Candy Sled Racing

This is a pretty fun activity- kids and adults love building with candy.  But if you do it just be sure you have about 5x as much hot glue stick refills as you think you'll need!

(Mid potty-training/flu week at our house, this cutest new shirt got poop all over it.  So I put it in oxi clean, which took out the poop like a dream, and took the gold dots off too :(  I still love the shirt but mourn the metallic polka dots!

The ramp in the backyard!  We have just used cardboard on the stairs before, but with so much wood around the Hathaway house, Scott ramped it up (if you will) and built this with Shane before the big race!

I am proud to say that my sled, "Curly Red" won the beauty contest, which isn't super accurate when you have a 2 year old for a judge!

Her dream come true!

Another successful year of candy sled races!

December 2014- A Random Compilation

This $2 Gingerbread Cottage from the Target $1 section was perfect!  Just enough thrill and not elaborate enough to get too demanding.  

Frosting sugar cookies was probably her favorite holiday activity!  Good thing I have a small collection of cookie cutters now so we can do it for more holidays too!

I loved our little Christmas tree!  And now that we have a 3ft fake tree we will have a kid/tacky tree for life, and I can decorate our 7 footer how I want :)  A good scheme this year if you ask me! 

FAKE CHRISTMAS MORNING!  

We had such a fun morning relaxing and doing gifts and breakfast with Tatum. It was nice to open a few things while still in NY so we didn't have to fly everything back and forth, and so Tatum could open gifts from Besta and Grampy and the Tanner family at her own pace.  She was such a gem saying "THANK YOU SO MUCH!" after every gift!

New bath toys! That aren't molding from water getting left inside them... Hooray!

Her favorite gift by FAR was this little tea set!  She loves the music playing when she pours, but thankfully hasn't found the on/off switch so we can still turn it off once we've heard it 10,000 times and need a break!  She spends literally hours pouring us tea and delivering it with a little cupcake on a saucer.  It is the cutest thing!!

3 princesses at playgroup!

Tate really loved doing our thankful tree in November. She got really into collecting leaves with me and even remembered perfectly what each leaf said that any of us had written earlier in the month!

Painting for cinnamon rolls!  I combined about 4 recipes and they turned out great, but I have no idea how to replicate them!  Oops!

Checking out the Rockefeller tree was high on my holiday to do list!  It was even bigger and grander than I even thought!  I really loved it, but I could do without the crowds!

My friend Kristel came to visit the city and it was so fun to meet up and catch up!  This was her first subway ride alone, we were both so proud :)

And Tatum, throwing wishes!  The girl is motivated by money, but she doesn't even know its money!  All she cares about it earning wishes to throw in fountains and ponds.  She carries them around in her pockets (checking to be sure they are still there about every 30 seconds) and waits and waits for a chance to throw a wish!  This fountain in Chelsea Markets is where the wish obsession began!

2015 New Years Glow Party

I saw this party idea on pinterest and then just bought what I could find at the dollar store and some hats, since for Tatum, hats= PARTY time!

 

We felt so lucky our friends Dane and Korine were in town and could come over for our little dinner party! And Dane's parents are good friends with SueAnn, so everybody there had a friend!  The Dellenbachs were the perfect guests!

Getting set up is almost as much fun as the party itself! To give you an idea, my budget was $20, so this is what I could get for 10 people for that price!

Wand Wars!

I just love this shot!  You can kind of see the black light in the back-- it used $4 of my budget and wasn't worth it.  Also, I made "glow in the dark jello" which uses tonic water and is supposed to make it glow in the dark, but also makes it taste bitter.  Mine tasted bitter, and didn't glow...

Bowling!  I was a little nervous having the kids throw balls right toward the wall of glass doors, but luckily it was all okay!  They had fun both knocking them over and setting them up!

Korine's chocolate cake took the cake!  After thinking about it for almost a month now, I think it was the best cake I've ever had.  It was really so so good.  And, she used gold dust atop the juicy, beautiful raspberries, so that didn't hurt either.

I mean, it was really reallllly delicious!  Here is the recipe from King Arthur Flour.

And, the Name Game, or Times Up, whichever you call it.  We only got through the first round before it was 9pm and time to celebrate the New Year!  What a relief to feel GREAT about going to bed early this year!  I always beat myself up about not liking staying up so late, but this year I had zero qualms.  It was really nice.

The place settings:

Bring it on 2015!