Happy Birthday Allison!

No, I haven't lost my mind! I know Allison's birthday is July 16th. I could hardly forget. I did give birth to her afterall! Anyway, since Allison has a Summer birthday she can't celebrate it in school with her classmates. So we celebrated it a little early. Her teacher gave her a cute birthday certificate with "Happy 6.8 Birthday" on it. Allison got a kick out of that. Her teacher suggested that I come in about 2:45 and if I wanted, I could spend the rest of the day with her class. Of course I wanted! I love watching them. It makes me realize that although I think Allison does some strange things, she is more behaved than some of the kids in her class. One little girl pulled up her sleeve, put her mouth on her forearm and started to blow loudly making a "gas" noise! Crazy! And she continued after she was told to stop! Okay, moving along here. Allison requested cupcakes and those "Little Hugs" that is pretty much sugar water or as her teacher described them..."melted popsicles." Even though they are cheap, cheap, cheap, I have never bought them. I'll stick with the 100% fruit juices thank you!

I also put together take home treat bags for the kids. I put little bags of pretzels, a Rice Krispie Treat, a little bag of M & M's, a Reese's cup and two Dum Dum lollipops in them.

Here's a close up. I found the balloon cellophane bags at Wal-Mart. They were in the party section. I'm glad I fought my urge to avoid Wal-Mart because they were very inexpensive. I hate Wal-Mart but that is a whole other post.
I gave Allison some choices for cupcakes and she picked penguins. Aren't they cute? I just love them and they were so easy. I found the idea on the Family Fun website. You can see their link over there. ------> As I've mentioned several times before, I love their magazine and website.
Here is a close up of a little penguin. The recipe said to use dried apricots cut into triangles for the nose and feet. However, I wasn't going to sit there and cut out 72 triangles to have the kids pull them off and say "Yuk, what is this?" So I improvised and colored some icing orange and piped it on with a Wilton #3 tip. I actually liked how they came out better than the apricots. The cookies are the Keebler Grasshopper Cookies. One package will make 24 cupcakes with a few left over. However, when you cut the cookie in half, use a sharp knife and start at the top first and then run the knife down to the bottom. If you put the knife on top and press down, you will not get a clean edge. The eyes are mini M & M's "glued" on with a little white icing. I found the minis at a convenience store and I bought two tubes to get 48 brown ones for the eyes. You could use different colored eyes if you wish and use all the colors but I liked the brown better.
Speaking of Penguins....Whoo Hooo! The Pittsburgh Penguins won game 3 last night of the Stanley Cup Finals! Here's a victory photo "borrowed" from their site. They lost the first two games and won the third. We need to win 3 more out of the next 4 to bring the cup home!

Go Pens!

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100 Days of School!

Do you remember celebrating 100 days of school when you were a kid? Me either but the schools do these days. It's actually really cute and they plan so much for them. Allison's 100th day of school was scheduled for Monday....however, we had a horrible ice storm on Friday and school was closed so it was pushed to Tuesday.

The first thing the students were asked to do was to create a 100 of something on a red poster board that was sent home. After MANY suggestions, Miss Allison decided that she wanted to collect 100 signatures. We decided that we would get the signatures on two inch square pieces of cardstock or paper. I emailed everyone I knew and asked for their help. Curtis and I also carried squares with us and solicited signatures from co-workers and customers. At first I was a little nervous that we would even be able to get all those signatures but then they started rolling in. Aunt Alesia helped us by getting some at her work and Pap Pap carried some with him too. Here is Allison with her project. As you can see, we used a United States map and linked the signatures to the states. I wanted to make it a learning experience as well. We also got three signatures from Egypt, France and Ukraine. She thought those were really cool. They are in the upper left hand corner. She was very proud of her project.The second thing she came home with was a paper from her teacher explaining her challenge to the kids. 100 consecutive hours of NO TV! Sorry for the curved lettering in the pic. I took the picture of it while it was hanging on the fridge. The TV outage started at 2 pm on Wednesday and ended at 6 pm on Sunday...just in time for the Superbowl. Of course, that didn't matter to us because we could care less about football in this house. Anyway, one of Allison's classmates refused to take the challenge because he couldn't go without Sponge Bob. LOL!
The 100 hours of no TV wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. When they cancelled school on Friday, I thought it might have been an issue but it wasn't at all. I had received a package the day before and I had the box by the door to go out to the trash. Allison asked if she could have it and turned it into a "TV." She drew my picture first of what she considered my favorite show. Do you recognize it? It's "30 Minute Meals with Raechel Ray." Too funny! It's not my favorite show but I thought it was funny what she picked. It's actually one of HER favorite shows that we watch together. After she completed the 100 hours, I had sign a paper to verify that Allison did indeed complete the challenge.

The teacher planned an afternoon snack of pizza and I volunteered to do "100" cupcakes. I put colored jimmies inside the cupcakes and on top so she could pass them off as having 100 sprinkles. I also made picks for each cupcake but didn't put them in until I got them to school.

Here is a close up of the picks. They said "Happy 100 Days!" I used lollipop sticks to hold the circles I printed on the computer and then used my circle punch. I topped the top off with a little curling ribbon to match the papers.
The kids were also instructed to wear a 100 of something. We decided a t-shirt with one hundred 100's on the shirt would be cute. I used fabric paint in six differnt colors and put them on the front, back and sleeves. If you click on the pic to enlarge, you will see I did a few rhinestone 100's for a little sparkle.
Here is Allison on the 100th day of school in front of her 100th day project.
Allison's teacher in the new school is awesome! She had so many things planned for the kids. They enjoyed a 100 snacks. She asked some of the parents to donate a snack and then the kids would build the a 100 snack mix making it with ten different snacks of ten each of those snacks. I donated mini pretzels. Apparantly those were the big hit because the students didn't have to pick them up with spoons. They were allowed to use their fingers to count out ten. Allison said "Mom, you spread the love in my class today because the kids were happy they could pick them up with their fingers!" Too funny! It's the little things, I guess. They also made a crown (see below) and fingerprinted it 100 times...20 of each color. Her teacher also gave each of them a pencil that said "100 days of school" and a certificate that said "Allison is 100 days smarter" with their picture on it. Mrs. M also read to them for 100 minutes. They were all instructed to bring something to lay on. I was worried about how this would go because 100 minutes is a long time for 1st graders. It apparantly went well as Allison told me all about the story so she must have been paying attention. In the picture below are 3 books that Mrs. M. gave to the kids for completing the 100 hours of no TV. I bet that little boy wished he would have taken the challenge after all!
One last thing before I go. I want to share a couple of "Allisonisms"...cute things she says from her perspective. 1.) There were a couple of extra cupcakes and Mrs. M. said she could take them to the office for the secretary and the principal. She said that she gave Miss E. hers and then Mr. V. wasn't in his office so Miss E. told her to put it on his desk for him. She said "Mom! I was in the principal's office and I wasn't even in trouble!" and she also said "I was a little embarrassed to be there because I didn't want anyone to see me and think I was in trouble." 2.) I asked her if she ate her pizza and she said no. I asked her why not. She said "because I ate your cupcake Mom." I told her she could have had both and she said "No thank you, I just wanted your cupcake because you make the best cupcakes!" So sweet! Not just the cupcake but my daughter too!

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Miss Me?....and December's Recap!

Wow! It's been almost 2 months since I've posted! The only excuse I can offer is LIFE! Thank you to all of you who have checked in on me. It's nice to know people care...especially when things got tough. I love you all!

Now just because I didn't post, didn't mean I didn't take pics! Here's my attempt to recap the events of December 2007...at least the highlights.

While looking at my pics from December, I found this picture of a prize from a contest, my friend, Kim ran on her blog. Kim, I am SO sorry that I didn't thank you earlier. It was my intention to do a blog post and thank you properly. It's a little blurry but she sent some cool things for my scrapbooking and a cute angel craft for Allison.

THANKS Kim!

Curtis bought me a Cuisinart Food Processor for my birthday and to thank him, I made Oatmeal Raisin Cookies for him. I probably should have mixed the raisins in by hand because it kind of chopped them up too small but he said they were the best he ever had. Even though I think he said that so I'll keep making them, they were good that way!

My Goddaughter, Maria, has a birthday just days before Christmas. She likes to watch movies so I bought her a gift card for Giant Eagle movie rentals and wanted to do something cute and fun for her. Have you seen the plastic popcorn containers that Target has in their "Dollar Spot" sometimes? Aren't they cute? I have been just itching to buy them and use them for something creative. Yay! This was my chance! I picked up 3 (because they have 3 in their family) and taped them together at the bottom and the top with white electrical tape. I chose electrical tape because the color blended in, it was strong and it is easy to remove. Next I filled it with shredded basket filler, packages of microwave popcorn and fun candy in boxes that you get when you go to the movie theater.

Here's the finished gift. I just wrapped it in cellophane and tied on some red curling ribbon and it was done!

I had so much fun putting together Maria's gift that my creative juices kept flowing. I adapted the idea for the Christmas gifts for Allison's classmates. I always like to do a little something for them from her but I like to keep it reasonable in price. I went to Sam's Club for the treats. I got a big box of microwave popcorn, Twizzlers which were individually wrapped and little bags of M & M cookies. I avoided chocolate because I didn't want to sugar them up for the teacher. I loosely stuffed a sheet of tissue paper in the bottom of each container to fill in the bottom. I didn't use the shredded filler because I didn't want the teacher to have a mess all over the classroom. Allison's favorite Christmas special is "The Grinch" so I used that for the tag. I slid them into cellophane bags and tah dah! An easy gift for under $2.00! The kids loved them!

Here's a close up of the tag. It was Allison's idea to alternate green and red for the Merry Christmas. She's so creative!

I volunteered to make the cupcakes for Allison's party at school. I've mentioned before that I love Family Fun Magazine. I keep all of my issues and have them organized by months. I went to my shelf and pulled out the ones for the Christmas ideas and saw these ornaments. Too cute! I knew I had to make them!

Here's a better look. Of course it's an upside down miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cup for the top of the ornament. The hardest part was breaking the preztels just right for the hook. By the way, Thanks Curtis for unwrapping all the candy for me!

Allison and I make a homemade Hot Cocoa Mix for her teacher. I got the recipe from Family Fun Magazine. I put it in a quart canning jar, added ribbon and a homemade label. I decided to do a whole theme and put it in a basket with 4 snowman mugs and a bag of miniature marshmallows. I used the shredded red filler and snowman ribbon for the bow.

Here's the whole basket. I probably should have made a floral bow for the top but I wasn't sure how much ribbon was on the spool. By the way, if you have read my blog, you know I love going to Goodwill and Salvation Army. Well guess where I got the basket? Yup, for $1.99! This basket would have been around $10 at Michael's. I always check out the baskets with the idea of gift baskets in mind. You never know when you might need one for organization too. My tip for picking out baskets is to smell them before you buy them. Some of them are adorable but have a musty smell to them. Like they've been stored in a basement or something. Sometimes they are dusty and need to be cleaned or are just loose and worn. If that's the case, don't shy away from buying them. Just fill your laundry or stationary tub up with soapy water and put the whole basket in the tub. Use a soft bristle brush to lightly scrub them. Rinse them good, reshape them and let them dry in the sun or in front of the furnace register. As they dry, they will tighten up an be good as new. Seriously friends, don't spend all your money on the basket for the gift. Spend it on the gift.
Four co-workers and I always do something really small for each other for Christmas. I usually do something put together or homemade. This year I made them each a dozen of chocolate covered oreos. I put them in tins that I found at The Dollar Tree. They also had this adorable plastic tissue paper. It worked perfectly!
Of course, I couldn't stop there! I put the tin in a cellphane bag and tied it off with raffia.
Allison gave the secretary of her school this petite candle from Home Interiors. She is a nice lady that helped us immensley when we transferred schools. I wanted to let her know that we appreciated her. She was so touched.

By the way, most of the Home Interior candles are 20% off this month. Let me know if you need any. They make great little gifts to have on hand. I can ship anywhere. Wow! How about that shameless plug?

A while back on Sophia's blog, she wrote about a book called "Christmas Jars." It sparked my curiosity. I bought three of them. One for me, one for my best friend, Susan, and one to give away for someone who I felt could benefit from it. After reading the book, I've decided that I will give one book with one jar away every year. If you haven't heard of it, you should check it out.

Someone liked my bead garland on my tree a little too much!

This is how I like her... behaving. She was actually "talking" to the birds outside. Isn't her coloring beautiful. UGH! I hate that fluffy tail!

OH NO! Here she is in trouble again! I wonder how many times I said "Princess, get out of the tree!" this year? Oh, if I only had a nickel for each time....!

Here is the ornament Allison made for us this year. Look closely, it's made out of puzzle pieces.

One of my favorite pics of the season.

This is us on Christmas Eve. It's when we celebrate and open gifts. Our neighbor stopped by so I asked her to take a pic of us. All of us in red may have been too much.

Allison and our family tree. I changed this year and used the lace angel that was my Aunt Carole's. It is just beautiful. She's holding lights and there are lights all underneath her gown. It was such a warm reminder of my Aunt Carole to be using her angel. I'm sure she was looking down from heaven with a smile on her face.

Another favorite pic of mine.

I bought Allison and Curtis the dvd sets of "Planet Earth" and "Blue Planet" from the Discovery Channel store. They are amazing. They are on sale right now...go check them out!

Here is what Princess got for Christmas. Had I known it was this big when built, I would have rethought the gift. UGH!!! There's that fluffy tail again!

Santa came!

The three cousins. This is at my parent's on Christmas day. Mya is 4 days younger than Allison and Derek is 2 years younger than the both of the girls. Every time I see a pic of the three of them, it reminds me of us three kids. Mya resembles my sister when she was little, of course Allison is a mini-me and Derek is a spitting image of my brother. I'll have to look for a pic of us when we were little and share it with all of you.

Aww, Ginger, my sister's dog, loved the Snugga Wubba we bought her!

A few days later Allison and I got together with my second family...by best friend, Susan's family. Stephanie had been in England for 3 months as an exchange student for college. She brought Allison home a damsel hat from a real castle. Too cute! She also brought home a sterling silver cross from "The Vatican" for her. It is gorgeous! I had a little moment when I realized that my Aunt Edith and Uncle Tony brought me home a gold cross from Italy when I was in first grade! It brought tears to my eyes. What can I say...my Mom calls me her sentimental Cindi!

Also while in Europe, Stephanie got a tatoo on the top of her foot. She got it the last week when her Mom met up with her for the last leg of her tour. They were in Ireland. She revealed it to me that night. It's pretty (yes Steph, I said pretty) but I agree with Aunt Marsha...it's BIG! HOWEVER, THIS is what my little one did the next day when she got home! THANKS STEPH!!!!!
That's all for now! I'll be back soon! I promise!

Have Fun!

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A Hello from a Bad Blogger!

I've been a bad blogger over this past week. At first I didn't have anything to say (can you imagine that?) and then I got too busy to sit and write. I don't have much time now either but I have some ramblings to share.

1. I worked on Memorial Day. It was my usual long Monday but I came home to this on my window sill. I do love that little girl. I love Curtis too for picking them for her to give to me. I am sure he tried talking her out of it because they are the thorniest roses I have ever seen! I was admiring them at his Mom's the day before and had to just sniff with my nose because I didn't want to get pricked.

2. Allison's birthday is in the middle of July so she misses having a birthday during the school year. However, her teacher suggested that we celebrate it anytime during the school year. So I made cupcakes and yesterday I took the cupcakes, a cooler full of juice boxes, party plates and napkins and was at the school for snack time at 10:30. I had a blast with those kids! They are so funny! There were 3 different colored gum drops on the top of the cupcakes and Ian or Joshua (not sure which) HAS to have the color green! I'm not kidding...the whole class told me so! The teacher told me that he had a meltdown one day when they had to color a box on their math paper red. He threw a fit and cried and cried because he couldn't color it green. Poor kid! Poor Parents! Poor teacher! Too funny! And I thought Allison was obsessive about pink!

3. Speaking of Allison's birthday, I rented a pavillion at the local park. We were looking at them the other day when we were at the park. I mentioned it to a friend at work and the next day she asked me if I had rented it yet. I hadn't. She encouraged me to do it soon because I may not get one. THANK goodness I listened to her! I went yesterday and looked at them all. I stopped by the office and they are almost all booked up for the Summer! They only had 2 left on the day that I wanted. One doesn't have electric or water...NO thank you! The other one was tied with another one for my first choice! Yippee! I scooped it right up! How happy was I? How happy is Curtis that he doesn't have to clean the basement? We are a happy family!!! So for my family and friends who read my blog, the date is Sunday, July 15th. I'll be sending "save the date" notices out soon! Any ideas what this year's theme is going to be??? Pin It

Brrrrrr and My First Bake Sale!

This is going to be a short post because it's cold in here! I don't want to be sitting still for any length of time. I want to keep moving! Our furnace went out yesterday sometime and we need a new blower and the furnace man can't replace it until tomorrow. BRRRR!!!! He did leave us a space heater to help us out until he can fix it. It makes me nervous so we will not be running it tonight while we sleep. I guess the three of us will be sleeping together again tonight! There's nothing like some good old fashioned cuddling to keep you warm but I don't get much sleep that way. Curtis and Allison are both BED HOGS!!!!! As far as Allison, Curtis took her over to his parents for a while. She didn't want to go. She wanted to stay home with Momma and cuddle but her fingers were so COLD! Poor baby!

Allison's school was having a "Soup, Pie & More" sale after church today. If you signed up at the beginning of the year for this committee, you were to put together ingredients for the soups. I am not sure how exactly that goes since I didn't order any of the soups. It's not that I didn't want any of the soups, it's just that the pick-up time conflicted with our church this morning. I just couldn't be in two places at once. This may sound confusing for some so let me explain. Allison goes to a Lutheran school that is about 20 minutes from where we live and the soup pick-up was at the Lutheran church that is part of the school. This is not our church. We are Roman Catholic and our church is just up the road from where we live. So when I said the soup pick-up conflicted with our church, I meant that I couldn't get there from our church to that church in time for pick-up. Make sense? Still with me? I know, sometimes I confuse myself too!

Anyway, if you weren't on the soup making committee, you were asked to help with the "Pie & More" part of the sale or if you didn't want to do that, a donation is always appreciated to help with the soup ingredients. I decided to do the "More" part and made some items for the sale. I guess I never really thought about it much but I love to cook, bake and be creative in the kitchen. I didn't make anything fancy by any means but this was my first bake sale as a Mom and I wanted my items to be fun and festive. Of course, I had to take pics. What would a blog entry be without pics? As always, click on the pictures for a closer look.

The final products:

These are 8" x 5" spice cakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. I got these pans with lids at a dollar store by where I work. I liked the size because it's perfect for a couple who don't want a whole cake laying around.

These are Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. I have a recipe for these cookies that is labor intensive but I didn't use it. Instead I used a recipe that I got off of Heather D. White's blog. I've mentioned her before. She has such great recipes! I had total confidence in trying this recipe for the bake sale without testing it beforehand. Here is the recipe straight from Heather's blog. I should also add that I copied how she packaged them too. I hope she doesn't mind...after all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

HEATHER'S MOM'S SUPER FLUFFY AND ABSOLUTELY DELISH & SIMPLE PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

1 Spice Cake Mix
1 Can (regular size) Pumpkin
1 Cup TOTAL of mix-ins (either 1 C. Chocolate Chips OR 1 C. raisins OR 1/2 C. Chocolate Chips & 1/2 C. raisins. - Whatever you add, add 1 Cup TOTAL)

Mix together. Spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. VOILA!!! (Remember...it's just the mix...don't add ANYTHING to the mix but the pumpkin...no eggs, no oil, nothing!) (P.S. I prefer to use Milk Chocolate Chips instead of Semisweet. Mmmm...delish!)

I wanted to make something fun for the kids and all kids (young and old) enjoy cupcakes! I used Wilton's Dazzling Dots baking cups. I iced them all with white icing using a Wilton star decorating tip (I think it was #20) and sprinkled Wilton's Spring Confetti Sprinkles on top. I put them in a bed of lime green & yellow shredded paper Easter grass from Wal-Mart to keep them steady in the take out containers I got from work. I wrapped them with ribbon that I had in my stash, added a tag and they were ready to go!

A closer look:

The last items I made were Chocolate Covered Oreos with white chocolate streaks on top of them. YUMMY and SO easy! I put each oreo in a Wilton Easter baking cup, dropped two of them into a cellophane bag and tied the top off with a ribbon from my stash. SUPER cute and a GREAT Easter basket idea!

Have Fun!

“When you look at a cupcake, you've got to smile.”

~Anne Byrn

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