Toddlerisims: Bunnies in Yellowstone

Spent a wonderful Mothers Day in beautiful Yellowstone National Park. We saw lots of buffalo, some elk, and an eagle, but our daughters favorite animal was the deer. We saw deer eating grass, walking in the stream and even hopping across the road. Each time we came upon them, our daughter pointed and would excidetly exclaim, "Bunnies!!!" Or, "Bunnies jumping!!!"

Gosh, she's cute. I guess I can see the resemblance to her favorite bunny book! 

Homemade (Healthy) Ice Cream

1. Banana Split Ice Cream

2. Cinnamon Swirl Peach Ice Cream

3. Rocky Road Ice Cream

4. Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream

5. Island Ice Cream

6. Chocolate Covered Apricot Ice Cream

 We're moving far away in two short days, but I keep finding things to do other than the important move related stuff. Queen of procrastination right here. At least todays distraction tastes AMAZING. And, like most of my fabulous ideas, this explanation begins with: There's this pin on pinterest...and it looks something like this:

Picture Courtesy of newbornmama.blogspot.com

So basically it's this one ingredient ice cream, and the star of the show? Bananas. Yep. Slice 'em, freeze 'em, blend 'em! The texture is just like that of real ice cream! And, you don't have to eat just a plain ol' frozen banana treat. You can add in pretty much anything you want. I know peanut butter and almond butter are two popular additions, but this morning I tried a whole bunch of creations and I'm still coming up with more that I'd like to try! Here's one that's perfect for summer time and appeals to the health concious:

My husbands favorite is the banana split concoction whereas mine would probably have to be the dark chocolate peanut butter flavor. Next time, I want to try adding a gob of nutella and a handful of maraschino cherries to some plain banana ice cream! Or... serve plain banana ice cream inside a miniature graham cracker pie crust and topped with whip cream and drizzled with caramel. Oh yes, now we're talking! The flavors we came up with today all began with plain banana ice cream and ended with the following mix-ins:

Banana Split- Chopped strawberries and nuts, chocolate chips; topped with chocolate syrup and a cherry.

Cinnamon Swirl Peach- Chopped peaches and melted cinnamon chips; topped with a peach slice.

Rocky Road- Tiny bit of cocoa powder, slivered almonds and marshmallows

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter- Tiny bit of dark cocoa powder, and a gob of peanut butter

Chocolate covered Apricot- Chopped chocolate covered apricots

Island Ice Cream- Shredded coconut and slivered almonds topped with coconut and whole almonds

Chocolate Covered Strawberry- Tiny bit of cocoa, chopped strawberries topped with chocolate syrup

Mixed Berry- Thawed frozen berries (black berries, raspberries, blue berries and strawberries)

Redneck Party and Jokes

Had a fun redneck themed going away party last night and it was a hoot! We're so blessed to have such great friends; sure going to miss them when we move several states away next week...

 Didn't my husband do a great job on the redneck cake? In addition to that, we made sure to include some NASCAR crackers served with cheese in a can, and had our drinks (root-beer and cream soda in a bottle) cooling in the sink filled with ice.

I think my favorite thing to include was the guest book. Friends wrote some really nice, and some really funny things in there! We enjoyed laughing over redneck jokes. And ofcourse, these jokes are all silly and in good fun and not intended to offend.

You might be a red neck if...
     your dad is walking you to school because you're in the same grade!
     your home has more wheels than your vehicle.
     you mow your lawn and find a car!

What's the last thing you usually hear before a redneck dies?
     Hey y'all.. Watch this!

How To Pick Up A Chick In Arkansas:
     Hey Baby! Nice Tooth.

Toddler Logic: Little Mermaid Wears Glasses

Our daughter, LJ's, favorite toy right now is the Fisher Price Little People Little Mermaid set.

She was playing with it yesterday and wanted to tell me about Ariel. LJ cannot say mermaid, but she held her up for me to see, pointed to her bikini top and told me, "Fish baby wears glasses!"

College Graduate!

This handsome man right here...

 

...graduated yesterday!!!

His mama and one of his brothers drove a really long way to be here for the occassion! 

Congratulations sir!!! We are all so proud of you!!! 

 
So, what's next for us?  For the second time in our marriage we are moving hundreds of miles away from everyone and everything familiar to us.That's ok though, we're excited for this new adventure and so grateful that my mr. right has a job lined up already! We have been very blessed; it is good to see his hard work paying off and wonderful to feel like we are moving in the direction of where we are meant to be.

Happy Easter!

Our Easter couldn't have been better this year! 

I know that our Redeemer lives.

The festivities started out Saturday morning when we took our kids 

and the neighbor kids to the park for an Easter Egg hunt. 

We had two oblivious (though super cute) babies, 

 one really excited toddler, 

and one very concerned little girl.

The park was way too crowded. 

He was quick enough to snag one egg; she didn't get any!

Seriously. You wanted me to get excited over that?!

They still had a good time at the park. 

I'm pretty sure this girl would follow that boy anywhere.

 Best friends.

We went home to have our own Easter Egg hunt for them, 

this time with guaranteed finds!

Pep talks from the dads

He was quick!

She enlisted a basket holder

 Sunday morning was a perfect Easter morning. Such beautiful sunshine and warmth outside! It was a wonderful, quiet little family day. At church, the choir moved me to tears and after naps we headed back outside for another Easter egg hunt and a picnic of jelly beans.

Happy 1st Easter little dude!

Thanks to her aunt, little girl had the perfect spring dress to wear today!

 

 

 Smooches for daddy, and making sure mom saw how silly that was!

Ah goodness, too many cute pictures to choose from! 

4 Month Update

 Isn't he just the cutest?

We love having him around! 

Blazer WIP

I ran into Kohls a while back to pick up some bed pillows and something perfect caught my eye. The Lauren Conrad jacquard blazer in marshmallow white!!! Doesn't it just sound... yummy? Oh, it's beautiful and textured and has pockets... 

kohls.com

It's just the thing I've had in mind for myself. Prior to the find, I had been pinning all sorts of fresh colored blazers on pinterest. Take these for example:

A cotton Linen Blazer selling for $118 at Loft.com 

The white sateen blazer, $158 at Banana Republic

And, the adorable outfit ensemble featuring a white blazer put together over on tumblr.com

Yea- I love the look. The only problem with the LC jacket I saw in stores was the price tag... At $70 I admit, I totally considered it. $70 isn't so bad... it's more affordable than if I had ordered the jacket from Banana Republic or Loft... but ever since I started sewing I have this mean little I can make that alter ego that pipes up when it should be quiet, "You can sew that for a whole lot cheaper!"

"Yea, maybe," I reason... but, ain't nobody got time for that! I reach out to grab the jacket, but then that voice starts chanting:

$70 dollars... 28 gallons of milk, dinner for the family every night for a week, and diapers- oh gosh, that's a lot of diapers.

Fine. I pull my arm back without having grabbed my marshmallow blazer. Look like somebody gon' make time for that! A few minutes here, a few minutes there over the past week and here is my muslin work in progress jacket:

It's not exactly praiseworthy right now... I didn't even complete it. I just wanted to make sure I could figure out the pattern (which I did after a couple phone calls and several texts to my grandma), that I'd be happy with the sleeve length, and that it'd fit alright. I'll pay a little more attention to detail when I start on the real thing. As you can see, the collar is pretty sloppy. It really did give me trouble. Hopefully, I'll figure it out a little better the second time around... Gotta do something with those raw edges; must've missed a step in the instructions.

So... Easier to have just bought it? Yep.

Is it really going to save me money?

I think so. The pattern I am using, NEWLook 6035, came from walmart and only cost a few bucks. I already had the muslin on hand, but even if I'd had to buy it, muslin is really inexpensive. Guess it depends on the cost of fabric I use in the end. Either way, my inner sewing ego is satisfied. It's been a fun project so far and I think after all the hours put into the blazer, I'll appreciate having it a whole lot more.

DIY tutus!

 Every girl needs to feel like a princess!

We've all seen 'em. The easy, no sew tutus that little girls just love to wear and moms love to make.

Recently, I made a few for my little girls dress up bin. Elastic for a waistband and strips of tulle tied slip knot style around the elastic. I learned that optimum fullness was achieved when the slip knots were tied in alternating directions, as pictured below: 

I get the feeling she'd wear these more often if I'd stop pulling the camera out. 

What can I say? I just want to capture all the poofy cuteness! 

Bloglovin... me too!

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Still figuring it out... but I'm using bloglovin now too! I don't do well with change!  

My girl is TWO!

Time flies, but yes- I can believe my little girl is two. She's just too darn grown up to be one! I mean this girl made her own lunch today for Pete's sake!  (With supervision, of course.) She cooked up her own pasta. 
And, she's potty trained. We started that last weekend; day two had one accident, day three had none and now she's good to go! I tested her on her letters this morning and she knows 23 of them, forgetting V and confusing E and F. She can even write a few letters like I, O and X, and point out the words Mama, Daddy and her own name too. She knows countless ASL signs and is understanding more and more Spanish. And, finally, FINALLY she is grasping the color concept. More often than not she can recognize yellow, blue, green, and red. What a relief! That was a toughy. Oh, and she counts to ten. We're so proud of her!



Little girl is a hoot. She says some pretty funny things, like:
"I want a geek!" Meaning, of course, that she'd like a drink. Yesterday, I started a conversation with her about what we'd find at the park. We agreed there would be rocks, water and ducks. When I asked her what else we could find at the park, she responded with, "Um... a purse!"
   "A purse?!" I asked.
   "Ya! Um... yellow!"
   "Wow! A yellow purse at the park?"
   "2, 3." She decided seriously. So we were on the look out, but darn it we didn't find two or three yellow purses at the park that day. She's become quite the critical back seat driver already. If I stop too suddenly, or turn too sharply for her liking, she flings out her arms to the sides and shouts, "Whoa! Baby, ok?" And she glances worriedly over at her brother in his car seat.

She sings; her favorite songs are the Wheels on the Bus and the Alphabet song which goes like this, "A, B, C, D, Q, R, S. Now I know my ABC- sing... me...A, B, C..." We rarely leave the house without her purse, a toy car, her baby, and- when she can convince us- her baby doll's stroller.

Our daughter is a very motivated, independent, social little girl who cannot be forced into anything. She can, however, be persuaded and candy is always a good bribe.

Oh, and despite my hoping for a princess party, our little girl chose a Cars/ Lightening McQueen themed birthday party. We had our awesome neighbors over to help us celebrate; just decorated cupcakes and socialized while the Cars movie played. Little girl just idolizes their son, and he is so sweet to her. The other day he was singing to her!