Arieldonenow

My little baby from above is 4 years old, can you believe it? I surely can't!  This year we kept her celebrations simple by having a little cupcake and treats party at her preschool. I also wanted to have our customary little photo shoot to capture her sweetness at this age!  All those who know me understand how much I love photography, and I jump at the chance to experiment with different light, textures and colors with new shoots all the time. Kids make the best subjects for photos, they don't worry about "bad pictures" and allow you to capture unscripted Kodak moments. As usual I had an overload of ideas for the shoot and finally decided a simply tissue paper number 4 would be the perfect prop for her pictures!  Once the idea was planted in my head, there was no shaking it.  I assembled all the materials I needed and got to work. For this project I used the following  20x30x3/16 inch foam board 1 pack of pink gift tissue paper floral twine Fiskars heavy duty ...

For thanksgiving dinner this year I decided to bring along one side dish and one dessert. I needed a dessert that was quick and easy to make, and would survive a long drive without refrigeration. After much deliberation I came across the hybrid brownie/cookie. I decided to combine a few different recipes I saw online and tailor it to suit my needs. I didn't have a lot of time on thanksgiving morning so I made a super easy version using Duncan Hines fudge brownie mix and Nestle Toll House cookie dough. I know this will taste ten times better if I make the dough and brownie batter from scratch. Tossing in a few marshmallows won't be a bad idea either! To begin with I sprayed Pam in a 13x9 baking pan. Then I lined the bottom of the pan with one and a quarter tube of the chocolate chip cookie dough. Next I added a layer of Oreo cookies, if your baking pan isn't deep enough you can crush the Oreo cookies up so you get a thinner layer of oreos.  Then I mixed up the brownie batter...

Potty training began quite early for us, and it wasn't intentional at all. I had been thoroughly warned by all moms that trying to start potty training too early could have dire effects {cue dramatic music} But my little girl had a mind of her own. Below I've listed all the gear we used on our potty training journey. [1] Potty training seat Just before her first birthday, we were finally winning our war against diaper rash  when I started to notice that every single time I went to change her diaper she was completely dry and would proceed to pee on me only after I removed the diaper.  She did this consistently every single time. I happened to mention this to her pediatrician who suggested that I just place her on a potty as soon as I take off the diaper and see how that worked out. I was initially quite hesitant, she seemed way too young for a potty, but the more I thought about it, the suggestion made perfect sense. The truth is I've never liked the idea of a stand alone p...

For her first two birthdays we kept it very simple, but for several months now I've known that her third birthday would be a different story. In the past few months she has been to so many different parties and fell in love with them all. She would ask me constantly when she would get to have her own birthday party. I knew, without a doubt, we simply had to throw a celebration for her.  After a long process of elimination we decided to go with a indoor bouncy jumping party place. I felt quite pleased with myself for booking an all inclusive party that would provide everything right down to the goodie bags. This meant I had to do absolutely nothing except show up in time for the party. This should have been good news for most people, except of course for DIY addicts like myself. I just felt that everything was a tiny bit too generic for my liking and I needed to add a few personal touches. The event location gave us the option to provide an image for the ice cream cake that was part...