Ms. Drew

Since I went back to work when Blake was 3 months old, we have been so blessed to always have such wonderful caregivers.  First with Mrs. Rhonda, who was truly an answered prayer and cared for our baby as if he was her own, and now with Ms. Drew.  

Some people just have that special ability to really connect with children – on an emotional level where they just always know the right thing to do or say to make the children feel better, on a physical level where they really get down on the floor with the kids and play, on an intellectual level where they take every opportunity and turn it into a teaching moment, and on a friend level where the kids just want to hang out with them.  That is Ms. Drew.   More often than not, she has soft music playing and all the kids happily engaged in an activity when I pick Blake up, she picks him up every morning to wave bye to us when we drop him off, and she even offered me a hug when I started to lose it when Blake moved to her class.  


Thank you Ms. Drew for all you've done for Blake and for your incredibly sweet note that we look forward to sharing with Blake over the years:

"In the toddler room I always thought of Blake as confident, funny, and quick to learn. However, having him in my class these last few months has offered me a whole new perspective. While my previous judgements were accurate, they were lacking in magnitude. Blake wins over a room when he walks in. He is not just funny, but hilarious. He has had me doubled over laughing on more than one occasion. And he is not just quick, but that special kind of bright not found often. He is lucky to have such engaging and loving parents. I wish I could express the depth of my love for him, but this note just couldn’t contain it."

You are irreplaceable and will be deeply missed by all of us, but we wish you all the best in Ohio!

Renovating the Dining Room

There's some dining room renovations going on at the Smith house this week. Maybe "renovate" is a strong word. Whatever it is, it's a bit of a mess right now but should be done in a few days. Nothing too crazy, we're not knocking down any walls or anything...just wiring for a couple of sconces and some recessed paneling around the bottom and over to the stairs. I have always loved recessed paneling/wainscoting/board and batten (still not sure I know the difference between each of those) and I can't wait to see it all done!

Here are the "in progress" pictures:

It probably would have helped to move the table to get a better picture but it's there as a boundary for Mr Blake and I was too lazy to move it...

Randy had an idea to use the tops to Pyrex storage bowls to mark the future sconces...fancy huh?

When we were building our last house, we walked in one day to find this carved into the insulation. We still laugh that underneath those painted walls and home decor is the word "Mexico" carved into our beloved home. So naturally, Randy had to make his mark on our new home before the paneling gets added:

I hope to post the "after" pics within the next few days!

"Bunny tried to get me"

Uh-oh. Second weekend in a row that we've had an animal mishap. (This directly follows the "goat knocked me over" episode at the rodeo last weekend.) At a street food festival yesterday, Blake and I went into a mini petting zoo. All was going well with the first bunny:

But then Blake saw the larger bunny, chickens, and turtles that the other kids were holding and wanted to hold a different bunny. The lady put a bigger bunny on his lap, who promptly tried to nuzzle its way into Blake's stomach. Well Blake was having no part of that and immediately started poking the bunny and trying to push it off his lap. I was trying to strike a balance between having the bunny go flying on the floor and being on the next episode of "When Animals Attack" when the lady stepped in and took the bunny away. Blake was D-O-N-E. He wanted out of the petting zoo immediately.

Since we will shortly be entering Easter bunny territory and I don't want him to be deathly afraid of bunnies, I have been trying to convince him that the bunny was just trying to give him kisses but I don't think he's buying it. The last thing he said to me when I laid him down last night was, "Bunny tried to get me." There will be a little petting zoo at our neighborhood Easter egg hunt next weekend and I'm really hoping all goes well or we will need to take a little break from animals.

"Goat knocked me over"

Yesterday we took Blake to his first rodeo. "We" being me and "Jim", Randy's rodeo alter-ego. Check out his cool belt that he's held onto since picking it up at a thrift store for a date party in college. Lucky me that he still decides to wear it now. Just kidding honey. It looked great with your Sevens.

Anyways, Blake enjoyed the petting zoo and seeing all of the animals but I think the thing that's stuck out most in his mind is that a goat nudged his chest and knocked him over at the petting zoo. Every time we've mentioned the animals since the rodeo, he's been sure to mention that "Goat knocked me over," sometimes followed by, "I'm just a little guy. He supposed to not do that." We will only be showing him these pictures in the future and hope that he forgets about that mean little goat.

Actually I'm pretty sure he won't forget driving the tractor:

"Hi, I'm Blake Smiff."

"Reindeer"

Party Planning - Choo Choo Blake is 2!

I just love party planning. I spent so many months planning Blake’s 2nd birthday and my mom’s 60th surprise bday that I’m having some withdrawals now that the parties are over and nothing is on the horizon. I’ve received several questions and compliments on Blake’s party…so I must admit, these are not all my ideas. I pull most of the ideas from different blogs and party planning sites, so I thought it only fair to put together a blog of all of my sources. Plus, I may forget these sources when planning the next party and need something to look back at to jog my memory.

Like a lot of toddler boys, Blake is obsessed with trains. So naturally we went with a train theme for his 2nd birthday: "Choo Choo Blake is 2!" (Confession: even if he wasn’t crazy about trains, we might’ve still gone with a train theme because I'm a sucker for a theme that rhymes.)

Here's the birthday boy. I was able to snap a picture of him while he was standing still to watch an airplane fly over:


After spending a lot of time on Pinterest and Etsy, here’s how the party all came together (links to vendors at bottom):

Invitations
Starting with the invitations, I went to my go-to person on Etsy who modified her invites to fit our blue/green/black color scheme.



The Train
I really wanted Randy to build a train like one I found online for pictures and to have something in the front yard. I didn’t know if I’d be able to convince him to do it but I told him about it once or twice and the next time we talked about it, he had made plans to get together with some friends to build it. Isn’t it adorable? The smokestacks are dustpans, the wheels are bucket lids, and the little track (I’m sure there’s a more appropriate name for that) along the wheels is a pipe! How creative is he? They spent a couple of hours constructing it and then it was my turn to have fun by giving it some paint and adding the letters. I love how it all came together. I just wish we still had some way to use it. Let me know if you know a little boy with a train party coming up!



I also wanted to have a railroad crossing in the yard. I used foam board thinking it was thick and would save me a step since it’s already white and I wouldn’t have to paint it. I don’t recommend that – it was a major pain to cut a straight piece out of it, even with an exacto knife. I stenciled the letters on and colored them in with a Sharpie. At the last minute, I asked Randy to make train tracks on the sidewalk out of electrical tape (thanks pinterest) but we didn’t have enough and the yard was starting to look a little ridiculous so we had to pass on that idea.


And of course what train party is complete without a train for the kids to ride? What else do you do with a bunch of 2-5 year olds at your house?


The Food
And then it was time to plan the food. I knew I wanted a dessert table. If you’ve ever spent any time looking at party planning sites, the dessert tables and backdrops are always adorable. I couldn’t resist. So I covered a piece of board we happened to have with green fabric and used wood glue (or actually, my mom used wood glue) to attach the letters which I made by tracing bulletin board letters onto patterned paper. (Please excuse the drab dining room. We're still trying to decorate our house and just haven't gotten to this room yet.)


Choo Choo Cupcakes

Conductor’s Cake (I bought the little painted trains at Hobby Lobby and painted them to match the party colors)


Caboose Candy - Lollipops, blue and green M&Ms, green swirly sugar sticks

Engineer’s Cookies – which I made using a train cookie cutter and this Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe – these are SO good

Locomotive Pretzels - chocolate covered pretzels
Chocolate Covered Oreo Pops - following this tutorial I found online, I made both white and milk chocolate. I also made oreo pops with yellow chocolate and attempted to draw a RR crossing on them. I got the circle and the X right but there was no way I was fitting an “RR” in there. It’s still on my list to figure out how to do that…

To avoid sending everyone home on a sugar high, we also had a separate table with:
Signal Skewers – fruit and cheese skewers (I made the round RR crossing signals by googling a RR crossing sign, printing it out on photo paper and cutting it out with a 2" round cutter)


Train Track Crackers – snack cups filled with goldfish
Produce Car – carrots and celery

Station House Sandwiches

Log Car – pretzel sticks


Favors
I always say I’m going to do something simple for favors and then I come across something I can't pass up. When I saw train shaped crayons on Etsy, I knew I could probably make these myself. I ordered a chocolate train mold off Amazon, melted crayons in a soup can over a double boiler, poured the hot wax into the mold, let it set for a few minutes in the freezer, popped them out and voila – train crayons!! There’s dozens of detailed tutorials out there on how to do this but that’s really all there is to it. After they pop out, you may have to do a little carving to get a little extra wax off but for the most part they’re really simple. I made it more complicated by having each train car be a different color so I had to repeat this several times to get enough crayons. It would be a lot easier if you mixed up the colors. Each favor also had a train whistle, train coloring book, and a train shaped sugar cookie in a bag with a tag that said “Choo Choo, Thank You!”

The only picture I had of the train crayons was on my phone and I think it got lost when Blake wiped my phone one time, so unfortunately no pic of these. :(

Kids Table
I covered the kids table in white butcher paper and put a bucket with some crayons and train stickers in the middle. I also stenciled some trains on the paper so the kids had fun coloring those too. If I knew what to do with it other than rolling it up and having it take up space in our closet, I would’ve kept it because all the doodling and drawing was really fun to look at after the party was over.


Decorations
Table centerpieces - I loved these centerpieces I came across on a blog and really wanted to use them throughout the party. With a lot of help from my mom, they came together to look like this. We stuffed the buckets with plastic bags (to give a little padding at the bottom and not have to use so many beans), filled it up with dried beans, then topped it off with little candies. We attached a die-cut train to a wooden dowel and propped it up in the bucket. To finish it off, we tied a ribbon around the bucket and taped a cupcake topper to cover where the ribbon meets. The buckets on other tables had yellow railroad crossing oreo pops stuck in them as well.

And this train banner added a little something in the living room…where a lot of eyes ended up being focused due to the Saints playing on TV during the party.



Thanks to everyone who helped pull the party together and suffer through my bossiness: my mom, Randy’s mom, Lightwine, Chad and of course Randy

Here’s the links to all of the party resources. Hope I didn't forget any. I’m so glad there’s talented people out there to make this stuff:
Invitations - http://www.etsy.com/shop/TintsAndPrints
Happy Birthday banner, cupcake toppers, favor tags -http://www.etsy.com/shop/frogprincepaperie
“Blake” train banner – http://www.etsy.com/shop/Dimpleprints
Train rental - http://www.kiddieexpresstrain.com/
Train whistles and train coloring books for favors – Target $1 bins
Birthday cake - Whole Foods
Sandwiches - HEB
Lollipops - Candy Warehouse
M&Ms, sugar sticks – Lammes Candies
Train die-cuts on centerpieces - http://www.etsy.com/shop/dillonsgirl
Blue buckets – IKEA
Train shirt for our birthday boy - http://www.etsy.com/shop/lilshabebe

Party inspiration:
http://www.thetomkatstudio.com/new-to-the-shop-vintage-train-birthday-party-collection/
http://jcaugustine1.blogspot.com/2010/10/all-aboard-graysons-2nd-birthday-party.html
http://atozebracelebrations.blogspot.com/2010/09/train-party.html



And I’ll save my mom’s party for another blog…

Has it really been 5 months?

Wow, really? Almost 5 months since I've blogged about anything? How did that happen? Certainly not for lack of something to blog about. Lately all kinds of things have been popping into my head, so let the blog posts resume right....now.

Copper & Wool

Ever since our 1st anniversary, Randy and I have used the modern and/or traditional anniversary gifts list. Trying to come up with unique gifts for other occasions throughout the year is hard enough, so this helps keep anniversary gifts fun and interesting. The 7th year’s traditional gifts are copper and wool. The modern gift is desk sets. So you can see how this can be challenging. Obviously, I don’t want to just get him a wool sweater. Now for Randy, this could be pretty simple – copper cookware, and oh did I mention that the 7th year jewelry is yellow sapphire? Too bad we don’t actually follow that list and try to keep the gifts a little more affordable. It’s pretty comical what we come up with. Some years are easier than others.

For example, last year was candy. Easy enough, right? Here’s what I got Randy: pink and brown M&Ms (our wedding colors), candy corn (popular candy for our wedding month), chocolate covered pretzels (for all the twists and turns of marriage…yeah, the gifts can get cheesy), and sour patch kids (for all the times he has put up with me when I’ve been sour (again, the cheesiness factor), each in a little baggy with a note attached explaining the connection.

I kid you not, this is what Randy gave me: Peanut M&Ms surrounded by Ghiradelli chocolates in a CEREAL BOWL!

It still makes me laugh when I see this picture because I know exactly what went through his head when we first looked at the gift list in September:

“Awesome. Candy. Easy enough. I’ll just go buy her favorite candy the day before. Done and done. “

And then I can just picture him trying to arrange the candy just so. I will never forget the look on his face when he gave me the cereal bowl. A look of “Er, maybe I should’ve put this in something different but here you go, hope you like it.” So maybe the presentation fell short but he always has good intentions and that’s one of the things I love about him.

Fast forward to year 7 and check out how the presentation has improved. 2 heart cookies made with a copper cookie cutter and a “7” made out of chocolate chips! I was very impressed. Add to that a copper bracelet and a copper mixing bowl and Randy outdid himself this year.

I’m so thankful to have a husband who plays along and follows the list and actually puts some thought into the gift. I can’t believe it’s already been 7 years. It’s always fun to look back at pictures and see how much we’ve changed.

Then...

And now...

Can't wait to see what year 8 brings!