Oh, the Places You'll Go!

My son turned one back in April. It was a really low-key event, therefore not too many decorations went into the extravaganza this year. I did, however, make his cake. The theme I chose was from Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go" book. When my first son was born, his 1st birthday theme was Dr. Seuss' "Green Eggs and Ham." I thought it only fitting that we did something along the same line for the youngest. Who knows, maybe when he graduates (way off into the future), we will do another one of these themed parties.

On his actual birthday, I made giant cupcakes. This picture doesn't really do the size of the cupcake justice.
It is sitting on a plate that I made especially for occasions like birthdays and other special events.
I got the idea from a friend of mine who had this tradition growing up in her family and it sounded
like it was right up my alley as well!

I made the birthday cake for him this year. I wasn't super happy with the way the cake turned out, but the concept still worked for what I was going for. I didn't count on the color dripping down the fondant the way it did every once in a while. Lessons learned for next time around! I always seem to learn something about cake decorating with birthday party time rolls around (kind of an inopportune time if you ask me).

I ordered a couple extra books from Amazon that were not in the best shape (so that meant I got a good price) and deconstructed them for decorating with for the party. This is actually from the jacket cover of the book. I cut out the pieces and just stuck them on the top of the cake.

I designed the cake based on the cover of the book. I made the bottom layer out of cake and covered it with fondant. I used a food marker to make my swirl outline and then painted the fondant from there. For the top of the cake, I actually used a floral styrofoam form. I didn't want to mess with trying to carve a cake and panic if it fell over, which, with my luck would have definitely happened. I just covered the styrofoam with fondant as well and followed the cake design.

As you can see, the cake was loved by all!

I had a grand idea to make a map using the pages of the actual book. Cutting each state out from the page and piecing it all together. I soon decided I was NOT up for that particular challenge given the fact that I wanted to have a big map. I opted for a purchase at the store instead. I have other uses for the map in the near future anyway.

Each month, I took a picture of my son in a rocking chair to see how much he had grown from month to month. I put all the pictures in the frame above to give everyone an idea of how big he has grown. It was fun to put this part together to reminisce myself. The picture now hangs in his bedroom (I love projects that serve dual purposes!)

The mantle above the fireplace, some balloons, pages from the book framed, the map and collage of his pictures.

Farm to Table: Green Onions

Dateline: May 20

We were on vacation for a week. I just knew that our garden wouldn't survive the week away, but I was wrong. Everything seems healthy and still growing! Time to harvest some of the fruits (vegetables) of our labor. First up: onions (scallions, green onions....whatever you want to call them). My favorite use for these little guys is wilted lettuce salad. I have a feeling we will be eating that for a few weeks and that makes us very happy!

The lettuce should be ready soon.

Some kind of onion salad that my husband concocted. It was actually pretty good.

Our Little Urban Garden, Part 5

Dateline: April 28

Our little garden is coming along nicely! The onions and carrots are definitely growing at this point (April 28th). It was time to put the tomatoes in the ground (finally). We also planted some cantaloupe and potatoes. Sam has been next to his daddy the ENTIRE process.

Such a sweet moment. Sam decided to take a moment out and pray for our food out of the blue.

Tomato time (my favorite part of the garden).

Our lettuce is starting out, the onions are coming up and the peppers are growing (slowly).

Our Little Urban Garden, Part 4

Dateline: April 14

It was finally time to get some of our seeds in the ground. It has been fun watching our son get into the gardening and growing stuff. He wants to do everything daddy does!

Raking. Sam needs a little help!

A lesson on how to push the seeds into the soil.

Intently watching the seeds.

Time to water everything.

We planted carrots, lettuce and onions on this day. Crossing our fingers that they actually take off and grow well in our little urban garden!

Project: Butterfly Birthday Party

A very special thank you to my grandmother who LOVES butterflies. You cannot go anywhere in her home and not be surrounded by the beautiful creatures. What better theme for her 85th birthday celebration than butterflies. You already saw what I consider the main attraction. Here are just a few other decorations that we put together for the big day.

We found a perfect box at Michaels that is meant to look like a book. The "book" has pictures of
butterflies all over it. Guests placed birthday cards in the box. It was a perfect accompaniment to the guestbook.

I made a guestbook for everyone to sign. Instead of the boring, "just sign on this line to say
you were here," I used some butterfly pictures my friend Brent let me use as the background to
each page and used scanned pictures of grandma as a child, young adult and now as a grandma to
1 granddaughter, 4 grandsons and 2 great-grandsons. It was a perfect addition to the party
and a nice way for her to look back on the day. 

My mom made this lovely butterfly bouquet. I guess I probably get some of my craftiness from her!

Each table had either a hurricane lamp or wine glasses in the middle of the table flanked by two vases
with white and yellow daisies (some of grandma's favorite flowers). We added little butterflies
to the table as a quick splash of color throughout each table.

The florist did the arrangement in the hurricane lamp sitting on the guestbook table.
She did a beautiful job with the yellow roses and daisies.

Under the wine glasses, we placed some greenery and daisies.
We placed votive candles on the stem of the glass. They were very pretty.

Our simple food table.

Edible Butterfly Life Cycle

It looks like I'll be in "butterfly world" for a while with my grandma's party and all. My son' preschool class recently studied butterflies, even grew some from caterpillars (something I plan on doing here after we get back from vacation later this Spring). I had seen this example of an edible butterfly cycle. I decided that we would try it in our house for an interesting snack. I look forward to trying some of her stuff with the Very Hungry Caterpillar as well. We drew the four basic stages on a plate as my son told me about each in detail. It was his job to put everything in the right category. He's a pretty good teacher!

We used marshmallows for the eggs, gummy worms for caterpillars, tootsie rolls for the chrysalis and fancy crackers for the butterfly.

Very proud of his work (probably more excited to eat it than anything)!

Project: Butterfly Cupcakes

This past weekend, we celebrated my grandma's 85th birthday. She decided she wanted to have a party so she could see her friends and celebrate this occasion. Planning for the event started back in January. My mom and aunt were in charge of getting everything organized. I am known as the crafty one of the bunch....the only granddaughter. My mom and I did a lot of the buying of decorating supplies and my mom did a great job organizing and packing everything so nothing would be left behind (we had to take everything from Tennessee to Indiana). My main contribution to the party was the cupcake. Mom found this idea with butterfly wings and we proceeded from there. This is how our cupcakes came together:

We used chocolate to pipe the wings of each butterfly. We planned on over 100 cupcakes, so we had well over  200 little wings (I anticipated breakage on the journey from Tennessee). I found a butterfly template that we used for all the little wings.

After the outline of the wing set, we proceeded to fill the inside with colored chocolate.

Butterflies of all colors could be found on my kitchen and dining room tables.

I was in charge of all the cupcake baking. I started early on Thursday morning and baked 120 cupcakes (all before 8:30 AM I might add).

Saturday morning in Indiana. I iced all the cupcakes preparing them for our little butterfly wings.

Here's the final product.

I just love the cupcake stand that my aunt found to display the cupcakes on the main table. I'm VERY EXCITED that I'm the new owner of said cupcake display. Happy Birthday to me :-)

 I'm so happy with the way they turned out. We had many, many compliments on them!