Square Foot Gardening

So I decided to try my hand at a little Square Foot Gardening this year, and I have to say that I am very excited about all the sprouts that are sprouting up right now. If you are not familiar with this type of gardening, you can check out this link:

Square Foot Gardening Foundation

I checked out this book from the library to help me get started:

The All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space


Check out my boxes!

As you can see, we never got around to adding the strips of wood that are supposed to make the squares, but I made do with some sticks from the yard! :)

I have lettuce, carrots, beans, peas, cucumbers, radishes, and tomatoes planted. Let's see how I do!

Happy little sprouts!

Birthday Surprise Video

Yay! The upload worked - here is the video from Mikaela's actual birthday when her big present for the year was revealed:

Enjoy!

A few more from that day:

Preschool Spring Concert/Graduation

Tonight was Mikaela's spring concert at her preschool AND it was a graduation ceremony because she will no longer be a preschooler at the end of next week!

I'm hoping to add the videos later, but here is a snapshot of her and her classmates on stage above. Below is a picture of her with her teacher Miss Constance:

We are very proud of her! What a smart girl!

(PS - Their cute little red mortarboards are made out of a plastic bowl with elastic strung through so it stayed on their heads. The bowl was connected to a piece of tagboard with a brass fastener which was poked through a piece of yarn...very cute!)

Making of the Cake

I discovered this video almost a year ago, and immediately knew that it was what I wanted to do for Mikaela's 5th birthday cake:

Happy Housewife - Barbie Cake Tutorial

This one also helped a lot:

Betty Crocker Princess Doll Cake Tutorial


With that, I was ready to go. I baked the first section in a Pyrex bowl. It took over an HOUR...

The other two sections were just regular circle pans. This is the part where is looked a little scary to me because I knew if I sliced the domed parts of the circles, I would lose height and I felt for sure that the cake sections would fall apart or crumble, crumble, crumble...

I took a deep breath and started putting on my crumb coat and just slathered it on where there were big gaps...whew! I think I'm going to make it! :)

With the crumb coat done, I put it in the fridge to set a while and then added the barbie doll so I could add the 2nd coat of frosting. Barbie is covered in saran wrap for easy clean up...

Then I used a cake decorating tip to add the frosting for the the top of her dress...

I just thought it looked funny to see her in the fridge while the frosting was setting!

Mikaela helped me add the finishing touches...

Yay! It actually worked! :) Mikaela loved it!

Snapshots of Mikaela's Birthday Party

Happy Birthday, Part 2! :)

Mikaela decided that she would like to have a barbie doll cake for her birthday. She helped me decorate it by putting on the stars all over the dress. I was very please with how well it turned out. I'll post some more pictures of the making of the cake in another post sometime. It was fun to make even though I wasn't sure how she would turn out!

After eating our lasagna (requested by the birthday girl) we sang Happy Birthday and she blew out the candle...

Then came presents...

...while the boys played...

Then we headed outdoors...

What a fun and beautiful day!

Happy Birthday, Mikaela!

Tonight, we got to celebrate our little girl turning 5! Mikaela had to wait all day to open presents even though she asked several times if she could "just open one" before Daddy got home!



Presents! Jumbo sized Princess coloring pages:





Even though it was Mikaela's day, I wanted to make sure that Aiden didn't feel left out. He was very happy to be able to hand Mikaela her presents, even if he didn't get to open them.

Mikaela can never get enough of the Color Wonder coloring books too:

Finally the big reveal - Aiden had to keep this one a secret for a long time...except he didn't keep it a secret...but Mommy was able to confuse Mikaela enough that she didn't know that he didn't keep it a secret. A surprise = success!

Daddy with Mikaela on her "big girl" bike.

I will post the video of her seeing her surprise for the first time tomorrow (hopefully) since it is bedtime now...and I have a lot of baking to do tomorrow! Just because the birthday is done doesn't mean the parties are done - Cupcakes for preschool on Friday, barbie doll cake on Saturday! Stay posted - I hope to show pictures of the doll cake too! I'm praying it turns out okay!!!

Plaster Playhouse

Good Morning, Birthday Girl! Today was Field Trip day at Mikaela's school. We were headed to the Plaster Playhouse for some fun. (Aiden got to enjoy a couple hours at "Miss Steffi's" place while Mikaela and Mommy had some one-on-one!)

I wish I had taken more pictures of the inside of the building to show more of the "atmosphere" but here are a couple shots of the huge murals on the walls:

Each child was able to pick out their own piece of molded plaster to decorate. Mikaela chose a sleeping kitty to paint.

Hmm....looks a lot like chocolate here...

After this, they coated the works of art with some sort of lacquer and then they were allowed to glue on eyes and gems:

The final product:

It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but the kitty is holding the heart between her two paws. Mikaela thought it was funny that the kitty was no longer sleeping because she put googly eyes on and now it's awake! Haha....

We may just have to visit them again because they have other things they offer as well like mosaics, ceramics, and jewelry. Check out the website...fun stuff. :)

Day Out with Thomas

After church on Sunday, we headed to Greenfield Village for their "Day Out with Thomas." We surprised the kids and they were very excited to find out where they were going.



First we stopped at the fountain by the gate. I love this picture of the two of them:










As we headed in, we then we got a chance to see Thomas coming down the line:

At one o'clock the "All Aboard" call was given and we were on our way!

Immediately after getting off the train, Aiden wanted to ride it again! Unfortunately, that was not an option, but a meltdown was avoided by distracting him somehow. After watching Thomas pull out of the station for the next trip, we headed over to the gift shop to see if we could find some mementos from our day. Mikaela found an activity book, and Aiden settled on a Percy train piece, and they each got stickers (and so did I so I could put them in our scrapbook ;) We also got a cute little Thomas the Train card game that they can both play.

Needless to say, we were pretty tired from our fun day, and it didn't take Aiden that long to pass out in the car with Lightning McQueen in hand, Percy and Petey Bear nearby.

Mikaela did eventually pass out as well, but not until she had gotten to start filling in her Thomas activity book and start a sucker...which you will notice is still in her hand while she is sleeping!

Too fun! I only wish that we could do it every year :) I'm so glad that we were able to go when they were this age though because they really loved it.