Cupcake's 2nd Birthday!

Cupcake turned 2 at the end of February 2013.  We kept things fairly low key since Princess had a big friend party earlier in the month.  I decorated the living room with Minnie Mouse things- her favorite.  We opened presents in the morning and she had a great time playing with all her new toys.

Later in the afternoon we went to the Aquarium, one of her favorite places to visit.  She was so cute running around from tank to tank in her new white, navy blue, and yellow birthday outfit. 

After visiting the fishies we went out to dinner at the Training Table.  Then it was home for cake.  I made the cake, my first birthday cake I have made for any of our kids.  I thought it was simple but cute!  And all that mattered was that she loved it and stuffed it in her face!

Valentine Creations

Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays!  I had fun with making various things during the month of February 2013.  For Princesses school Valentine's I used an idea off of Pinterest.  We gave her classmates pencils with a note that said "Valentine you are just 'write' for me!'. 

I wanted to make them even "cutesier" but I was 9 months pregnant so it was good enough.

On the morning of Vday I made cinnamon rolls look like hearts. 

 Cute and sweet!  Yum!  I think I will make this a yearly tradition.

I did my very first Crafty Wood Cutout creation.  This is a new trend in Utah.  Wood cutouts that you paint and cover in scrapbook paper and glitter.  They are lots of fun and always have something cute for each season.  I made these 3 hearts on dowels. 

Not too shabby for my first time!  I think I will add some tulle or ribbon this year to add a finishing tough!

And this is just a random tidbit but my Scentsy warmer seemed to be in the Valentine mood too.  It was casting heart-shaped bits of light on the wall!

Gifts I Made- Thank you Pinterest!

Isn't Pinterest wonderful?  I finally got around to making some of my pins this last Christmas. I think the one I am most proud of is the girl's pillow mattresses! 

I loved this idea because my girl's love to throw all of the pillows and blankets on the floor to jump on or lay on while watching TV or to make paths to walk on.  It wasn't really hard, just a little time consuming.  My advice: don't wait until 3 days before Christmas to start!  I did a lot of searching around for tutorials and how to get the best deals on pillows and fabric.  Cause 9 pillows really adds up!  My secret: IKEA!!  Thanks to Southern Disposition I had a great idea of how to actually sew these things!  I found the tutorial wasn't perfect so I made my own little tweaks.  If you are really that interested message me and I will give you directions!  Sorry- I just don't have time to take pictures for step-by-step tutorials.  I am kind-of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pj's kind of girl!  Needless to say the girls LOVE them!

My other pride-and-joy craft this season was Cupcake's wooden shoes.  If you didn't know, my mother-in-law is Dutch.  She moved from Holland to the US as a child.  So this makes The Artist 1/2 and our children 1/4 Dutch!  I think this is so neat!  So when we were first married we decided that instead of stockings at Christmas, we would leave out wooden shoes for Santa to fill! 

I like to decorate them special for each child so I order them (usually directly from Holland because it is actually cheapest) plain and then get my crafting on!  I order them huge too so that they can fit more stash in them.  Wooden shoes are surprisingly challenging to "stuff" like a normal stocking!  I ordered Cupcake's last year, but the arrived too late.  So this year (2012) I was finally able to decorate them and let Santa fill them up!  I LOVE them!  I painted them purple and then glittered them with white glitter!  The pictured has been blurred on purpose to hide her real name, but they have her first and middle name in white letters too!

I find a mess similar to this at least once a day thanks to Cupcake:

So I was hoping this next gift would fix it.  It is a wipes box with scraps of fabric for them to pull out as much as they please.  I loved this tutorial to help me make this for Cupcake.  But I think now she just thinks it's ok to pull stuff out of any wipes box she finds.  Oh well.  It was very fulfilling to make her a Christmas present myself!  Here is my version:

Our neighbor gifts this year were a hand towel and dish cloth as a "Washer and Dryer"

The tag reads: "This Christmas you deserve the best.  A present unlike all the rest.  We considered a new car or exotic cruise, but decided on something you could really use!  Finally we found a gift to admire, we hope you like your new washer and dryer!!"

Princess' pre-school gifts to her friends were chaptick and Hershey kisses with a little tag reading:  "Merry Kiss-mas and Chappy New Year!" This has always been one of my favorite simple gifts at Christmas time!

And lastly, The Artist's family decided to do cheap White Elephant gifts this year.  These were the ones I copied from Pinterest.  

Sorry this last one was pretty blurry.  I thought this one was so hilarious, but my sweet 17-year-old niece decided to play the game with the adults this year.  Guess who ended up with this one?  Yep!  Poor N, she was so embarrassed!

New Christmas 2012 Decor

Yeah.  I know it's Memorial Day weekend.  But I am dying to get caught up so that I can spend more time on fun little posts I think up on a whim rather than over-loaded posts about what we did in one entire month.  So I am posting about Christmas in an effort to get it all done!

I have been trying for YEARS to come up with a good solution to displaying Christmas cards that The Artist actually approves of.  And thanks to Pinterest I finally found something to get excited about!!  My clothes-pin wreath is the perfect combo of cute+functional!

It was so easy and pretty cheap.  The most expensive part was the wire frame I got at Hobby Lobby.   A bag of clothes-pins are a dollar at Wal-Mart and I had the scrapbook paper and ribbon on hand.  I mode-podged the paper on the pins and then hot glued the pins to the frame.  Then I tied ribbons in-between and voila!  Thank you to Sew Sara for the idea!

I tried a few new decorating ideas last December.  Like wrapping our dinning room light in garland and tying on ribbons:

I had extra garland left-over so I bought some pink bows (cause you HAVE to have pink when you are 4!) and decorated the girls' room while Princess was at school.  You want an easy way to make a preschooler's day?  Here ya go!  She was SO excited!  

Our plant shelf in the kitchen that after nearly 7 years in this home I have finally discovered is cute to decorate for holidays!

My almost-free- poinsettia I got on an awesome deal next to our Santa count-down we've had since our first Christmas.

 And this last one is not a decoration.  For if it was, it wouldn't last because we would eat it all gone in a day!!  This is my absolute most FAVORITE Christmas treat!  Sticky Sweet Chex Mix!  YUM!  I got the recipe way back when in young women's and just found it last year!  It is now a tradition in our home!  Check out the recipe below- you're welcome!

 Sticky Sweet Chex-Mix
1 box Rice Chex
8 oz. Peanuts
2 Large bags M&M's
2 Cubes Butter
1 1/2 C Sugar
1 1/2 C Light Karo Syrup
1 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla

Combine Chex, peanuts and M&M's in large bowl.  Boil sugar, butter, and Karo syrup for 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and add vanilla.  Pour over cereal mixture and stir.  Spread over wax paper to cool.  Now try to refrain yourself from eating the entire batch! ;)

October's Overflow

So this was the rest of our October and all of our extra pictures:

We made cholesterol-free Halloween cupcakes for Daddy.  Despite the frosting that I screwed up, they actually were really good!

We watched the first snowfall of the year from our windows:

Princess had orange day at school.  We didn't have any orange clothing for her so we did orange accessories- necklaces, nails, hair bows, and socks!

My friend, Ashly, had a baby shower and I decorated for it.  The pictures didn't turn out so great but I thought it was pretty cute.  I hung baby clothes up like a clothes line:

 I also made made marshmallow pops and set the table up cute with decor and some of her maternity pictures:

We enjoyed the new playground in our community with our friends and loved the warm temperatures we had throughout the month! Cupcake learned how to sit on a swing all by herself!

She also learned to put herself in timeout, even if she doesn't need to be there.  She just walks over to the corner and sits down in time-out!

I did a Norwex party down in Payson.  It turned out to be right across the street from the new temple they are building there.  I totally forgot there was one there!  Pretty neat to see!

Princess is such a little artist, just like her Daddy.  Here is a cheerleader that she drew on her magnadoodle!

Halloween 2012

We had a great Halloween this year.  Princess got to dress up for her preschool party and we also went to our ward Trunk or Treat the Saturday before. 

This year we went trick-or-treating in our own neighborhoods nearby instead of Riverton like we usually do.  It was really fun going out just as our own little family. It was pretty warm and we only needed jackets instead of heavy coats like you usually need on Halloween in Utah!

Princess was Rapunzel and Cupcake was a witch.  I made Cupcake's tutu myself and then got other pieces to put it all together.  I think it turned out pretty cute! 

I was also pretty pleased with how Princess' Rapunzel hair turned out.  I wasn't quite sure what to do with it but I love what we came up with!  It had lots of glitter in it too but it didn't show up all too well on the picture.

Enjoying their candy at the end of the night:

And our little shelf of Halloween decor in our living room:

Zebra Party!!!

Ok, we are going back in time a few months to finish up February.  Remember I told you how fun it was?  Well, I still have some more posts for it!

One of the most exciting things was the girls' birthday party.  We took them out each separately on their actual birthdays but we also did a combined party.  I have always done a party for Princess, but I didn't want Cupcake to feel left out.  I know, she's only one, but when she grows up I want her to know we made a big deal of her first birthday too, like we did for Princess.  Next year we are DEFINITELY scaling back.  But here is the madness of the Pink zebra party!!!

I worked for an entire month I think making and prepping and shopping for everything so excuse me for the massive amounts of pictures- but I just had to share it all!  Their names have been Photoshopped out of everything so you can't see the complete cuteness- but you get the idea!

The invite:

The birthday girl's in their zebra attire:

Cupcake climbing up The Artist's tripod.   Too cute!

We had everyone dress in black, white, or pink just for added fun!

The decorations.  I had a big pink number 4 and number 1 balloon for each girl that I ordered online, but the 1 got a hole in it and popped while filling- so I had to go with something generic for Cupcake's balloon bouquet at the party store.  Too bad cause the #4 looks awesome!

Favor/Treat Bags:

The yummy food and treats.  I was lucky that our colors included pink and the party was the weekend before Valentine's Day because it was easy to find lots of pink treats!  The cupcake flags had their name and age on them, but I had to Photoshop out their names for the blog.  They were really cute though!

Each girl got their own cakes.  Thank you to my friend Abby for making them!

For games we did pin the tail on the zebra:

We played a relay game of herding "zebras" (balloons) and freeze dance, which was Princess' favorite.  I used the songs Michael Jackson's "Black and White", Lion Kings "I Just Can't Wait to be King", and the classic "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" to go with the party theme.  I also had a little poster for the adults to play Guess Who.  It listed details of both girls and the had to guess if it was Princess or Cupcake.

And lastly, the girls enjoying their cakes.

This was Cupcakes very first taste of sugar!  Always fun to see a 1-year-old experiencing birthday cake for the first time!