Finally...The Birthday Post - 3 years

I am a very lucky and blessed mom.  Sometimes I am luckier than I deserve.  It was the first week of January and I still had no secure place to celebrate my son's birthday.  Every time the thought of celebrating Carr's birthday at our apartment came up, I would start hyperventilating.  Wall to wall carpeting and any amount of 3 to 4 year old toddlers, do not mix.  But then that voice in your head says, you wouldn't dare not celebrate it!  I frantically started making phone calls, only to find out that many of the venues were booked 2 months in advance, even McDonald's doesn't do birthdays (yes, I was that desperate!) and that whatever place had availability was very expensive.  That said, I am glad I invested the money in this particular venue.  It is called Amazement Square.  Please visit their website, they are an incredible organization! Taken from their site, they define themselves as follows: "Amazement Square is Central Virginia's first multidisciplinary, hands-on children's museum!"

That said, I truly couldn't have pulled this all of without my husband.  He stood there while I "decorated" the cake (2am the night before).  He took care of Carr while I prepared everything and ran around at the museum.  Most importantly, he kept me calm and sane.  That, my friends is priceless.

All his little buddies were there.  Funny story:  all my son's friends, his little social circle, are children of friends of ours way back to college times.  How cool is that!  We have gone through break-ups, make-ups, weddings, pregnancies and now we face toddler mayhem together.  It was so nice looking at these photos and just reminescing how far we've come.

We have signed up to be members of the museum.  it is such a great place, I hope to take more photos and do them justice.  My son loved the farm exihibit most of all.

There is a common saying "It takes a village to bring up a child" and I believe this to be true.  I want to thank my family and my friends for helping, supporting and witnessing these important moments in my child's life.

Birthday preparations - Part two: The Cake

Simple White cake Recipe

1 cup of white sugar

1/2 butter 

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 and 1/2 all purpose flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking poder

1/2 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a pan or line a muffin pan.
2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch.

Chocolate cake

1 box of chocolate cake mix
1 box of chocolate pudding
1 large bag of chocolate chunks
3 tablespoons of milk and 3 tablespoons of butter

Directions

1.  Mix cake according to package directions and stir in chocolate chunks. Pour into pans and bake according to package directions.(cook for 35 minutes on 350°F)

2. Let cool completely.

Decorating a cake is hard stuff.  The essential part is learning the difference between icing and frosting.  Huge!  Which I admit I didn't and that would explain why everything looks so running.  Wow, something so basic and that had a huge impact on the cake.  Another thing that I did check and totally steered me wrong was the amount of coloring that went in the frosting, two tubes and I only got this peony substitute for a grayish color.   Black is not that changing of white icing, you need lots to actually make it change.  Obviously, it is all dependant on the amount of icing and the size of the tubes.  Thankfully this is not a cooking blog and I have nowwhere said that I was an expert.  The amount of icing a big bowls worth and the tubes are the smallest size that you can buy.

I am not an expert or even an aficionado to even expect this to look like a building with a Spider man on top but somehow the mommy guardian angel came, gave me a hand a made this.  It's not great but you should have seen my son's face when he opened the refrigerator and saw the finished cake.  He actually loved it!  And that my friends was enough for me.

Maybe this is the last try at making a birthday cake but a part of me loves to do something from scratch in honor of my little man.  I might try something else next time, who knows?  I would love to hear some suggestions as to what would be good ideas for next year.

Preparations for the birthday party - part one party favors

It's been awhile since I have written a post.  We have all been sick in one way or another since Carr birthday. I've been saving all the little energy I had for my boys and work.  It's really hard to keep a house running when everyone in the household is sick.  Needless to mention, that crafts and hobbies take the back seat for a wile until the dusts settles.  Which is not the case now but heck tomorrows Valentine's Day!
 
You would think that having Carr's birthday so close to Christmas should require special planning weeks ahead, right?  Christmas and New Years leave me exhausted after all the preparations, cookie baking and crafting. I wish I could say that but for the past 3 years, I have been caught off guard and unprepared. for  Carr's Birthday.   Thankfully, I  have managed to pull it together at the last minute with help from friends, family and event planning blogs.  Here is the post I published a year ago, please look at the DIY party favors for Carr's second birthday.

This year I wanted to be more hands on, I had already decided that I didn't want to give away party favors that inevitably loaded up kids full of sugar and ended up in the trash.  I also wanted to theme his birthday cake.  Yes, I know, I am not a baker and certainly not a cake decorator!  You'll get to judge the cake yourself soon enough.  First thing is first, I want to thank Tasha @  Creation Corner for the best idea ever. Tasha's super cape idea and design are brilliant. Check out her blog, I am planning to make more of her crafts.

Well, let's get started.   I suggest you go to Creation Corner and go over Tasha's instructions.  Her directions are easy to follow.  I was unsure of the measurements, and I ultimately wanted a bigger cape so I bought a yard in each color of felt.

The only change that I made was adding a superhero symbol.  I chose oval because it was easier to draw,  folding the felt in half and sketching a crescent.  Because I was pressed for time I chose to use ironed on letters with  their first initial and spray adhesive.

*Note: do not use anywhere near a child the fumes will get you loopy.

Looking back, I realize now that I really would love to do this project again, this time enjoying it and taking my time.  This was a very easy project that actually took me two nights to get done.  Considering I would work on them from 11 pm.  Oh, I didn't sew the Velcro, I bought the self-adhesive.

Another little piece of advice, not every child has your child's interest.  You must decide early on who you want to impress.  But sincerely, who can go wrong with superhero capes!

A cape gives you super human strength and muscles.

Happy Birthday to my little man

True reflection comes during the weirdest of times, sometimes unwarranted and sometimes brought about.  Three years ago, we held our child for the first time and everything as we knew changed in that split second.  Every goal, aspiration, every notion of the world and our purpose was transformed.  We held our son and fell in love.  A love so unlike any other feeling we had experienced before.

Happy Birthday!
Mommy and Daddy love you so much!

Freedom of Speech

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim. 

Richard Bach

http://www.blingcheese.com/image/code/0/tape+mouth.htm

I want to introduce you to a good friend of mine, her name is Roxy MtJoy.  I met her in July 2007, during the time my beloved college turned coeducational.  Just 2 years prior, I had graduated from Randolph Macon Woman's College.  Through the entire lengthy process of  contesting this change, late night meetings, email chains, petition letters, etc.  there was a voice that stood out, she made sense, and she inspired many women to listen, her name...Roxy.  While I stood around sometimes tongue tied at the inexplicable sadness of it all, she seemed to find the right words to inspire and to comfort.  
Roxy has her own blog Foxy by Nature.  and frquently writes for Change.Org.  Which leads me to explain the purpose of this post, Freedom of Speech and tolerance or the lack of it.  I am inviting you to weigh in on a timeless debate:  What is actually protected speech?  Roxy explains it very eloquently in her January post Hate this.  I would really love feedback, your thoughts are welcomed here. I hope that you enjoy her articles as much as I.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day - Santa came!

photo by Ron Bird

I need to let you in on a secret, Chip and I have been  recruited by Santa to help with Christmas packaging.  We were approached about two years ago after Christmas by an undercover elf and asked if we could assist.  Yeah, I know, you think I have gone bonkers.  "It was bound to happen!, "I could see it coming for a while", etc.  Believe what you want, but I know THERE ARE OTHERS OUT THERE! 

The story goes like so, Santa doesn't have enough helpers.  At the rate the population here on earth is multiplying, he can't keep up.  So, according to Guy "the elf", he recruits certain parents that still hold Christmas near and dear to their hearts and have spread the Christmas spirit in the past to help.  Chip and I thought about this mission and the responsibility it would require and gladly accepted.  You see, Guy informed us that the only "gift" he would give us is an improvement in our gift packaging ability.  We inquired if we could get super sonic speed or the ability to mute all noise but Guy "the elf" explained that because we were not elves per say we would not be bestowed these abilities.  Which as all my undercover comrades know makes for our mission to be VERY DANGEROUS.

I am not supposed to share this information with anyone and we might lose our privileges because I can't hold a secret.  But look at what we did on Christmas Eve:

I feel that Chip and I are getting better at it with every Christmas that has gone by.  Another great perk, we have started our own Christmas tradition!  Christmas eve is our time, even though we are helping Santa somewhere in the thick of it, we found the time to have some champagne and share the moment together.  Sooo, I know that I have let the cat out of the bag and that Santa and Guy "the elf" might be angry but I wanted to thank them for giving us a moment to slow down and count our many blessings and love each other.  This quiet and still moment helps us cope with this madness:

I am so looking forward to next year's Christmas.  Hopefully, we won't get fired.  I am counting on the human capacity for denial and disbelieving.  You will think this is a catchy blog post and that this is not possible.  But somewhere in our hearts we know that the magic of Christmas is our responsibility, that stressing over preparations, last minute rushing to buy more stuff and economic meltdowns should be put aside and we should focus on the true spirit of Christmas, we owe it to our children.

Winter wonderland - white Christmas?

This photo was taken about a week before Christmas, this is what you can see from my MIL back porch. 

There is nothing quite like waking up early in the morning to this.  Crisp air, the smell of freshly made coffee and the Christmas tree lite up.  I am not that old that I don't remember how fun it was to play in the snow and have hot chocolate but I much prefer my old age, sitting by a window and knitting while my husband flips through channels on the TV.  I am a homebody and love staying home during every season but snowy cold days are very special to me.

My son on the other hand thoroghly enjoys the outdoors, especially snowy cold days.  He is such a boys boy that it blows my mind.  He would stay outdoors in the snow for hours if I would let him.

By the way, we did get a white Christmas!