Birthday Boy!!!

Yesterday, the 8th, was Timmy Tigers 2nd Birthday! I found a question and answer for my kids I want to do on each of their birthdays, but Timmy is still too young to answer the questions. So I shortened the list and answered most of the ones I knew for him...

1. What is your favorite color? Blue

2. What is your favorite toy? His absolute favorite toy is his play power drill. He also loves to play with his Daddies tools and he love dump trucks and his big Buzz Light Year.
3. What is your favorite fruit? He loves grapes.

4. What is your favorite tv show? "Maget" - Inspector Gadget and Curious George

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Peanut Butter & Jelly and Mac & Cheese

6. What is your favorite outfit? a onesie, a hat and two different shoes. :)

7. What is your favorite game? Duck, Duck, Goose

8. What is your favorite snack? Dried Fruit and he loves Fruit by the Foot

9. What is your favorite song? Itsy Bitsy spider

10. What is your favorite book? He loves all books! No favorite yet. He really gets excited to read!

11. Who is your best friend? He gets excited to play with his cousins Shoren (Soren), & Ophie (Sophie) and his friends Ephan (Ethan) & Julia.

12. What is your favorite cereal? Fruity Pebbles at the moment. :)

13. What is your favorite thing to do outside? Jump on the Trampoline

14. What is your favorite drink? Milk

15. What do you like to take to bed with you at night? His blankie and he has to cuddle with mama to sleep.

16. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? He LOVES Pancakes!

I love our boy! He keeps me on my toes every single day. If there isn't a mess in the house, he is sure to make one quickly. He is a true boy. He is always pretending to fix things even if its not broken, like his sisters pink bike...

Now that the weather is nice, we decided to get the kids a trampoline. It was kinda their Christmas gift but we decided to wait to give it to them when they could use it. Timmy loves it! He especially loves to jump with his sissy...

Timmy has a shoe fetish. It doesn't even matter if they match or not. He just has to wear them. Usually the first ones he finds are his sisters and its one of her silver sparkly shoes and a pink one. But mostly he goes in his closet and just grabs two shoes (which never match). Sometimes its two lefties or two righties and he can't wait to get some clothes on in the morning just so he can wear them.

He still always has the most tender cry. If he gets his feelings hurt, he puts his hands to his face and cries like it would break your heart. I still love his expressive eyebrows. He's had them since he was a new born baby...

Tiger mostly prefers me and he'll cry until I hold him or love on him. The past week it has started to change a little. He's ok with attention from Dad, but I'm the one that has to hold him to sleep and comfort him when he gets hurt. I love it.



And the last little tid bit about our boy, he loves to give high fives and knucks (fist bumps)!




Last weekend we had a birthday party for Timmy with all our family and some friends who came. It was a lot of work but I think he had a lot of fun playing and getting lots of attention! I kinda went with a jungle theme. I made monkey cupcakes out of Vanilla Wafers and Nutter Butter cookies. I got the idea from Taste of Homes. I thought they turned out so cute!!! The cupcakes had to be chocolate cake with chocolate frosting... his favorite of course!

How To Make Monkey Cupcakes

You will need:
Nutter Butter cookies
Vanilla Wafers
Candy Eyes or M&M's with a dot of icing as the eyeballs.
( I found the candy eyes in the cake decorating section of Walmart )
red decorating gel for the mouth

Make your chocolate cupcakes and after they have cooled enough, frost them with chocolate frosting.

*While the cupcakes are baking, with a serrated knife cut off and discard 1/4 of the top of a vanilla wafer. Carefully take apart the Nutter Butter cookie and then with the same serrated knife, cut them in half for the ears of the monkey. 

After you assemble the cupcake with the cookies, add the nose with a small #3 wilton tip and the hair I used a #16 star tip with left over chocolate frosting. Finish it off with drawing on the mouth with the red decorating gel and you've got yourself some silly monkeys!!

The kids will love them!



Thank you to Lurlyn for helping me put it all together. I couldn't have done it without you!



Timmy loved the cupcakes!



Tim and Lurlyn helped me put together this huge outdoor water bed. It was a big hit with the kids!



Some of our family that was there...







Timmy blowing out his candle while everyone was still singing to him and then proceeding to take a huge bite out of his cupcake. He waste no time!



He also had a pinata! Most of the 10 kids had a chance to swing at it a couple of different times. Timmy & Aubri did really good. I might need to put them in T-Ball or something. Some of the kids happy about the candy they collected...



Timmy waving good bye to everyone from the trampoline. It was a fun day!!

Spring Adventures...

My family is adventurous. We really like to explore and be in nature and since we live near Mt. Rainier, we decided to a get a year pass and go play. Since this is really our first Spring here in the Seattle area, I didn't really know what to expect and really really wanted to hike to Myrtle Falls. Unfortunately, there is way too much snow still.  We got to the Paradise Visitor center and couldn't go any further due to the 10 ft of snow on the roads. Yikes! So we will have to go sometime in August when hopefully the snow has melted by then.

But... we were able to take a hike to Christine Falls even though there was still a little snow on the trails. It was a beautiful hike. My kids loved it.

This is the view of Christine Falls from the road. Gorgeous!

Yes, unfortunately we are those types of parents that keeps our kid on a leash. Never had to with Aubri, but this kid likes to take off. So for safety sake... we look ridiculous and get a lot of stares from people. Oh well. Haha!

I'm trying to get a picture of Tim and the kids in front of the falls but as you can see they were scared to death of the long drop behind the rock wall.

Aubri was our leader!





The end of the trail. The bridge over top of the waterfall.





Heading back down...



Our shoes of choice. Love them!





On our way to Narada Falls/ Paradise point.





Narada Falls is mostly still frozen but still beautiful!





Timmy always, without fail, has one of Tim's tools in his hand. We had to take a little break so he could stab the snow with his screw driver.



The restrooms still covered with snow past the windows...



Cute little birds that kept following us and Aubri doing a dance pose for me in the parking lot.



It was the best way to spend the day with my little family! 

Spring Happenings...

April has been a busy month and I'm behind on my blog...

Spring finally came! Since we bought our home last September we haven't experienced spring or summer in our house. I was pleasantly surprised at how beautiful our tree in the front yard looked after it bloomed!

And finding more plants popping up out of the ground that I didn't know were there. Like the Peonies!!! I can't wait until they bloom!

One of the first things that happened for us in April... we FINALLY have an oven! Yeah! A couple of posts back I blogged about the ice/snow storm we had. When we finally got power back after a few days, with it went my double oven. It fried the electrical panel somehow... not sure how, but it did. :(

So after 2 months of working with the home warranty company and not having an oven, (crock pot meals were a great replacement) they finally shipped us the replacement. We waited another "3 weeks" to get someone out here to install it. I know... ridiculous! We finally got two repair guys (who were short a few bricks) to install the double oven and I had to point out to them, while they were hooking up the electrical, that it was too tall for the wall. Oh... hmmm... interesting. We were told on the phone by the warranty company that it was our fault that we didn't go down to an appliance store after they gave us the model # to make sure it was a right fit for our space. I'm sorry, no one told me I was suppose to do that. My incredibly handy, sexy, smart hubby took matters into his own hands and popped off the molding, lowered a shelf, put everything back together, hooked up the electrical and with my muscles we were able to lift and slide the oven into place. PERFECT! Whew! I can bake again!!!

The best part of the whole thing, my hubby had a little helper (screw driver in hand) that just had to help his dad the whole time. I love having fixing men in my house!

Just in time for Easter... I was able to try out baking eggs instead of boiling them. Something I found on Pinterest. Found here. I loved how they turned out! They peeled perfectly. I only had two slightly cracked eggs. You should try it sometime.

Here is how you make them.

1st - place the eggs on the center rack parallel (as shown) with a cookies sheet underneath incase an egg cracks and oozes. I have not had one make a mess on me yet, but better to be safe then sorry!

2nd - Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. *Eggs go into the oven before you preheat so they will cook slowly*

3rd - place the eggs in a bowl of ice water when done to cool down. Wait about 10 minutes before peeling them. After you peel them place them back in the water to continue cooling.

Done! You should have some perfectly hard baked eggs. Try it!

Aubri LOVES boiled eggs. Something I never thought she would like, but she does. The kid surprises me all the time.

My little Timmy boy is still too destructive to trust with cups full of dye and the eggs themselves. So, while he took a nap, Aubri had some fun being creative. She had a blast decorating eggs this year.

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The day before Easter Sunday we headed down to Grandma & Grandpa Jones'. The kids had a big Easter egg hunt with their cousins. There were way too many eggs, but it was a fun experience.

Tim was suppose to be helping hide the eggs but I caught him eating them instead...

It didn't take Timmy long to figure out what he needed to do.

This was Aubri's "please, no pictures" moment. She was too busy finding eggs.

Most of the little cousins taking a break playing dress up and jumping on the trampoline.

Timmy & Soren enjoying the gravel pit together.

This is sweet "tiny" Farah! Newest addition to our Nephew Cody & his wife Saydee. She is such a sweet sweet baby.

Lots of grub to be had.

And Timmy melting my heart with his charming good looks.

I was there too... sometimes I forget to put myself in the memories. I thought I looked cute that day but all I have to show for it is a mug shot of me and the hubs. Literally. I really need to be more creative on self portraits and getting my hubby to take his sunglasses off...

Refurbishing | Being Creative

When we bought our house, it came with some "lovely" bar stools. Are you sensing a bit of sarcasm? It's there. I was immediately on the look out for some new ones. Little did I know, they would cost more than I'm willing to spend for a flippin chair. My husband also argued the point that the chairs we inherited with the house swivel (ooh ahh!). Hence the idea of flipping the chairs...

Here's the "lovely" before it got flipped:

And here's the flipped chair:

What do you think? HUGE improvement I would say. Even though it took me a while to finally get the chair done (I had some issues with my sewing machine). It was worth it. When I say "the" chair, I mean only one has been finished. I still have 3 more to go. Now that I've gone through the whole process, it should be easy finishing the rest.

I went to the Fabric Depot in Oregon for that fabric. My sis-in-law Lurlyn and I love to shop there whenever we have an itch for a project. I don't remember the name and maker of the fabric, but if anyone needs to know, I'm sure I can do a little research.

I originally painted the legs and arms white to go along with the fabric but it didn't have enough contrast or kick that I was looking for. So I thought to go black but was fretting that it would be too much. So I asked Lurlyn (who's opinion I trust whole heatedly because of similar taste) and she said to go for the black. Plus it would hide dirt or sticky fingers from my kiddos. I'm so happy I did! I love it! Thanks Lur! ;)

Projects like this can be easy if you use the original fabric from the chair as the pattern and really make notes of how the chair was put together originally. I did make a couple of mistakes that are only visible to me, but will make sure to do it better the 2, 3 & 4th time around.

Just for giggles and because I'm so proud of myself, here is another before & after pic side by side. :)