The latest

This morning, Sam put Lucy down for a nap. A few minutes later I heard her pounding on something. It was really loud so I asked Sam if he had closed her door. Of course he had so I went to her room and she was pounding on her door! That little stinker figured out how to climb out of her crib! Dangit! I guess it's time for a big girl bed.
A few weeks ago, we realized we had a leak in our water main. Fortunately, we didn't have a flood in the basement or sink holes in the yard, just water running continuously through our pipes. We got some bids for replacing the pipe then realized if we rented a mini excavator and dug it up ourselves, we could save over $1000! So Sam worked tirelessly Friday and Saturday getting it dug up. He and the kids all thought the mini excavator was a blast. In fact, Noah asked for one for Christmas!

Movie Review

Have you seen the movie Julie and Julia? If not, I highly recommend you make a date with your significant other, best girlfriend, mom, sister, cousin, next door neighbor, mailman. Whoever. Go see it. You will not be disappointed.
I think this is the first time I have seen a movie, made from a book, where the movie is better than the book. Like 100 times better. I went to see it with my mom and we both loved it. We cried and laughed so hard that we cried. I basically had tears running down my face the entire movie. I really wish it would have just been a movie about Julia Child because it was such a sweet story and, let me tell ya, that Meryl Streep knows how to act. She WAS Julia Child. And Stanley Tucci, oh what a sweetheart. Really. Seriously. Can you tell I loved this movie? I will be buying the DVD. However, I will not be mastering the art of French cooking!

Baby shower goodness

I love reading crafty blogs. I am amazed by the cute things people create. I have been known to create some cute stuff but I don't usually come up with stuff on my own. So, I love that people share all the fun stuff that they make so I can copy them! Now, it's my turn to share some of my cute stuff!

Saturday I hosted a baby shower for a friend of mine. I decided I wanted to try my hand at cupcakes. Now, I've made cupcakes before but always just slapped some frosting on the top. But I wanted these cupcakes to be really pretty. So I borrowed some cake decorating tips from my friend Megan and an instruction booklet and went to town. I made strawberry lemonade cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I made three different designs and two colors of frosting:pink and light orange. Decorating them was really fun, relatively easy and they turned out so yummy. I might even go as far as saying they were yummioso and they looked oh-so-cute! Unfortunately, most were eaten before I got a chance to take a photo of their cuteness. So, the one remaining cupcake that I hid is in the photo above.

Megan helped me make cream cheese mints for the little favors. We did pink strawberry kiwi mints and yellow lime flavored mints. (I guess they weren't really mints since we didn't use mint but that's what they are called.) Megan has a ton of cute molds so we did baby bottles, rocking horses, baby carriages and butterflies.
The favor boxes were these darling "sour cream containers". You know the kind, like when you go to Wendy's and order a baked potato and the sour cream is in that funky little tubey thing. I got the instructions here and really, they could not be any easier.

Then I made a cute little advice book to match and had everyone write down their best baby advice for the new parents. I haven't put the whole book together yet but the cover of it is shown in the photo.

The shower was a success. Yummy food, fun gifts, cute favors and showered mama-to-be.

100th post!

Yesterday was my 100th post. I intended to make a big deal out of it but was so caught up in getting caught up that I didn't realize until later that I had written the 100th post! Oh well, here's to good intentions.

We celebrated Sam's birthday yesterday. We had a yummy dinner of pesto stuffed pork chops, twice baked potatoes and a delicious, fresh green salad. Then we topped it off with some birthday ice cream treats. Sam had asked a few weeks ago for a headlamp but I never got around to ordering it so I was left scrambling at the last minute for a meaningful gift. He has taken some really beautiful pictures lately so I browsed through our photos and found two of my favorites (one was a fave of his). I then had 8x10's printed of each of them and framed them. Although it wasn't the headlamp he was hoping for, he was touched by the thoughtful gift. He really does have an eye for photography and loves to take pictures. Maybe one day we'll be able to save up for a really good camera.

I'm so grateful for Sam. He is a wonderful dad, husband and provider. We think he's pretty great!