This Birthday Weekend was a SMASH! (pun intended.... you will see why...)

The party this weekend was amazing! Everything went really well! We had a great turn out of friends and family and everyone really seemed to love the candy shoppe theme! The weather held out until later that night. It was nice and warm and dry!

Our sweets table!

Finley and me! She is trying to get her marshmallow lollipop open.

Marshmallow and Chocolate Covered Oreo Lollipops! The Oreo's were a big hit! I made these... instructions to come soon!

Chocolate covered pretzels.

The birthday cake! This was my first time making a tiered cake. It turned out really well. The sprinkles were kind of a pain to get on the side. The bottom tier was the hardest. I didn't sleep much the night before. I kept having dreams that I went to get it out of the fridge and it had fallen over.

Strawberry Cupcakes.

The goodie bags. We left them empty so everyone could take what they wanted off the treat table to take home with them.

I printed these tags and then used a scrapbook punch design to cut them out. 

The banner. I ended up not writing anything on it. This way I can use it for other things later on.

Finley opening a few of her gifts.

Hello Kitty rain boots! She is in love with these!

At this point she was getting tired of opening gifts, so she decided to just walk away and go swing and left me to finish opening.

Cutting the cake :)

Finley and her Grump. This was right at the end of the party and it was an hour and half past nap time and she was starting to melt... quickly!

So after the party we took Finley home and put her down for her nap and left her with Daddy and Grump. My mom and I headed out to Target to get her last birthday gift. As we walked into the store my mom tripped and fell and caught herself with her face on the pavement. I have to say this was one of the scariest things to watch happen. I saw her falling and couldn't catch her. She fell like a tree! She now has a nice black eye. She broke her orbital bone around her eye, but not bad just a hairline fracture. Target called 911 and she was checked out by the paramedics. She refused to go to the hospital (because she is hard headed.... haha!). 

Yesterday was Finley's actual birthday. I can't believe my baby is 2! The past 2 years went by so fast! She has turned into such a wonderful, sweet and smart little girl! She has changed our lives for the better. I remember holding her in the hospital shortly after she was born and said to Matthew "I couldn't even begin to imagine what she would look like. But now that she is here, I can't imagine her looking any other way." She is the most beautiful little girl in the world, inside and out. Even when she is having a hard day, she can give me that look and it melts my heart. I love her in a way I never thought my heart and soul could love.

*The morning I was induced.

*Shortly after being born. I have to say the TV shows make it look like it is only about 15 minutes between the time the baby is born and you actually get the baby. But it was more like an hour! 

* The next day :)

Finley on her 1st birthday!

It has been another amazing year baby.... here is to starting another one!

Happy Birthdays!

This past week has been very busy (April usually is for us with all the birthdays and Easter)! We had 2 birthday parties last weekend. Then Wednesday was my birthday. My wonderful husband surprised me this year with a very thoughtful gift. Last September we spent a week in the Finger Lakes of New York for our 5 year wedding anniversary. On one of the days we were there we did a wine tour and I fell in love with one of the wineries up there. So for my birthday he ordered a case of my 2 favorite types of wine. *Notice the already open bottle ;)* If you are ever in the area of Lake Seneca, I defiantly recommend do the wine tour and trying the Hazlett Winerey! 

Then on Thursday my husband took the day off of work to spend with us. We weren't sure what to do, but after much thought on my part, we decided to go hike Amicalola Falls in North Georgia.

 We had a wonderful time spending the day as a family and talking about how wonderful God was. We explained to Finley that God made the falls for us to enjoys.

 She really seemed to like to watch the water come over the edge.

This was a sweet moment I was able to catch of Finley and her daddy! I think this is one of my favorites from the day!

Well today is D-day! Today is the day of the big birthday party! Everything is made and ready to go. I have to finish washing a few things and we will be set. I am still praying for no rain today. We have a 30% chance.  I am hopeing it will hold off until later this afternoon. 

*Pictures of the party and everything I made coming soon!*

Rain, rain go away!

We are 4 days (including today) until Finley's birthday party and I am getting really nervous about the weather.... We have rain most of this week. The forecast is calling for rain today through Thursday, with no rain on Friday, 60% chance of rain Saturday (the big day!) and no rain on Sunday. The major problem with this is we are having the party at a park in our neighborhood and it is outside. Also, our house is not big enough to fit the 60+ people and kids that plan on attending. Our house can typically fit 20ish comfortably, but not 60 especially if we can't go outside! I really have no clue what to do.....

The other big bummer is that my birthday is tomorrow and my husband is taking Thursday off so we can hang out as a family. We have talked about going to Amicalola Falls in north Georgia, but if it is raining we wont be able to go :( It never rains on my birthday.... it HAS to stop!

Easter Recap

We started our Easter fun by dyeing eggs on Friday. Finley really enjoyed this, although the control freak in me didn't want her touching any of the dyes. But she did enjoy telling me which color to put the egg in and watching the egg change colors. 

We also did some baking....

** These were the worst cupcakes. I don't think I have done that bad of a job on baking cupcakes since I started to cook/bake. They were very dense and kind of burned (my oven has a fine line between cooked and burned and I had missed it that day). Everyone was really nice though and ate some.

I also made this.... It was a big hit, as always! It has become a staple at all our family get togethers. I will post how I make it soon.

Saturday was spent with my family and my parents new condo. We had a great time hanging out and playing on the Xbox Kinect. I kicked butt at gold, who knew? We also did an egg hunt for Finley and my nephew. I am looking forward to next year when Aurelle (my new niece) can join the fun!

Oh my goodness she was so dirty! My parents let her eat cheetos and she had started to wipe her hands all over her dress. When I told her to stop and wait so I could get a wipe, she walked over to me and tried to wipe her hands on me!

She is eating jelly beans in this picture.

I have never seen a child shovel jelly beans in their mouth like she did. She would shake the egg to see which ones had jelly beans and then pop it open and start shoveling!

Sunday morning we got up and got ready for church. After I put Finley in her Easter dress she started twirling and ran out to the living room to her daddy and said "I a princess!" It was so cute!

After church we let her have her easter basket. I didn't want her to see it before we left because she would have wanted the candy in it and that was a fight I did not want to have at 7:30 in the morning!

This is Finley with her great grandmother. You don't see to many of those these days. So I try and capture any moment of the two of them together. She is an amazing woman and I want Finley to be able to look back at these pictures one day and remember how wonderful she was.

 My pretty little girl loves to play in the dirt!

Our ride home only takes about  15 minutes, but she fell asleep before we even made it half way there!

Well happy late easter!

We are T-minus 7 days to the birthday party!!!

Homemade Dishwasher Detergent and Liquid Dish Soap

A few weeks ago I decided I was going to start making my own cleaning products. So I started looking around on the internet for recipes. I made my list of supplies and went shopping. Total I probably spent about $20 for all the stuff. The first one I made was dishwasher detergent. At first I was super excited about the soap. It seemed to be working really well, and it does. But I am glad I didn't post this right after I started to use it. I gave it some time to really get a feel for how it works. The soap does do a fantastic job. My only problem with it is that I am not sure I am really saving any money. After looking at a few different websites I realized I need to use white vinegar when I washed my dishes (this is where I start to have an issue). I went and bought a big bottle of white vinegar. For the store brand it was about $2.50 for the big bottle, there were some bottles that were $3.50+. If you add the cost of  materials and the vinegar together, I probably ended up spending about $4.00 to make the soap. Now I could have just bought store brand dishwasher detergent for about $2.50. The whole reason I wanted to make my own soaps what to help save money, and I don't feel like I really am accomplishing that. But here is how I made it....

Ingredients:

1 Cup of Borax (Target and Walmart do carry this!)
1 Cup Baking Soda (I used Washing Soda)
1/2 Cup Kosher Salt
 15 packets of lemon Kool-aid, the unsweetened kind. (You can also use 1/2 Cup Citric Acid, this can be found in the canning isle.)

Mix everything together and you have dish washing soap!
I use 1 tablespoon of the mixture with 1 cup white vinegar. I pour the vinegar into the bottom of the dishwasher. This seems to be pretty important. If you don't use it then your cups and plastics can come out looking foggy. I also tried to just use 1/2 a cup of vinegar, but I noticed my dishes weren't getting as clean.

Just to add a little cuteness to the jar, I used some of my letter stickers. On the front I labeled what it was and then put how much you are suppose to use on the back side. This is mostly for my husbands sake, in case he ever feels the need to run the dishwasher when I am not home. 

And there you have. My biggest complaint is that I don't feel like I am saving any money by making this myself. My other complaint is that the mixture sticks together. I think it is because of the kool-aid, so if you used the citric acid it may not do that.

NEXT......

I also made my own liquid dish soap.

Here is how I made it...

Ingredients:-1 ½ cup of hot water

-½ cup castile soap
-1 tablespoon of white vinegar (I used Kirk's Original Coco Castile Bar Soap)
-1 tablespoon of Arm&Hammer’s Super Washing Soda (used to thicken the soap)

Mix all the ingredients together and put in your liquid dish soap container. Again, this works really well.... but as you can tell from my picture it looks a bit solid and it is. When I first made it, it was super clear. It didn't even look like there was anything in the jar. Then as it started to cool, I noticed it began to solidify. I have to put it in the microwave for about 30 seconds before I use it, which is kind of annoying. I have been looking to see what I did wrong, and I think where I messed up is that I used bar soap instead of liquid castile soap. So you may want to look for that instead. 

My next project will probably be laundry soap. So we will see how it goes....

On another note we are 10 days out from the big birthday party!