn’t resist this picture of my littlest man trying to reach up for the balloon just a 1/4 of an inch out of his grasp.

Master M enjoyed the afternoon playing with his new soccer ball out on the back deck, I was sneaking pictures of him through the screen door and caught him action kicking the ball.

We ended up the days meal with a rare treat of crinkle fries and nuggets.  I love that it doesn’t take much to make the children smile with joy!!

Another chocolate cake of course…I had one of those pressurized containers of icing in my cabinet which I attempted to write his name with…and then I remembered why I had stuck it up there, because it was too difficult to try and write with….sometimes a little would come out and then other times a huge blob!!

There was a baby shower at church and I found this cute tutorial on Pinterest to make these baby diaper wreathes so made one to bless the new mom with.  It was a nice change from the regular diaper cakes you see.

The image on the left is what I was trying to copy and what I ended up with at church was on the left.  I figure it was pretty decent considering the ceilings were like 15 feet or close to it!!!  The pin didn’t go to a website that was working so I don’t have direct link to the picture.

We closed out the month with a fabulous pizza recipe found on Pinterest that was Barbeque chicken and pineapple with caramelized onions.  The sauce was really good, I had never used molasses in a BBQ sauce before and it was well worth trying.  I will post the recipe next time I am on.

I pray everyone is well and God Bless,

Melissa

 

Journaling with your children…..

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I thought I had posted about this a while back but as I looked back in my blog I see I had missed it.  I joined Pinterest last year and it has been wonderful to be able to save pictures of ideas I would like to do with my family or meals I would like to cook.

Anyhow, one of the ideas I pinned was about a journal to do with my daughter.

                                 Source Pinterest

The idea is that you start writing back and forth to each other and have a book of memories to last a lifetime.  So back in August I got my stuff together and made my own and here are a few pictures.

 

I used one of my own fonts and printed the cover out on Microsoft Word and then went to the store and found a scrapbook paper that I liked.  I then covered the outside cover with clear contact paper and voila…..we have a wonderful journal that we keep in touch.  Now mind you we have a great relationship verbally and talk all the time.  This just supplements the open communication that we already have.  Sometimes there are concerns or questions that are just easier to write down than to express out loud.  This is just another way for us to talk and work through any thing. 

And this is not just for my daughter and I, when my boys are older I plan on doing the same thing with them as well!

I hope you try this out with your children!!

Busy Bags and a Birthday

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I came across some sites via Pinterest today that had ideas for busy bags for small children.  I figured I would consolidate the addresses so that I could refer back to them and try and put some of my own together for in the car or for during school time…Some of these look great and if you have several to take along at the same time then it would work out fantastic to occupy a little mind.

http://mineforthemaking.blogspot.com/2011/09/busy-bags.html

http://www.mydeliciousambiguity.com/2010/11/toddler-busy-bag-month-4.html

http://chasingcheerios.blogspot.com/2008/06/toddler-activity-bags.html

http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow/2008/06/toddler-activit.html

http://ourcountryroad.blogspot.com/2011/08/busy-bags-and-travel-games.html

http://theprincessandthetot.blogspot.com/2011/07/toddler-busy-bags.html

 

Today is also a special day today.  My son Corban turned 5 at 8:45 this morning. I can usually go all year and not be too upset, but it is inevitable that at some point on his birthday I tear up and cry.  I miss him, and wish I had the chance to see him as a five year old running around my house and playing with all his brothers.  Alas, this was not to be the Lord’s plan for his life and instead he has grown up in a much better place in the Lord’s house.

We were at the beach this last Sunday evening down in Florida, I will post about that later, and I took this picture since it was so close to Corban’s birthday.

If you would like to know more about Corban and see wonderful pictures of him, I have a special tab at the top of the page just for him.

God Bless~~

Craft project…Baby Gift

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I saw this project on the Feltorama website a while back and loved it so much I ordered the pattern…One of the ladies at church had a little baby boy recently and I made these little shoes in black to give to her.

 

The pictures are clickable and you can see a larger view and see the eyes that were sewn on….I opted to not do buttons as I was afraid it might become a choking hazard later so just did French Double knots.

I would not recommend buying the felt from the Feltorama store only because I was able to find it better by shopping around on the internet and found a great deal at Prairie Junction!!

The Project is finally over :)

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Back in October, I had posted on my old blog about looking for elegant Table decorations….I have moved that post over here and you can find it at this link.

Each month, the last Sunday of the month, the church has what they call Teen Afterglow.  This is usually sponsored by a couple in the church, it is a different couple each time….and there is usually food provided for the teens…it can be anything you want, a taco bar, snacks, desserts, whatever you want to provide.

I signed up last October to provide the food for this January. Usually this event takes place in our Gymnasium which is quite big in comparison to the number of teenagers.  We have about 15 teenagers give or take some either way and the two adults that are their leaders.

I asked early on if I could provide the food in the Ladies Sunday School room which was adjacent to the gymnasium.  This is a much smaller and cozier environment.  Once I had permission, the wheels in my brain started turning…I wanted to provide a Winter Wonderland setting that was really elegant; something that the teens had never had done for them before.  This is the room before….

The picture below is the wall directly opposite the glass door in the picture above.

This picture below is the wall directly opposite the double doors in the first picture.

So as soon as the Christmas decorations started going on sale at Hobby Lobby I went scouring the aisles….I was looking for snowflakes and anything that might be winter related but not Christmasy…if there were such a word….lol

I started looking on the internet for some inspirations and found some great ideas.  I ended up making some souvenirs to remember the evening..those probably took the longest time but shouldn’t have .

Here is my inspiration:

Here is what I did:

The idea was to be simple on purpose and to get the significance of the star by itself…it is not something I pointed out to the teenagers but if anyone happens to ask about it I will share it with them….

I found a beautiful floral centerpiece on the internet that I copied the idea and made my own.  I found some pretty candle holders and found a way to make something similar on my own.

I wanted to include a thank you to the teenagers for being inspiring and to thank them for being role models.  Well this past January….out in blog land there seemed to be several people posting about their “word” for the year….either what they wanted this year to be or what they thought last year summed up would be….anyhow….Michelle over at She Looketh Well…had a fabulous post about her word and it was the inspiration for what I shared with the teenagers.  Michelle focused on what she wanted to pursue as a mom and I adapted some of her ideas and added more of my own to apply to the youthful years of a teenager.  I then included our thank you and a scripture verse at the end.

We strung white Christmas lights all across the ceiling and turned off the fluorescent lights which gave a soft warm glow.  We then had over 60 snowflakes that were hung in three different sizes all scattered around the room.

I saw these beautiful centerpiece flower arrangements and wanted to try and do something similar:

 

I was wanting to try and do the smaller square bottom one on the right…..well this is what I ended up coming up with….

I took two vases from Hobby lobby that happened to be 50% and then bought a half round florist foam that was about 6.5 inches or so and cut it down some because I needed it to be around 5.5 inches…then I went to three different Dollar Tree stores and bought a combination of white rosebuds and white roses that were open and mixed them all up and filled in the dome….

Then we took Dogwood branches from our yard and spray painted them white….

Once the branches were dry I took a paint brush and painted them with Aileen's glue all around each branch and covered them with a combination of German’s glass glitter and another product called Vase filler that they use for making it look like Iced snow on branches.

The larger plastic looking pieces are the vase filler and the sparkles are the glass glitter.

And then let them dry and stick them into the foam.

The crystals were also purchased at Hobby Lobby in their Christmas stuff…they are plastic but it was great that they had snowflakes!!  The bottom inside the vase and inside the bottom of the candles were the little round iridescent half marbles.

Each of the tables had one large candle display with two tea lights on each side spreading out the length of the

and tables. We had bought this glittery ribbon to use as table runners in blue and white however that was before I had found a great deal on these tablecloths and organza overlays.  So we used the ribbon to make sashes on half the chairs with a bow on the back of the chair.

This was my inspiration:

I think those were sawarsky crystals on like a bracelet that went around the candle holder.

 

Here is what I did:

I took candle holders from the Dollar tree and used Aileen's Tacky glue around the top edge and then purchased German Glass glitter and sprinkled it around the top edge.  I bought a 66’ strand of iridescent beads in the Christmas decorations at Hobby Lobby and cut it into 12’+ lengths for each candle display…  someone said you could use sugar but I don’t think the sugar would be as sparkly as the glass glitter.

My husbands idea was to use tape…like masking tape so I would have a straight line….

Neither one of us would recommend doing that again….luckily I had two left that I did not tape and just eye-balled it with the paint brush…..you can’t tell the difference and the issue was that the glue got on top of the tape and then when it all dried, I had to go around each candle holder with an Exacto knife and cut through the glue and glitter to get the tape off!! Just free hand it!

There were two fake palm trees in the room that we moved to either end of the buffet and used lights in amongst the foliage to give an extra glow.

Overall, the evening was a big success, the teenagers were wowed and awed and very appreciative.

After having had been sick for weeks, I was finally better until about 3am Saturday morning when I had a sore throat and when I woke up later that morning, my nose was completely stuffy.  All day Saturday I worked on the preparations and then we had fellowship dinner that evening at church which I had made two casseroles….there was to be extra people there that night…..I had one of those casseroles in the oven for close to two hours and it was still frozen in the center…arrgghhh…. we ended up putting it in the fridge and getting off to church…  I was just praying the whole time to be able to get home as soon as possible I had 8 tablecloths I needed to iron and it wasn’t until I had called my parents asking for prayers for my strength to get through what I needed that I realized I still needed to frost another cake… I went to bed at 10:30pm Saturday evening exhausted….I got up Sunday…. the morning of the event….my goal was to get to church early before everyone else to unload everything because it was to be a surprise…..

There was no way that was going to happen….Tim took the children to church, I went back to bed, my legs were freezing.  I got up once and did some work, went back to bed…and then slept and sweated out a fever…which was a huge blessing, I felt like this fog had lifted….I wasn’t better but felt I had the strength I needed to get done what was necessary.  I arrived at church at about 1pm and it took until about 5:30 to get everything all set up, which gave me a few minutes to tidy up loose ends and get myself cleaned up before evening service.  I took some cold medicine at the start of service which really helped me the night before so my nose wasn’t running….no such luck yesterday, it was like I hadn’t taken anything, my nose was on run non-stop. 

It was about 10:30pm last night when we finally left the church and everything was as if nothing had ever occurred there.  We came home brought the refrigerated items in and fell into bed!  There was only one small casualty yesterday…you see those chairs in the pictures….I was standing on one of those to hang up snowflakes well one time I was up there and moved my leg and it slipped off and went down through the hole on the back side of the chair….I had a snowflake in one hand and that went flying across the room like one of those little ninja discs…good thing no one was in the path of that thing!  but I have a nice black and blue mark on my upper calf…drats!!

That second casserole…..came in handy this evening…now I know why God did not need me to bring it to the Fellowship dinner, He knew I would need it today with no energy to cook!!!

So here are the pictures of the room….you always think you capture every thing and then realize later you don’t but this is what I have….

This was with the lights on….with just the candles lit on the buffet table.

You can kind of see the sashes that I made for some of the chairs on the left side.

Again, this was with the lights on but wanted to show the snow flakes and lights….

I had tinfoiled out the glass door and window so no one could see in and it would be a surprise

 

 

 

I put all the food trays together myself and made the carrot cake and chocolate torte.

It just so happened, I had a skirt in my closet that had snowflakes on it!!!!

The end…….