Random Photos, Valentine's Day, Raingutter Regata, Little House on the Prairie Party

Lots of random uploads today with some events as well. I'll just jump in, it's late and I want to make sure I get this post finished before I go to bed or I'm afraid it will never get done!

First up, SarahMae reading a story to Ruby. Ruby looks super happy about it. SarahMae is seriously in love with this dog, and Ruby is incredibly patient. :o)

Next up, Raingutter Regata for American Heritage Girls. They made a boat to race at one of their meetings. Rick and Shiloh worked on it together for several days. Shiloh was very insistent on a specific design that she wanted. I got some pics of them working on it one morning when Rick used some comp time to stay home with her.

Ignore the boxes of Cap'n Crunch Berries in the photos -- no, we can't eat that type of cereal, we had just bought them for a care package for a missionary from our church. 

SarahMae couldn't be left out of picture taking, of course. :o)

"Hi!" or, more accurately, "Di!"

At the race, playing around with friends. 

Racing her friend, Gracie. I think she had fun! 

Sharing a snack after the race, graciously allowing SarahMae to sit at the table with her and her friends.

 The actual design. Hot pink boat, covered with daisies of all sizes, with a candy-cane striped mast, and a white sail with a red diamond surrounded by a blue circle. Like I said, very specific ideas. :o)

Posted these on facebook, but still part of 'random photos.' Shiloh's ballet bun pigtails. She really loved these and have asked me to make them for her many times since. They're cute!

After class. Cutie!

Mommy-Daughter date to Chik-Fil-A, on her request. We had sweet tea and french fries. And made funny faces. :o)

Again, SarahMae with Ruby. Sitting on her cuddle blanket that I made for her last year for Valentine's Day. She didn't care for it too much last year at first, but these past several months, she's gotten fairly attached and drags it around with her most places in the house. Here, drinking her morning milk. :o)

Shiloh and SarahMae playing with puzzles. I'm realizing that my kids are in PJs in a lot of these photos. I promise, they also sometimes wear real clothes!

Snow day!

Valentine's Day! Shiloh's and SarahMae's gifts. Shiloh got a new drinking cup, a sew-your-own doll (which she sewed all on her own, working steadily for three hours!) and eye mask. 

SarahMae got a new book, crayons and drawing paper. She's been slightly obsessed with coloring lately. :o)

First thing in the morning. Shiloh said "It's Valentine's morning! Take my picture!"

"Let's go get SarahMae!" This is a seriously sweet picture. :o)

Yay new eye mask! She wore this thing all day.

Shiloh had gotten me a card, and I had no idea! My goodness, how sweet can a girl be?!

Cuteness!

Opening gifts from Nana and Papa.

Reading the card first, of course. :o)

New PJs!!

And, we have to test out the PJ/eye mask combo, of course. :o)

Finally, a birthday party! Since Shiloh's birthday fell right in the middle of the Christmas season/Nutcracker ballet craziness, we decided to wait on a sleepover birthday party until things had died down a bit and her friends could make it. That wasn't until this weekend, unfortunately, but at least we did it! She chose a book theme, Little House on the Prairie. She really loves the series and had all sorts of ideas of things she wanted to do. 

First of all, the two main party favors were handmade, like they gave to friends in the books. Shiloh wrote out her friends' names on the fabric and started to embroider it, but, let's face it -- that was a lot of embroidering, so I finished it. :o) I completely forgot to take an after picture, but these are before they were stuffed. I made one for Shiloh after this. 

Also, I sewed bonnets for all the girls. This is Shiloh modeling one for me. She had been asking for one ever since she started reading the books.

And, party time! The girls got to play Kinect Party, which was SO much fun! It's a camera image of the living room, and it super-imposes images on the screen for you to interact with -- fills up the room with balloons so you can pop them all, boards for you to "karate chop" through, buildings for you to knock down. They loved this. 

We had food from the book, "garden" food -- mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, cornbread muffins, corn on the cob. Then, chocolate pudding and chocolate cupcakes for dessert. :o)

And apples. Which many of the girls dipped in their pudding. :o/ Defeats the purpose, no?

Opening presents...

In keeping with the theme, we made bread from scratch. I handed out ingredients to each girl, and they each got to to add something, measure it out themselves, and get to stir it up.

They scooped out some for each of their mini loaf pans, we let it rise for about thirty minutes (which they all seriously thought was like magic!) and then baked them. 

 Next, we made candles from soy wax, and Shiloh chose a rose scent to add to each candle. I got the containers at an antique store, they were shaped like little flower petals of different colors. We talked about how in the books, they made candles in the same way from beeswax.

(Also -- they drank out of mason jars the whole time, they thought that was so neat!)

And... more desserts. :o)

Settling in for the night, watching a movie (or two)...

Shiloh requested that Rick and I dress up like Ma and Pa. I just wore a long skirt with an apron. Rick wore a flannel shirt with tall rubber boots, much more like the "real" Pa. We played fiddle music all night. This is my "leave Ma alone and let her wash the dishes" look. ;o)

Then, they decided that they weren't "settling in" after all. A dance party ensued for about an hour. :o)

The following morning, a fashion show with dress up clothes, first thing. Priorities... ;o)

Breakfast! Pancakes and scrambled eggs with orange juice. Sooo yummy!

After breakfast, we made "church dolls," an old-fashioned type of doll made from a hankerchief, we used squares of fabric. They sewed on little pieces of lace for bonnets. So cute!

Aaaaand.... more Kinect Party. That's a seriously fun game. :o)

SarahMae enjoyed some leftoever popcorn as an after-breakfast snack.

Then, she asked to do more crafts and we made button necklaces, like Laura and Mary did in the books. Except Shiloh, of course, turned hers into a noisemaker instead. :o)

I think Shiloh had a really great time, and I always like seeing her play so well with her friends. She has made friends with a seriously incredible group of girls who are genuine with each other and help each other whenever they can. They also hold each other accountable, apparently -- at one point, during a game of princess Monopoly, one of the girls began talking to them all about being Christians and how important it was. Then, I heard Shiloh say "Yes, that's VERY important. Also, I hope you're all reading your Bible every night." Accountability at seven years old! Let's pray that these girls stay friends forEVER!

Lastly, more snow this afternoon and a few funny pics after church when she finally got to play in it. 

And that's all for now! Lots has happened this month, and we stayed very busy. For goodness sake, my girls are getting so BIG! 

Valentine's Party 2013

I didn't want to flood facebook with pics, but I wanted to share our Valentine's Day with you. Shiloh did a lot of work for our homeschool co-op's Valentine's Party. :o)

We cut and folded scrapbook paper and stamped homemade Valentine's cards.

Shiloh (and I -- not gonna lie, those are a lotta hearts) cut and sewed together little heart pillows to attach to glue dots on the inside of the card. They turned out so cute, I think!

She kept saying "I love to sew. Sewing is so relaxing." Hey, I'll take anything that Shiloh finds relaxing!

 Front of the card, little random heart stamps.

And the inside -- sweet!

We ended up making forty Valentines. That was a lot of hearts!

At the party, there were snacks. We made chocolate cupcakes with white, pink and red icing arranged in the shape of a heart (sorry, no picture) and chocolate chip cookies. We made the cupcakes to share, and this time, I failed to advertise that they were gluten free and color-dye free maybe on purpose, and they were almost all gone by the time we got to them! I made a typical buttercream icing but added strawberry juice to make the pink icing and just a few drops of beet juice to make the red icing. No one knew the difference! Hah! And it looks like these two goobers enjoyed the snacks as well. How cute are they with chocolate all in their teeth?!

Working on one her three crafts. I didn't get a good after photo, but she got to hammer some nails into a board with this one. It took quite a long time. :o)

Shiloh's Valentine's box. We glued pink yarn on the front, yellow construction paper decorated with hand-drawn jewels and swirls all around, and a foam crown with jewels and sequins. Fitting for a princess. :o)

Lastly, another craft. Jewels glued on scrapbook paper and framed. It's a diamond. (nudge, nudge.) ;o)

A few random pictures from the past week or so. 

This one I posted on facebook. I told Shiloh that Rick was coming home and she parked it in front of the window saying "I'm looking out the window looking for the Daddy." :o)

Also, I finished this blanket. I. Love. It. It was my most favorite that I've made maybe ever. I made it for my friend Christina's new baby. I learned the entrelac knitting pattern, which looks like strips woven over and under the others, but it's all made in one piece. It's so neat! However, I've never liked the way that knitting looks on the back. I saw a blanket similar to this one online and they had sewn minky fabric onto the back, making it a quilt. They had bound the edges, but I didn't want to do that, it seemed too bulky to me, so I just made a wide straight stitch border to define the edges. It felt so nice, I had serious second thoughts about giving it away. ;o) I know Christina's baby Isabella will love it, though, so I managed to part with it, but I'm definitely going to be making more of these. :o)

Lastly, look at this cutie while out on a walk the other day when it wasn't snowing, raining or the mid-70s and breezy. :o) I have more pictures of her, but they were on my other phone that was recently lost, and I had been too lax in transferring the images to the computer, so they were lost along with my phone. :o( I had given my mom what was on there, though, when were in KY about a month ago, so she'll send them to me (right, Mom?!) so they won't be lost forever. :o)

Happy early Valentine's Day!