A twist on an old Danish tradition.

So as you all know I am always trying to find ways to keep my girls memory of my mom alive and so this Christmas I have found a way to bring back an old family tradition of ours and to include my mom. As we were growing up my parents would hide these little pictures of Nisse men every morning and the first one to find it got good luck for the rest of the day and got to hide the next Nisse Men. Now I dont remember much of my childhood and I know I have blocked a lot of it out but I do remember the feeling we had in our home every Christmas because of how hard my mom worked to make it magical for all of us. Now I know we probably continued doing this tradition after she got sick but as I for me it died when she got sick. A couple of years ago I found all her little Nisse men pictures and photo copied them all and gave them out as christmas gifts to my siblings. I finally got mine out and decided it was about time I would bring back the tradition. I put a little spin on mine though. I love the elf on the shelf idea but its just not christmas with out nisse men for me. So I kind of combine the two and included my mom in it all. To introduce the nisse men here is acute little note "from" my mom with I made with the mymemories software and I am going to leave it on our porch for my girls.

Sorry the note is hard to read but here is what it says.

To My Princesses
I am so happy to see how big you have grown and happy to see how much you are caring for each other. With Christmas coming soon I wanted to send you some of my favorite little men over to help keep an eye on you this season. They are called Nisse Men and they are from very far away. Everday a new Nisse men will appear so keep an eye out. If you spot him first you will have good luck all day long. The Nisse Men will let Santa know if you are being good. and on Christmas Eve put your shoes out by the front porch and make sure to leave a treat for the Nisse men to say thank you and you'll get a wonderful suprise. I miss you very much and watch over you everyday.
  I love you,
Grandma Kairlee

See I got to mix the idea of the elf who is santa's helper and keeping an eye on the children and the nisse men all together. And if your wondering in Denmark they would leave out rice pudding on the doorstep to make the nisse men happy for another year that's why we leave a treat at the door for them and in return they will get a new christmas ornament in their shoe "from" my mom. Now the shoe part comes in because I remeber as a kid we would leave our shoes out and they would get filled with candy but my husband cant get past the idea of shoes on the table and candy in them so we comprimised and walla a new christmas tradition which helps keep the memory of my mom in our kids lives too.

Now as for the Nisse Men if you are wondering where these cute pictures came from, well my Mom's, Dad actually picked them up in Denmark while on his mission so I have no idea where you would find them now but lucky for you I have photo copied them all and can easily email them to you if you would like them too. I love the different traditions from around the world and I love teaching them to my kids as well. This one I love because my grandma on my dads side is actually full Danish and I know we have some Danish on my moms side to so I also get to teach my kids about our ancestors all in one big fun season. 

Here is a promo code for 10$ off the mymemories software that I just love! use STMMMS99421 at check out.

Fairy party for Breakfast!

 

OK so I have to say I didn't handle my moms passing as well as I thought I would. I know I am lucky to have wanted her to pass so she wouldn't have to suffer any more, but really I didn't know I would miss her so much. I also do not want my girls to forget Grandma Kairlee. So I found the solution to help me feel better and for my girls to never forget Grandma. Throw a party! I know I get my cookyness from my mom. She did do a lot for us kids and try to keep us busy and having fun. My favorite memory was one night soon after we had watched the movie Practical Magic, my mom woke up all of us kids at midnight for midnight margaritas. She had even got the soundtrack from the movie Practical Magic so we could dance around the table. Who wakes up, or at least tried to wake up, 9 kids in the middle of the night and I am pretty sure it was on a school night. That's my mom for you. It sure made a lasting memory for us. So to carry my mom spirit in our home I set up just a quick Fairy Breakfast for my girls last minute, but I gave credit all to my mom. When my girls think of fairies they always think of my mom because my mom had loved fairies and such. she even glued a little fairy door in her room. She loved her grand kids and was always buying stuff to encourage their imagination. Even though some of the stuff she bought she didn't want the kids to touch but I think that's because she couldn't get out of bed to make sure everything was put back and not broken. I guess that was apart of her anxiety, but she had good intentions I had also made up several stories about Grandma and how she was really good freinds with the Fairies and so did my dad.

So back to the party, I set this all up and then put a portable doorbell in my girls room and when to my bed and with the remote I kept ringing and ringing the doorbell until my girls got up. It was so cute to hear the excitement in their voices as they squealed Grandma Kairlee came last night!!!! now they know it was from Grandma Kairlee because about a week after my mom passed away a did something similar which I am not quite ready to share yet, it's to dear to my heart right now, but in short, I had bundled up a party package with a letter from "Grandma Kairlee" and left it on our doorstep and doorbell ditched my house. I told them it was from Grandma Kairlee and read their notes to them. It really helped Itylee who was having a hard time with dealing with her death. So I thought it was time to throw another party. I had told my girls Grandma must of had help from the fairies to make all these magical fairy food. They were so happy just to think Grandma and Fairies had come to our house while they slept.

I was so lucky to have just bought the BEST cookbook in the world recently. It's called Sophia's Cookbook For Mortals by Cheri Schmidt. It's a cook book from a point of view of one of her character from her Fateful trilogy and has recipes from some of the stuff they ate in the books, and lucky for me there is a section of fairy food! It was perfect, and the recipes are amazing!!

I highly suggest all of her books and if your lucky you might be able to get them while they are on sale! I got Sophia's Cookbook For Mortal for only .99 cents. Best .99 cents I have ever spent!!

Here's a link for all her books

From Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/cheri-schmidt?store=ALLPRODUCTS&keyword=cheri+schmidt

KOBO http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=cheri+schmidt

Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Sophias-Cookbook-Mortals-Fateful-ebook/dp/B0082RYGVM/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1344963761&sr=1-1&keywords=Sophia%27s+cookbook+for+mortals

This book is more than a cookbook to me. It's has really help in my healing process too. I know my mom would of totally loved all of Cheri Schmidt's books and I really wish I could of shared them with her, but for now when I read or make something like fairy food it really helps me remember my mom and how amazing she was and I know this is something she would do. So thank you Cheri you have really made a difference in my life with your books. Don't ever stop writing!

Picture below are Fairy Cakes (with a Delicious lemon curd inside) and Raspberry-Kissed Lemon Fairy Cupcakes

Fairy Fruit dip

 Inside-Out Cheesecake Bites

 Magic Fairy Juice (this is my favorite! It may look like milk but it's far from it)

 Such Happy Girls!

 The girls love the flying fairies

For those of you that don't agree with what I am doing to help carry on memories of my mom then simply don't read my post. This is our way of healing and yes my girls will one day find out it's been me but we will keep on doing these random parties in memory of my mom so that we will always remember her. In a way it really is from her. She raised me to have an imagination, and to always love and have fun with your kids. It's a piece of her that she had passed along to me in my blood. So thank you to all who have read this and I hope you have a wonderful day!

Pink and Black Paris Bridal Shower

I will go into depth about where I got a lot of my stuff because when ever I find a cute party on someone else's blog I wish they would list where they got everything so I could do the same. So I apologize in advance for the lengthy post.

So I was so fortunate to be able to plan another party for another one of my sister in laws who is getting married in June. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to plan her party. Wednesday, 18th, I was talking with my sister in law and discovered no one was planning a bridal shower for her and that she also wanted her sister who was moving to be able to come. So the only way was to have the party on the 28th. woo hoo I got to plan an entire bridal shower in 10 days which meant I also had to send out the invitations the next day. Lucky for me I have Mymemories suite software and whipped out the invitations that night and used Sendoutcards.com to print and mail them so everyone got their invitations on Saturday and gave them a weeks notice, which is good right? Anyways here is a picture of the invitation. Again I sent it out as a post card. Names,numbers and addresses have been change to protect identify.

For the Fireplace I used my Silhouette to cut out all the lettering, the 3D Eiffel tower and also the cute little shoes. I found some cute vases at the D.I. and just sprayed painted them black and stuck some fake flowers in a Styrofoam ball for the top of them. Next I found the cute little fans at hobby lobby and lucky for me they were 50% off. For the necklaces I found them at Zurchers and stuffed them in the shoes which I also used for decoration and for a thank you for coming gift. I am sorry I didn't take a close up of the Paris sign but I bought a roll of pearls from hobby lobby from the wedding section which I used to put together the Paris sign.

Now for this party I didn't have enough time to make a cake so I did the next best thing. I bought a Nothing bundt cake. mmmmm It was soooo good! I found the F at hobby lobby and spray painted them and the Eiffel tower I made with my Silhouette and did a small half pom pom for underneath it. The cake platter is actually a plate on top of an upside down sundae cup. The cup I did have to spray paint but luckily the dollar store had black plates. Again I used some of the little shoes to kind of decorate with but I also made a big shoe with my silhouette to put the forks in. And for the cake server my mother in law already had a little shoe serving knife that we got to use..

For the entry table I placed the thank you for coming gifts. I made cute little 3D dresses and filled them with Swedish fish and skittles. The clear cups I found at hobby lobby and I just filled them with pink tulle and topped them off with a small half pom pom. I was so lucky that hobby lobby had a cute Paris pack of paper so all the cute little shoes and dresses matched the theme so well.

OK so for the food I did ask my other sister in law to make some chicken salad mix then I got the smaller crescents at Sam's club and we had a salad, grapes, strawberries, cream puffs, a pudding and Oreo mix and then of course a Delicious slushing drink recipe here. I was even lucky enough to find Olive Garden salad dressing at Sam's club so it was a good salad. For the decorations I made the big shoes to hold spoons and forks, and I found the black vases at hobby lobby but they were clear I just sprayed painted them and topped them off with a half pom pom and I used the roll of pearls I got from hobby hobby to lay out around all the food. You cant really see them but I bought plastic champagne glass from hobby lobby for the drink

The pudding cups I found at Zurchers and placed a little ring around the base of them which I found the rings at Zurchers too.

Here is a link to all my cute cut outs.

3D Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

3D Dresses

Shoes (I couldn't find a shoe pattern on the silhouette online store so this link will take you to a website that has a pdf of it. then I used my silhouette program and just manually traced the design.)

For the Paris and Merci banners I just used a curly font from my computer.

If you are interested in the Mymemories suite software make sure to type in the promotion code STMMMS99421 and receive 10$ off your purchase price and 10$ to use in the design shop

Well that's about it. I hope you enjoyed it.

African Safari baby shower

Pin It

I know I have been distance lately from everything in my life but I have a good reason why. James' sister is having her first baby and I really wanted to throw her a baby shower. So I started back in february and I dedicated all my free time to make this the perfect baby shower. I'll first start with the invitations. I used My Memories Suite software to create the invitations it is seriously the best scrapbooking software you can use it for anything. Then I went to sendoutcards.com and had my pictures printed out on a postcard so I did not have to print out and mail the invitations myself they did it all for me.

Names, addresses, and phone numbers have been changed for the proctection of me and sister in-law. Where ever you see the name Mama is where my sister in-laws name was you already know my name so I left it.

This was what the front looked like where the mailing address was.

This was the back side of the post card.

So for the decorations I was able to get my hands on a Silhouette and cut out these cute little animal faces, lettering, baby diapers and accordion lolli.

For the little "thank for coming treats" I made preztels dipped in carmel then chocolate, chocolate dipped oreos, and little diapers filled with m&ms.

The picture below is where I had the presents put. There is a little table below the It's A Boy sign.

For the decor I just used empty cans from vegtables and covered them in paper and ribbon and topped it off with half a tissue pom pom and glued a little animal charater in the front.

For the food I simply did a deli bar with fruits and veggies. Very easy and stress free. Again a decorated with the cans and tiny tissue poms poms fromthe ceiling. I had also had some little animals faces just on the counter that I had left over.

I made a yummy slushy juice that was extremely easy and good. Here is the recipe for the juice.

I got the idea for the cake off of pinterest and it was my first time I have ever used marshmellow fondant.

The table below is what I had the game sheets and prizes on. I only did one game since there was going to be a lot of people. For the game I did The Nursery Rhyme Game. The sign below the table says SAFARI if you can't read it.

 I just put some cans on my banester to decorate it a little bit

The last decoration I did was this cute little diaper wreath for my door.

Here are the links to the silhouette store for all the cut outs I did.

Monkey

Elephant and zebra

Lion, tiger, and leopard

Diaper

I had so much fun planning this party. I also got to start and finish the office season 1-7 while working on this. So a double bonus. I know a lot of the time was spent trying to figure out how I wanted to decorate but then assembly all those cute little animal faces took a long time to. I made 108 of them. So don't worry I am storing this all in a box so hopefully I can use them again. If you live near by and want to borrow them I would be more than happy to and also could easily change the invitations for you. It would be really easy to change it for a girl party too. You just have to change out the blue for pink. Well I hope you enjoyed reading this!

If you are interested in getting the My Memories Suite software enter my code  STMMMS99421  at check out and get 10$ off the software and 10$ to use towards the purchase of some embellishment for your program.

Husband of the Year Award goes to.........

Ok if there was a husband of the year award I would totally be giving it to my husband right now. First I'll have to explain. So we are finishing our basement so that my hubby's brother, wife and 2 kids can move in. Well that means that I had to loose my awesome toy/school/craft room since it was in the one room that was finished in the basement. So I was planning on moving all of that into the guest room we had upstairs, the only problem was that the guest room was going to be very crowded with my stuff and my girls toys since the room is significantly smaller. So my hubby willingly gave up his office to let me turn it into my very own craft room. So I was super excited for that. Then while we were planning the kitchen in the basement we realized that the kitchen cabinets that we had previously gotten off of ksl for a steal, wouldn't work in the basement. So instead of getting rid of the whole kitchen set my husband agreed to let me put it up in my craft room. SWEET! So I got to work right away on cutting the counter and rearranging how I wanted the whole set to go up in my room. Then my awesome hubby lugged all the cabinets and counter top and put it all together for me. He has definitively spoiled me this year. Not only do I have my own very organized craft room he had also earlier got me the best serger I could have ever asked for. I am going to be having so much fun this coming year.

This is the before picture of the cabinets. The wall cabinets are behind the counter so you can't see them.

These are the pictures of my craft room.

Now I can't wait for the spring and summer time because I think I'll give the cabinets and counter top a new fresh look!

A Temple gift

So recently I had a friend of mine go through the Temple with her family. I was so excited for her so I wanted to do something special for her but had no clue what to do. So I hit up google to try and find a gift I could make but I could not find anything that had to do with just going through the temple. Great I had to come up with an idea on my own crap. So I thought I wanted to do like a temple kit or something before she went through the temple but freak what do I know I have never been through the Temple, so that idea was out the window. Then I decided to make a little "BASKET" full of blessing as a gift to help remind her how blessed she is. So I called up my visit teaching companion and we got to work. We kind of did it like the candy bar posters but I wanted it to be cute so we just put everything in a basket and I made the cute little cards with my digital scrapbooking program My Memories Suite. This is the best scrabooking software and if you would like to purchase it type in STMMMS99421 at checkout and get 10$ off and then 10$ to use in there store for embellishment. It will be the best purchase ever! I use it all the time.

This is what all the little cards say.

-A "BASKET" full of blessing. (basket)
-There are many "RIESENS" why you are blessed for going through the temple. (Riesens)
- Your family will be "EVERLASTING" (everlasting gobstoppers)
-You will be "SODA"-lighted to being one step closer to God. (her favorite soda)
- "U-NO" your marraiged has been strengthened. (U-NO candy bar)
-You will be able to "ACT" upon the spirit. (ACT popcorn.)
- Your kids will have a "PASTA"-tive example to look up to. (Pasta)
-There is "MUFFIN" like an eternal companion. (Her favorite muffin)
-You will have "JOY" beyond "MEASURE" (almond joys in a measuring cup.)
-It is an invest-"MINT" in reaching your eternal goals. (mints)
-You "SKOR"-ed one againsted Satan. (SKOR candy bar.)
-We're "NERDS" for not doing this earlier.(Nerds)
-"HUGS" and "KISSES" ~ Emmie & Jessie (Hugs and Kisses)



This could be a real cute idea for a bridal shower gift too. Well I hope you enjoyed. I loved how this turned out. This is my first time I have come up with an Idea all by myself with out relying on Pinterest, sugardoodle, blogs, or google. Yeah me. Maybe I will break through this creative block I am in.

Potty Training tips for the Independent child.

Ok so my little miss V is one of those kids that wants to be sooo independent. She has been showing interest in potty training for EVER but every time I step in to potty train her it totally back fires on me so I had a break off of work and finally told her, "Here you do this yourself." And gave her some panties and let her wear them with no pants around the house, and what do you know she did great. Only like one accident a day sometimes which was great! The only problem was I did this 2 days before I had to go back to work. She hasn't done so well when I put pants on her so during the day when I am home I leave her in just panties and at work I put her in  a diaper. Great I don't think she is ever going to be potty train A) because it is not socially acceptable to let your child run around in her underwear all day and B) it is starting to get cold so my poor little miss V can't run around naked. Luckly I was cleaning her room and found one of those little diaper covers that came with an old dress and decided turn them into "Pretty Panties" so that I could continue the potty training at work. All I did was sewed some small lace in rows on the butt then got a bigger lace to go around the entire waist part and viola pretty panties that people will think is a skirt. Now for the cold part, I had made these leg warmers for Itylee when she was a baby but these work perfect for potty training. They keep her warm and she doesn't have to take them off to go potty! Score!!! If there are people interested in learning how to make the leg warmers let me know. I'll do a tutorial if people are interested. They are super easy! I put a panty liner in her panties because there have been times where she pee's just a little bit and this way it doesn't totally wet the panties and keeps her feeling like she is wearing big girl panties. Now some other tips you could do it a visit from the Potty Fairy. I did this with Itylee and she was good to go. Fill a basket with little prizes or treat wrap it up all cute and knock on the door and run. Tell your little one that the potty fairy dropped off this package so every time they go potty they get to choose a prize. Now with Vienna being all independent this did not work instead one time I got upset and told her "Fine you pee pee in the potty you get your potty treat. But you pee pee in the panties and I get your potty treat." Then I ate her treat right in front of her. Oh man did this get her mad. So with the "pretty panties" and the "i get your treat" I think we will be totally done with diapers soon. YEAH!!!!! Don't mind the little stain on the pretty panties I should of taken the picture before she had lunch. dang spaghetti ooo's.