Happy Birthday and Independence Day!

Ahh...Good to be home. Good to see you again, too! I didn't get much time to recover from our 2-day drive home before putting on a birthday party for my littlest. I really enjoy his birthday because it is on July 4th! (I get to combine patriotic ideas AND birthday ideas!) {squeal}

I literally threw together this birthday party in a day! Even I am surprised that I pulled it off!

But I found such great ideas from other craft blogs while we were on vacation. {Love you, craft bloggers!} I just had to make them all as soon as we got back. I had about 24 hours to pull it off. So if you are ever looking for some fast party ideas with big impact, these are worth noting:

Poke cake for the birthday cake...

~~Make a white cake, poke holes in top of cake with a fork, dissolve 1 box of jello with 1 cup boiling water and pour over cake (do this for each layer), chill 3 hours, frost cake with cool whip topping~~

Ice Cream Sandwich pops...inspired by this at Living Locurto.

I had to make some red, white, and blue cupcakes with Homemade Buttercream Icing!

I will make buttercream icing any time I have a reason to!

Red and blue Jello flavored popcorn...I found the recipe here at Claire's Creations.

...What are your "go-to" party ideas?...

And seriously, I might have found my new July 4th tradition- Cheesecake Filled Strawberries! Mmmmm. Sadly, I don't have a picture of these, but I filled strawberries with cheesecake filling and topped each with a blueberry. I apologize for no pic. But we ate them all! And honestly, if it weren't for my husband (who knows I get super side-tracked during a party) I wouldn't have any pics at all. I think he took all of these. I did have to rescue them all with some quick editing in iPhoto. Note to self: Teach husband how to focus camera...even on auto.

Oh who am I kidding...I am on vacation!

I crack myself up! Does this look crafty to you?

Right. It is not crafty. At all.
I really, actually thought I would be blogging "from the road"...HA! Seriously, people. I am on vacation in every sense of the word!

I am not doing anything crafty.

I am not doing anything bloggy. Or blog-worthy, really.

But I am relaxing. And enjoying our last few days of detachment-from-real-life. I wanted to share that with you before you never come back to my blog again because you thought I bailed.

And just to prove that I am not doing anything crafty. I am here:

The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC.

Walking around.

Wine selecting.

Wine sampling.

Enjoying our time sans-children.

See you after the 4th!!

Have You Tie Dyed Lately?

Gosh, it has been years and years since I have tie dyed anything! Until yesterday...

I got the kids excited to tie dye. Then headed out to the store to pick up the necessary supplies- shirts, dyes, and rubber bands. Then came home and washed the shirts and got everything set up. Sure the kids were excited, but they couldn't wrap the rubber bands and didn't understand the rubber banding process. So my mom and I did all the shirts. Then they couldn't help mixing the dye (because they are reckless kids). So my mom and I did that part, too. But they got to help drop the shirts into the buckets and stir them in the buckets for about 15 minutes. They only half-enjoyed that part. So my mom and I just finished it all up. We rinsed and cut rubber bands. Then washed and dried everything. But everyone ooohed and aaahed over the finished products. I will try and get some pictures of everyone wearing their creations. Today I had a swollen eye (gross and weird) so I have been trying to fix that all day. By dinner time I was able to see out of it again. Apparently it is some strange allergic reaction to something. Who knows! I am just glad it is getting better. I had to walk in the urgent care with sunglasses on so people wouldn't get grossed out.  They probably thought I got in a fight.

Summer Ideas for Kids: Weather Crafts

Weather Watching!

Even though it is summer, I still like to keep my kids learning. They made such great progress last year in school, especially near the end of the school year, and I would hate to see them lose any of it. So I am really trying to entice them into learning and reading by using topics they are interested in at the present moment.

Last week was all.about.weather. My kids are fascinated with weather.  Maybe that is because we have such big weather in OK. Big winds, big hail, big tornadoes, big rain, and big hot sun!

The website I was using is called Fun4Kids. She had book suggestions and crafts. It is wonderful!

We made the cloud craft with the cotton balls...except we used paper plates and I didn't have cotton balls. We used polyester stuffing because I had tons of it.

The kids loved the craft. Plenty of gluing going on!

Today we are visiting family out of state.  We have spent the last three days in the car so the kids are outside running around.  It is great to stay put for a few days, at least!  I will post again on Wednesday and show you what we are up to!

Blog Design... Um, I DIY'ed it.

Have you noticed that every once in a while my blog appears different?

          ugh!

 old banner

You'll learn that I have a hard time making my mind up!  But for now, I think I am at peace with this new color scheme and "design" (if you can call it that...because I made it up).

  

So what is new?  Well mostly everything...

• Like I have a background which I made in PSE
• These new sidebar headers  ------->
• New header (made that too in PSE)
• The lines of text are closer together
• Random post gadget added on my sidebar
• Went back to a 2-column blog (from 3-column)

and no, I still can't seem to get my photos to be a size that I am happy with!

If you have any questions about any blog design let me know and I will do a Q and A post.  I have tweaked this Blogger template all by myself.  And I have a few more things I need to redo.  But I am learning a lot- which was one of my goals of starting a blog.  But everything you see, I have done so I could walk you through if you needed some help.