Colin's Party

Colin's Thomas the Train Birthday Party!

Here is the goodie table full of yummy treats! It has the cake, cupcakes, Sweedish fish, blue and red gumballs, M&Ms, licorice, and taffy! All of Colin's favorites! I used a white tablecloth on top, so as not to drown out all the bright colors, with a blue tablecloth around the bottom. I also added some balloons around the edges to make it more playful

Here is the candy! On the left, I used a Blue bucket with white polka dots to fill with licorice, Colin's favorite. In the middle, there is a glass jar that I glued onto a candlestick, filled with sweedish fish, and added a blue bow with toole. On the right, I jsut used a plain old jar from Tai Pan and filled with blue gumballs and added a bow with blue ribbon with white polka dots. YUM!

 So, for the candy on this side, I did some of the same things as the other. On the right, I used another bucket to hold taffy, the jar in the middle is also glued onto a candlestick with a rafia bow, and the left jar is just a fun jar I found with a light blue lid that I used to hold the York Pieces to add some more blue to the candy

 Here is my cupcake stand with all the yummy cupcakes on it :)

 I made chocolate cupcakes this time with flufffy white frosting (From my Better Homes and Gardens red checker cookbook). I added some extra almond extract to the frosting to give it an extra yummy flavor as well as blue food coloring and sprinkles. For the topper, I found a cute Thomas picture on the internet and shrunk it waay down and cut them out. I used one on the front and one on the back and glued them together with a toothpick in the middle

 I found this glass dome at DI a while back and decided to make it into a cake stand. I also found the glass vase and plate at DI and glued them together. I think it looks super cute with the glass dome, especially after I added a blue dotted ribbon on top!

 I would love to say I made the cake, but I would be lying....I badly need to take a cake decorating class. I definately lack in those skills. BUT I did find this amazing cake lady who made this not only super cute, but yummy cake. She did out of a butter cream frosting and smoothed it out like fondant. She put it on a larger board and made the track go around the outside on the bottom. The very best part is the tunnel on the side! She dug it out a little and made the track come out of it as a place for Thomas to sit. Colin absolutely loved the tunnel! Soo Cute!

 I found this idea on Pinterest! It is just my vegetable cans covered in scrapbook paper for utensil holders! So cute and practical and costs almost nothing! Find it here

 Another Pinterest idea! I talked Paul into making this track with electrical tape for Colin to scoot on with Thomas the train! All the kids loved it! Find it at maddycakesmuse.blogspot.com

 I found these cute lanterns at Hobby Lobby and just love them! So cute!

 Last, but not least, comes the ballon streamers! My favorite new idea! You just blow up the balloons and use a needle and thread to make them into a garland to hang! It was a pretty breezy day, and they didn't go anywhere! Great idea if you don't want to go get all your balloons filled at the store!! Find it at agirlandaboy.com

 I had so much fun with Colin's birthday party! All the wonderful Pinterest ideas really came in handy! Thank you Pinterest, Cakes by Deanna, Tai Pan, Hobby Lobby, DI, and a great husband to help pull the whole thing together!

Happy Birthday to my sweet little boy, Colin, who just turned 2!

Chicken Tacos!

I made these recently and decided they are my new favorite food, replacing my normal favorite, ground beef tacos. Mmm. They were soo good! I found the idea from sixsistersstuff.com. I made the chicken in the crock pot with taco seasoning and some of my yummy homemade salsa. The toppings include cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, avacados, corn, black beans, sour cream, and more of my homemade salsa. I love, love, love tacos!

My almost-two year old loves tacos now and begs for these whenever we have them!

Our First Garden

This year, we decided to start our first garden! We cleared the space in the Fall and Paul worked with the dirt and brought in some treated soil (well... what I mean by treated, is...turkey poop, ewe!). We planted our seeds back in April and it's really growing now! Wow! This pic shows the different kinds of lettuce we planted including a Black Seeded something or other, Swiss Chard, and Mesclun. What you can't see is that we recently added some Spinach and Kale that are just comin up. Paul is really into trying everything out this year to see what we like. In the very tippy-top of the pic, you can hardly see, but we also have a row of Peas and a row of Celantro

I thought it was going to be really hard to get a garden to grow and that most things wont even grow your first year....I really had no idea how a garden works! Haha! If you can't tell, Paul is the one with the green thumb in our family. In this picture, you can see in the back there are 2 Blueberry bushes, a Raspberry, and Strawberries, and the middle row includes a Green Pepper and 2 Big Boy Tomato plants. In the front there are 2 rows of Carrots and 2 rows of Onions. Oh ya, and Paul just added some Radish seeds around the tomato plants as well. It's hard to keep track anymore haha!

Here is a view of our garden from the yard. It is in the back corner by our backyard neighbor's garden and we chat and share ideas with them as we work. Love it! What is not shown, is to the right of the garden, we also have a Zuchinni plant and 2 Cherry Tomato plants growing....like I said, it's hard to keep track of everything anymore! We lined the front of our garden with some small boxwood plants to create a nice view from the rest of the yard and created a stone pathway down the middle

We love our garden and have recently decided we want to be farmers! Ha! Just kidding! I have to admit Paul does most all the work on it, but I work just as hard watering it and keeping the kids out of it as he does actually in it! Thanks Paul, for your green thumb and hard work! Love ya babe!