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Been racking my brain thinking about options for Tess upcoming birthday. We usually spend & celebrate the summer date away. We will be out of town again this year but daddy is requesting that we do a small playdate party at home for her close buddies. I'm a little concerned about having two parties... are we setting ourselves up for trouble next year when her birthday rolls around again. I can already hear it... Tess gets TWO parties. What ever we do I will have to try and top the cupcakes from last year and the octopus cake from her first birthday... I take it as a personal challenge. I wanted to post the cake from her big 1 because that's were the "topping" the cake challenge began. Matt and I had NEVER made cake from scratch before but we have watched plenty of food network cake shows and were thinking, "we could try that". We had a few obstacles to overcome, we had to cook the cake in the vacation kitchen and had to track down quality fondant on a small limited provisions island all the while dealing with an active 1 year old- thank god for grandparents.
The first cake went into the garbage, burnt. My mother-in-law slipped my hubby a tranquilizer in his diet coke to calm him down and we had food coloring everywhere. Alas, the cake turned out great so proud of our first attempt and best of all Tess was just enchanted with her Octocake.We called her Toothy.
Cake specifics - we used an egg shaped mold, fonderific fondant and gel food coloring. For the cake we used Martha Stewarts recipe for yellow cake with buttercream icing. There was lemon curd between the layers and we topped it with crushed graham crackers to get that sandy look.
Theo just rounded the corner on his 8th month. His little personality is really starting to shine through and boy do I love this little monkey. He is so fulled with wonder and amazement at his new world that he just couldn't wait to start pulling up, standing and creeping about the house. He has been crawling now for about two months and I think he just might walk early. I think the idea of keeping up with big sis is a big motivator. Along with being very physical he is also sweet & loving (minus the occasional bite), his favorite past time is playing the piano and squealing in delight.
I give a lot of thought as to what kind of boy Theo will be and what kind of things will he be interested in. Wondering if he's going to be sporty or brainy, into science or comics looking to Matt wondering if he will be just like dad. I'm not overly concerned about the specifics as long as he is happy - it's more of a fascination with how different he is from Tess and how wonderfully boylike he is.
Tess has been really crazy about dress up these days. Usually before when we leave the house to go anywhere she has to put on some kind of hat, grab a purse or bag, sunglasses and every piece of plastic jewelry she owns...plus some of mine. We are deep into pretend play phase.
Last week they announced it was going to be Western Day in Tess' class and I asked her if she wanted to be a cowgirl or an Indian and she chose the later. I only had a few hours to whip this up so I was thankful the child chose the easier out of the two. I made my own pattern for this one by just laying out a dress she already had and tracing around it to get an approximate size. The beauty of this project and key to creating it quickly was the fabric, we used ultra suede so there was no hemming or binding involved. The last dress I made for Tess called for bias trim around the arms and neck and I am still traumatized by the memories of that sewing project. I tried to keep the costume unisex and big enough so that she could get a few years of play out of it and baby Theo would be able to wear it when he gets to be her age. Next week we are tackling a pirate costume which means learning to sew elastic pants. By summers end I am hoping T will have a whole closet full of mommy made pretend play clothes.
The project from start to finish took 1.5 hours and cost only $8.99 - we were able to use remnant ultra suede from the fabric store.
Materials:
1 yard Ultra suede
.5 yard decorative ribbon trim
Feathers
Elastic for the headband (I pulled the elastic out of my old maternity shorts)
We headed off to Bastrop for Memorial Day Weekend. It was our first overnighters with the whole family and I wasn't so sure how baby Theo was going to manage the long drive and unfamiliar sleeping arrangements. We decided to head out on Thursday about the same time as his morning nap and we got 3/4 of way there before he woke up and demanded some out of the car time which was expected - we were all hungry for lunch. When we arrived Lost Pines we were all excited to go exploring and get in some lazy river time. Tess is at that age where she can appreciate all the outdoor activities and Theo is small enough to not really care so we were in vacation bliss the whole weekend. Tess loved interacting with the animals and our room overlooked pastures with longhorn cows, horses, alpacas and miniature donkeys. I was really surprised that some of the best times we had were right in our room we had small moments filled with kisses and cuddles. It amazes me to see how much Tess and Theo love each other, he adores her and she can always get him to smile. Tess takes such pride in being his big sister and always wants to be included in helping us out with the baby. Everything was just perfect we ended up extending our trip by another day and I am already pining to get back to those Pines.
Anyone who has known Tess since she was a baby knows that the girl was born without a lick of hair on her head and didn't start getting peach fuzz on her noggin until practically her second birthday. At almost three she still doesn't have much. What she does have grows incredibly slow in the front and on the sides leaving the majority of her goldie locks growing in back - aka the toddler mullet. After debating for the last week if I should trim up her hair or let what precious little she has grow brazenly wild, I decided finally to get out the scissors and give her a respectable do. She was delighted to get her first haircut and sat without fuss while I chopped off the straggly strands to give her a pixie cut that perfectly suits her.
A very crafty mommy friend of mine always has these addictive pretzel treats out when we come over. She swore they were easy to make and that her little monkey loves to help out making these sweet treats so I thought we would give them a go. She was right, easy, low mess and super fun for the kiddos. Only three ingredients you can't go wrong, we used matchstick pretzels, quick melt chocolate and course sanding sugar. The entire project minus the time spent eating and munching and laughing along the way only took about 10 minutes. First we laid the pretzels out on some wax paper(makes for easy clean up), microwaved the chocolate in a glass bowl for 60 seconds then put the chocolate into a squeezy bottle and drizzled over the pretzels. Finally Tess sprinkled the sugar over the tops and we let harden for about 30 minutes before eating. Tess is so excited to show Daddy that she made "prentzels" for him - what a treat.
The first few precious tomatoes of the season are ready for picking. About to undertake a big renovation/addition to our house this summer we planted very little this year. Since our backyard will be one big muddy construction site I debated if I should plant anything at all but decided that I couldn't miss an opportunity to teach T about growing from seed. We started the plantings indoors in February and Tess has patiently watched and watered her plants over the past few months with loving care. Elated at finally getting a chance to harvest some of her crops, she immediately picked the first tomato and went to bite right in and enjoy it straight from the vine. Also ready were sunflowers that had grown a few feet tall, which are now pride of place on our dinning room table. Construction is likely (hopefully, all fingers crossed) to begin next month and we might not get to harvest the rest of our crops but at least we got a few early tomatoes to get us in the summer mood. Fingers crossed the watermelons are ready before all the craziness starts.
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