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!

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

What a magical weekend!

Happy Birthday Kainen!

One year ago today, after a very easy labor and near perfect homebirth, we welcomed our sweet little guy into the world. My heart doubled in size that day. Happy Birthday, Kainen Alexandar! You're such a blessing in our life!

To celebrate his first year, we threw a party in true Darning Diva form with a custom shirt, coordinating decorations and a homemade cake. Here are a few shots from his party:

I appliqued his shirt with rib knit to match the party decorations

A toy dump truck filled will tool shaped cookies to give to the kids as favors. We applied masking tape to our table to make them look like roads and finished them off with orange cones.  :)

I purchased printable decorations from Dimple Prints - Seriously, instant party!

And of course, what would a party be without balloons? 

Please ignore the tinfoil on the backs of the couches. 

We use it to keep the cat from smooshing the cusions. :)

Of course, You can't have a birthday party without cake! 

This one was quite time consuming to make, but I love the way it turned out! 

I think he liked it!

Gosh, I can't believe it's been a year already. Time sure does fly when you're having fun!  It may be time to start thinking about having another little bundle. Maybe. :)

Weekend Festivities

Ok, so I'm not too keen on posting a lot of photos of myself, but I had to take this opportunity to show you the adorable ensemble I put together for my family this weekend.

Over the weekend, this beautiful couple was responsible for giving me reason to run rampant...

...to put together these wonderfully coordinated outfits for their wedding. I was really hoping they would have a photographer taking photos of the guests on a backdrop so we could sneak in a family portrait. But, since they didn't, you'll have to settle for this less than professional snap shot.

Notice the matching red shoes and my son's little red bow-tie peeking out from behind his chubby little hand? I fashioned his bow-tie from this tutorial. Cute, no?

Oh yeah, please disregard the candy that my daughter is so thoroughly enjoying. It's near impossible to get all four of us looking good all at the same time!

And just so you can soak in the cute factor of our matching outfits a little more, here are a few more photos for you to enjoy

Isn't he just so handsome in his pinstripes?!

These two were non-stop all night long!

Of course, the night wouldn't have been 

complete without a dance with my daughter

Oh yes, and before I forget, I also made the red belt that I'm wearing. The dress came with a black in white belt that disappeared into the background, so I spiced it up by sticking a frayed fabric rosette onto a belt that I fashioned out of the same fabric from my son's bow-tie. 

Maybe I can coerce everyone ask everyone nicely to get dressed up again so we can have some professional photos taken.