Bella is 1!!!

It's official... Bella Georgia is ONE today! This little gal cracks me up everyday. I was trying to get cute pics of her in her birthday tutu I made, but she SO was NOT havin' it. I got this adorable pic of her while holding her. She finds the camera fascinating, in fact she finds all electronic gadgets and gizmos simply amazing. Forget toys, this one finds pure joy in our T.V. remote. She's definitely ours, all our babes have preferred non-toys as their play things.I love her sweet face.
This is the pink tutu I made. I can't believe how simple it was to make and now my other two "girly" girls are demanding I make them some too. Fine by me, my craftin and bakin keep this momma from the looney bin!
I just had to include this one. I SO don't blame the gal. Tulle is certainly not the most comfy of things to be wearing. Bella hates it on, but loves to play with it when it is sitting on the floor. Oh well, I made it a little bigger so she can wear it into her toddler years as well. She just looks SO cute in it, I couldn't resist "torturing" her again to get some pics.

Bella's Party Part 2

Again, thank you to our friend Jeremy and his pics. He even got some cute ones of Laney and Kaleigh at the party.Laney just loved having all the dum dums she could get her hands on.
I love this pic of Kaleigh. Look at all those freckles. Oh man, does Eric have his work cut out for him with these two girlie girls and fightin' off all them boys!

More of Bella eating her cake.

She loved eating her cake at her own pace. She also loved wearing it. I just love this baby. So cute and adorable, I could just eat her up.

I made my own banner for her birthday with some scrapbook paper I had, ribbon, and pictures on each letter marking her first year. This was my favorite craft I did for her party. I also made her cute little outfit, but forgot to get a pic of it, so I'll have to get one later and post it. The banner started with her birth and ended at 11 months with a place for a pic from her birthday.




Blessing Day

Love, love, love this one. Caught her mid-giggle.


Gotta love a baby dressed as a flower.

The pic I used for her invitations.

Last one ready for her 1st birthday picture to go on.


This is what it looked like hanging up.


I loved doing the decorations all by myself. I had most of the supplies on hand already and they meant a little more to us than just buying the decorations at a party store. I got to fill my crafting bug and show my love for my little girl. We had a blast throwing her bash and I am thankful to the hubs for helping me with the kids so I could get it all done. Love to him always 'cause he helps out so much and never grumbles at me. The other kids have already ordered their birthday wishes at me for their own decorations as well. Looks like I'll be a busy craftin' bee over the next few months, but that's fine by me. I just love to craft and the older kids can help out too. I just love parties!

Bella's 1st Birthday Party and mommy's crafting bug satisfied

Our little munchkin is turning one this week, but we needed to celebrate early due to my little trip to Washington this week and my dad being out of town, so we partied into the night last night for our cute Bella. I wanted to do something special, being it her first birthday and all so I dreamed up Bella's Sweet Shoppe. We had family and family friends over with lots of kids of all ages, so I wanted to keep the kiddos entertained. Enter mounds and mounds of candy and a big backyard to run out all the sugar energy. This is the breakdown of the party...Her cute birthday invite that I hand drew(I really dream and long for a cricut machine, but alas, the moola is just not there for the crafting tool love of my life). I think it's pretty good for hand drawing it.=)
Our candy jars for the shoppe

Bella's cute sign for her shop. Again, I hand drew the cupcake to go along with the theme. The dum dum suckers were a HUGE hit!

Bella needed a entry sign for her party, so enter another craft for me, this cute balloon wreath. I can change out the card for everyone else's birthdays too. Love that I can use it all year long. It's way easy to make and was way cute. It was the kids' favorite decoration that I did.

This is the set up for Bella's Sweet Shoppe. We had suckers, taffy, rainbow licorice, pink whoppers(strawberry flavored), mini brownie bites, and mini baby rattle cupcakes.

Bella loved, loved, loved her cake. She started out being very dainty, but when she realized I wasn't going to take it away, she dove right in. She got it all over her and loved eating big chunks of it. She was by far our messiest cake eater out of all the kids. I wanted just one kid to finally dive into their cake and she certainly didn't dissappoint. I loved it and we had a family friend who took pictures for us and got some amazing pics for us. I am so jealous of his camera and want one badly. This pic above is from my little one and so did not do Bella's cake eating justice, but Jeremy's pics sure did. Thank you Jeremy for all the pics.

One of the big cakes, it was chocolate with chocolate raspberry frosting in the middle.

This was another one of the cakes, a pair of pink booties. It was an orange white cake and YUMMY! Bella had an exact one for her dig in cake.

Bella smashing her cake in her mouth. She just couldn't get it in fast enough. This is one of the pics Jeremy took. I love that we got lots of clear, cute pics.

Bella got her cake everywhere. This one just shows how much she got in her hair. She loved rubbing it in everywhere. Silly girl, she must have heard Eric say I get the honor of the birthday bath. She loves to get extra messy when I have the bath honor.

I love, love, love this one. She even has frosting caked in her eyelashes. So cute looking up though. I just love this little angel. She melts my heart each and everyday. We enjoyed having everyone share Bella's special day with us. Thanks to everyone for celebrating with us, for the presents-she loves them all, and for always taking time for us and our family. It's sad to think she will be one on Wednesday, it went by so fast. But we look forward to all the fun of the many special moments in her life. We love you Bella and are very happy to have you in our family. You light up our lives and your brothers and sisters love you tons. Many joys and happiness we wish you as you grow up. Beautiful Bella, we love you tons and Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Discovery Garden Day with Grandma!

This past week my lit'l kindergartner has been out of school for end-of-year testing, and we couldn't have been any happier. It's tough doing fun stuff when you have to pick up a kid only 2 1/2 hours later. We took advantage and had some fun. We went down to Thanksgiving Point's Children's Garden. The kids had a blast and... grandma came with us. They were excited to show her all the fun things they could do. Here's Laney "performing" once again for us, her "audience." A little out of focus due to I only took the single stroller, so terror Noah was roaming free. Trying to keep him in my sights and take pictures didn't go so well, but he loved being free.Noah's grumpy face letting me know he DID NOT want me to take his picture, again.

Laney, poking her head out the lighthouse window.
Having fun in the belly of a bug slide.
Noah having a blast climbing up the belly of the bug slide.

Here we are back at home and cute Bella standing on her tippy toes. I wanted to get this picture and document this. This is how she always stands and "walks" around stuff. It's the cutest thing. She loves to stand on her tippy toes and I think it is A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E! I mean, c'mon, how can you not love that smile. The girl is so cute, but I'm not bias or anything.

The hubs turns 36!

The lovely old man turned 36 this weekend and I just had to surprise him once again. The hubs has always, always wanted to go to a mystery dinner theater show, so that's exactly what he got. I took him to see "Godfather of the Bride." It was put on by a company called Hunt's Mysteries at Spaghetti Mama's. He had no idea until we got there and walked in. He thought we were just going to dinner with some friends and that was it. We walked in and he was stunned. Heck, I am still stunned that I kept it hush, hush for 3 WEEKS! That's impressive for me. I am horrible at keeping surprises for a long time. He had a blast, as did the rest of us, especially when he got to play a part in the show as a police officer. Funny stuff!

Here's the man of the hour ready and roaring to blow out his candles on his "36" cupcake cake.
He wanted me to just make some rum sauce for the spumoni ice cream he picked for his birthday treat, but the kids really wanted a cake, so I made these rainbow cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Oh man, were they good, too good, you know I only have 4 weeks left until the big 5K, so I need to watch it or I'll have to be pushed to the finish line.

Here's what these beauties look like in the middle. The kids thought they were awesome as well as the big kid of the house. Here's to many more birthdays for the hubs. Many more happy, and healthy lifetime moments!

Projects and Re-do projects

My creative juices have been flowing and wanting to burst out lately, so out came a bunch of ideas for projects. I can now post this one since the receiver's birthday has passed and she now is the proud owner of this lovely, adorable, garden-themed apron. I've seen this idea before all over the internet, but since my bunch is bigger than most, our "garden" is quite the size. The "butterfly" is Bella's feet, and all the flowers are the kids' hands. Then we took their thumbs and made some "bees and ladybugs." I thought it was so cute, that I now want one for myself. We made it as a present for grandma's birthday. Eric and I had our own cute present to give her, but the kids wanted to make something. They love to craft. Glad to see I'm raising them up right. Gotta love to craft in this family!

I have fallen in LOVE! I love, love, love spray paint. I have a few things in my house that I haven't been lovin' lately, but I don't have the dough to replace, so enter my new BFF- spray paint. This spice rack use to be very light wood with green lettering "herbs and spices." A few minutes later and voila...

new spice rack!

So, I did a post awhile back about our "new" family home evening board I bought and painted. It's been on our wall for a couple of months and I simply DID NOT like it. The metal sheet leaves all my munchkins' fingerprints on it whenever they play with the names and it just looked too plain. Plus, I really wanted to move it into my kitchen up and away from the youngins who love to hide the names. So, enter new FHE board...

With a little paper, ribbon, flowers, and my other BFF-mod podge, we have our new FHE board in the kitchen.

It matches our kitchen so well and as we change our kitchen over the next couple of years, it will still match. I'm aiming for a "Tuscan" inspired kitchen. Can't wait to get paint on those plain, yucky, white walls!

Alexis gives a talk!

Alexis was assigned this last week to give a talk in Primary and she did it extemely well. I was unable to go, but Eric said she was awesome. I take great pride in the fact that she has a strong testimony already and she knows how to choose the right over the bad so well. She has a good head, heart, and spirit about her and I'm very lucky to call her my daughter. I wanted to post her talk because she did it all on her own without help from anyone. It's a good refresher for us all.

Trying to be Like Jesus Christ

"When we are trying to be like Jesus Christ we should say our prayers every night and every morning. We can also read the scriptures. The scriptures teach us what Jesus was like.

During His ministry, Jesus would teach the people, he would heal the sick, he would help sad people feel better and he even raised the dead. Whenever there were little children like us, he would talk to them and bless them.

Jesus is a very kind, loving, person, so you should help people like your parents, grandparents, neighbors and friends whenever you can. You can do an extra chore around the house, maybe help watch your siblings or be good for the babysitter. If we ever do something wrong and we feel really bad about it, we can repent!

That would make Jesus Christ very happy. That's how we should show we're becoming like Jesus Christ."

It was a very short talk-but then in Primary, all the talks are short- but VERY good and straight to the point on how we should be like Jesus. It's nice to know that we really,HAVE, taught our daughter well enough that she knows what she should be doing. She is such a great example to her younger siblings and to me too!