A Tangled Celebration

Just popping in to share some pics of my daughter's fourth birthday party. I kept it a little more simple this year, with my focus being on the cake and her birthday shirt. Inspiration for the party came from here. Enjoy!

It wouldn't be a Rapunzel Party without a tower cake!

And 48 cupcakes...

Here you can see a small glimpse of her birthday shirt. I used freezer paper to stencil the sun logo used throughout the movie with the number four in the middle. You can also see how the tower started to sag from the weight of the muffins.  Oh well. It didn't seem to change the yum factor one bit!

On her actual birthday we took her to get her ears pierced. She'd been asking for earring for *months* She cried a bit, but really loved them in the end.

We also celebrated her birthday at school by bringing 25 candy covered marshmallows. If you're never tried these, you must! I never really liked un-roasted marshmallows until trying this. They really were yummy!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope you're all having a great week!

Christmas in California {Part 1}

We're finally back to somewhat of a normal routine around here. Somewhat. Is there ever really a routine when you have children?

Anyway, now that things are back to normal, I figured I'd share our Christmas adventure with you. After all, I did promise.

My brother, who lives in California with his Beautiful wife, had never met my little guy Kainen. Since he's 18 months already (woah, really?!) I decided it was time we rectified that problem. We packed our car and headed for the open road. From Illinois. That's 36 hours in the car. One. Way.

We started off at night to knock out a good portion of the trip while the kids were sleeping. With travel pillows in place, they were sure to be comfy for the long ride.

Ok, so this photo was really taken during the day, for those of you who caught me!

We drove, and drove and drove. Then we stopped to take some pictures just to prove that we'd been there.

It's seems the photographer may have a problem with her equilibrium. :)

 After 24 hours of driving, it was time to turn in for the night. So we got a hotel. In New Mexico.

The next morning, we drove some more...

The sights were stunning, and the kids were in good spirits. It was a good trip. After only (ha!) 12 more hours of driving, we finally arrived and were greeted by this handsome fellow.

This is Max. Seriously the sweetest dog you'll ever meet.

I'll pick up next time with details of all of the fun thing we did in California.

Hope you're having a great week! 

Home Sweet Home

As I briefly mentioned here, we took a road trip to California for Christmas. And in case you weren't sure, we live in a suburb of Chicago so that meant about 36 hours of driving. One. way. Whew!

I'm happy to say, we all made it back in one piece with nary a complaint from anyone. Well, maybe one or two. After all, 36 hours in a car is a lot to ask of someone, especially children. But we made it. We had a blast and I have lots to share with you.

I'm still working on getting back into a normal routine, so for now I'll leave you with a cute photo of my kids dressed in their Christmas pajamas. I promise a detailed account of our trip soon.

Hoping you all had a wonderful holiday and that Santa made all of your wishes come true!

Wordless Wednesday - Christmasifying

Wordless Wednesday - New Hat

A Wizardly Halloween

Hello, hello? Is anyone out there? So sorry for the recent silence around here! I have been sewing my fingers to the bone to prepare for a holiday craft show. The show is only six weeks out, so I've been taking every spare moment {like I have a lot of those, with two little people under foot} to crank out as many products for the show as possible. More on that later though, this post is about Halloween.

Sharing our Halloween photos with you all was something that just couldn't be put off.  My daughter is in love with the Wizard of Oz and even puts on little shows for us by singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow and can often be seen skipping around singing We're Off to See the Wizard.

So, her costume was a no-brainer this year. She would be Dorothy. I made her costume for a total of I think $3. I didn't have the time to make a lion costume for my son, so his was a Target special. Mine and my husbands costumes were thrown together at the last minute with poster board, burlap and felt. Everyone we encountered loved our costumes, but most importantly, the kids had a blast! Enjoy!

Hope you all had a fantastic Halloween! I'll try not to be so scarce this month! :)

Photo Friday

This photo was taken after our picnic in the park on my birthday. This is one of our favorite games to play. One of us is the monster and has to chase the other. I love that we have a graduated train thing going on here. This one just makes me smile!

First Day of Preschool or Mama has Attachment Issues

As promised, here are a few photos of my big girl on her first day of preschool. It went pretty well minus the minor emergency involving her favorite toy that couldn't be found this morning. Yeesh! Thankfully my husband came to the rescue and found it in T minus 2 minutes!

She looks ecstatic, doesn't she?

Heading up the stairs

Gosh, she looks so grown up!

Waiting to go inside. Now we're starting to look excited!

Things went pretty smooth when I dropped her off. I only choked up once! My husband was there, talking me down though. We'll see how I do by myself next Tuesday.

Playing with Photoshop

I recently learned how to use actions in Photoshop Elements and I have to say, I'm addicted. I spent countless hours ignoring my kids enhancing photos yesterday. Rita over at Coffeeshop Photography couldn't make it easier! She creates the actions and includes the directions for how to implement them and she even has instructions for how to install them! Did I mention that she does all of this for free?! What a gem! Here are a few of the photos that I enhanced using her Baby Powder Room and Powder Room 2 actions:

Before: Dark and off centered

After: Brighter, centered, skin smoothed and added vignette

Before: dark, uneven skin  

After: bright, defined eyes, powdery smooth skin and added vignette

Before: too far away, dark

After: cropped closer, brightened, smoothed skin and added vignette.

If you love photography and love enhancing your photos in photoshop, head on over to Coffeeshop Photography. You won't regret it! 

P.S. I'm not receiving any endorsements for this post. I just love her blog that much!

Stawberries and Lavender

Well, not together, but they're both on my thirty before thirty list.

I scored a bunch of strawberry plants from a very generous free-cycler this spring and now that they're healthy and lush I thought I would share a few photos.

I think my main motivation for wanting to grow strawberries was to try my hand at making freezer jam. It just sounds so delicious! Unfortunately we won't be harvesting any strawberries this year,  but I'm hoping for a plentiful crop next year!

Another thing I've always wanted to grow is lavender. The heavenly scent of those beautiful purple flowers sucks me in every time. I can't help but stop and take a whiff every time I pass them- even the foliage smells wonderful!

And as long as we're on the topic of gardening, I thought I would share a few photos of some of the veggies that we planted this year. We've been enjoying a lot of fresh salads this summer with tender leaf lettuce, fresh tomatoes right off the vine and giant cucumbers. Yum!

I hope your summer is going well. What simple pleasures have you been indulging yourself in?

Wordless Wednesday - Camping on Grandma's Farm - AKA TBT #8 (extremely image heavy)

What a magical weekend!