1st Birthday Fun

Today is my niece Graecyn's 1st birthday party and everyone is excited to celebrate!  I had the honor of making cookies for the garden themed party as well as the fun ladybug invitations!

Last night I was busy putting finishing touches on the cookies and cookie pops.

For the party I put the cookie pops in a terra cotta planter filled with rice and topped with black beans (to look like dirt). 

 

And gotta love a pinterest idea put to great use at a party with lots of little kids and adults.  Individual servings of veggies with dip. 

And this cute pinwheel decoration is also the take home favor!  My brother in law drilled holes in to a 2x4 and inserted the pinwheel stems.  They then mounted to their deck rail. Clever! 

The invitations I created for Graecyn's party.  The ladybug's wings spread to show the party details.

Fun garden themed party hats made by Graecyn's mom and dad.

And a window frame with pictures on both sides.  Each pane represented a month of Graecyn's first year.

What an honor to be able to create the party invites and cookies for the big day! 

Raspberries!

Today we headed to Remlinger Farms to pick raspberries. I figured the kids would like it for about five minutes, but much to my delight they picked berries for almost an hour. 

We ended up with almost 6 pounds of berries.  This then leads to the dilemma of what to do with all the berries.  We ate quite a few right out of the box.  Some on yogurt, ice cream, cereal... then I found a recipe for raspberry (or blueberry) muffins and we gave it a try.

The muffin batter was so thick it didn't let the berries sink very far!

In to the muffin tins!

After they came out of the oven it was hard to resist eating one right away.  What a treat!

This was a great recipe for raspberries and I may try again with blueberries since they have been on sale at the market recently.  Enjoy!  Click here for the link.

Jean Makeover

My son rips the knee in his pants within record time.  We should buy stock in denim companies because at the rate he rips his jeans? Wow.... this boy plays hard!

I purchased some iron on denim patches at the fabric store and attempted to make 'cool' patches for the torn jeans.  While they did turn out great, B wasn't always too thrilled.  One pair had a star shaped patch, another had different size squares overlapping.  In fact, my daughter was so envious of his shaped patches that she begged for some.  I cut out two small flowers from the iron on denim and put them on a pair of her jeans!

But thanks to pinterest I found a cool idea for patching up a pair of jeans.  A montser patch!

Lay out your clean pair of jeans with tear and cut out a piece of thick red felt or wool fabric that is larger than the tear.  Giving a good 1" extra red fabric on all sides.

Place red fabric on inside of jeans and hand or machine stich the fabrics together.  Make sure you don't try to close the rip in jeans completely as you are sewing.  You want to let the red fabric have a little slack to accomodate for the knee bending.  

Red fabric is no sewn on to jeans.  Take a piece of thick white wool or felt fabric and cut teeth to fit the width of the jean opening.   

Tuck the teeth under the end of the tear and hand or machine sew through the denim, white, and red fabrics.

To complete the look, add a couple circles for silly or scary eyes!

Now you have an extra cool pair of monster jeans!

Garden

A little garden update.  Now that the sun is shining, the garden is growing!  The snow peas are really taking off and so are the carrots!

A broccoli floret.

Pretty snow pea flowers.

And our three raspberry bushes have been producing like crazy!

The corn is off to a slow start this year, but hoping the sun will stick around to really kick in a growth spurt.

And an onion bloom.  They are so pretty!

Linguine with Arugula and Fresh Crab

We went crabbing on opening day of crab season and came home with 11 biggies!  Thank goodness we have three licenses to make this possible... yes, that is me validating our catch in case anyone is wondering. :)

Ironically, my friend posted a crab pasta recipe on facebook today and I made it for dinner.  Refreshing, light and full of crab.  I'm not a big fan of eating crab mixed in with things... I prefer it straight from the shell or in a great crab cake.  But this pasta was a good option, Linguine with Arugula and Crab.  Add in some lemon and garlic and you're done!  You can substitute chicken or shrimp for the crab.

Click here for the link, courtesy of Tuesday Recipe.

Patriotic Food

Last night we had some friends over for a BBQ and to decorate the bikes and wagons that our children will ride in the annual neighborhood parade.  I made a few patriotic treats for the evening!

Fruit Sparklers.... long skewers with blueberries, raspberry and a piece of watermelon shaped as a star.  I did discover that these are pretty top-heavy.  Be warned!

And a red, white and blue cake!  A single layer 9" vanilla cake topped with vanilla frosting and decorated with blueberries and raspberries.  I will admit that I used a box cake mix and frosting to keep the day easy.  I did bake two 9" rounds, but saved the other 9" for our family dinner tonight!

This morning was the annual parade and "That Guy" (his license plate) lead the parade of kids.

We celebrated the 4th with smoked ribs, corn and another patriotic cake.  Today's cake had a big blueberry star surrounded by halved strawberries.  I love summer fruits!

And to cap it all off... a big fireworks show! :)

Red, White and Blue

I'm a sucker for anything red, white and blue.  So when these bottles were staring at me in the dairy section, I was smitten.  And the grocer's product placement totally worked.  My trip to the store for milk, sandwich bread and fruit was altered just a tad by two bottles of champagne. 

But who can resist a few bottles of patriotic bubbly!?