PREPARING A PARTY and a fun CHALLENGE!

WINTER DREAMS

Sarah VanDyke and I created this fun collection last year, but wanted to revamp it, add to it, and re release it at Scrapbookbytes! The whole collection is available in 8 parts at our collab store RIGHT HERE! Right now you can pick up whichever kit you would like for 33% Off, but if you would like to save a little more you can grab the entire collection (add them all to your cart, and use coupon code: WDcomplete) and get them all at over 50% off!

CHALLENGE yourself a little, and get a great prize! If you want to take part in Shelleyrae's QP challenge at Scrapbookbytes, you can pick up any portion of Winter Dreams, create a 8x8 Quick Page and as a reward you'll get everyone's pages who participates. There are already a lot of great pages filling the gallery. Check them out HERE. For more information about the QP challenge, look HERE! Happy Scrapping!

My Old Man is 38!!!!

He's taking a nap at the moment, after spending the entire day up at the ski hill on patrol duty. I've got his cake made, and presents wrapped and as soon as he gets up we'll have our dinner and celebration.

My Mom got me a cookbook by the Cake Mix Doctor several years ago, and it has become a ritual that Jeff pick his cake (from the full color photos of each cake) from this book. The Cake Mix Doctor is a great lady, in my opinion. She takes ordinary cake mix and adds all kinds of extras into the mix to make the best, most delicious cakes (and easy, gotta love that). This year Jeff picked out the amaretto cake, and I'll tell you, it looks and smells delicious! I can't wait to try a bite! We also got him some fun gifts, so I'll have to share more photos later (love how we wrapped them in the frilly bows from my Christmas gifts? I'm sure he'll love that). As far as dinner, this year Jeff wants his childhood favorite, Meat Fondue. He used to pick this as a birthday meal so often as a kid that his Mom gave us the family fondue pot when he grew up (see photo, so 70s! It even has the wooden handle forks to go with). So tonight we'll be frying bits of steak in oil while we feast on sushi, Hawaiian bread, baby reds and artichokes! Yum!

SNOW FORT

Jeff took Zoe to the hill today, so it was just me and Max at home, baking cakes and reading books, and playing with Legos, and yep, building snow forts! I'm pretty darn proud of this momma who rarely gets out in the snow to play! Max and I got the inspiration from an empty plastic tub sitting in the garage, and now he's ready for a snowball fight with his sis tomorrow! Max's friend Shayne peeked over the fence today, so we invited him in to play for a bit. Check this out!

Take a walk with me....Memory Lane

A friend and coworker of ours lost everything he owns this week. It was a sad day, when we all found out that the Klepec's house burned to the ground, destroying everything in it last Thursday morning. The community here is amazing though, and everyone they know is pulling together to help them put the pieces back together. One of the requests is for photos, as they lost every album in the house. This is a personal nightmare, that I can not even imagine happening! Luckily, Tony, the son, was in my child care for several years, so I was able to locate several photos today. One of the fourth grade classes at school is working on a new family album for the family and I'll bring my contribution in to them this week.

While browsing through years of photos, I came across a few favorites that I just had to bring out, and share!

Zoe, Ana and Karina with the daycare's collection of sunflowers, gourds and pumpkins! What a harvest we had that year!

This one needs explaining. One year for April Fool's Day I decided to make "cupcakes" for the kids for lunch. They were really no more than meatloaf in muffin cups topped with tinted potatoes. The kids were thrilled to be getting such a treat for lunch, especially when the "food lady" often visited to make sure we were eating 100% healthy. Well...Max was SOO MAD when he took that first bite! UUUGH! I was laughing so hard!

Just look at these two....how cute is that! And still best friends, 5 years later!
The were pretending to go to school this day!

Not a daycare photo, but just a sweet one of my kids about six years ago. AAAAWWWW, look at them cuddling together watching TV.