Paper dolls

I loved paper dolls when I was a girl. I though i'd get one for mill and came across these cute (free) paperdolls. Just thought I'd share.

click here if you want the above doll

or to get the full size of this doll, click here

also check out this darling paperdoll website

Mardi Gras

We headed down to New Orleans for Marti Gras this last weekend. We had a GREAT time! I know what you are thinking, 'they must be crazy, Marti Gras is pretty riske' '. But we had a few friends and also ward members who've said it is really a family freindly event, just don't go to the french quarter at night and you'll be fine. We went to one of the night parrades, (tonz of other kids there) We scored about 100 sets of beads, 6 stuffed animals, gold coins, and several cups. Mill was in heaven!

Next day we went to the aquarium. Mill is so brave and didn't mind petting the sting rays at all.

Below is Millie on a "Fishally" She was in heaven this trip because we got to go on so many "fishally's" (ie: an exploration. I have NO idea where she came up with this- her vocab. is in no way limited so it's not because she can't pronounce something??)

We ended up gettin rained out. I was sooo dissapointed because we left early and didn't do our sight seeing because, well, we couldn't see anything b/c the rain was so thick. needless to say, this is about the best pic. we got.

We were able to grab a bag of Beignets (cross between doughnut and scones, covered in tonz of powdered sugar) that New Orleans is apparently famous for.

I thought the architecutre and culture was so awesome down there! (wish I had more pictures to share) Everything was old, and bright, and cool, cajin/creole food and all that. I've always wanted to see the Bayou, so one of my fav. parts was driving into the city. The freeway goes right through the Bayou-- it's all built up on stilts. There are a few neighborhood areas built on stilts with their means of transportations being boats. So crazy! I'm sure Gators just show up on their doorstep and it's no bigger deal to them then it would be to us if we found a spider in our house. Loved the trip!

Happy Engagement!

(tracy and kyle on their engagement night)

Alot of you probabally know my little sister Tracy. Well, she got engaged this last weekend!!!! I'm so excited for them! They are a such a cute couple! they have known each other for about... hum... 12 years? but didn't ever date till Kyle got home from his mission. Kyle's a great guy, super personable, and fun. (Also alot like Curtis Stone if you watch food network. ha ha ) Tracy and Kyle are both kindof... crazy (ie: menstal-tute. if you know what this is then you know tracy very well !) They are such a good pair in so many ways! We're excited for Kyle to be in our family! congrats you guys!

best cupcake ever

Yes, Another food post... You see, this was quite certanly the best cupcake I've ever had. I wasn't expecting much from this blueberry cupcake (top R.), picked out by Millie, but it topped the list! Very dense, with real blueberries inside. The frosting must have been half freshly whipped cream half frosting. Just wishing I could have another! If you are ever in Fayetteville AR. (on the way to most places, jk) stop by Bliss Cupcakes and try out one of these!

Weather

Memphis weather is pretty crazy. I love that these 2 pictures were taken the same week. Start out with a snow storm and temperatures in the 20's... end the week with some sunny 60 deg. weather! (It's like coach Kuhlmann always says, "you don't like the weather, wait 10 minutes" ha ha, love that guy!)

last minute valentines

My Valentines is kindof last min. this year (due to being out of town last week, and planning for New Beginnings) but here are some cute, easy valentine ideas... just in case you are on the same track that i'm on (well, on second thought, if you are on the same track i'm on you may not check blogs on a busy day, but oh well, i'll post anyway)

All images from B.H.G.

Message in a bottle!

(mini candy bar for the body)

This one for mill.

This one for Josh

and some yummy treats that you could make later this week- from BHG as well (you can find the recipes by using the recipe search on BHG.com)

Chocolate-covered strawberry cake(only i'm using a cake mix rather than making home-made cupcakes like the recipe suggests)

chocolate-malted mousse

New Favorite Activity

Playing "snow" is Millies new favorite activity- We play this like every day or two lately! The supplies, ie: Gillette shaving cream, only cost about $1.59 ... it has provided about 3 hours of entertainment so far --and is super easy to clean up! We just put out a plastic placemat (or just put it on the table) and squirt away. we had some plastic arctic animals that millie loves to cover in the snow. Of course the snow generally ends up all over her face and cloths and on the chair etc but it is so easy to clean up!

Valentines Wreath

I saw a wreath like this in my friends magazine and thought it was pretty cute. I like how it looks home-made and kind of cheesy with all the glitter but that's what valentines is about! The cost was about $4. I've written up a little "tutorial" below

Supplies:

-scizzors

-newspaper or pages from an old book

-4-5 different sheets of "valentines paper"

-red cardstock

-glitter glue

-glue stick

-modge podge

-sponge brush

-Thin card board box (like a cereal box)

-normal cardboard box

-ribbon to match

-glitter love letters (Target has a pink glitter pack of ABC's for .99 cents)

1. cut out hearts from scrap book paper. (I got my paper after last Valentines so it was like 50% off) You will want to cut 4 big hearts (out of same paper), 8 med hearts (1 did 5 out of newsprint and 3 on a brown print) and about 12-13 small hearts, can be cut in various small sizes.(I used about 3 different prints AND the plain red cardstock for the smaller hearts)

2. brush modge podge on the back of the hearts and stick them on the thin cardboard (ie; cereal box) when the Modge podge is dry, paint over the tops of the hearts. wait for it to dry.

3. Glitter glue!

squirt red glitter glue around newsprint hearts, and silver glue around the 4 big hearts... I was to cheap to buy red glitter paper so I just painted my small plain red hearts with the glitter glue...

4. cut out wreath from thicker cardboard- I traced a large mixing bowl (about 12") then I cut out the center- leaving me with a wreath that was about 1 1/2 in wide.

5. arrange hearts on wreath, and glue them down with glue stick (or hot glue or what ever you want) I also wanted my hearts to be a little more 3d so I cut some small tabs out of cardboard (like the one in the gap between hearts in photo above) and then glued the heart onto that. some hearts were glued directly to the wreath, some on 1 tab and others on 2 tabs (does that make sense?)

6. make sign- I had reversable paper so I used the back of one of my sheets. covered it with modge podge and glued on the love letters. (the ribbon looking things off to the side of the sign is just paper that was modge-podged and folded like a ribbon)

7. attach ribbon to top!

Young Womens New Beginnings

New Beginnings is comming up in our ward. I'm the "Personal Progress Advisor" so I'm the one who gets to head up New Beg. The girls in the presidencies came up with a cute theme- "Girls just wanna have F-U-N" - accompanied with sleepover themes (the "fun" stands for the sponge bob song; I do NOT like sponge bob, but the song did fit and was kinda cute so we let the girls use it) I'm excited about it and think it's going to turn out really cute, so I thought I'd share a few of the fun things we came up with:

Invites

these took me a little to long to make but I think they turned out cute. The paper doll is in a sleeping bag, you pull her out and the invite is on her dress. (template for doll head found at (http://greenbeanbaby.typepad.com/main/2006/08/cut_paper_illus.html)

DECOR:

Like the flower vases filled with candy (photo from "the celebration shop")

Cute and super cheap tabel decor. The girls are just bringing patterned sheets/bedspreads.(photo from "the celebration shop")

FOOD:

(photo from "allergymoms") we'll just bake cookie dough in a pizza pan, then use red frosting for sauce, white for cheese, and fruit roll-ups for the pepperoni's

chocolate dipped mallows- but we'll do rice crispy treats

**So, if any of you other gals are in Y.W. you should post what you are doing and then I can steal some ideas for next year ;)

We had a great christmas break and were glad to see LOTS of family and also some friends! We started our trip by DRIVING (20 hrs.) to Lakeside, Az. (Josh wanted to "investigate a business opportunity there) We stayed with Josh's sister and Millie had a blast playing with her kids! Not only did she love the kids, but was obsessed with their cat- she named her new stuffed cat "Pumpkin" after Sarah's cat!

Mill and Sarah dressed up in animal costumes and jumping on the tramp

A few days later we headed up to Provo (add another 9 hours to our driving total) We were so happy to wake up the next morning with a thick blanket of snow covering everything. Mill thought snow was just about the best thing she'd ever seen!

Since we were spending christmas in Ut. we had to make the treck up to Temple Square to see the lights. This is one of my favorite things to do at christmas!

We took Mill to see Santa for the first time! She got a kick out of it, and so did I! I wasn't sure if she'd want to sit on this strange man's lap... but, oh yeah, I forgot, no one is strange, or a stranger to Millie. She LOVED it! I had bought all her presents by this time but hadn't ever thought to ask her what she wanted because I thought she wouldn't really understand/care... but turns out she wanted Santa to bring her a Kitty, a dog, and some suckers! had to make a quick last min. trip to get those :)


Bowling on christmas eve. Mill and I were on a team. Having Millie on my team and therefore getting to use this little bowling device probabally helped me score alot more points than I would have on my own. ha ha.

Mill's pirate costume I got for 99 cents from little tykes.


Went swimming in the awesome lehi indoor pool. We don't have any indoor pools (or outdoor for that matter) here in memphis so we have to squeeze in swimming when ever we get a chance!

Mill went to "Monkey Island" (in Lehi) and had a good time playing with Grandpa! Monkey Island just has a bunch of blow up slides and stuff to play on. We thought it was totally great because it was $5 for mill-- but parents/grandparents are FREE! you can stay as long as you want and you also get a free otter pop (which helps when you are trying to bribe them to leave)

Hope you all had a merry christmas too!

What we've been doing

I really have no excuse as to why I haven't done a post in forever... You know how you do a few fun things, and then get overwhelmed, and just don't post. Then that cycles on for a long time till you end up making some attempt to show that you have actually been doing stuff the last few months?

This is all the way back in the end of Sep. Mill and one of her best buddies (our back yard neighbor) swimming. I just love how she grabbed his goggles and wanted to wear them the whole day.

My Sis. Kelly and cuteie Ollie came out in beg. of October. We had a great time, and after a couple days of getting used to each other the kidd-o's really liked each other alot!

K. and I made these doughnuts from BHG (October) magazine. Easy, and YUMMY!

Trip to the pumpkin patch!

My friend from H.S., Bonnie, lives in TN. too so she came for a short visit. I kinda think her girl and my girl look a little alike

Mill's thing for October was making cookies, or making cakes. Every morning right when she's get up "Mom? make a cake?"

Just a cute little childrens garden area

After several times of "just missing" wicked we finally got to go. It came to memphis and was GREAT!

Josh went to Florida for a "conference" but apparently had enough free time to get a surf lesson from his friend/classmate John.

Millie has a thing for "Bicycle Helmut's". Don't really know how that got started. She doesn't have a helmut though, so she'll get her little plastic shopping basket (that came with plastic food in it) and put it on her head for a helmut! Love it!

I really missed fall after 3 years of lame memphis falls so I took a trip to utah for a few days. One day I went with some of the Girls I used to coach on a fav. run in the provo canyon. So pretty!

While in UT. we celebrated Mill's birthday with my family- this is a bad photo of a sheep cake (from family fun mag. )

We of course had to take our annual "Fall Sisters Trip to Gardner Village"

Mill's birthday present. She was/is obsessed with slides/climbing so we splurged and got her one of these.

Bad photo: Mill's birthday with giant cup cake cake (again) and some mini cup cake pops.

This past year has been a bad year for running, but I decided to run the Race for the cure anyways... My grandma passed away this last year and she'd had breast cancer so it was fun to support the cause and do it in memory of her. there were 19,700 runners- somehow I came in 4th female. Same as last year.

Our halloween costume, Mill was a little harvest fairy, she had a orange tutu that you can't see very well, but she looked adorable- oh, and my new hair cut. Lindsey cut it while I was in provo. took off about 7 in!!!

At the zoo- mill really likes the animals, but equally loves being able to run all over and be crazy.

Southern college of Optometry 5k- we both ran :)

We got this new and it's been super fun because then when one of us is running, the other one can pack up millie and bike along. She likes it ALOT better than the running stroller!

It's getting cold outside so we get bored... but she loves this "crazy hair" now

Our Thanksgiving meal. We had it at our house, had one of Josh's classmates over. It was such a great thanksgiving! it was our firs one "alone" and it was SO fun to be able to plan our own dishes, and have a good time making them all! we had some good stuff- but the pulling the neck out of the turkey experience was not so great.
again, getting cold outside, we get bored and creative. Millie's Cinderella doll started swimming in my glass of water. Then all of millies people from her manger scene wanted to swim, so we had to get a bigger swimming pool, then we even had to add a 3rd pool. By that time it just looked so fun, so millie insisted on putting on her swimming suit and swimming with them... she was sitting in the bowls and trying very hard to imerse herself in the water.

A week ago Josh ran the St. Judes Half Marathon. Millie had a good time tracking him all over town and met up with him after he finished. He won. surprise surprise, and ran a time of 1:08.0

so, there you have it in a nutshell. Hope you are all having a great christmas season so far!