Roar...Ethan is Four!

My baby turned four this month and we celebrated by having our family over for a dinosaur themed birthday bash. It was a dinoriffic time!

 I decorated the house in green and orange and, of course, dinosaurs.



My friends at Sign Solutions created this awesome banner, which is now hanging in Ethan's bedroom as a permanent decoration.

I made the dinosaur birthday cake and am really proud of how this stegosaurus cake turned out. It was my first attempt at doing a carved 3-D cake and it was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. Plus it was really fun to try and figure out what candies that we have at our small town grocery store would work for the dinosaur details. (I'll try and do a post later on dedicated to the details on how I made this cake.)

All smiles as we sing "Happy Birthday"!

Ethan with his cousins, Alex & Hunter, enjoying the birthday cake. Ethan got the dinosaur head for his piece of cake.

The adult table. (For the birthday dinner we served some of Ethan's favorites: Pork tenderloin, twice baked potatoes, broccoli & cheese, gnocchi and crescent rolls.)

Pictures of some of the birthday presents.



Happy Birthday to my sweet, baby boy who constantly reminds me that he is no longer a baby now that he is four. And he's right, he's such a big boy now and amazes me at all the things he can do. Becoming a Mom four years ago was the best thing that has ever happened to me and I'm forever thankful to God for bestowing this great blessing upon me.

Easter Pops

Well hello there blogging world. It's been a long time! I hope you missed me a little bit because I sure missed you. I took some time away from the blog to sort out some personal issues and then my laptop decided to get the "blue screen of death," as my repair man called it, and I just now got it back to working order.

I made these cute, little cake pops for Easter this year. For directions on all things cake pops, check out Bakerella's website.

The bunny's nose is from heart shaped sprinkles and the ears are made from pastel colored candy corn. When you flip the bunny over, you see his fluffy tail made from a mini marshmallow.

The chick's feet were made from flower shaped sprinkles and the nose was from a broken piece of candy corn. The eyes on both characters were made from candy pearls and drawn on with editable ink.

Ethan let me borrow his Easter basket to tuck the cake pops in for their transport to the farm for Easter dinner. The bunnies were the biggest hit and their cute little faces were quickly gobbled up.

Handmade Valentine's Day Cards

Ethan had his daycare Valentine's Day party yesterday and all the children brought Valentine's Day cards to exchange with each other.

I'm a big fan of handmade Valentine's Day cards for children. I know that eventually Ethan will be begging to bring those boxed cards with Spiderman on them but, until then, I want him to take part in making special cards for his friends.

This year, we cut out a bunch of hearts and Ethan decorated each of the hearts with glitter glue and crayons.

After the heart's decorations were dry, we made a hole near the bottom with a paper punch. Place a lollipop through the holes to form a flower. Secure the hearts in place by wrapping the stick of the lollipop with a green pipe cleaner to make the flower steam. We placed some bug stickers on the flower petals and then attached a cut out green leaf on the stem that had the Valentine's message written on it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Snow Day = Snow Candy

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Today Ethan and I had a snow day. We woke up to a blizzard warning and lots of falling snow, so my office was closed due to the severe weather. I love adult snow days! Poor Jim, he had to go into work at the crack of dawn to help with clearing the roads while Ethan and I stayed tucked in our warm beds.

We had a late start to the day, as who wants to hustle around first thing on a snow day? Ethan and I watched Dora the Explorer and leisured over our milk and coffee.

When I was finally ready to start the day, I looked out the window at all the freshly fallen snow and had an idea...make Sugar Snow Candy!

When I was little, I absolutely loved the Little House on the Prairie books. In one of the books, Laura makes maple sugar candy by pouring the hot candy over pans of snow. My favorite part of the snow candy story is her Grandma letting all the kids have as much candy as they wanted because "sugar never hurt nobody." Isn't that exactly how we want a grandma to act? I've always wanted to try this and thought it would be a great day to give it a whirl.

You can use any favorite toffee or caramel recipe for this. I went easy, as I had a lot of cooking ahead of me later on today, and melted 1/2 cup of butter with 3/4 cup of brown sugar.

Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 3 minutes.

Drizzle the hot mixture over a dish of fresh snow.

Enjoy!