My new laundry area

I had seen things like this in a few places on other blogs, so I thought I would give it a shot....and it has been AWESOME! I love this new set up, it allows me to see what loads actually need to be done and to do them. I must have some sort of mental disease...I mean, who gets excited about dirty underwear??? Oh well, here it is, for all of you to enjoy.

I went out and bought 5 new laundry baskets (since I didn't have that many in my house to begin with) and put 4 here, as you can see, and the last one is in our bedroom and every morning I use it to take down the dirty clothes from the previous day and the clean clothes back up. I used to be one of those wait until someone has run out of something before I would finally force myself to do it, but now it is practically ridiculous not to do it...lol!

My Stick Family from WiddlyTinks.com

Pirate Party!

First off, before I forget, all the pictures where taken by Betsy of b.mullinax photography. She was awesome and I was thrilled with the results.

Now, on to the party! I spent months getting everything together for this party, you know, since I have to live up to my Martha Stewart Miranda nickname =)

I made the cones and homemade trail mix and the hubby made the awesome little boxes for them to sit in.

The table with 'golden nuggets'

I am a bit saddened that this is the only picture that managed to get taken of my adorable silverware rolls...a little photoshop cropping might be in order, but as of right now, this is what you get.

This is the second year (my youngest was turning two) that we have done a party for the boys together (since their birthdays are 2 weeks apart). Last year I had heard about how some people had accepted donations for a charity of their choice in lieu of receiving presents. I LOVED this idea on many levels... we already have Toys R Us in our house (or at least it feels like it), I don't want anyone to feel obligated to bring something for both children (in case they are only friends with one of them), on the other side of that, I don't want one child to receive more presents than the other, we donate things all the time and I like the idea of teaching the children to donate as well and finally I like the idea that the party is a celebration of them and not what they can get from their friends. They do still get birthday presents, we (ourselves and our families) give them presents on each of their birthdays and they get to pick where we are eating dinner that day. They are not deprived...anything but! I will post pics of their playroom at a later date. You will see. =)

This was the dress up table.

Another view of the dress up table. I made black vests and sashes for everyone. We also had bandannas, eye patches and telescopes to complete the look. In the invitation I had asked that everyone come in jeans and a white t-shirt.

One last picture from the dress up table. This was at the front of the table to show the kiddos what all they were supposed to get.

I had a little table set up in the back of the pavilion to entertain in between activities. I LOVED these little cans.
Somehow he got the nickname Pirate Bob....IDK, I had the girls who babysit the boys were helping me out at the party. They were silly and a GIANT help!
The hubby and I made two pirate ships out of some washer and dryer boxes. He put his blood, sweat and tears into these...ok, maybe not the tears, but definitely the other two, however that is a story for another day.

I loved the little signs that I made! These started out in life as pretty ugly Easter signs from the dollar store. I took off the ribbon and repainted them. Used some twine to hang them, some vinyl to put the letters on and some ink to kind of distress them.

This was their cake! I can't believe I forgot the masts!! Either way, they loved them. The 'ocean' is a chocolate cavity maker with some peanut butter cookie in between the layers. Matthew's boat was blueberry pound cake and Andrews was strawberry cake.

The party took place at a park and during some down time, the kids wandered over to the playground, of course =) This is my youngest with one of the girls who helped me out for the day.

One of the games we played was pop the cannonball. I put goodies inside most of the balloons and they had to go around and pop them all. This was a great game for everyone but my 2 year who decided that he didn't like the sound that popping balloons makes and freaked out seconds into it...probably with this balloon pop (that is him in the background).

There was buried treasure to be found! OK, maybe not so buried, but you get the idea =)

Another game we did was having a cannonball fight between the two pirate ships. We split the kiddos up into two groups and they got into their pirate ships and ATTACKED!!!

See what I mean...ATTACKED!

Listening to the first clue of the scavenger hunt.

Part of the scavenger hunt we had to walk the plank. This is my oldest jumping off.
The kids running to find the next clue. We ended up having 5 clues since the party was mainly 3 and 4 year olds, who have notoriously short attention spans. I was worried that they would lose interest after a few, but I bet we could have actually had more, they were having a blast.

They found their loot!

Overall, I would have to say that the party was a success. There was a slight rain delay in getting things started and it fell on a weekend when some sort of bug was going around, so we had a lot of friends who couldn't make it due to sick little ones,but the ones who were there seemed to really enjoy it. I got reports from several parents that over a week later they were still talking about it. There was one little boy who didn't stay for the whole party, since he had another party to go to (at Chuck E Cheese's) and apparently at the end of the day ours was the one he was still talking about. I think I spent about six months, off and on, planning it. Next year is going to be carnival and no I am not already looking into ideas...not at all...ok, maybe a little ;)

Getting Crafty...FINALLY!

While I have only done a few cakes this year, I have managed to get in more crafty things done. This is a sampling of the major projects that I have accomplished this year.

Earlier this year we went to Disney World for a couple of days. I had heard that the kiddos like doing the autographs with the characters, so I thought I would give it a shot and make both boys an autograph book. I wasn't sure since they didn't even like seeing Chuck E Cheese. They had a really good military package that came with the dining plan, so we ended up with FOUR character meals. The first character to come up to us was Pluto and it was love at first sight for Andrew. Matthew was a little hesitant at first, but even he decided that the characters were fun. By the end of the trip the boys were running up to characters. It was AWESOME to see them having so much fun with it all AND I got tons of compliments on my books. =)

This is a sample of the inside of the book. I decorated all the pages differently.

We went to Sesame Place last month and I found out that they did autographs as well, so I took the layout plan from the Disney book and did this one.

Thanks to an awesome employee there we managed to get all of the characters that they have there to sign our books.

This was from a kit I bought while at CKC last year that I just got around to making it.

This was from a class I did last year at CKC, but just recently got around to actually doing it.

I had seen boards like this on several blogs and decided to give it a shot. I was really happy with how it turned out AND it was in Dallas Cowboys colors, so even better ;)

Cakes done so far this year

This cake was for the great grandfather of one of the little boys that Matthew went to school with this year. As you can see, it was for his 90th birthday. The grandmother came to me with the question of whether there was any way to put 90 candles on a cake and this is what I came up with. It was a lot of work, but I was really happy with how it turned out and they loved it.
Matthew was finally old enough to play 'real' sports, as my husband puts it, and this year played soccer and t-ball and it just so happened that he had t-ball practice on his birthday AND we had snack duty. I had been wanting to try these out for a while, so I figured this was a perfect opportunity. They didn't turn out quite like I had planned and they were plenty messy, but they were REALLY yummy. They are smores cupcakes. It's chocolate cake, with marshmallow filling and topping, with the tops dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with graham crackers.
This is the cupcake, fully dressed.

Matthew decided that he wanted to have a Thomas cake for his birthday party at school, so this is what I came up with. I am not sure that I was in love with it, but I was working on his and his brother's upcoming birthday party, so it was good enough. Besides as long as there is Thomas and cake, the 4 year olds were happy ;)

New attempt and an update of some the cakes I have done in past months

I have NOT been a very good blogger. Let's see if I can try to get updated on what has been going on in recent months. I think if I could sum in up in one word, it would be BUSY! There was school, a few trips, sports and then just regular life. I did several cakes close together, but in recent months I have not done any. It's a good thing that my oldest kiddo's little girlfriend has a birthday coming up. I'm getting an itch to bake =)

Here are some of the cakes I did in the past year:This one was done for a teacher that was leaving the preschool where my oldest son goes.

This was for my son's preschool teacher's 40th birthday. I am not sure if you can tell how massive this is, but there is a roll of paper towels to the left, if that gives you any sort of perspective. Around the base of each layer are some oreo cookie truffles and chips ahoy cookie truffles.


This was, once again, for my son's preschool. They were participating in Read for the Record and this year's story was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This cake was so much fun to do!



This is not all the ones I have done, but some of my favorites from 2009. I will update later with some of the ones from this year.

Thanks for reading!!

Banana Blueberry Yummy!

Ok, so I kinda stole the title from my three year old son, but whatever, still cute. He made this statement after I told him what kind of muffins I had made and he tried them.

I got the recipe from the Country Crock website. Here it is in case anyone wants to try them...

Blueberry Banana Muffins

3 Cups All Purpose Flour

1 Cup Sugar

1 TBSP Baking Powder

1/2 TSP Baking Soda

2 Large Eggs

3/4 Cup Milk

3/4 Cup Butter, melted

1 Large Ripe Banana

1 TSP Vanilla Extract

2 Cups Fresh Blueberries

1 Cup Chopped Walnuts (optional - I didn't add these since I was planning on giving some to my infant son as well)

Preheat oven to 375. Grease 18 muffin cups or line with paper cupcake liners; set aside.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda in large bowl; set aside.

Beat eggs, milk, melted butter, banana and vanilla in medium bowl with wire whisk until smooth. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture with wooden spoon just until combined. Gently fold in blueberries and walnuts. Evenly spoon into prepared pans.

Bake 20 mins or until toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool 10 mins on a wire rack; remove from pans and cool completely.

Matthew's Room

Let me show you why I have not posted recently...I have been busy, being crafty! I a dinosaur cake for my son's preschool's dinosaur camp week. They actually do the same camp two weeks in a row (the first week in the am, the second in the pm) to give the maximum amount of children the opportunity to be able to go. I tell you this, becuase as soon as his teacher saw the cake, she informed me that I was now required to make one next week for the other camp! I told her not a problem, not realizing at the time that I have my first customer's cake also this week. Oops!

My older son is completely obsessed with Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so that is how we are decorating. We have already bought the sheets and comforter, but are waiting until we get his new bed in a few months to put them on. However, I have begun decorating the walls and everything else to indugle his current obsession. Here's what I have done, so far...there's more to come though!

This is the main wall you see when you walk in... this is a close up of the little figures above the tiles... There is so much more going on this wall, but I think this was cute already...
I had trouble getting a pic of this wall, 'cause of the window. I dont' know if you can tell, but along the top of the room I did a dark red border with Mickey Mouse heads about every foot or so...

This is part of one of the songs that they sing on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse...it's the Hot Dog Dance!!

I think that is all for now, but I hope to have more pics to add by the end of the week. I will be making two cakes this week...wish me luck!