Upcycle

We were given a dresser and mirror by Mark's Aunt and Uncle. It sat in our house for a couple of months before I got around to cleaning it and putting it to use. I used some Stanley Wood Cleaner on the dresser, changed the contact paper and filled it with the girls clothes. Uh oh! No sooner had I finished then, we started finding stink bugs in the girls room. The girls were terrified. The beetles would hiss and charge at you. It was actually quite funny at times. After killing 3-4 a day and finally taking the dresser apart to make sure we had found them all, we were debugged. Now that it is warm, I took it apart again and took it all outside to give it a face lift. A coat of Kilz, two coats of Rose Sharon paint and some purple detailing paint and the dresser looks completely different. The girls are in heaven.

Just to keep them grounded, I stenciled on "True Beauty comes from a heart that serves GOD". I know that they may not recognize the truth of those words for years to come, but I hope that it plants a seed. Natalia has been very sure to show everyone she can her skill in reading the new words at the bottom of the mirror.

8 years of Mommyhood

My beautiful first born has turned 8. To celebrate, we had a few of her friends over for a party immediately after school. They had flower cupcakes, which she helped to bake. Then they had a "treasure" hunt to find the characters from the Brave Little Toaster. Our toaster was the final item to find and was sitting on our couch with a DVD of the Brave Little Toaster. Here are her pretty cupcake flowers (she didn't get to help decorate because we didn't want the frosting to soften the jelly beans. Who wasn't soggy jelly beans?)

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

I love pintrest. This year for our annual birthday cake baking session, I found cakes and posted them to pinterest. Then I let my little guy pick from the 6 or so example cakes I had picked. Thomas, airplane, kitkat bucket o'candy, and he picks a bug cake. We sure had a lot of fun assembling the cake. Even when the top layer broke in half. We meant it to look like there was a crack in the ground (well, even if we didn't, it still fit with the theme) We had cinnamon red ants and tootsie roll brown ants, a tootise roll snail, m & M caterpillars, gummy worms and frosting centipedes. Tobias spent most of his time carefully laying the rock candy path. He was thrilled!