Project Life - Week 7

We started this week with Drew's 100th day of school.  He was supposed to bring 100 of something to school, so he decided to take 100 toy cars.  He and Jim had spent quite a bit of time the previous week counting out all the cars and carefully packing them into a case.  As we stepped out of the house onto the driveway on Monday morning, the car case hit a bump, came open, and dumped the cars out of their little slots.  We had to rush to get them all repacked and get on the road to school!

 Drew came home from school with a special 100th day hat and badge.

 Tuesday was Fat Tuesday, and Drew talked me into buying him a packzi from the grocery store.  He had a cream-filled one.

 That evening, we worked on writing out Valentine cards for Drew's school and Wednesday night church classes.  Drew had Angry Bird valentine cards this year, and he enjoyed choosing and preparing one for each friend.

 I made a candy bouquet for Drew to take to his teacher.

 Drew's school has a mail system in the month of February, and Jim and I sent Drew a box of Angry Birds gummies on Valentine's Day.

 We drove straight from school to our church that day for our church pre-school playgroup Valentine party.  We got there in time for lunch.

 After lunch the children played a few games.

 That evening, I made a fun Valentine dinner.  The birthday girl was ready to eat!

 I made pizza with heart-shaped pepperonis.  I cut them out with a little heart cookie cutter.

 We also had some fruit.  I put a little treat at each person's place at dinner.  Jim and Drew each got a Butterfinger heart, and Maddie got a couple of Little People Disney princesses to go with her castle.  The children also each had a Valentine card from my parents to open.

After our Valentine dinner, we had a heart-shaped cookie for dessert.  I put a candle in it for Maddie's birthday, and Drew blew it out for her after we sang.

 We gave her her presents from us after dessert.  Drew got her a popper, and we gave her a wooden clock puzzle, a bag of letters and numbers, and a doll quilt.  My parents got her an American Girl Bitty Baby doll for her birthday, so the quilt is for her new baby.  Jim and I are painting a doll cradle for the new baby doll too, but I didn't get it quite finished yet.  I will post pictures of the cradle and quilt when everything is done.

 Maddie loved her cookie, and she was covered with chocolate by the time she was done with it!

Here is my layout for this week.  This is how it will look in the album, across the page from last week's layout.  This week I made a big page about our week and an insert about Maddie's birthday party.

 This is how this week's page looks with the insert flipped.

 I used a Page J insert and was able to include lots of birthday party pictures.  This is the front of the insert,

 and this is the back.

 This is how this week's page looks.

I am linking this post to The Mom Creative.

We are supposed to get some more snow this week, and I am hoping to get a little traditional scrapbooking done if we end up with a snow day.  We'll see!

Maddie's First Birthday Party

Maddie turned one on Valentine's Day!  I can't believe that a whole year has gone by since she was born!  What an eventful time we had a year ago!  You can read about her birth here, here, and here.  We had fun celebrating her birthday as a family on Valentine's Day (I'll post some pictures of that with my Project Life post next week), and we had a birthday party with the extended family on Saturday.  

Jim's family members are all local, but all of my family lives in South Carolina, and we usually have to miss out on a lot of family celebrations with them.  However, my mom and sister were able to come up for the weekend to help me with Maddie's party and to be here to celebrate her birthday!  They arrived late Friday night after the children were already in bed.  The next morning, the kids were both up around 6:00, and I came out to find them hanging out with their Aunt Nora on the couch.  Aunt Nora gave Maddie her gift that morning, and Maddie (and Drew) had fun playing with the new picnic set.

 Our house is very small, so we were very grateful that Jim's sister and brother-in-law allowed us to have Maddie's party at their house.  We arrived to find the dining room fully decorated for our little Valentine's party!

 I made Maddie a pillowcase dress to wear for her party.  I found the Valentine cupcake fabric at Hobby Lobby and thought that it was perfect!

 Maddie and Aunt Nora.

 We had a soups, salads, and breads for dinner (which I forgot to photograph!), and we opened Maddie's gifts.  Maddie ate a sucker while we opened the gifts.  Drew was my opening assistant.

Maddie received lots of fun gifts from the family.  Then, it was time for cake!  My mom made Maddie's smash cake and frosted it.  I had seen some similar cakes on Pinterest, and since we were doing a Valentine's theme for the party, I thought that the frosting roses would be perfect.  My mom used a 1M frosting tip to make the roses, and I loved how they looked on the cake

 and on the cupcakes!

 We stripped Maddie down to a bib and a diaper for her cake.

 She grabbed her cake right away and pulled it over to herself.

 At first, she just picked at the frosting quite daintily.

 Aunt Nora showed her how to smash into her cake, and then Maddie got busy eating it!

 She did a pretty good job of demolishing her cake.

 She was pretty proud of herself!

 Maddie's cousin, Lilly, just turned 4, and she loves Maddie!

We had such a nice evening celebrating Maddie's first year of life!  We are so grateful that God brought her into our family!

Project Life - Week 6

Week 6 was a fun week!  We started the week with a birthday celebration.  Jim's mom had a birthday at the end of January, and since Drew was sick on her birthday, we postponed her dinner a little bit.  We brought dinner over to her at her apartment on Monday evening.  Her sister lives in the same building, so she came over for dinner too.  We gave her some pictures for one of her living room walls.

 One of Jim's cousins is married to an artist, and he did some drawings of Drew and Maddie.  Jim hung them for his mom a few weeks ago, but she wanted some photos of the children to go on the wall with the drawings, so we gave her a new frame and another little hanging for her birthday, and Jim hung them for her that evening.

 Jim rented Season One of Downton Abbey for me, and we watched the whole thing.  I am hooked!

 Maddie is getting into everything!  Jim says that she needs a hobby!  She looked so cute this day that I had to take a few pictures of her.  Her aunts have spoiled her with many cute clothes.  Her little shirt is from Aunt Nora,

 and her rainbow jeans are from Aunt Sharon.  So cute!

 Maddie has learned to hug recently, and she gives some really good hugs!  She loves to hug Drew, and she sometimes crawls over to him just to hug him.

 Since Maddie is a Valentine's Day baby, the actual day has become pretty much hers, so we celebrated Valentine's Day early, and Jim spread it out over several days.  He brought me some little roses on Thursday.

 Drew loved his little Valentine mailbox, and he asked me every day after school if the flag was up and if there was going to be a surprise inside when he got home from school.

 We got several inches of snow on Thursday night, and we had a snow day on Friday.  After the boys cleared the driveway, we took Maddie out into the snow for the first time.  She was very serious about it.

 Drew made a quick snow angel

 and threw a few snowballs before we came inside.

 The snow must have tired Maddie out because she fell asleep in her chair at lunch.

 She also got into a box of tissues that afternoon - it was a busy day for her!

 The boys went out that afternoon and came back with some Dove chocolate, a Sonic gift card, and some coupons for me.  Jim said that he knows how much I love coupons, so he made some for me.  They really spoiled me!

 We had a little date night on Saturday night (I told you that he spread out Valentine's Day over a few days!), and we went to our favorite Greek restaurant.

 Here is what I did for Project Life for this week.  I made a big page and a little insert this week.  This is how it will look in the book, with the insert on top,

 and here is how it will look with the insert flipped over.

 I made the main page about our week, with several pictures from the snow.

I made the insert all about Valentine's Day.  I made it by cutting off the top third of a Design A page.  This is the front side,

 and this is the back.

I like using inserts to include extra pictures about events or celebrations.
I am linking this post at The Mom Creative.
I hope your Valentine's Day was very nice.  I hope to post again this week about Maddie's birthday.  We had so much fun celebrating her first birthday this weekend!