Project Life - Week 9

To start Week 9, the boys went to church, and Maddie and I stayed home.  I was feeling pretty bad because of a cold/sinus pain, and I decided to just stay home.  After morning church, Jim and Drew stopped at the fruit market, and they came home with several kinds of fruit.  

We had pancakes for lunch that day.  Jim and Maddie ate plain pancakes, and Drew had chocolate chip pancakes.  I made some blueberry pancakes for myself, and Jim and I decided to make a few blackberry pancakes too.  The blackberry pancakes were very good!

 Maddie had her 12 month well-visit at the pediatrician's office on Tuesday.  She weighs just over 20 pounds, is right around the 50th percentile in every category, and is very healthy.  She had to get 4 shots and a toe prick, so the visit ended on kind of a sad note.  She cheered up after I gave her a few puffs to eat, and overall, the visit was a pretty good one.

 Maddie is allowed to eat pretty much everything now that she is one (except the obvious choking hazard foods), and she and Drew have been eating similar lunches most days now.  They both love peanut butter toast and cheese, and they have this combination, along with some kind of fruit or veggie several days each week.

 Maddie also gets to drink whole milk now, and she is enjoying it.  She is getting much better at using her sippy cups.

 Our TCBY does Waffle Cone Wednesday, with $1.50 waffle cones, and we stopped there after church on Wednesday evening.  Since it was almost bedtime, we opted to eat our cones in the car as we drove home, and Drew got covered in melted frozen yogurt!  What a mess, but he enjoyed it!

 We had another mess (and a second washing of his coat in one week) because of a bloody nose on the way home from school on Friday.  I turned around to tell him something at a red light and saw his face covered with blood!  I found him a tissue, and his nose pretty much stopped bleeding by the time we got home.  I took a "covered up" photo of this event.  He looked pretty rough under that tissue!

 Maddie and I try to run most of our errands in the mornings while Drew is at school.  It is easier to shop with just one child!  She was being silly as I was getting ready to load her back into the van, and I snapped a quick picture.

 A friend told me about a local children's resale shop where she has sold some of her kids' clothes, and in our recent spirit of cleaning out, I took some clothes there on their open selling day.  Maddie and I dropped off a bin of clothes one morning, and we stopped back after we picked Drew up from school to see what they had decided to buy.  They bought most of what I had brought, and they asked if I had any other Spring and Summer clothes I wanted to get rid of.  I guess they struggle to get boy clothing that is in good shape. I went back with another bin on Saturday, and they bought all but two of those items.  I ended up making quite a bit of money there this week, and I got rid of two more bins of clothes (some were leftovers that didn't sell at the Mom to Mom sale).  I am planning to keep selling to them as we continue to clean out.
Drew loved the swing at the front of the resale shop.

 Friday was Dr. Seuss day at school.  I went to the thrift store to look for some kind of costume for Drew and found this Grinch shirt.  It wouldn't have been my first choice, but it was the only Dr. Seuss thing I saw, and it was $1.50.  Sold!  He ended up getting into character that morning - look at that mean face!

Here is this week's Project Life layout, along with last week's layout, as they will look side by side in my still unpurchased album.

 Here is this week's layout on its own.  I kept things very simple this week with a bunch of 3x4 inch photos.

I am linking up with The Mom Creative.
Later this week, I am planning to post about Drew's family birthday party.  I hope you all have a great week!

Easy Pumpkin Muffins

Drew's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Scally, and her husband are expecting a little boy in May, and we are very excited for them!  Mr. Scally's family - his parents, his three brothers, the brothers' wives and kids - all go to our church.  The Scally family planned the baby shower for this new little Scally baby that is coming in May, and when I asked my friend Beth (one of the Scally sisters-in-law) what I could do to help with the shower, she asked if I could bake some muffins.  

When I found out that she needed me to make 72 muffins (4 batches), I was a little nervous, but the recipe she gave me ended up being very simple, and I was able to get them all done in an afternoon.  The recipe started with a cake mix, and it came together very easily.  They were delicious, and I had many people at the shower tell me how much they enjoyed them.

Pumpkin Muffins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Streusel Topping:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
Mix flour and brown sugar and cut in butter.  Set aside.

Muffin Batter:
1 Spice cake mix (We used Duncan Hines.)
1 15-oz. can of pumpkin
3 eggs
1/4 cup water

Mix ingredients until well-combined.  Scoop batter into greased or lined muffin cups.  Top batter with a heaping spoonful of streusel topping.  Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in a muffin comes out clean.  Leave muffins in the muffin tin for a few minutes and then remove and allow to cool on a wire cooling rack.  Enjoy!

Project Life - Week 8

This week started with having to say goodbye to my mom and sister after their short, but sweet, birthday visit.  We took a few pictures on Monday morning before they left.

Drew and Aunt Nora.

 Aunt Nora, Grandma Becka, Drew, and Maddie.

 Maddie gave Aunt Nora a nice hug!

 Saying goodbye to Grandma.

 We waved goodbye to them out the window as they drove away.

 That Monday was Presidents' Day, so Drew had the day off from school.  We had a fun day at home.  I spent that afternoon making lots and lots of pumpkin muffins (the recipe is coming later this week!) for a baby shower that was being held for Drew's kindergarten teacher that evening at church.  Drew's teacher is expecting a little boy in May!  I went to the shower that evening, and Jim and the kids spent the evening at home.

 Maddie and Drew enjoyed playing with some of the leftover birthday party balloons throughout that week.

One of the highlights of the week was that Maddie started walking!  She took her first few little steps on Tuesday evening.  She had been very close to walking for a while, and we were all so excited that she did it!

 Drew has been sleeping in a Thomas the Train toddler bed for the past couple of years, and he has really loved that bed.  It was a great bed for him, but it was really starting to get too short, and we've been talking about moving him up to a bigger bed for a while.  We decided that with Drew's sixth birthday coming up, it was probably time to go ahead with our big boy bed plans.  We already had Jim's old wooden twin-sized bed in our basement, so we just needed to get Drew a mattress.
We researched some mattress options, and we ended up ordering a twin-sized memory foam mattress from Sam's Club.  It came in a little over a week, and it was delivered to our porch in a box - a box that was not at all the shape of a mattress!  I carried it in myself, and once I got through the packaging, I found it tightly rolled inside the box.  As soon as I cut through the plastic packaging, it puffed right up to its normal shape and size!  It was kind of amazing!
My mom got to test it out first during the weekend she was here, and Drew got to start sleeping in it for the first time this week.  He loves his new bed!  We are planning some other changes to his room in the coming weeks, and I'll blog about those when we get them done.

 I went to see a play with some friends on Thursday evening.  We saw "Pride and Prejudice," and we really enjoyed it.  We stopped at McDonalds afterwards, and we ended up staying out so long that we were asked to leave because they wanted to lock up!  Clearly, none of us had had a girls' night out in while!

 Maddie got more adventurous in her walking as the days went by.  Here she is trying to stand in an awkward way.

 There she goes!

 I had mentioned a while ago that I was preparing for a Mom to Mom sale at church, and this was the weekend!  Jim and I went over to the church on Friday evening to set up my table.  We decided to make a little date night out of it and stopped for a quick dinner afterwards before we picked up Maddie from Jim's mom's house.  Drew spent the night there with her.
The Mom to Mom sale was Saturday morning, and, for our church's first sale, I thought it went well.  It was well-organized, and it ran very smoothly.  We all wished that it had been a little better attended, but over-all it was a good experience.  I made just under $200.00, and we cleared some clothes out of our basement, so I was happy!

 Jim got two new pairs of shoes this week, and as he was trying one pair on, Drew decided to try out the other pair.  I love that Drew's are on the wrong feet!

 Here is my layout for this week.  I kept things very simple and just used mostly 3x4 inch photos and one 4x6 inch collage.

I am linking up at The Mom Creative.

I plan to share the pumpkin muffin recipe later this week.  It is a good one - and very easy!

Fundraising Idea

Tiny Prints has asked me to share a fun new fundraising idea with you - Tiny Prints Affiliate Storefronts.  This is an easy fundraising opportunity for schools and other non-profit groups to raise money through commissions they earn from sales made through their Tiny Prints Storefront.
Tiny Prints is doing a special Facebook Contest, where non-profits have a chance to win one of ten $1000 weekly prizes!  The contest goes from February 22 - March 22. 2013, and to enter you must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit (including non-profit schools and PTAs). US only.

Here's how to enter:
 1.   In order to apply for a Tiny Prints Storefront, nonprofits must first apply to become a Tiny Prints affiliate through Shareasale’s simple sign up process here.
2.   If nonprofits are accepted into the Tiny Prints affiliate program, they must apply for a Tiny Prints Storefront here.  Successful applicants will receive a Tiny Prints Storefront URL.
3.  After you have completed these two steps and agree to the Official Rules below, you will need to fill out the registration form here to enter the contest. This is where you will enter your Tiny Prints Storefront URL. Entrants must have a valid Tiny Prints Storefront created during the Entry Period.

I think that this is such a fun and different fundraising alternative, and the chance to win $1000 is a great incentive to check it out!

This post is sponsored by Tiny Prints.  I was compensated to share this information, but the opinions shared are mine.

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!