Christmas In The Kitchen

My Kitchen Christmas tree. I decorate it with all my cookie cutters and a few other gingerbread type ornaments that I've collected, there's even a mini spatula!

Orange Rolls and Sugar Twists. These recipes are from Reese's Grandma Barb. He likes it when I make them around Christmas time. A little tradition handed down I guess.
Lane had a lot of fun decorating his gingerbread boys and girls.

This recipe I found was really awesome for gingerbread cookies. The dough needed a little extra flour but other than that it was great! I used my royal icing to decorate them:

Royal Icing:
2 large egg whites (I use Wiltons Meringue powder from Michaels instead the raw egg whites)
3 cups powdered sugar
juice of one lemon

Merry Christmas!! Hope you have a very yummy one. Can't wait to spend time with friends and family and celebrate the birth of Jesus!!

Christmasy Stuff

So this December we've done some Christmas festivities. I've been baking alot, I will share later. Lane sang at the Hotel Del Coronado. Ohhhh Ahhhh. Reese took Lane ice skating. AND...we watched Santa come in on a helicopter. Awesome!

Lane explained ice skating as "slippery" (he said it with a lisp)
Case is 4 months old. He weighs 15 lbs 12 oz and is 25 1/2 inches long!
Me and the boys after Lane sang at the Hotel Del.

Doesn't get much better than this!

Case cracks me up. His eyebrows are always raised and his eyes big. He's taking it all in!

Thanksgiving with Friends and Family!

We had a fun Thanksgiving up in WA. It was so fun to introduce Case to all of our family and to meet our new niece Hazel! My sister Michele took these two pictures plus many more while we were at my dads. Right before we had family pictures taken, Lane decided to play in piles of dirt and mud! So...a little dirt in the hair and a little mudd on the jeans, no worries.

Michele, Lesha, Me, Matt, and Phil. From oldest to youngest, these are my bestest friends in the whole world and next to Reese and my boys my favorite people to be with! No offense to anyone :)
Case and Lil' Miss Hazel the newest of the cousins and less 3 months apart.Laura (Mops or Mimi), Marryn, and Case. We stayed with Reese's parents in their new house. It was great hanging out with Reese's family and their house is very cozy and inviting. It's great to stay out in the country. Both my dad and Reese's parents live on land which is so nice for Lane to run on.
Erawyn and Lane are great friends! He loves spending time with those girls!
My SISTA'S I am SO blessed to have these beautiful women in my life! We had such a fun day of coffee, shopping and lunch on Friday. Lots of laughs and fun memories made.
My dad's eight grandchildren. They range in age from 7 yrs-6 weeks old. LOVE these kids! They are all hilarious!

Everything's Better With Butter!

Shake it Lane!! (Lane shaking the butter)

Lane had a little Thanksgiving party at his school yesterday. His teacher had the kids make butter. It was a great activity for the kids and they were very interested. She just passed around some jars of cream and they took turns shaking them. Of course this was right up my alley, I had seen it on this blog before and had been wanting to try it. So when we got home, we made some of our own butter!

Lane's finished product after shaking.

I put the rest of the heavy cream in the mixer and made a bigger batch in there. I covered the mixer with the towel because when the milk seperates from the butter, milk flies!
Here is the butter once it seperated from the liquid. I used the "butter" milk (not actual buttermilk like you buy in the store) to make some biscuits last night. After whipping it until it seperates, you need to wash the butter so keeps for longer I guess. The directions are linked above and it's really less complicated than it seems.
I decided to flavor our butter with cinnamon, honey, and a little salt.
And since everything is better with butter, I had to make some pumpkin chocolate chip scones (my recipe is adapted from this one) to go with the butter. Heavenly! Now I think everytime I make homemade bread, I'll ask Lane to make the butter....

Lane and Case

Here is a little comparison for all of you. My friend Joelle did this on her blog showing how much her two kids look alike, so she gave me the idea. Case is the top picture Lane is the bottom. I think their nose and mouth are very similar and the difference might be more in the eyes. It is amazing though! Even their hair looks the same! Such good sweet babies I am blessed with! Lane was bigger than Case is but he did have almost 2 lbs on him at birth!

Case 3 1/2 months
Lane 2 1/2 months

We are having a good week other than a little sicky last night but it was short lived. Lane just must have had a little stomach bug, so we stayed home today and are feeling much better! We are looking forward to seeing daddy soon! Case is such a good baby, have I said that already? :) He has started giggling this adorable little giggle. I love it! My sister Michele has really inspired me to simplify so I am trying to stay home a little more and just enjoy my boys. I took these pictures today of Case on his tummy time mat. He is really trying to get his toys now and grab on to them. He was so proud of himself today when he was holding his toy. I've been cooking and baking lately, getting into "winter mode." Even got around to making some baby food to put in the freezer for when Case is ready. I will try to share some recipes soon.

New Friends

We got some new friends at our house today. Some of our friends are moving so they gave us their 3 fish. Lane named them Silly, Stinky, and Sippy, all on his own :) The fish in the middle is "special" that's Sippy. The other two decided to attack it and eat it's fins so Sippy only has a partial tail and no fins. Sippy can still swim but in a "special" way. This is very entertaining to me, just imagine swimming with no arms and one leg, that's how Sippy swims. Sometime it swims upside down or on it's side because it can't quite get upright. Hopefully Sippy makes it, it's lived 2 weeks with out fins. Does anyone know if they can grow back? Let me know, there may be hope for Sippy yet.

3 months old

This little guy has been cracking me up! I can't believe he is 3 months old! He is so good, he's so content and happy. He smiles a lot and laughs when I change his diaper because he's so ticklish. He watches every move I make and he loves to watch what Lane is doing. Lane really likes to sing him the songs he learns at school. Today he asked me if he could babysit him. Hmmm, tempting but no.
One of my favorite outfits!

My Shutter

I've had this idea in my head for months now. Finally I was able to accomplish this. I started with a shutter. I got it at Habitat for Humanity Restore for $8. I applied a coat of Elmers glue first. Once that dried a little, just until it's a little tacky I put on a coat of red acrylic paint. I think I used about 3 small bottles at around $1 each.

The glue created a crackle finish on the shutter. It was a little to "crackely" for me so I put on another coat of red.

Here is the before shot of that wall, see the shelves on the right...

Here is the after.
I added drawer knobs from Anthropologie all of them on clearance for $2.95 each. Just drilled holes and screwed them on. I really like the architectural look it gives. I love things like old doors and windows hanging on walls like this headboard idea from Country Living.
I wish I had more room for these things, but I do like how this project turned out.

Halloween Festivities

These are the cookies I decorated this year.
Our pumpkins this year. We carved them with daddy last night. The witch turned out so much better then I thought it would and it didn't take too long.
We went to our friends Kyle and Leah's house tonight for dinner and trick or treating.
My Indiana Jones. He made quite the handsome Indy.
Sweet little chile pepper. He's been such a good boy, sleeping at night, hardly ever cries! I am SO blessed!
Michele sent this onesie when he was born. The little ghosts glow in the dark. That was a highlight for Lane :)

Lane turns 5!

We had Lane's birthday party on Saturday. He invited 5 boys over for a Hotwheels party. My friend Elaina brought their inflatable jumpy thing, we had a pinata and they played with Hotwheels tracks. They had fun, it was only 2 hours long, and they didn't destroy my house! A fun time was had by all :)

Opening presents. He got Jenga from one of his buddies and loves it!
No Hotwheels pinatas so I had to go with the baseball one. He'd never had one at his birthday party before so this was a fun addition.
I didn't over do it this year. If you'll remember back to last year when Reese thought I "Clark W. Griswold everything to death." This year I did a lot less. I did make the cake though. It was a race track cake and it ended up turning out alright, it just stressed me out little bit while I was doing it. My original plan was to dye coconut green for the "grass" Then it dawned on me that most 5 year olds probably wouldn't want to eat coconut on cake so I improvised. I just used a star tip on a piping bag and went all around the cake with it. Like the kids even care!
Lane must have told a really funny joke in this picture.

And just so I don't leave Case out. Here is a little picture of him in the jumper. He can hold his head up really well so we put him in it for a little while the other day. What a big boy!