Making Plans…

I haven’t been too crafty as of late….well, at least that anyone would notice, mostly I’ve been running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off, mopping 1,400 plus square feet of tile, painting, organizing,cleaning, vacuuming, and mothering two children…that’s all.  I really need to get my craft room into a state where I actually can get all of the boxes off of the ground and I can actually get some projects done.  Believe me, I have plenty. 

I need to make some kind of black-out curtains for each of the kids’ rooms (and mine if possible), refinish chairs, a bed, a nightstand and a table, make pillows for the loft and figure out what colors I want the other rooms in this house to be.  I hate, absolutely hate the color the main floor is and I can’t even figure out why I hate it.  It looks okay in some lights but it seems like a muddy dingy brownish-yellowish kaki in most lights.  I don’t mind it in the morning but I hate it by nightfall.

I have gotten a couple of things done so far.  Besides painting the loft a lovely shade (or two) of green, I painted the nursery and the downstairs powder room. I also did hold a cookie exchange (where I completely forgot to take any photos at).  It went pretty well I thought.  Even if the main level of our house lacks much furniture and echoed like crazy as children ran around and adults visited.  I had great fun myself.  We did pasta on the menu.  I made penne, linguini, and angel hair and had marinara, pesto and alfredo, as well as meatballs, roasted squash with tomatoes, steamed broccoli, salad and other veggies to munch on.  I even tried making a fruit punch drink which resulted in my teaching one of my friends that the best way to get fruit stains out of a white shirt is to pour boiling water over it while it’s still wet.  It is almost magical how it works!

Of course, I had too much food and we ended up eating the same thing or a variation of for about a week.  I learned that Spaghetti noodles cut work great in chicken noodle soup…so good in fact that my son even wanted the leftovers for breakfast the next day. :D  We also pulled off a birthday party for my daughter in Utah when we were there for Christmas.  Which took a bit of extra planning on my part.

I am so looking forward to the New Year.  I want to finish lots of projects, make my home a place of peace and rest.  A comfortable place where my kids would rather be than at the neighbor’s house :). A real home that my family and even my friends want to be.  That is my goal for the New Year.  To be a better mom, wife and housekeeper.  It’s not the most glamorous goal but that’s what it is!

Winter Baby Boy Bear Cake

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I helped throw a baby shower for my friend Sherrada who’s having a baby boy.  Her sister Kalei and I threw it at my pretty much empty house since we more than doubled our square-footage when we moved and  do not yet have much furniture downstairs and though I have some ideas what to do, I’m not completely sure what colors I want in those rooms yet.  We had a spread of veggies, fruits, cheese and crackers and meats and some sweets Kalei brought and then I made some breakfast casseroles: a baked French toast one and two different egg ones.

I also practiced by piping skills the night before by making a polar bear cake with a bow-tie the night before.  I love the 3D mold I used for this bear.  I bought it a while ago and was excited to try it out.  I think it is tempting me to buy a tilting cake turner so that I can get the detail better on the bottom when I make it again.  I used tip 233 for the fur because I absolutely love the fuzzy look it gives the bear….much cuter than stars in my opinion.

Here’s our “Brunch” spread.  Kalei brought such yummy things.  It was great that I had her help with the food! Here’s the detail on the bear.  It’s difficult to see the fur and it probably would have been cuter if I did it in brown but I wanted to have white butter-cream since it was a spice cake to go with the holiday season.    Here’s pretty Sherrada filling out a paper for one of the games.

This is her mom getting ready to guess how big (actually little) Sherrada’s belly is.

One of Sherrada’s husband’s  aunts made this with regular grocery bags from the store.  I thought it was such a great idea, I had to take a photo so I can steal her idea.  She mentioned that using lunch sacks with the same idea makes a really cute bag for little cookies or something.  Love it!

Here’s Kalei with her brand new baby and Sherrada with her darling baby-belly.  So much fun that these sisters are having babies around the same time!

Baby Boy “Bear” Shower

I haven’t been blogging much lately, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been up to anything.  In fact, in the last three weeks, I’ve thrown two baby showers, hosted Thanksgiving and in between all that partying/work, our family moved and I have begun the task of painting and decorating each room.  Here are some pictures of the shower I helped throw for my friend Claudia on the 4th of November.  Her little boy showed up yesterday, so it’s about time I put up the pictures. My friend Brooktynn, who’s house we had the shower at thank goodness because I was moving the next week and my apartment was decorated with cardboard boxes from the grocery store, made this cute sign above the buffet table.  I loved that cute paper she used I wish it came out better in the photo.

Here’s my darling friend Claudia in all her glowing motherhood glory.  She is so cute! This is a photo of the spread.  Claudia’s been on a fruit and veggie kick since she got pregnant so I thought it would be appropriate to have Crudités and various dips, along with some wraps and French bread for dipping as well.  We had Hummus, Babba Ganoush,  herb vinaigrette, ranch and artichoke spinach dip for the dips along with broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, olives, tomatoes, baby corn and snap peas and a bowl of mixed fruit.  It was delicious and a pretty easy spread to put together.  The trickiest part was transporting it all to Brooktynn’s house.

Here’s the cake I decorated.  It has a mini bear on the top to honor little baby bear (that part was actually a brownie since who wouldn’t rather have a brownie than cake?).  The bottom cakes were white with strawberry preserves for the filling since strawberries are Claudia’s favorite.  It was delicious if I do say so myself.

We didn’t play any games (at Claudia’s request) but instead we put together scrapbook pages that Claudia can just add photos to since life gets pretty hectic once the baby actually arrives and that’s when you need it done, we thought that would be fun.

It was a little crazy to give a shower the week before a move but it was great fun and I’m glad I did it!  I hope Claudia enjoyed it too!

Valentines Dinner

I decided to start a new tradition of making a Valentines dinner for our family.  I had some incredibly (corny) funny ideas of what to serve.  First we had a salad with hearts of Romaine, then I had two Cornish game hens with rice stuffing with sautéed mushrooms and car(e)rots  with dill and to give a nod to cupid asparagus spears.  I know terrible huh?  It was great fun.