A little late but here's Halloween

I know it's a bit late but here are photos of the kids in their Halloween costumes.

 Wade wanted to be a guy holding his own head, haha, so this is what we came up with. On Halloween night he was miserable because it was hot and a bit heavy. I ended up taking him home and he changed into an old pirate costume.

 Firefighter Kayle. Such a cutie pie.

 Faleen was a Sugar Plum Fairy. I made the dress and the wings. got inspiration for the dress from Juju's Tutus. She does amazing work and her dresses are gorgeous!

 I designed and made the wings myself. Got a bit of inspiration from Emilie Autumn. Here is a video of her making some wings. Very cool. And HERE is the tutorial I used to do Faleen's hair. It normally turns out better than this but we were in a hurry to get it done.

Christian was Cedric Diggory from Harry Potter. He made his own wand and everything. So cool. :)

Hot Chocolate Bar

We had an event at our house last night for Secretary of State Ken Bennett who is running for Governor. Being the Christmas season we decided to do a Hot Chocolate Bar and cookies for our guests. I think it turned out wonderfully!

Here are lots of pictures of the table and backdrop.

 The mix-ins we had for the ho cocoa were: Cinnamon, Crushed Candy Canes, Hazelnut, Vanilla Caramel, Chocolate Chips, Roasted Coconut, Marshmallows, Raspberry Flavor Syrup, French Vanilla Flavor Syrup, Coconut Cream, and Whipped Cream. Everybody loved the variety. My personal favorite was the coconut cream with whipped cream on top and roasted coconut sprinkled on top. Devine!

 I had this frame I had gotten from Ikea. It was black so I spray painted it with red made for plastic spray paint. I took the glass out and covered the cardboard part with chalkboard vinyl. I hand wrote the words "Baby it's cold outside". I got the letter styling from a printable I found on pinterest HERE. I just looked at it and copied it by hand.

 The mugs I bought at Ikea for $0.99 a piece and the straws I got at Hobby Lobby. I believe they were $2.99 for a pack of 25. Half of the mugs I dipped in white melting wafers and then in crushed candy canes. I figured not everyone would want peppermint with their hot cocoa.

(Interesting side note. At the end of the night I wanted to see which color mug was taken the most and if the candy cane mugs or plain mugs were taken the most. Would you believe it, there were 10 mugs that weren't used and it was equal on all levels. Interesting.

 The stars I made from a tutorial I found HERE.

I made all the treats as well. We had chocolate chip cookies, snicker doodles, Oreo truffles (tutorials for these all over pinterest), and chocolate sandwich cookies. One person said the sandwich cookies tasted like they came from a bakery. =D The cookie part only has three ingredients. Nice!

The Hazelnut and Vanilla Caramel were both powdered coffee creamers and the Coconut Cream was liquid coffee creamer.

What is your favorite thing to mix into hot cocoa?

Garden Birthday Party

Almost all of my friend's birthdays are in the spring so I decided I wanted to throw a girl's only birthday party for all of them. Two years ago one of our friends threw a great one that was so much fun! She did Minute To Win It games. It was so so funny and was such a great time. Last year another friends invited everybody to go to her parent's cabin for a girl's retreat. (I missed that one :(We were leaving for Hawaii the day after they got back and I just could swing it. Boo hoo) I heard it was a blast though. So, this year I thought I'd go a little more formal.

I decided on a Garden Party theme sense I knew I wanted to do it in my backyard. Two of my friends said they would help with the food and another friend helped me with the set up and decorations. It was beautiful! Ok. Here are some pictures that I know you are so ready to see.

These were part of the table decorations. I was going to put my tables banquet style but my friend, Karen, convinced me that putting them in a square would be better. That way we could all see each other and chat. Thanks, Karen, you were totally right! Dinner was going to be around sunset so I needed a lot of mood lighting and these lanterns were perfect. I put battery powered LED lights in the bottom then put some flowers on top. I wrapped the roots of the flowers in pink tulle. You can see it poking out. I got the flowers to "hover" on the top by poking toothpicks in toward the top of the roots to keep them from falling all the way to the bottom. Worked like a charm.

I wish I could have gotten a better picture of them lit up. (I'm not the best at pictures). They looked like they had fireflies in the bottom. I wish they twinkled. That would have been way cool.

I picked up a few 6-packs of flowers. The ones I didn't use in the lanterns I put into little mini galvanized tin pots. Added a little greenery for the garden theme.

I made homemade cloth napkins and folded them into a lilly flower. So pretty :) (Side note. It took me four hours to hem the edges of all those napkins! I told my hubs that I WANT A SERGER!! sigh)

I ran lights in my trees and my friend, Laural, brought some tissue paper pom poms to add. I made a chandelier from trimmings from my grapevine and icicle lights. I couldn't get it to hang high enough so I had to bring out my pole for it to hang on. See, we decorated the pole with pink fabric. lol.

The sun was starting to go down. Doesn't it look magical? :)

Everybody helped out with the food. We had chicken salad sandwiches, green spinach salad with nuts cheese and craisins, pasta salad, fruit veggies, and homemade pink lemonade. mmmm YUM!

 Can I just say, Annie! I covet your hair! Look at those long locks. Soooo beautiful!

 I know you guys are going to hate me for posting this. Sorry! I love you!

I love all these girls!

I had everybody bring a $10 gift (sense it was a birthday party after all). After we were done eating we played a little game. We all grabbed a gift and somebody rolled a dice. If it was even we passed our gifts to the right, if it was odd we all passed to the left. After 5 minutes whatever gift you were holding was yours. I got some hand cream and some really pretty earrings.

For dessert we made nests. I'm so bummed because I don't have any pictures of the dessert. I need to ask around and see if any of my girlfriends took any. We made the nests out of shredded wheat and melted chocolate. They were put into little bowls to shape them and a little hollowed out in the center to look like a nest. I put a scoop of ice cream in the nest and fanned a strawberry on the side of the ice cream in the nest. Thanks, Annie, for making the nests for me. You are awesome!

Thanks for the fun night everybody! It was such a blast!!

My Garden

I've been wanting to start a garden ever sense we moved into this house on 2-acres almost 6 years ago! The problem has always been where to put it because we irrigate and I didn't want to flood it away or spend a fortune to build a raised bed...

I finally came up with a solution. We have a rose bed that I never take care of. Those poor poor roses. They have/had so much potential... I put an add on craigslist saying that anybody that was willing to come and dig them out could have them. Could you believe that about 15 people responded to that add within 1/2 an hour! Free labor, SWEET!

Just look at all those weeds and swamp grass! Yuck!

This nice couple came from 30 minutes away to dig them out. They thought they were getting a great deal and I knew I was getting a great deal. Yay! Everybody is happy :)

After the roses were taken out I made a trip to Lowe's and bought me some weed and grass killer, top soil and a hand tiller. I sprayed down everything that was left in the flower bed and waited a few days until it all died then pulled weeds like crazy. Next came the hand tilling. Let me tell you! I am glad I go to the gym on a regular basis because that hand tilling was killer! My neck and shoulders and back were so sore! Not to mention a HUGE blister on EACH hand! Chris and Wade helped me though. They got in there with their shovels. They really worked hard.

After that I put in my top soil fertilizer and tilled it in with my existing dirt and fixed the sprinklers. I got so lucky that the sprinklers in there were working. I only had to replace two heads. The others only needed a little bit of tweaking.

My flower bed is 4 feet deep (which is way to far for my little body to reach) so I had to come up with a solution. I could do rows because I wouldn't be able to reach into the back. I could just not plant there but then that would be wasted space.

 I decided to do squares, like square foot gardening. I did for "boxes" of 4 foot by 4 foot with a 1 1/2 foot stepping path between each "box".

I made a grid with string and skewers. The stepping paths between each row are newspaper and old shelves that have been sitting in my storage room for years.

Yesterday Chris, Wade, and I planted our garden. I am using a website called sproutrobot.com. It is amazing! You put in your zip code and it tells you what you can plant and when. It gives you all the instructions on how to plant what and when they should be sprouting and how to thin. It is amazing! (did I say that already?) It is a really great tool if you are a gardening dummy like me!

I'll keep you updated :)

Do you have a garden? Do you have any gardening tips for me?

Army Camouflage Party Invite

Here is the invitation we gave to Christian's friends...

I had Costco print them as a 4x6 photo so they were super cheap :)

My first post and an Army Camouflage Party

I have been told over and over again that I should start a blog, and over and over again I have said I don't have enough time. And it's true, I don't have enough time!! That being said, my oldest guy turned 8 this last week and we had his birthday party this weekend. It turned out so great I just couldn't hold back sharing...so here it is....my blog. :)

His party turned out so great!! I was so worried the week before because I had dreams that the party was a disaster. lol. Then, the day before I was trying to get stuff done and nothing was working! I was going to hem up his costume for the party and my sewing machine broke (boo hoo, I still haven't figured out what's wrong with it). So then I decided to bake the cake only to find that all of my cake pans were missing (did I ever find them? Nope, still missing). Then I decided I would mow the lawn. I pulled the lawn mower out and the engine is frozen...the pull cord won't pull. Nice... I threw my hands up in the air and said, Why??!

Then a thought popped into my mind. "Fawn, it isn't as important as you think." Hmm. Yeah, you're right, it's not as important as I thought it was. Move on.
I put the little ones down to nap and I set out to set up the obstacle course. Boy, was that hard work by myself! I almost got stung by a scorpion while I was getting blocks for the balance beam. Yikes! I was filthy and sweaty when I finished but it looked GOOD!

When the little ones woke up we ran to Hobby Lobby and picked up some cake pans and I got cooking. Figured out later that it was a good thing that the lawn mower didn't work. If it had I would have spent my whole afternoon mowing my backyard. Instead I got the whole obstacle course put together. That night the hubs the sick. He was throwing up and tossing and turning. I knew I was not going to be getting any help from him the next day.

So, all in all, it was a good thing that things went wrong the day before so I would be better prepared for no help from the hubs the day of. I do have to say, though, our babysitter, Miranda, came over later in the afternoon to help me an I could not have done it without her!! My mom also came by and stayed to help. AWESOME!!

Alright, enough rambling. Here are the pictures of the party. Enjoy!!

The Food Table and Backdrop. I made the banner out of burlap. I made stencils from a font I found on dafont.com and painted the letters on. I had chocolate dipped pretzels and marshmallows. Got the ideas from here and here. (I have most of these ideas on one of my boards on pinterest. here is a link) The carmel popcorn I made from my grandma's recipe. Best carmel popcorn EVER!!! I also made homemade lemonade and put it in a gallon apple juice container that I painted army green. I'm bummed I didn't get a picture of it. I really looked like an army canteen.

Here is the table all set up waiting for the boys to arrive. Each place had a helmet (oriental trading) and a dog tag (walmart) and a word search found here and a crayon. As the boys arrived I had them sit at the table and do the word search while they waited for everybody else to get there.

 The tank cake was fun to make!

I made the wraps for the water bottles with the same font as the banner. They say Happy Birthday Christian.

 Army crawl for the obstacle course.

 Tire run.

 The obstacle course started with the boys climbing up the jungle gym and sliding down the pole.

 Then they had to climb the ladder and slide down the slide.

 Next was the balance beam.

 Then the tire run. Some of them fell pretty good, but they were all good sports about it :)

 After that was the army crawl.

Then they had to weave in and out of the bars. At the end they did a forward roll over the finish line. They went through the course three or four times. It was great. Got them nice and tuckered out. lol

When the obstacle course was over I had them get a snack from the table and have a drink while I set up for the next game. Tactical Maneuvers.

 In this game there were two teams. One from each team was blindfolded and had to "maneuver" their way across a field filled with "landmines" (water balloons). Their teammates had to tell them which way to walk so they wouldn't step on a landmine.

 When everybody was across the field safely they had real war. lol

After that game was over I, again, had them get a drink and a snack while I set up the for next game, Wounded Soldier.

 I told the boys some were injured during the land mine game and they had the save the wounded soldier. Each team had to wind a whole roll of toilet paper around their wounded soldier then lay them down on the towel and carry them across the field. That's the birthday boy getting all fixed up.

 Uh oh, the other team dropped their wounded soldier!

Next, it was time to sing happy birthday and have some yummy cake.

 It was a little windy so the candle were kind of hard to light. Look how hard I am concentrating! and look how worried all the boys are! ha ha

 Blow, Chris, blow!

 Look! I even did the inside of the cake camouflage!

 This is what it looked like right when it was done baking. Doesn't it look cool? See Elvis anyone? or maybe the Easter Bunny?

 We got some awesome pictures of Chris's best friend doing some crazy things! This is just one of them. lol

 Next was the pinata. We found this one at Party City.

 There is the birthday boy all ready to go. :)

 We couldn't find a good stick to use so we ended up having them use my bokken (wooden sword). Look at him swing that thing!!

 They are all waiting so patiently. The hubs even made an appearance.

 Next was presents. I love the look on his face. ha ha ha

 As a thank you to all of his friends for coming we gave everybody a marshmallow gun to take home with them. They got them right after presents and had fun shooting each other while they were waiting for their moms to pick them up.

Apparently they go farther the higher up you are! ha ha That and you can ambush people as they are walking by. Always take the high ground, right?

Overall, the best birthday party I think I've thrown. There was fun had by all!

Feel free to leave me a comment! I would love to hear what you think of the party!