500th Post-Random Friday-Eggnests, Topher's b-day invites, Spaghetti face and a vintage freebie

500 posts! Crazy! Since I realized I was reaching this milestone, I've looked back at my first posts and realized how awesome blogging really is. I started when Christopher was Porter's age and now Topher is almost 3. It is so great that I have all of that down and that I can look back and remember things that I wouldn't have otherwise. Hooray for blogging. I didn't know what I should post for my 500th, so I decided to post all randomness at once....

Random Friday Recipe

One of my favorite cookies are no-bake cookies-the problem is, I can eat a whole batch by myself easily. We had book club last night so I made them to bring and share.
I also had a couple bags of these in the cupboard-which when open, don't last hours in my house, but minutes.So I put them in the cookies to take away more of the temptations in the house, and the results are cute little egg nests that are perfect for little spring or Easter parties.
The recipe I'm sure you all have your own version of, but I'll share mine-

• 3 c. oatmeal
• 1 t. vanilla-stir the two together in a separate bowl
• 2 c. sugar
• 1/2 c. milk
• 1/2 c. cocoa
• 1/2 c. butter-heat sugar, milk, cocoa and butter-stirring until just melted

Stir in hot mixture into oats and vanilla mixture and drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper, and refrigerate until cool. yummmmmm

Christopher's Birthday Invites

I made little toolbelts for the 3 little friends he's inviting-he is so excited about his party and has LOTS of input-this is his first birthday party, and although it is a little young for a birthday party-he would have been sorely disappointed after just witnessing Bekah's spectacle.

They have 4 little pockets that I sewed on the paper and tools in each, and a blue print in one pocket with the invite information-turned out cute, and Topher was beyond thrilled about it!Spaghetti Face-

I have a picture of Bekah much like this one, I can't believe how much he looks like her! He scratched his eye today, unfortunately it is not more spaghetti sauce. This kid loves to eat and can out eat his brother and sister at almost every meal.

This is the first time we let him eat spaghetti on his own and he caught right on, with the whole noodle slurping bit!

Vintage Paper Dolls

My mother in law gave me these vintage paper dolls that came from the Friend church magazine back in the 50's. There are 12 of them with matching clothes-one for each month of the year. I thought I'd share-because they are too cute to keep to myself!

One of my friends just blogged that her 6 year old got some paper dolls for her birthday and had no idea what they were!

Say what?

I say bring paper dolls back-I loved them as a kid, and my fondness for them has not changed, especially when I saw this little cutie at the top of the stack!

Meet Alice:

And here are Alice's clothes-

Enjoy!

Here's to another happy 500 posts!

Oh Mr Sunshine

It was such a nice day out today. I took the kids out to play and realized this was the first time since Porter was a newborn that he had been outside longer than walking to the car or from the car. It has just been too cold-or not a good enough reason to go out.

He loved the fresh air! He also enjoyed the grass and the leaves.

He thought they were delicious!

He is not sad in this pic-just showing me his bottom lip. He is always pulling faces lately and this is one of his favorites. Have I mentioned I love this kidd-o?

Z's Birthday Gift

One of my favorite people that I have met in Klamath Falls (or anywhere for that matter), Suzanne just celebrated her 50th birthday and we went out with some of the girls for dessert at Applebee's last night. Such a great night of laughter and fun with some of the funniest people on this planet.
I made her a birthday calendar, somewhat like the one's I made for my family for Christmas-but changed the pages and cut it in half. LOVED the end result. I will post the pages on my craft/scrap blog so you can see them all.
I also made her some note cards with some 7gypsies music paper-because this woman is the most talented, musical person I have ever had the priviledge of knowing. Simply incredible.
So Happy Birthday Z-have a great week in Utah!

Cupcake Friday-Rootbeer Floats

I know I have slacked off in the Cupcake Friday area, and I feel bad about it-but I'm running out of cupcakes that I want to eat. I thought I was a cupcake person-but I have found I am a boring cupcake person. I like chocolate cupcakes, white cupcakes and spice cupcakes, that's about as adventurous as I like to be with my cupcakes. Take this weeks cupcake for instance.
Rootbeer Float cupcakes.
The cupcakes were great, but I didn't want to eat the whole pan like I did with the s'more ones or the vanilla buttercream ones. But we did enjoy them and if you like rootbeer floats, you will enjoy them too.

• 1 c Rootbeer
• 1 t apple cider vinegar-combine these two ingredients and let stand for a few minutes
• 3/4 c sugar
• 1/3 c canola oil-add these two ing. and whisk until frothy
• 1/2 t vanilla
• 2 t rootbeer extract-integrate extracts
• 1 1/3 c flour
• 3/4 t baking soda
• 1/2 t baking powder
• pinch of salt-combine dry ing. and gently introduce to mix. Do not over mix.

Bake at 350 for 18-22 minutes. (Cupcake tins should be at about 2/3 way full)

I could not find a recipe for vanilla frosting that I thought would taste enough like vanilla ice cream and finally it dawned on me to just use vanilla ice cream. I beat the ice cream until it was smooth enough to frost the cupcakes and then served. Yum.

The point to my earlier ramblings is, I am not going to do Cupcake Friday any longer-I think I will instead do Random Recipe Friday, and post a family favorite or something new we try that's yummy. I hope that no one is terribly disappointed, if so there are some fantastic cupcake blogs out there-devoted solely to cupcakes. I should know, that's where I found most of the recipes for mine!
(This recipe was from Project Cupcake)

Goodbye Joe Bum

While looking at my previous post 'Munchkin Love' Chad pointed out to me that Bekah is always, as he put it 'Barbie picture perfect' and Topher always looks like 'Joe Bum'.

I know.

It is my own selfish reasons that my kid looks like Joe Bum-I LOVE his long hair, and I know it is not the most flattering to his perfect cuteness, but when he gets his hair cut, he looks so much older and less like my baby, and I love how soft it is.

Well I knew once again it was time to cut the cord, I mean hair.

BEFORE:

I had to bribe him with a cookie to sit still for me while I cut it-whatever works!

AFTER:

Yes I know it is a huge improvement.

Maybe now he will look more 'Ken doll picture perfect'.

Warning; Walking Talking Hormonal Imbalance Living Here

Being busy is not the main reason I have not blogged in the last couple weeks.......It's mostly because this kid has had his adolescent butt parked in front of the screen with face book on for the last month, Chad is at work tonight so I got a turn on my computer while he is using Chad's lap top.My baby brother who is now almost 16 (yikes!) has moved in with us and will be staying until the end of the school year.
There are pro's to having him here;

• Free babysitting-heck yes!
• Him sitting in the car with the kids while I run into the store-double heck yes!
• A night off from dishes once in awhile (even though it is like pulling teeth to get him to do it)
• Endless hours of fun tormenting him about anything and everything
• Endless hours of fun for my friends who have caught on to the fun of tormenting him
• Endless hours of fun for my daughter who loves to torment him with plans for his 16th dinosaur themed birthday party, complete with a visit from Barney. (You can't tell me she's not an evil little genius-she hasn't broke character with it-saying if he doesn't have a dinosaur party-his birthday will be canceled! Ha ha!)
  

The cons are few and far between;

• He got an old truck to fix up with Chad-so that means even more talk in this house about things like timing belts, radiators, spark plugs and other completely boring items that make my eyes glaze over
• His general teenager-ness that makes him believe that he is always right, we are always dumb and his life is on the verge of falling apart if things don't work out exactly the way he has planned
• His constant need to be connected to technology of any sort-if it's not my computer, he has either an i-pod or phone attached to his head-come on read a book, and get the heck off my computer!

Love ya little bro!

Mr. Charming

This little boy has not only his mama smitten, but every person he comes in contact with!
It might be the huge blue twinkling eyes, or the big dimply grin he gives you when you say hi, or maybe it's the perfect little boy hair with the swirl in the back. Whatever it is, people LOVE this baby. What he's doing now:

• He is now scooting around the house and getting into everything.
• He gets up on all fours and pushes off until he gets what he wants.
• He is eating anything and everything and is very good at it.
• He has the pincer grasp down-(you know thumb and forefinger together to pick stuff up).
• He gives kisses when you ask for them and pucker up-while very wet and open mouthed-still pretty dang great. (Then there are the times when he just attacks my face and I get small hickeys on my chin-so it looks like I've been beat).
• Sleeping in his own bed at naptimes and at night, which is something I hadn't done with my other kids until they were older. (He usually comes into our room between 5:30-6:30 and then sleeps till about 9-heavenly little creature!)

Sweet Sweet Day

Valentines Day was so much fun this year.

We went out to dinner with the Appah's and then went back to their house to play games with them and the Stewarts.

We ate delicious chocolate cake, and ice cream had a lot of laughs playing Cranium.

I am really grateful to have such fun friends where we can all be ourselves and have so much fun together.

It was a crazy week. We (Suzanne Stewart, April, Rachel (April's sister) and I) were in charge of the Adults only Valentines dinner for our ward.

We made it so cool and romantic-loved it-but so much work!

We did a formal Chinese restaraunt and the night before we spent about 5 hours hanging fishing line with paper lanterns and twinkling lights.

All the tables were decorated formally with china, stemware, tablecloths, cloth napkins, centerpieces-the whole nine yards.

We made all the food for it, I made this delicious angel food cake that Suzanne's aunt gave her the recipe for that I will have to make again-soooo much better than store bought! I also made the Thai lettuce wraps for the appetizers, yum!

The young men were all dressed up with long aprons like waiters and seated and served everyone-it was like the real deal.

Suzanne's acapella group sang and were just fantastic.

These pics I stole off April's blog-it was awesome-by far the best church function I had ever attended or even heard about!

Saturday morning we had a primary activity-and although it was pretty low key-it was still a stress hanging over me until it was done and over. Love the primary!

SO when Valentines evening was finally here-we were able to celebrate for more than just being in love-which of course is enough of a reason, but it was so nice to have had such a busy, hard and yet so successful weekend over and finish it off with such a great night.

Munchkin Love

The kids had a fun little Valentines Playgroup on Friday.

It started off with a bunch of us going to the Children's Musuem, which was much better than expected. There was tons for the kids to do and we could have stayed a lot longer but we had other plans.

After a couple hours playing there we went over to the church and we had lunch and decorated cookies. Yum!Then all the kids made a little Valentines bag and then they all exchanged Valentines.

Even Porter had fun laughing and terrorizing his friends.

She Rocks!

I love Kim-she always has such cute ideas, and features the coolest blogs, I get lost over on her blog and those she features for hours every week!

I am so excited-she posted my valentine stuff on her site-you need to go over there and see-not only are my ideas on there for Valentines day, but lots of other great ideas.

If you don't already, you will soon love her too!

Can you Feel the Love?

I put up a few Valentines Day decorations that I made this week.

Valentines day is so fun and over the top-my mom used to always give us little Valentines Day surprises, and it came to be one of my favorite holidays as a kid. I made this wreath by shaping some wire into a heart shape and wrapped it in a feather boa that Bekah had in her dress ups. I then wrapped random strips of ribbon to hold it on.

It's cheesy, over the top and I love it! This is my favorite-I strung some of the wire and bent some hearts out of it, hung them with ribbon and put up my quote with vinyl letters cut from the cri-cut.

(For those of you who have a cri-cut, my friend April actually had this epiphany-to use vinyl contact paper-you know the stuff you line your drawers and shelves with?

I happened to have a big roll of white, so now I can cut it and then decorate it however I want it. For these letters, I just colored them in with a black permanent marker. Way cheaper than buying vinyl at a craft store!)

I am making little presents for my kids-this robot I made for Topher-a little 'Love Machine'. He is signing I love you.
I also stitched I love you on his bum. Topher found him yesterday, in my room, so I just let him have it early. He loves it.
I'll post Bekah's and Porter's when they are done.
I've also made a bunch of cards and a couple fun lovey dovey scrapbook layouts.

"There's a lot of love out there man..." -Fillmore-

Time Stops When your Shooting It

Chad took the Airsoft guns out the other day and Topher was all over it.
I am a lot apprehensive about Topher enjoying guns and all, but in this house I'm afraid it's inevitable, Chad is going to want a little hunting buddy.

So I let Chad teach him, it's probably a good thing to teach him early and make sure the lessons are engraved in his brain, so that by the time the real guns (gulp) come around he is VERY aware of gun safety and how to properly use them.

He learned how to aim and pull back the trigger, he had a hard time cocking it(is that the right word?). so he had to have daddy's help, but he LOVED it!

While going over gun safety with him, I told him he shouldn't ever shoot anyone or any animal and he replied.

"We just shoot tickety tock, right mom?"I can see the resemblence between the target and tickety, so I replied, "Right Topher."

Silly kid!