Happy Birthday Jack and Abraham!

Jack and Abraham Lincoln are celebrating their birthday today.  It’s Jack’s 7th and Abe’s 202nd.  It was Jack’s request to have an Abe Lincoln birthday theme.  Thank goodness we live in Central Illinois which is home to all things Abe Lincoln! 

Cupcakes for our family party.

My cousin Shawna had this Abe “action figure” and sent it to Jack knowing that he would love it. 

Coloring Abe pages with friends.

Building rafts and log cabins with Lincoln logs (pretzel sticks).   Lunch—everything is better on a stick! 

I came out this morning and found that Jack had set up all this new presents and some old favorites in front of the TV.  He also built a pretzel rod cabin.

Jack and Abraham.

A friend of mine makes our cakes and they taste even better than they look!

My parents have had this Lincoln bust forever and we are borrowing it for the day.

Pin the nose on Abe.  Jack made the first attempt.

Getting ready to blow out seven candles—wearing his new fedora and shades that he wanted so he can do the robot.  What an odd little character.

The circus came to town!

My niece and nephew's preschool summer camp is doing a circus themed open house type thing so my sister made these cupcakes to bring. I bought the Hello Cupcake book knowing that she would love it. I think these turned out AWESOME! I can't wait to see what she tries next!

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Day #2 of Teacher Appreciation Week

Today our theme for Teacher Appreciation Week was Popcorn. We covered mini bags of microwave popcorn with a paper sleeve and tied a ribbon to the top. I just made a little sign and put it on the table in the teacher's lounge. I heard it went over quite well. We have something planned for each day. FUN! I saw this idea and the one below at TIP JUNKIE.


I am also the room-mom for Parker's class. For today, I made a sign and hung it outside Mrs. Reynolds' room and gave each of the kids a lei to wear all day.

Plan B Turkeys

When my turkey cake balls turn out looking yucky, one of these is my back-up plan. Probably the Oreos and peanut butter cups because I always welcome an excuse to bring Oreos and peanut butter cups into my house! (Don't the turkeys look like they are pleading "Please don't eat me!!!!")

Teacher Gift Star

*If you are visiting from Just a Girl , #107. treyandlucy gives a really nice tutorial on how to make a star just like this one only using Christmas papers and photos. It's adorable! I think I will be making one of those for myself!


Each year, McGaughey School has a different theme. Last year it was, "Put Your Best Foot Forward" and we did all sorts of wellness type stuff including keeping track of how many miles each child walked over the course of the year. This year it's "McGaughey's Shining Stars" so I have run with the star theme. You know I love stars! I made this GIANT tin star for Parker's teacher. I think it must be at least 30 inches across--maybe more. This was one of her birthday presents from the class and she hung it from the ceiling above her desk. It looks so cute and colorful in her room and the kids love it too.
I got the star at Gordman's for $5.99 and I had tons of paper here at home. I just Mod Podged it onto the star, lettered it and put the kids pictures on with glue. Honestly, pretty easy stuff!

Sushi, anyone?

My boys are obsessed with sushi. They certainly have never eaten it. I don't even know if they've ever seen it. I'm thinking they must have talked about it on iCarly or something. Anyway, I saw some candy sushi on a blog last night and we made some today. This is sooooooooo very, very easy!!! It even tastes as good as it looks!

Here's the how to:
-pre-made Rice Krispie Treats
-gelly Orange Slices
-Swedish Fish
-Fruit roll-ups (I bought several boxes in order to have enough green ones but you don't actually need too many because you are cutting them into strips.)

For the Swedish fish sushi, I just cut the krispie treat in half, put the fish on top and wrapped it with a strip of fruit roll-up.
For the Orange slice sushi, I flattened out the krispie treat just with my fingers, sliced the tip off of two orange slices, laid them next to each other on the krispie treat, and started rolling as carefully and tightly as I could. Then I cut it in half and wrapped it with fruit roll-up.
Easy, peasy and adorable. I even added the chop-sticks and "sliced ginger" (sliced orange slices) for effect.
If I were really with-it, I would have added some chocolate syrup in a tiny little bowl as soy sauce.
BTW, I did try to find some cheap little square sushi plates, but couldn't find any. It's times like this that I really wish we had a World Market or Bed, Bath and Beyond in Mt. Zion!!!

Photo Op Idea

I came across the most wonderful blog (linked from another blog)and I have been getting an overload of great Halloween ideas. I thought this would be perfect for Jack's preschool Halloween party. It just uses one of those cardboard display board from Hobby Lobby (which was 4.99 originally but I used a 40% off coupon)and then painted with acyrlic paint (which I already have in abundance.) The possibilities are endless with this! Think of all the cute scenes that could be done. Anyway, this is the one I saw on the blog.

This is my version (I changed the witched hair):

And this is what it looks like with a couple of little spooks in it:
I am thrilled with how it turned out (and so is my little helper, Jack.) This wasn't hard because the picture is very simplistic. If it were super realistic, I couldn't have done it. Well, I could have done it, but it wouldn't have looked good. For any of you who might not consider yourself crafty, you might be surprised at how easy some of this stuff is! I swear!

Random thoughts

Some funny things Jack said and try to imagine it with his Boston accent:
- We were watching a Math DVD and they counted to ten. Jack said, "Hey! That's my two hand number!"
- We were driving by Big Creek Stables and there was a horse show. Jack said, "Hey! They're having a horse party!"
- We were driving by New Beginnings Church and Jack said, "They have horse parties there." (It does look rather like a barn--white walls with metal red roof.)

Tracy introduced Capri Sun Water to Stella and she held it out to her and said, "Here Stella. Try it." So now Stella calls juice pouches "try it." Example, "I want some try it."

I took some pictures of our crafty projects in Parker's classroom. I still love how that banner came out. So cute and so simple. Next time we will do it at the beginning of the year so it can be enjoyed all year.



This sign was another simple project but it turned out so colorful and cute.

Parker's class went to the zoo yesterday. It was cold and then rainy. They got to see all of the zoo but their picnic got canceled. I don't think they really cared at that point.




Today, Jack and I were sitting in the drive through at the barbeque place. I watched these two women walk into the restaurant and I had to laugh out loud. They were both tall and thin with very bleached out hair. Both were attractive but they were wearing the most ridiculous clothes. Like right off the runway type clothes. You know how runway shows are always way over the top? Designers don't intend for people to wear those clothes, they are just trying to be artistic. Anyway, maybe their attire would have been acceptable in New York or LA but definitely not in Mt. Zion. Especially not when going to dine at the barbeque place. It just struck me as very, very comical because you know they thought they were "all that" and really they just looked stupid. And no, I'm not jealous because even if I were taller and thinner and younger and blonder, I still wouldn't dress like Paris Hilton and go to eat barbeque. Also, barbeque is not a Weight Watcher food but it's worth working out twice today to enjoy it.
Since I didn't report about weigh-in Wednesday last week, I will now. I have lost 17 pounds. Whoo hoo. 19 more to go. This probably won't be a good week, but I'm not going to worry because next week will be better and it all evens out.

Projects Galore

I made one of these little "teacher resource" boxes as a door prize for the luncheon we held for the teachers. These are for a teacher who admired the original one to give to her children's teachers. I actually got 3 order from that one door prize.


These bouquets are for a bridal shower. I brought my flower making factory (a bag with all my stuff)to a ball game last week and one of the mom's ordered these.

This is the scrapbook I made for Mrs. Fitzgerald. I had each of the kids write a note to her and some of the parents did too. She took the time to read each child's note aloud and made a kind comment about each one. Love that. They all felt very special--you could tell from their red cheeks!






Thanks to scrapbooks, boxes and paper flowers I have made enough $ to get my hair highlighted and go to weight watchers the rest of the summer. Now I need to earn enough more to get a great dress, a pedicure, fake nails and another hair highlight and then I will be set for the reunion! I have officially lost 15.6 pounds but it's actually more like 17 because I have busted my butt the past few days to reach my birthday goal--which I did. It is a wonderful, wonderful feeling BUT I still have 20pounds to go. I got out some clothes that had been in the back of my closet because they were too small for me to wear and guess what!? They are still too small to wear. This is a good thing because I don't want to get complacent. I still haven't really gone down a clothing size because I am just fitting comfortably into the clothes I was wearing which is very troubling because I don't know how in the world I was squishing myself into them! Why didn't someone tell me I looked like a stuffed sausage!?

Flowers

I have been dying to post pictures of the paper bouquet I made because I just think it's adorable. I know it's probably rude to be so excited about something I made, but I just love how this turned out! And the one of the best parts for me is that it didn't cost me a dime. I used only supplies that I already had. All those little scraps of scrapbook paper that I can never throw away finally came in handy. I used drinking straws and wooden skewers to make the stems then I wrapped them in floral tape. The vase is a pringles can cut down and wrapped in scrapbook paper. When you look down from the top, you just see a bouquet of adorable little smiling faces. In fact, the hardest part of the whole thing was arranging the flowers so that every child can be seen. It was so much fun to do this that I'm trying to figure out a way to sell them at craft shows. Let's just hope Mrs. Fitzgerald enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it! ;-)