Let's Get This Party Started

June is one crazy month in this household, let me tell you. There's just too much going on. For starters, Peanut Head and I celebrate our anniversary in June (it was 18 loooooong years on Monday), there's Father's Day, Zoe Bug's birthday, the Scrapbook Expo in my town, and I do my big summer crop.

As if all that wasn't enough, I'm also celebrating my blogiversary on Monday, the same day as Zoe's birthday. Yep, June 22nd my Zoe Bug will be 8 and my blog will be a whole year old. Wow! So, in case you were wondering, that's why my blog header this month is so festive.

I want to do some fun things to celebrate my blog's birthday, but first things first, we have to celebrate Zoe Bug's birthday. Then after that I might have a fun give-away or two, so stick around.

Tomorrow we're going to have Zoe's party for her friends. That's her invitation you see up above. We always do a backyard water/pool/squirt gun bonanza and this year is no different. Heh. Yeah. Except that we've been experiencing torrential downpours daily for the past two weeks. When I made the invitation I was in complete denial when I wrote "The weather IS going to be nice."

But still, I'm convinced that it will be nice in spite of the dog dish floating in our backyard. Besides, the weather man says it will be nice, for just this one day as I've ordered. Never mind that the weather man is frequently wrong, we're going to have a water party of one sort or another tomorrow. And as soon as I finish this post, I'm going to go and find my life jacket.

I made these little brownie pops to give out as party favors, and let me just say this, NEVER AGAIN. Oh, the pain and suffering I went through for these ridiculous little things. It's so not worth it. Just in case you ever consider making some of these yourself, let me save you a little time and money, okay?

Don't buy this. It's a stooooooooopid silicone brownie pop mold and it's dumber than dumb. First of all, do you really want to pay $8.99 for this? No. And yes, I did use a 50% off coupon but still. Let me just tell you why you should never buy one of these.

First of all, you can only bake eight brownie pops at a time. Then you have to let them cool before you can get them out of the pan. Then they won't come out of the pan anyway. Then you'll try again because you'll be convinced that you did something wrong because maybe you're sometimes a bonehead. And it still won't work and you will have wasted two hours in the process. Then you will dump the rest of the batter into a pan and bake them the way Betty Crocker intended in the first place. And why?

Actually, Betty Crocker is one smart cookie and her way is best. You don't need no stinkin' special pan. After wasting two hours of my life that I can never get back, I learned something. You can cut the brownies like a normal person and then roll them into perfect little balls and then put the cute little lollipop sticks in them. Duh.

After that epiphany, I stuck the brownie pops into the freezer before I dipped them. I left them in there for a couple hours so they were firm and cold. 

Then I melted some of those nasty waxy candy thingies to dip them in. Actually, I think they're really called Wilton Candy Melts, but do you really care? Man, I sound bitter.

That's Zoe Bug's hand there, helping me. We went through a truckload of sprinkles which was another disaster in itself. After dipping the brownie pops into the melted wax, we sprinkled the sprinkles on the pops. Rolling them in the sprinkles didn't work because it left unsightly clumps of wax in the sprinkles. Also, we had to be very careful to not get too much candy wax on the pops or the whole shebang would just slide off like a California mudslide. It would have been funny if I hadn't been freaking out.

But they're done and that ordeal is over. Thankfully.

I found another fun idea, complete with tutorial, for these cute little water bottle tag drink mix holders on Blue Eyed Blessings. They're actually supposed to be for Crystal Light packets, but I didn't think the kids would appreciate those very much, so I crammed some Kool-Aid packets in them instead.

Plus, since it's Zoe's Bug's birthday, I had to put a lady bug on them.

So tomorrow is the birthday party, and Saturday is my big summer crop. But for once I'm not behaving like a complete lunatic, and I'm making my June crop a "No Frills" crop. That means I'm only cooking dinner and when I'm ready to do it I'm going to stand up from my own scrapbooking spot and say "Ladies, get yo' rear-ends upstairs, we're cookin' us some dinner." Yee haw!

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and give myself an attitude adjustment.

Carnage from Two-Song-Singing-Hannah Festivities

By now you're probably tired of hearing about my baby who just turned six, so I'll try to keep this brief. For her birthday, Stinkerbell requested a Hannah Montana party, and after denying my girls the opportunity to dress up as Two-Song-Singing-Hannah for Halloween, I figured using it as a lame party theme would be okay. Sort of the lesser of two evils.


So here was the party invite. It's all Hannah, but with Stinkerbell's picture instead of Hannah-Miley-Whatever. I don't know why I'm so cranky about Hannah, it could be worse. I'll take Hannah-Miley-Whatever over Britney Spears any day.

Anyway, I really was going somewhere here. We got a little crazy and invited Stink's whole class. Eeek! Thankfully the class is smallish since it is Kindergarten. I think I got daring because we decided to have the party at one of those kid places where they get to run around and scream their heads off. The kind of place where you can't leave without a sensory overload headache.

The part I was most worried about with inviting so many kids, was getting that many presents when we really don't need one more toy in this house.

I let the girls know before the party that they weren't going to be playing with any of the new toys until they went through their toys, decluttered and got rid of some of their old toys. Plus, they couldn't touch a new toy until a thank you note had been written for it. Aren't I mean?

I know. It's so much fun being a Mama sometimes.


So here they are, tearing the place apart and deciding what will go.


"YOU CAN'T KEEP EVERYTHING, ANNIKA!"

Can I just tell you how much my heart swelled with pride to hear Zoe say this?


"Blah, blah, blah. Whatever."

Annika is such a cucumber.


"There's a snake in my boot."

At first I was a little sad to see Woody in the discard pile, but then I decided that we'll give him to a friend who actually looks like Woody and the girls even call him Woody. They don't even know what his real name is. Woody will get a good home.


Eeek! Freaky doll head! Decapitated Donna is no longer loved? How sad. We must be ruthless though. I really just had to stop watching because I wanted to jump in and rescue toys. How pathetic is that?

We'll take the toys to the thrift store though, so hopefully there are kids out there who will be thrilled with these toys.


I was surprised at how quickly Stinkerbell jumped into the thank you notes. We tend to spread them out, so the toys are sitting in the guest room and coming out one at a time, as the thank you notes are slowly written. What surprised me, I mean really surprised me, is that the girls didn't even argue with me about this. I feel like I won the lottery or something. Or like maybe they think I know what I'm doing with this whole parenting thing. They're so gullible.


Oops, my pictures are a little out of order. I'm lazy though so I'm not going to fix it. This is just the girls putting the party favor bags together.


Once the bags were stuffed, I stapled treat toppers to them and then punched a hole in the corner for attaching a balloon. We didn't attach the balloons until we got to Leo's and I'm glad for that. They would have been a tangled mess otherwise.

I took pictures of the party, but I don't feel like I should post pictures of the kids without their parents' permission. And I'm too lazy to put happy face heads on all of them. So just believe me when I tell you that the party was a blast for the kids, and quite painful for the adults.

That's a wrap for birthday week. Tomorrow I'm going to try to put my Cinnamon Roll recipe up. If you're dieting, you might just want to stay away from Sabotage Station for the next day or so. Sorry.

Pool Party Time--and Carnage

So, here's the little invite the girls and I gave their little neighbor friends when I told you about the Shark Attack cupcakes I wanted to make from this book. The party is an excuse to make the cupcakes. Isn't that sad?

Well. Hmmm. How shall I break the news? The shark cupcakes were not such a hot idea. Instead of going on and on with the whys, let me just show you.

It was a nice idea. In theory. Not so much in the land of gravity and physics.

Here's what the sharks were supposed to look like.

Pretty cute, eh? HA! If you went through what I went through today trying to make these puppies, you wouldn't be thinking so. I don't even think these are real now. In fact, I think someone knows how to use their PhotoShop program pretty darn well. That, or they made these on the space station.

That's what I'm telling myself.

I still had a gazillion cupcakes to make so I figured "Hey, the life preserver ones would be easy." That was a pretty dumb thing to say.

First of all, I couldn't find the plain mini doughnuts so I had to settle for the powdered sugar doughnuts. Not the end of the world, but still.

Cutting up all that fruit leather and placing it was maddening. That's all I'm going to say about that.

In retrospect, I think I should have made the holes bigger with my apple corer.

Here's the end result. It's far from what I envisioned, but who really cares, anyway. Thing 1 spotted the gummy sharks at the bread store. Good save, girlfriend.

Party Invitations

As promised, here is an example of one of the invitations I have made with my digital scrapbooking program. I really like doing invitations this way because
1) I don't have to write out all the invitations by hand, so it saves time
2) I can include a picture so that it's more personalized
3) I can make my invitation look however I choose and not limit myself to what I can buy at the store
4) It's cheaper. I'm all about saving money whenever I can.

I use the same format (a 4x6 print) for thank you notes, announcements and Christmas cards. I'm itching to do a baby announcement, so as soon as Mattie Cake gets her pictures to me, I'll do an announcement for her sweet little bundle of joy. I've seen some very cool wedding invitations and engagement announcements done as well, although they are usually printed as 5x7s.

With digital scrapbooking, the possibilities are endless.