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

Advent and a Birthday

It's been a busy couple of days :)
We had family visiting from out of town, a special outing to listen to the Christmas choir singing at one of the churches in the city which was such a treat, catching a few last minute craft fairs and a few trips transporting Hubby to and from his tug boat for work.

It's okay though because today was my birthday and I got to sleep in and catch up on some rest and relaxation *grin*. The children made me the cutest little handmade birthday cards and my mom had all of us for cake. A delicious hazelnut torte filled with apricot jam and brushed with Austrian rum... so yummy! So good in fact that it disappeared much to quickly as we sipped our coffee that we had to splurge and have a second slice :)

The days leading up to Christmas eve seem to be zipping by really quickly and I've been working on making a list of all the things that still need to be done. I've been spending an hour each evening working on a few fabric Finnish stars that I want to give to my mom and my mother in-law and the children requested felt dragons earlier in the year after seeing the one I had made for Michaelmas so they have been cut out and are waiting to be sewn...

but when we lit our three candles last night for advent it reminded me of the peace and joy of the season that we are embracing and that I need to focus less again on the hustle and bustle of 'getting it all done' and more on family and togetherness. I found that in the past I get very caught up in doing and this year is all about the enjoying *grin*.

So far I think I'm doing a pretty good job at it and the sparkle in the children's eyes has never been so bright :)

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 12th Birthday

Today we celebrated my oldest son's 12th birthday.

Where have all the years gone?! I can't believe my baby is twelve :) Actually his birthday is officially tomorrow at 10:50 pm but his friend could only come over today for a little party so we whooped it up this afternoon and tomorrow we'll have a nice quiet family dinner with my parents.

Remember those gloves I was knitting? I got them finished! I stayed up till 2 am last night knitting like a mad woman to finish off the last 4 fingers and I'm so glad I did.



They fit him perfectly and I'm so happy I could make them for him since they were a special birthday request :)

He's also crazy about the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books so when I happened to see this great t-shirt at the bookstore I just had to get it for him. It is so neat! He gets to draw in with a special fabric marker any funny joke or picture that he wants to complete the thought bubble *grin*.

His friends gave him this neat drawing book...

and inside was one of those little wooden models that you can pose any way you want to help him learn to draw bodies. He's crazy about drawing and painting so I'd say he got everything he could have wanted for his birthday. Lucky boy!

Now I'm going to rest :) The last couple of days have been exhausting and the super late night last night has left me in need of some extra sleep.... I must be getting old! LOL. I've already prepared some of the food for tomorrow's dinner to cut down on the workload and I think if I'm lucky I'll have some free time tomorrow to catch up on some mama projects :)

Enjoy your weekend!

Hugs,
Rosina

New Years Baby

My dad is a new years baby so every year he gets completely spoiled with a new year's eve party and then the following day another birthday day with the kids :)

We don't actually go out or anything for new years. My sister and her husband come up every second year and we pig out on waaay to much good food, watch movies, play games and just enjoy family time all together with my parents which is exactly what we did today :)

This year for fun I got him a giant candy apple for his birthday cake :) It was so cute when the kids brought it to him with one lone candle burning in the top *grin*.

Nothing like a giant green apple coated in chocolate and caramel :) Well, at least it is partially nutritious with the apple center! LOL

For turning 68, beating cancer for the second time earlier this year and in the process of building his third house, I'd say he's doing pretty darn good for his age :)

Happy Birthday Daddy :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Birthday to Me

Last night the kids and I had a birthday party sleep over at my mom's house *grin*. Hubby is still away at work so we packed up our jammies and headed on over for movies, cake and pillow fights. Okay maybe not pillow fights but the kids giggled and mucked around in the dark well past their bedtimes!

This morning they woke me up for a special breakfast... a mountain of fresh baked bread and poached eggs. I'm thinking that 'Mt. Toast' was really for the kids but it was sweet :)

L surprised me with a special birthday card that she had made with a little quilled balloon, a lace bunting and a whole lot of hearts *grin*. I'm such a lucky mama to be loved so much :)

This afternoon I thought that I would do a little prep work and whip up some batches of sugar and gingerbread dough to chill in the fridge for tomorrow. We're going to have a baking marathon and having the dough made will make our morning go much quicker :)

Hopefully we'll have time to run down to the post office at some time tomorrow to so that we can get our christmas swap cards off to the families waiting for them :) I just love this little gnome santa stamp that I found to. Isn't he cute!

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend to :)

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

Tutorial ~ Make A Felt & Fabric Birthday Banner

I'm so pleased with how the Happy Birthday banner I made for my son's birthday last weekend turned out that I just had to share it with all of you :)

You will need:

Printed ABC's
an assortment of colored felt
coordinating cotton fabrics and thread
cookie cutter, mug or something else round to trace around

I started by tracing 3 inch circles on my felt using one of my water glasses as a tracing pattern :) Then I found a 4 inch scalloped cookie cutter that was just perfect for the white accent underneath the colored circles and traced around it, then cutting both styles of circles out. Don't worry if you don't have items that are the exact measurements that I used, check out your cookie cutters & glass cupboard and match up sizes that you have :)

Next using my word processor program on my computer I typed in 'happy birthday' and adjusted the size until the letters printed out at a suitable size to fit on the top circle comfortably without being to close to the edges. I used the 'Arial' font at 200 points for the size :)

With all of your circles and letters cut out, stack them together the way that you want them to look and start by sewing just your letters on through all 3 layers of felt. This is much quicker than hand sewing and I was in a bit of a time crunch *grin*.

With all of your letters attached it's time to get your flags cut. You'll have to excuse my hodge podge assortment of measuring tools! LOL. I only had one ruler that was long enough so I had to resort to fabric scraps for the other side *grin*. Not a big deal at this point though, all you want to do right now is visualize how big you want your flags to be so that your felt circles are going to fit nicely and jot down your measurements for when you are ready to actually start cutting!



Now that I knew exactly what size my flags we're going to have to be to look good, I started to cut. I used a 10 inch wide strip of cotton cut parallel to the selvage along the width of my fabric leaving me with a nice rectangular chunk.

With my flags planning to be 7 inches wide at the top, I lined one end of my ruler up at one of the corners on the narrow end of rectangle sized fabric and moved the other end of the ruler diagonally across the fabric so that it stopped 3.5 inches further up the fabric on the opposite side. This first cut was going to create one side of one flag. Once that was cut I repositioned my ruler so that it stayed on the 3.5 inch mark on the one side and slid the opposite end of the ruler up the fabric 7 inches and made my second cut which then created my 7 inch wide triangle like in the above photo.

To continue cutting your triangles out of your rectangular piece of fabric you just alternate what sides you count up your 7 & 3.5 inches. Hopefully my photo is worth a 1000 words and helps clarify my instructions *grin*.

With my assortment of colored flags all cut, I laid the entire banner out so that I could alternate flags & felt alphabet circles around until I had it looking just like I wanted :)

As soon as I had my line up decided I took them to the sewing machine, positioned each circle 3/4 of an inch below the top of each flag and then edge stitched inside the colored felt circles to attach them permanently to the flags.

Since I never turned under any of the raw edges on my cotton I was a bit concerned that with all of the handling it was going to start to fray. So I took my pinking sheers and quickly cut down each of the edges tidying up any stray threads and giving them a fun finish :)

The last and final step was to attach some pre-made bias tape along the top, connecting all of the flags together :) Now if you're really industrious you can actually make your own bias and the thought did actually crossed my mind but I opted for the easy way out and used the pre-made stuff *grin*.

That's it! One fun and super colorful birthday banner :) These could be used for anything to, not necessarily just birthdays. They'll gussy up any festivities and you could personalize it with your child's name to! The only thing that I would have changed was to put on the number 4 with velcro so that I would have been able to remove it every year and update how old he is. Alas, hindsight is 20/20 *grin*.

Have fun making one of your own and let me know when you've finished it. I'd love to see what you do to make yours special :)

~ Rosina

Happy 4th Birthday

It has been party central around here since December with 6 birthdays in the last three months and yesterday my baby turned 4!! Above is the cute little birthday card we made for him to match the 'Happy Birthday' banner that I made :) You'll have to excuse the backwards 'a'. We had a bit of a stamping malfunction! *grin*

To please all the men in the family I went with the super deluxe meat and cheese platter from our favorite German delicatessen. So yummy and not a piece left for a midnight snack!

I don't know what it is about ice cream cake but everyone has requested it for their birthday cake even though it's wintertime!

It was absolutely hilarious to watch M open his gifts. My mom had hidden them around the house and gave him clues as to where to find them. He would race around hunting for them but little did he know that Omi was going to make him work extra hard to open them. She had wrapped them in mass amounts of tape! He wouldn't let K or L help him open them either. So we all giggled as he strained and pulled making the funniest faces as he worked so hard with his little hands to unwrap them :)

One of his favorite gifts was this cute stamp set. We've been drawing roads on paper and he stamps in all of the vehicles traveling while making up little stories to go along with them. Stamps & playdough are his favorite playthings right now so this will provide endless hours of fun for him :)

No more birthdays now until August. Time is moving so quickly though this year that it'll be here in a blink of an eye! If only I could bottle time and slow it all down :)

~ Rosina

Party Banner

I'm feeding my felt fetish again LOL.
I've been working on a happy birthday banner for my son's 4th birthday tomorrow and I've just about got it completed :) Last night I hauled out my jumbo bag of felt and started cutting up a storm. I love working with felt, it's so easy to work and forgiving of mistakes. Just a little tug here and there sorts out little imperfections *grin*.

He's turning 4 and thought that I'd surprise him with a special birthday bunting with 'Happy 4th Birthday' on it. All that's left is to sew a string of bias along the top to tuck all of the flags into and it'll be ready to string up tomorrow afternoon :)

We just finished putting on a big shin dig for big brother's 11th birthday so we're going a little more low key tomorrow with cheese & crackers, salami and landjaeger from our favorite German delicatessen and of course one jumbo ice cream cake!

~ Rosina