Father's Day Presents

I know it’s a little late, and perhaps it would have been helpful if I had posted these BEFORE Sunday, but life gets busy! I wanted to put together a post of the crafty things we made for the hubs for Father’s Day. He is such a wonderful husband and daddy, he deserves all the presents in the world!!

Here's a photo of my dad and I.  He's the bestest!

Both the kids made gifts for dad at school – Miss E put together a coupon book for Daddy with vouchers for hugs, car washes and breakfast in bed. Miss A’s teacher took a cute pic of each of the kids on the playground and they made picture frames from blue-painted tongue depressors with magnets attached to the back.

I also wanted to put together a gift that we could do again in the future to show how much the girls have changed. I scoured my favourite sources (mainly Pinterest) to find interview questions to ask the girls where they would have to answer in their own words.
After picking a few questions from a few sites, here are some of the questions we used:
My favourite thing to do with Daddy is...
My favourite book to read with Daddy is...
My favourite thing about my dad is...

Miss E's answers

  I love the honesty of children! Miss E said her daddy is four years old and he likes to wear pyjamas! 

Miss A's answers

Miss A said that her Daddy’s face is orangey and round, and if Daddy could go on a trip, he would go to China and would bring our whole family. Hmmm.... I’m not so sure about some of those answers!!

I got Miss A to fill hers out in her own handwriting (you’ll notice it’s barely legible, but I’m her Mama, I can decipher it!). I filled out Miss E’s using her answers – she’s only three!
I finished both of the interviews off with the line: This is the hand I used to hold you with when I was ... years old. I traced each little girls hand onto the sheet.

We also spent an evening at my brother’s house last week and using fabric paint, dipped the girls hands into paint and transferred them onto a grey tshirt. It turned out so cute! 

We did a similar one for my dad with the little tiny hands of all three of his granddaughters. Miss E’s is the orange hand that kind of looks like a turkey – don’t ask me how that happened!?

Here's a pic of the three dad's together - my little brother and husband and dad, all in a row.

And the three little girls that made that celebrated Father's Day with their daddy's.
Hope you all had a fantastic Father's Day too!  Until next year, when I promise to post the craft ideas before the holiday!!

A Week of Eating From the Freezer

This past weekend was SO much fun; I didn’t want it to end! My girls went “camping” down in the states with my parents. Although the weather was the pits, the girls managed to go swimming a bunch of times and did a little shopping!
The hubs and I spent Saturday treating ourselves to an anniversary weekend of excess! After a Father’s Day brunch with my in-laws, we headed downtown for a romantic getaway. The hubs booked us into a fancy hotel and had them deliver sparkling wine and chocolate covered strawberries to our room!

The hubs and I at the end of the Bryan Adams concert - it was HOT in there!

After a delicious dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, we took a romantic stroll to the venue for the Bryan Adams concert (it got less and less romantic and more and more rushed as the rain started to fall on my flat, straight hair!).
As always Bryan Adams rocked the house, and my voice was hoarse from singing along at the top of my lungs – I’m sure the people sitting around me LOVED that!

Source

With school winding down (only 1 ½ weeks left!) it’s almost time to give out Miss A’s teacher presents!
We have a family event filled weekend this weekend, and the week ahead is looking crazy-busy too. Good thing there is a freezer STILL full of pre-made dinners for us!

On the Menu

Monday – Meatballs and perogiesTuesday – Chicken macaroni bake
Wednesday – Turkey meat loaf, potatoes and veggiesThursday  – Shake n bake fish n chipsFriday – BRINNER - Pancakes for the kiddos, eggs, bacon and hashbrowns for us!

Saturday – Turkey burgers, potatoes and roasted peppers on the BBQ!Sunday – Dinner out with the kiddos

I'll be linking up to Org Junkie's Menu Plan Monday - check it out!

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

The hubs and I celebrate a B-I-G milestone this weekend. This Friday we will be married TEN years! Can you believe it? It seems like just yesterday we stood up before God, our family and friends and proclaimed our everlasting love for each other – and then spent the evening dancing the night away.
Married for ten years, together almost 19 years (we started dating in 1993!!) I think I am qualified to put together a post about the secrets to a happy marriage. Actually, it’s no secret – marriage is hard work! It requires commitment and dedication, but it’s totally worth it to see a future path of happiness and marital bliss ahead.
Sorry for the photo quality!  Back in 2002 when I got married, photographers still used FILM!  I used my digital camera to take photos of the photos today!

1. Marriage requires COMMITMENT. You have to be eternally committed – to yourself, your spouse, your relationship, your faith. You can’t waiver, you can’t falter – you need to commit to being there for each other – through thick and thin (remember those vows? Sickness and health and all that stuff?).
2. A long lasting relationship takes PATIENCE – an insane amount of patience. Don’t kid yourself. No matter how much you love your spouse, there will be days (weeks) where your spouse will drive you crazy! It is important to be patient, work through the insanity and bring yourselves back to the path of true happiness.

3. Talk it out – you need COMMUNICATION to succeed together. Hopefully the person you married is your best friend – I know my husband is mine! We can talk about anything, anytime. Some days it’s remembering to sit and go over the schedule for the week, other days its long debates about serious topics. What’s most important is knowing that you always have a shoulder to cry on if you need it and someone to listen to you vent when you need!
4. You can’t hear each other unless you LISTEN. This one seems pretty self-explanatory, but it bears mentioning. You have to listen to more than just the everyday conversations that occur between you and your spouse. You need to hear what they are saying to truly understand what they are thinking and feeling. This goes hand in hand with communication, but more so because you need to hear what’s going on in his heart to succeed as a couple.

5. You gotta keep the FAITH. I am going to be honest – I took seriously my marriage vows. We stood in a church before God, our family and friends and promised to love, honor and cherish my husband. And I will, til death do us part. I know that not everyone believes in God, or goes to church – and that’s fine. As long as you have faith in your life – faith in yourself, faith in each other, you will succeed. For me, I just love knowing that God is in our corner, helping us to succeed in our marriage. OK, enough preaching, onto the next topic.
6. Don’t sweat the SMALL STUFF. I may be a schedule-crazy, menu planning, taxi driving mama, but if you let one little hiccup in your day ruin the rest of your day, you are bound to fail. Same thing in your marriage – if you let one of your spouse’s traits get to you, or if you nitpick each other over every little thing, you’ll never be happy. Make sure you take a few minutes to yourself each day if you feel like you’re going crazy. That 20 minute break from life can put those small things into perspective.

7. Let’s talk about SEX, baby. Now I’m not going into the juicy details, but we all know that sex is an important part of a healthy marriage. It’s not a numbers game or anything like that, but you and your spouse need to make each other happy, in lots of ways. Enough said.

8. Make your own FAMILY TRADITIONS. We are lucky. Like REALLY lucky. Our families always manage to split the holidays and important days easily. The hubs’ family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve, my family does Christmas Day. We do Thanksgiving with the hubs’ family on Saturday, and mine on Sunday. It works out great for us. We have created a wonderful, dynamic experience for our kids that works out famously. We know that on Family Holiday weekends that the kids will be sleep deprived, over sugared and showered with gifts by pretty much everyone we see, and that’s ok. We’ll catch up on sleep later, right now, we’re making memories!
9. LAUGH. EVERY DAY. I am so blessed to be married to a crazy, hilarious, wonderful man. He makes me laugh every single day. Even when I’m feeling down, or when I am sad, he can manage to sing/dance/act like a fool to make me smile, even when I don’t think it’s possible. It gives me great joy to know that when we are old and gray, he will still be making me laugh.

10. HARD WORK. DEDICATION. This was a mantra from one of the fitness trainers on the TV show the Biggest Loser a couple of years ago, and I LOVE it. It holds true in so many facets of our lives, but especially so in marriage. Marriage takes hard work – it takes getting up every day and being willing to put your spouse and their happiness above everything else in the world. It takes dedication – you have to be there through all of it – the good, the bad and the ugly, and no matter how hard it gets, you have to dedicate yourself to getting through it. Together.
I think this may be the longest post I’ve ever written! I hope you enjoyed the photos from our big day so many years ago – look how young we look! I was skinny! Brett had hair! So much has changed, almost all of it for the better.

We have two gorgeous red headed crazy children who keep us on our toes and give us lots of reasons to laugh together, and challenge us. After ten wonderful years together, I can only hope we have 60 more ahead of us!

I will be linking this recipe up on Serenity Now, A Bowl Full of Lemons andDelightful Order.

3 Ingredient Nutella Cookies

This past weekend I was putting together a cupcake order for a kids baseball team when my girls decided they absolutely had to have cookies. I had been browsing Pinterest that morning and found this recipe for Nutella cookies.
What really sold me on this recipe was the ingredient list - only three little items required for these cookies - and a bonus! NO SUGAR!.
The recipe makes about 30 cookies which is perfect for the kids and their friends as an after school snack.

3 Ingredient Nutella Cookies

Recipe from Kirbie Cravings

1 cup Nutella

1 cup Flour

1 Egg

Mix all three ingredients together until nicely combined. The mixture will be crumbly, but will come together. Scoop a tablespoon or so into your hand and roll tightly into a ball. 

Place on cookie sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes at 350F.

Remove from the oven and while still hot, use a fork and squish down the cookies a bit.
Allow to cool on wire rack and store in an airtight container.

Enjoy!

I will be linking this recipe up on Serenity Now, A Bowl Full of Lemons and Delightful Order.
If you like this recipe, I hope you'll pin it!

Short Week of Cooking for Me!

Another fun-filled weekend has flown by! The girls and I were on our own for a couple of days while the hubs went away golfing. 

We went to the park by our house and released the collection of snails Miss A had been storing in her bug catcher for what seemed like ages.

Monkey #1

Monkey #2

 Although we managed to stick to the menu plan pretty well, there were a couple of nights where we strayed away from the menu, but that's life! 

This week is super busy for us - the kids are going away for the weekend, it's our ten year wedding anniversary!! and it's Father's Day! This week I'll hopefully post about the plan for our Father's Day craft, and a new cookie recipe that I tried this weekend - sugar free and totally delicious!
This week I am hoping to run four times and go to boot camp twice. Last week I managed boot camp three times, but only one run. I was so exhausted one night that I went to bed at 9pm and slept right through my running alarm and slept until 7am! That's not going to work with a half marathon three months away.

On the Menu:

Monday: Roasted potatoes, mixed veggies and pulled pork calzones
Tuesday: Chicken Tetrazzini 
Wednesday: Lasagna Wednesday
Thursday: Tourtiere, perogies  
Friday: 10 year anniversary! The hubs works until 10pm though, so nothing fancy tonight - turkey meat loaf, pasta with veggies
Saturday: Bryan Adams concert - lunch out, dinner out (it's going to be a high calorie day!)
Sunday: Brunch Out AND Family BBQ for Father's Day


I will be linking up to Org Junkie's Menu Plan Monday - if you are looking for menu ideas or recipes, you have to check it out!

End of the Year Teacher Thank You Presents

My girls both have awesome teachers. Miss A's teacher has a class full of crazy five-year-olds and in the past year, she has taught my daughter how to read, how to add and subtract and how to become a great student and friend. 
Miss E's teachers have helped bring her out of her little girl shell, helped her to make friends and taught her all about the wonders of play-doh! We also made up one of these lovelies for Miss A's Irish Dancing teacher.

Source

Thanks to the wonderful world of Pinterest and a number of inspiration blogs that I follow, it was easy to find great end of the year gift ideas for the girls' teachers. The gift we decided on was inspired by Tatertots and Jello (great blog by the way, creative, awesome ideas every day!).
I wanted to find something functional that they would be able to use. Since summer is coming (at some point...the weather certainly doesn't seem that way), what could be better than iced tea and candy!?

I picked up some brightly colored insulated drink cups with straws, some Lipton Tea Infusion packs and some Reese Peanut Butter Cups.

Next up, I gathered my supplies: Cricut cupcake wrappers cartridge, some brightly colored cardstock, glue and these adorable labels. I used the same wording as the Tatertots and Jello inspiration idea, but updated the tags with the girls' names and a little thanks for being a great teacher!

I filled the bottom of the cups with Reese Peanut Butter cups, then put the straw in the middle to stand up between. I used three packs of infusion tea for each cup and then tied a ribbon around the straw to keep the ribbon from sliding off and the gift tag getting detached.

I attached the printed label to a circle of cardstock cut out with the cricut, punched a hole and tied the ribbon to the tag. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

I played with the "Thanks" cupcake topper cartridge and cut out a few different sizes and put together some thank you cards for the teachers.

I absolutely LOVE the way these turned out! I hope the teachers love them too!!



I will be linking up to Delightful Order, A Bowl Full of Lemons, and Serenity Now. Check them out!
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