My First Blog Award

Wow! I've received my first blog award! Thanks to Tricia at Craft Addict for passing along this award to me. You should totally go visit her blog. She has some awesome craft projects and a fun blog! Be sure to visit!

What is the lemonade award you might ask. It's an award that celebrates good attitude and gratitude. So I am passing it along to ten other bloggers. Some of these I have been visiting for awhile and some I just recently found. I enjoy visiting all of them and seeing what they are doing, saying or creating. I think they show great attitude and gratitude. So be sure to check these out too!

When you receive your lemonade award, pass it on to others who show great attitude and gratitude. Share the love! Here's what you do:

1.Put the lemonade logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate 10 other bloggers who you think demonstrate good attitude and/or gratitude.
3. Link to your nominees within your post.
4.Comment on their blog to let them know they have received this award.
5.Link back to this post and the person whom you received this award from.

My nominees for the Lemonade award are:
1. Jessie@Sprgtime
2.Heidi@Blue Eyed Blessings
3.Angela@The Creative Homemaker
4.Lia@Getting Busy Living
5.Jaime@Caddywumpus
6.Jessica@The Pelkey's Place
7.Jason&Wendy@Jaywenhop
8.Hat Chick
9.Chaos Platz
10. Faith@That's Just Freaking Lovely

Thanks again Tricia for the award!

Birthdays To Remember

Today I'm showing off the cute birthday calendar my friend Kim gave our family for Christmas. (Now I have no excuses for forgetting birthdays! Ha! Ha!) It's a plain white spiral bound pad with a numbered page for each month. Just fill in the name by their birthday! Easy peasy! She made it pop by stamping cute images that go along with each month. Cu-ute! I featured February in the picture above. She did eggs and bunnies for April, stars and stripes for July, Halloween for October and so on. I actually had one a long time ago, but lost it in one of our moves. I'm glad I have one again. Now I need to get busy making cards to send out. Thanks Kim. I love it!

This is the front cover. I think it is from Stampin' Up, but not sure! It's a great gift idea!

Works For Me Wednesday- Foam Cookware Protectors

Rocks in my Dryer hosts a Works for Me Wednesday, so I thought I'd join in the fun! Check it out for some good tips and fun stuff! Thanks to Heidi for posting about WFMW, or I would have never known about it!



I want to share a tip I learned about not too long ago. A lady from my church told me about it when I saw her in a craft store one day. Go figure, me at a craft store. I visit them frequently! Anyway, she told me that her daughter uses foam craft pieces as pan protectors. I thought that was awesome since I'm always scrounging up some funky piece of cardboard to go between my pots and pans, which never really fits right. You can buy special protectors, but the ones I've priced are pretty expensive. I got a pack of foam circles for about $4.50. I didn't use all of them, so I can use the rest for crafts. Can't beat that!

The foam pieces come in different shapes, so you could use whatever you like. I chose circles. However, I couldn't find the really thick pieces of foam, so I adhered 2 of them together with sticky strip to make them a bit thicker. You could probably use glue dots or hot glue as well. I think they work best for saute pans. They will go between my bigger sauce pans, but not the small ones.Guess I should just cut them in half. I invested in a nice set of cookware, so I want to keep it in good shape. This is an inexpensive way to protect your pans from getting all scratched up. Try it!

Nope, that's not a purple pancake. It's the foam in between my pans.

Pinewood Derby 2009

Let's go racin'! Pinewood Derby Style!

This past Saturday, Trent participated in his second Pinewood Derby. It was a day of racing and fun projects for the boys. Aside from the races, they made racing flame pennants and decorated their own stands for their cars. He also got to lead the color guard in the flag ceremony. Cool! Even though he didn't win his division, Trent did get the award for Most Turbocharged car. I agree! His car was sweet! It was black and red with racing decals. It looked like an Indy car!

Here he is working diligently making his car. It takes quite a bit of work to get the finished product! He did a great job!

Sweet Cake

This weekend, the girls and I took a trip up to my parents and had a fun time as always. We also took this sweet little cake to my nanny as part of her birthday present from us. A sweet cake for a sweet grandmother!

I thought a 6 inch round cake would be perfect for her. It's a yummy butter recipe, yellow cake with homemade buttercream icing. I simply piped borders of stars and added some purple pansies cascading down the front. I told her this was all hers, no sharing! She finally cut it the last day we were there. Happy Birthday!

Game Time!

Yesterday, I shared my kids' love of board games with you.They're not the only ones who like to get their game on. So today it's mom and dad's turn! Will is definitely more into strategy games. Me, not so much. He is a certified computer geek,after all. Really, he is. He's a software developer, come on! And no, he doesn't mind if I refer to him as a geek. That's a term of endearment to him. He's proud of it and so am I. I love my geek!:) Anyway, back to the games. By far, his favorite of all time is Chess. It's not in the picture because I didn't know where the chess set was. Other faves include Risk, Fluxx and Munchkin. If you haven't heard of Fluxx, it's a card game where the rules constantly change. Pretty fun once you get going. Check it out.




Moving on to me. I am a party game kinda girl. Apples to Apples and Taboo are a couple of my faves, but I also enjoy games like Spoons, Scattergories and Outburst. Like I said before, I'm not so much into the strategy type, but I will play them. I'm just not very good at them. Probably the reason I don't care for them too much. It' just so fun to have everybody involved and interacting in the game, to me. These are a sure bet for a fun game night. I think it's time to call some friends and get the snacks ready!

Mom, Can We Play A Game?

Mom, can we play a game? It's a question I hear a lot at our house. The kids(and their parents) love a good game. We have game nights all the time. It's just so fun for us to sit down and spend time together this way. Mine and Will's family always played games and I'm glad our family does too.Usually, the amount of time we have determines the one we play. My kids like all sorts of games; Sorry, Clue, Apples to Apples, Zigity. I could go on and on. But I thought I'd share a few of their favorites. Check 'em out if you can. They're kid tested and approved!



Oh how we love Fancy Nancy! The girls, that is. Laci adores the books and the game now, too. She got the Fancy Nancy Big Easy game for Christmas from Nana and Grand dad and has been lovin' it! It has big, chunky pieces, a puzzle piece board and fun cling on stickers. So cute! You get to visit places from the books like The King's Crown, ice cream parlor and Nancy's bedroom to earn those little stickers. A Laci favorite. She can't wait for her b'day in May, when we celebrate Fancy Nancy style.



Fun, Star Wars trivia is.(Say that in your best Yoda voice) Yes! Star Wars Trivial Pursuit is Trent's favorite! Probably because he's so good at it.He won this game in about 30 mins. one day. Now, if you're not a SW's junkies like most of our family, then you might not like this one. I have to say it is fun to play with him. I think he's surprised when I get the questions right. He forgets I've only seen those movies like 100 times! Definitely a good choice for the SW fan in your house.



Gotta love Wig Out! A friend of mine introduced me to this game a few years ago. It's fast paced and fun! It won the Best Vacation Children's Product from Dr. Toy. We play this one over and over!( Our box is so tattered, I think it's time to store the cards in something else. ) Basically, it's just a deck of cards with silly looking faces on them and you make piles of matching cards. Everyone-at the same time. Well, my explanation of it is not the best, but the kids and I highly recommend it. Give it a try! Tomorrow, I'll share mine and my husband's faves. If you have some game recommendations, leave a comment to tell me about it. We're always looking for a good game.