Wise Owl Giveaway & Learning Curve

I just love checking out my girlfriends blog. I am just GREEN with ENVY for her crafty-ness!! :) she is such a fun girl too so I love following her blog and getting updates on what she is doing in my inbox every few days. And she always has great music on her blog so I always can't wait to see what pops up! Ha ha!

I talk about Amanda because she makes some awesome stationary and some really fun "felties" that you can use if you make cards or you scrapbook. I just used my third feltie (and last - boo!) that I bought from her etsy shop this last week when I went scrapbooking. I put a cute bird she made on the layout I did for Riley showing how she learned to ride her bike! Very cute and fun layout to make! I was remembering her decision to finally learn how to ride and her big brother helping her. Sweet time.

Amanda is doing a "Give Away" of some great stationary she hand made and a hand made Wise Owl feltie. I REALLY WANT TO WIN IT!!!! But I also need to tell my followers about it and the friends that get my Blog by email so you can sign up for a chance too. Here is the post about the giveaway but if you click on the Title of her Blog you can go and see some other posts she has made. Some are really funny and the latest one was kind of sad because she had an "Alexander" kind of day today!! So go check her out and send her good vibes for GOOD DAYS AHEAD!!! :)

http://craftypapergirl.blogspot.com/2009/10/giveaway-day.html

Prince Pasta Bowl Restaurant

Well, the girls finished the new restaurant and opened for business. They even made a menu which was very cute! (With everything spelled phonetically of course.) They then enlisted the help of The Man to cook spaghetti and came and delivered an invitation to Emma's mom an me to come to dinner!

We had spaghetti with bacon bits and red sauce. They also found the stashed bottle of favorite white wine in the downstairs fridge and served that! Yum! I am kinda wondering if Riley has secretly been hanging out at Amanda's house because she has been so crafty lately! She tied the silverware up inside the paper napkins with some of my ribbon :) ! Lovely dinner and all before the rain came pouring down again!

Now those are Two Happy Mommas!!!!

Sweetie's Lollypops

Whew!! What a day. My youngest is a massive ball of energy, always asking me to help her do something. (I am now wondering if she learned that by watching me always ask her father to help me do something??) I am glad she asks me though and doesn't just set about doing something on her own because many times it involves some kind of danger. (again wondering where she learned that...)

Today she asked if we could make lollypops. I had bought everything to do this a few days ago but got side tracked by my buddy Rebecca who, besides being able to do everything else in the world, is a fire hooper. HUH?? Well, she hula-hoops and lights the hoop on fire!!! How cool!! She is such an amazing person! So she called me Friday night and said she and her daughter were going hula-hooping in the park and did we want to come. Uh... YEAH!!! And just for the record, I have never been able to hula-hoop. Seriously. Never could keep that hoop going around and around my tummy. So Becky taught me Friday night and it is now my new obsession. Yes, I will be having a party and paying Rebecca to come and teach my girlfriends!! Needless to say, when someone calls and asks if I want to do something new, I am all in and I knew the lollys would wait a few days. So here we are on Sunday afternoon and Riley remembers we were going to make lollys on Friday so of course we need to start NOW!!! (Never mind I have a paper due tomorrow and a take home test to turn in!!!)

Sweet Keith decided to get it all going while I finished my spreadsheet and paper (love that guy!!) and then I joined them and took some pics. (Of course if I had remembered to put my flipin' card back in my camera, I would have had great pics of us hula-hooping on Fri. night! DUH!!) We had fun making the candy. You have to boil the sugar and corn syrup until it reaches 305 degrees! and then put it in an ice bath for 10 seconds. Only Sweet Keith counts in Mississippi-Mississippi's for his seconds so I think it was a little too long. Anyway, then you add the flavoring (we used orange extract) and the coloring. They came out too thick because we decided to jam ourselves into a corner of the kitchen instead of using an open counter and so we were all on top of eachother trying to work too fast because the candy was cooling too quickly and getting hard fast. It is ok, because we can try it again another day!! And you have to be really careful not to touch your skin and stir slow when adding the water based stuff cause it boils immediately! Here are some fun shots! Enjoy!