I Love You More...

     I am a member of the children's book of the month club and as part of one of their special deals that they had running, I bought the book Bedtime for Mommy.  I thought it had a cute enough description and title, and the kids might get into it.  Might is definitely an understatement.  Both the kids love the book and Noah asks to read it every night.  The book is about a little girl who goes through the bedtime routine with her mommy.  They pick out clothes, read books, have bath time, and brush teeth.  Anyway, there is a part in the book where the mommy says goodnight and I love you to the little girl and the little girl replies I love you more.  Noah really likes it when we play the roles and he reads the part of the little girl and I read the mommy.  And since we started reading this book each night when I say good night and I love you to Noah, his reply is always I love you more.  It is so cute and so sweet.  After watching the Tangled movie I added the line I love you the most and he just gets the biggest smile.  I love it!

An American Girl

     Not sure why but just typing that title made me want to break out in a song.  Anyway, back to the post.  Before Christmas Mikayla had the opportunity to write her list a few times for Santa. One thing that remained the constant across all the lists was an American Girl. Mike and I had talked about and decided that she was not quite ready to take care of one. But it made it really hard to resist as the time got closer and she kept looking at the catalogue and picking out exactly what it was that she wanted. The week before Christmas she decided that she wanted to pick out the doll so she sent one last request to Santa asking for a "ticket" for an American Girl. Well, I guess Santa got the message and it was there waiting in her stocking on Christmas morning.
     Truth be known I was looking for something special to do with her on her birthday, but ahem, this one was left up to mr. softie.  If only I had known what he had gotten us into.  The morning after Christmas, a.k.a. Mikayla's birthday, we went to a small little church to watch Mike's mom play the flute.  After the service Mike's sister went with us to the Mall of America for the American Girl experience.  I definitely did not plan this well, and let's just say I was a bit overwhelmed when we got to the American Girl store.  You see, I have been in the store before both here and in Minnesota, but the time I went there in Minnesota I only remember one floor.  So, um yeah, that entered the first source of confusion.  We flagged somebody down who helped us locate a catalogue and let us know that what we were looking floor was on the lower level.  Finally we located the doll, but finding the outfits that Mikayla wanted was another task.  Oh and by this time we had my brother-in-law, his wife, and two boys met up with us.  So we had both of my sister-in-laws and me on the hunt for the outfits.  Finally we were able to buy the doll, get her ears pierced, and her hair done.  Phew, it was definitely a task.  And if it was not quite as crazy it was I would have taken pictures of the whole experience.  Mikayla really loves the doll and is doing a great job of taking care of her.  But I am not ready to be the mom who lets her take the doll everywhere with her.

Meet Julie

She loves, loves this doll

Christmas in Minnesota

     Christmas this year was to be spent in Minnesota.  I always struggle with the timing of leaving since we typically stay with family and I want to be able to do our family Christmas and not feel like I am imposing on their individual family Christmas.  It makes it even more difficult now that we have kids who are fully aware that Santa is supposed to visit on Christmas Eve.  We have done it a few different ways, but this year we opted to spend Christmas Eve here with my family and head up to stay overnight in Omaha.  So we woke up Christmas morning in Omaha and the kids opened their presents and were really excited.  They loved all their gifts from Santa and Mikayla kept saying that Santa also left her presents at home under the tree.  Um, not quite.  I told her there would be a present under the tree for her, but not from Santa (she was going to get one from my aunt).  After breakfast we got on the road and headed up to Minnesota.  Originally our trip was supposed to take us through South Dakota, but the GPS on my phone took us a different route.  We ended up getting to Minnesota a little later than we planned, but were so glad that we decided to travel on Christmas day because the weather the day before was pretty bad and we could see cars off the road.  Anyway, we had a great Christmas dinner with Mike's family and the kids enjoyed opening their presents.  But more than the presents, the kids had so much fun playing with their cousins.  We definitely should get them together more often.  When we first got there Noah was ready to go, but when it was time to leave he was crying because he wanted to stay and play. 

     Sorry for the lack of photos.  Our camera was acting really weird with the lighting and the motion from all the excitement of the kids.

Opening presents from mom and dad on Christmas Eve morning.

Playing with his new VReader.

Mikayla's present from Noah.

Christmas morning in Omaha

The beloved Toy Story 3 movie.

Showing off his new Toy Story 3 toy.  To say the least the kid is obsessed.

Christmas night in Minnesota

Waiting for the okay to open presents.

Examining all the presents.

Snowman Cupcakes

     Need I say more with a title like that?  Um, yum!  I have really been on the homemade cake/cupcake bend lately.  Once I started making them I pretty much decided I would never buy a store bought cake again.  Don't get me wrong there are still some good cakes out there, but the homemade versions just taste better to me (plus the ideas are limitless).  So with the task of sending Mikayla to school with some treats her birthday I set out to find some cupcakes that were just a little above and beyond the mound of frosting of store bought ones.  Enter these snowman cupcakes. 

I adapted the recipe from here.

1.  Gather ingredients.  Pre-made cupcakes (cooled), white icing, large marshmallows, pretzel sticks, and decorators gel icing in black and orange.

2.  I used a simple white buttercream frosting to ice each of the cupcakes.

3.  Depending on the number of cupcakes you are making, cut in half about a third (12) of the marshmallows.  (If you are only making a dozen, you can simply smoosh one marshmallow for each cupcake.)

4.  Place a whole marshmallow on top of the halved one and stick a pretzel stick through both of them.  Then stick the marshmallows into the cupcakes.

5.  Using the black decorators gel, create eyes and buttons on the snowmen. 


6.  Create a nose using the orange decorators gel.

  Due to the limited space of the box and the fact they were being transported, I eliminated the arms.  So there you have it, an army of snowmen.

MIA...Finally a Post

     Okay so here I am back to my poor, neglected blog.  Really it's not that I have nothing to write, because believe me I have quite a list of things that I really should post.  But for whatever reason lately I have been more interested in reading blogs than posting on my own.  Funny, huh?  Now that the holidays are over I will try to get better and more regular again with my posts, but I can't make any promises.  Speaking of the holidays, they were filled with many trips to this store and that along with some crafts intermixed here and there.  Oh and don't forget all the holiday gatherings and a trip to Minnesota.  Over the next few weeks or so I will be trying to catch up on our happenings and throw in some of the crafts that I made for Christmas (a little late for gift ideas, but hey there's always next year) along the way.  Let's start off with the teacher gifts that I gave to each of the kids' teachers.  I fell in love with the idea of the monogram hanger frame after reading this blog.  (Sorry for the lack of pictures with each of the steps.)


1.  First gather all the items needed for the project.  I used a 2"x3" mini frame, some scrapbook paper (one design for the letters and one for the background), dot pegs to give it some dimension, and my Cricut (which makes this project a breeze).  I also used a hot glue gun to add some twine for a hanger.

2.  Next stepp is to cut down the scrapbook paper to 6"x12" so that it can fit onto the Cricut cutting board.  Place the paper on the sticky side of the cutting board lining it up with the ruler. 
 3.  Then you set up the Cricut to cut the desired size of the object, in this instance I used 2" letters.  Load the paper and press "cut".  You will see a nicely cut image that will need to use the tools to remove.  (I was able to cut the three letters I needed at the same time using the 6"x12" paper.)

4.  Using the Cricut scoring device, cut out a 2"x3" square to match the back of the frame.


5.  Add the circle pegs to the back of the letters and center on the background.  Place it in the frame.


6.  Cut a sizable piece of twine to use as a hanger.  Apply two dots of glue on the top corners of the frame and attach the twine.  Tie a nice little bow and Voila you will you have something that resembles this:


Note:  This frame was the 2"x3" frame. 
Using a 3"x3" frame works better for this project.



I also made some homemade notepads using this tutorial.