Happy 6th Birthday Monkey

Today was Monkey's 6th birthday. My baby is growing up so quickly. First he lost his very first tooth a few weeks ago and now he's six! I just wish I could keep him small forever *grin*.

We woke up early to head into the city to visit with good friends of ours and then we treated the birthday boy and the whole crew to an afternoon of ice skating and hot chocolate. So much fun :)

I cheated and picked up a special birthday cake with Wall-E and Eva on it because he had been checking out the birthday cake book at the supermarket every time we went and had his little heart set on having a Wall-E cake. I just knew I wouldn't be able to find the little characters for the top so I ordered it secretly on Friday and when I pulled it out of the box tonight he was so excited.

But that wasn't the biggest highlight of his party! The boys are absolutely crazy about everything Star Wars and I can't tell you how many times they've watched the old VHS movies that I found for them at the second hand store. So when he opened up his gift from his dad and I his little eyes nearly popped out of his head to find a light saber just like Yoda's and it lights up and makes the real sounds to boot. No more wrapping paper tube light sabers for him. LOL.

I caught it all on video so that when Hubby comes home he can watch it and feel like he was able to be there for his special night to :) Plus it's going to be hilarious to show him when he's older :)

Hugs,
Rosina

I've Got A Teenager!!

On Monday my son turned 13!!!
I can't believe I have a teenager in the house already. It sort of makes me feel old *grin*. On Saturday he had a couple of friends over for the day and we had his big cake, party food and presents and on Monday the actual day of his birthday we kept it pretty low key. I made his favorite meal of hamburgers and as a joke I stuck a candle in the top of one of the burgers and sang happy birthday to him as I brought it out to him for lunch :) You should have seen the grin on his face. I'm actually looking forward to his teenage years as it brings a whole new set of experiences and he is such a great kid that it can only get better :)

Today we all worked on our Valentine's day cards that we are making for a swap we are participating in. My daughter traced out hearts on some heat n bond paper and then we transferred it to the burlap rectangles above which are going to make the front panel of our cards.

I just LOVE all of the red fabrics and can't wait to show you how they turn out. Last year we made cute little handprint heart cards and we shared our extras with some of you lovely readers and we're going to do it again! So make sure and check back as I will have 5 of our new cards ready to hit the mail just for you :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy 5th Birthday

Yesterday my baby turned five... born in a snowstorm in 2006 and got his wish of having his fifth birthday in a snowstorm *grin*. All he really wanted was for it to snow on his birthday :)

I wish you could have seen the big ear to ear smile on his face when he pulled out 'snakey' from its wrapping paper :)

It was an instant hit as he started stuffing little felted mice into the snake's mouth and working them down the knitted body including munching sound effects...

followed by regurgitating noises as they all started to pop back out! It went totally crazy after that as the whoopie cushion was pulled and the snake had some bad indigestion resulting in very loud gas. LOL.

Boys... heehee.

He also got a wooden play castle with a few wooden knights and horses, a king and queen...

and it opens up wide so that it creates a great little play place inside with a dungeon and more :)

We wrapped up our little birthday party with a Thomas the train cake. His favorite :) Now if only I could bottle him up and he would stay 5 forever *grin*. I'm running out of babies!

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Birthday Halloween Style

It was all about Halloween today :)
We started our day with a hunt for fireworks which we successfully located at the nearby corner store and then headed home to tackle our pumpkins. I had been waiting until the last day to carve them as we have a bear around our property right now and I didn't want to draw him close to the house with the smell of fresh pumpkin *grin*.

All three of the children had their very own pumpkin and as they plucked out innards I sifted through the bits for seeds to roast for munching on later. I just love roasted pumpkin seeds :) It was great to watch them carve and the scary faces take shape. My little guy insisted on trying to carve his with a butter knife because mama isn't quite ready to let him wield a sharper knife just yet but in the end he had to enlist the help of daddy because his knife just wasn't getting the job done LOL.

Halloween happens to by Hubby's birthday as well but he has to leave for work tomorrow so we decided to celebrate his birthday today so that he wouldn't miss out on some of the Halloween fun :) I had quite a few different plans for ghouly food and waaay to much for just one meal so we decided to keep it a little tamer for daddy as he's not so crazy about 'eye of newt' juice and some of the other things I like to make for the kids *grin*. So tomorrow we are going to have a second party with eye ball soup, rotten cheese spread and more! Oh do I love halloween meals :)

So we kept it tame for daddy and had roast zombie leg (pork roast), mashed brain with bat blood (mashed potato & cranberry sauce) , vegetables and eye of newt juice (lemonade with tapioca pearls). I just couldn't help myself but call everything crazy names and the kids loved it :) Of course that led in to some, um, very interesting dinner conversation as my oldest wanted to discuss just how do you kill a zombie *grin*.

Hubby loves ice cream cake so much that he had the kids quite convinced that he wasn't going to share. You can see from the photo that he was doing a pretty good job as he attacked the cake with his fork!

To end our birthday celebrations we shot off all of our fireworks and I think startled the neighbors LOL. After the first couple of ear shattering bangs we could see a spotlight pop on down the road as they checked out just what was happening up our neck of the woods *grin*. The kids didn't want daddy to miss out on any of the fun so who could say no!

He's another year older and even more loved than the year before :)
Happy Birthday Hub-a-licious *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

A Lovely Surprise

The little bunting birthday cake that I made for L's birthday party this summer has been featured in the One Pretty Thing weekly flickr friends roundup.

What a fun little surprise :)
I hope you all are having a great weekend!
Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Birthday

Today we celebrated L's 7th birthday.
Her actual birthday was last Wednesday but with my dad being in the hospital and all of us spending so much time with him we thought that it would be best to postpone her party so that we could really make it special for her and I think I succeeded :)

I wanted to make a fun cake for her along a princess theme and I had previously done the castle cakes with towers so this time I thought I'd experiment with fondant. Now that is some fun stuff!

I baked a chocolate cake for the two layers and then rolled out a large sheet of the white fondant and popped it over the base of the cake. It went on so nice and smooth and it just took on the circular shape without much effort at all :) For the castle top I worked in some pink gel food coloring into the remaining fondant and then rolled out another rectangular strip to wrap around the top layer of the cake. I put a dollop of icing in the top of the base layer in the center and placed the second cake on top of it and then wrapped the pink castle tower shaped fondant around it and inserted another circular piece of pink fondant inside the top so that it was completely covered.

For the circular embellishments all around the bottom I just used various small objects I found around the kitchen for the circles and when you dampen the backside of the fondant it instantly becomes tacky so that you can just press the shapes onto the other fondant and they stick like glue.

Of course I couldn't resist making matching miniature bunting flags to adorn the top of the cake to go with the larger set of special birthday bunting that I made for her just days before :) It turned out so cute!

The weather cooperated beautifully and the rain held off long enough so that we could have her party out in the gazebo like we do every year :) With the amount of food my mom and I made you would have thought the entire neighborhood was coming but it was only the six of us *grin*.

There we were outside in the garden sipping raspberry spritzers with little strawberry & umbrella garnishes...

and nibbling on our ice cream cake cones *grin*.
L was definitely one happy birthday girl :)

~ Rosina