Baby girl!

Thought I'd participate in this week's Unity Friends with Flair and share this adorable baby girl card I made! I used the Hello Little One kit and lots of old pink scraps of paper. I also took the opportunity to use my new Wink of Stella glitter pen. So fun to add a little bit of sparkle!

This is for a friend who just had a baby girl after having two boys. So excited for her to experience the world of little girls now too!

Happy Day after Thanksgiving!

Did you have a great day yesterday? We sure did! Well, another year has passed and I have yet to roast a whole turkey! That's right, I've never been in charge of the big bird.

Ever.

in my life.

15+ years as wife and chief cook.

:)

Tim smoked our turkey again this year...and it was delicious! (His choice, I was actually up for trying my hand at the roasting this year.) He's really perfecting his technique. It was actually done about 5 hours before we had everything else ready and all our guests assembled for the big meal. Tim read up and discovered that you could keep it warm and juicy by wrapping it up and keeping it in a cooler. We left the thermometers in so as to monitor safe temps and it all worked great. Mmm good! We had a very enjoyable evening with great friends. And now we have lots of leftovers! I do LOVE smoked poultry for all sorts of recipes. Can't wait to use this stuff!

I had this great picture of the little girl digging into her big turkey drumstick, but unfortunately the file is corrupt. Bummer. Here's a photo collage of the kids playing in puddles the other day. We had massively heavy rain for about 24 hours and with all the leaves blowing off the trees too, the drains got clogged...great huge puddles to jump in while the cold rain came pouring down!

Know what else the passing of Thanksgiving means in our family? Time to pull together Christmas lists! As I was browsing through Black Friday on-line stuff last night, I was thinking we really should start doing this before Thanksgiving. But many in this family of ours are procrastinators (oh, yes, definitely me included!) and I find that unlikely to happen. But it really would have been great to know who my secret sibling is for gifts this year and what he or she is pining for. Or maybe she's Pinning for something this year!

Well, without further ado...I'm going to start posting stuff I find on here and my Pinterest board.

Pinned things on my All I want for Christmas board --

• Anything from Williams-Sonoma. Yep, you could just walk in there and buy me anything and I'm pretty sure I'll be thrilled with it. All sorts of fun, that store is!
• New cozy slippers. My beloved ATM ones pretty much fell apart from daily use for several years. I wear about size 6 usually.
• I want a food processor. Not sure which size. Seems like lots of recipes recommend using them though.
• Well, lots of cooking gadgets on my list...I think I'm gonna need a new kitchen too. Need more storage!
• I need a flash diffuser for my camera. Haven't done any research as to which one I want though.
• A good tripod for our myriad of photography and videography equipment is definitely in order! Again...no research yet.
• More stuff coming soon...as soon as I think of it!

*Christmas list image credits: Kate Teague "Berry Days", Bella Gypsy "Talk Like A Pirate" red alpha, Shawna Clingerman "Frolic" plaid alpha

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Seriously...it is raining AGAIN! Summer was about two weeks long (not even 14 consecutive days!) and it has been cloudy and rainy all the other time. Rain all through Memorial Day weekend, rain on the 4th of July (well, that's what I hear...we were in MI), pouring buckets of cold rain on my boys' 4th birthday, rain on Labor Day....and so it continues. Yesterday was a surprising sunny day. Today...raining, raining, raining again.

Credits: Bella Gypsy - Two by two, Kreations by Kami - Basic Needs, MC-Designs - Vintage Touch, Jeanne Marie Scraps - Daredevil (recolored), Page Maps sketch July 2010

We had two birthdays!

My twin boys celebrated their 4th birthday a couple weeks ago. It was a cold, rainy day and we of course had a big outdoor backyard party planned. Oh well! We made due since we are used to this here in Pacific NW.

The theme was Hot Wheels since the boys are really into them these days. We had rented a NASCAR bouncy house...luckily it had a roof. The rain still got inside which made it slippery, but we just kept wiping it off with towels. The kids loved it.

My favorite part is how fun the cakes turned out. I made them myself - I always make each twin their own cake. It's not their fault they were born the same day! In this house we live by the motto that everyone should be special on their birthday. Anyway, one boy asked me to make a cake "like at the airport", which meant the spiral ramps in the parking garage. And I did! It took a while but went together just how I imagined. Phew!

I got these wonderful reactions "[Brother], come look at the awesome cakes mom made us!" and "Mom, you make the best cakes in the whole world!"

Definitely worth all the work for happiness like that. :)