Good Shepherd's Garden Party ~ Week Three

We held our party on Saturday evening after the girls' piano recital. We offered them a special dinner of their own choosing, but they asked for this... and a trip to the coffee shop!

The Heavens Tell God’s Glory

This week was almost exactly like last year (without the pulled muscle).

The Sun

The Cloud

The Rain, the Lightning and the Hail

The straw was the lightning. It was supposed to be yellow but looked more greenish.

The Wind

We made our own kite brownies. I hate frosting brownies because they are so flaky on top but it was definitely more fun than buying the prepackaged ones. We were going to embellish them further, but ran out of time before the recital.

The Rainbow

  

{pretty, happy, funny, real} St. George redux

Faithful servant of God and invincible martyr, Saint George;

favored by God with the gift of faith, and inflamed with an ardent love of Christ, thou didst fight valiantly against the dragon of pride, falsehood, and deceit. Neither pain nor torture, sword nor death could part thee from the love of Christ. I fervently implore thee for the sake of this love to help me by thy intercession to overcome the temptations that surround me, and to bear bravely the trials that oppress me, so that I may patiently carry the cross which is placed upon me; and let neither distress nor difficulties separate me from the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Valiant champion of the Faith, assist me in the combat against evil, that I may win the crown promised to them that persevere unto the end.

{pretty}

~pretty baby... with CRAZY hair! This is what you get when Daddy does the after bath hairstyling!

{happy}

It is a very happy 7 year old who has a sword to brandish and scorch marks on his shield. Shortcake made the swords and I used a candle to scorch his shield. It was just a Chinet oval platter with some crepe paper glued on and a ribbon for a handle.

{funny}

~funny baby, funny cake

{real}

~real sisters help you slay the dragon!

What I thought was just allergies turned into a full blown cold for The Professor. Fever, sniffles, gunk and hives. Yes, hives. That's how his immune system responds to a virus. Thankfully he's outgrown the full body hives he used to get and now just gets one or two. 

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter

Cabbage Eggs

I meant to post this last week but then I didn't get to it. I mentioned that our first batch of cabbage dyed eggs didn't work and I think it was because my hand slipped while pouring the baking soda and I dumped more than I intended. So we decided to see if various amounts of baking soda affected the color of this second batch. Our experiment was to boil red cabbage leaves, make a natural vegetable dye and then test different amounts of baking soda on the dye both with and without vinegar.

Here were the results:

According to the natural egg dying lore out there, baking soda makes the dye look more teal than blue and that has always been our experience. You can see it most strongly in the second row from the bottom egg on the right. Except this time. You can judge the results of this highly unscientific experiment yourself. 

This one is deceptive. It was dyed in cabbage dye and 1 Tbl. of vinegar. The vinegar is supposed to soften the shell just slightly and help it accept the dye... kind of like sanding before you paint. Well, it turned out this really lovely blue color but as you can see...

... that was only a surface film. It rubbed off as soon as we started handling the eggs. 

When all was said and done, it was about the same as the rest.

 

Almost ready for the slaying...

 BigBoy is so proud of  the dragon he helped decorate this morning. He is busy making swords out of butter knives and a shield to go with it. I was tempted to not do a dragon this year. We don't need more treats in the house and we just had our Garden Party on Saturday, and frankly, I admit it, I only have one child who still gets really excited about the idea of a frosting covered dragon cake. But I wanted him to know that his excitement was worth it. It's different than when I had four children all excited, but it's still worth acknowledging. I guess I didn't want him to feel like we were saying, "Well, if it's just for you, I'm not going to bother." So, call it mommy guilt or just the fact that I love to see that shadow dimple of his when he smiles, but he is worth the effort. His excitement alone is worth my time. It's worth a messy kitchen. It's worth not getting something else done today.

We tried to make him ferocious, but this was as close as we got. Maybe it's a she... those nails look a little too manicured for a boy dragon. That's the last time I use red M&M's for claws. I used all non-dairy cake this year and no ding-dongs....just two round layers and about 6 cupcakes. BigBoy helped with the green spots and the scales on the back. Oh, he also chose and placed the red eyes. I painted the fire with food coloring. It was super easy! There are some more ideas over at Catholic Cuisine for celebrating the day. A dragon cake isn't your only option. And don't forget to link up any celebrating you do with food. We'd love to see it!

Happy Feast of St. George to you and your little knights!

 

Good Shepherd's Garden Party ~ Week Two

This week's party was quite a challenge! I have some gunk faced kids with varying degrees of lower GI distress. I think it's a either a very mild cold or very bad allergies. When my kids get gunky, they usually forgo dairy products as those just seem to add to the gunk in the throat and the intestinal distress. Like I said, it seems to be very mild but significant enough to make us decide to skip the dairy for a few days.

We had our party on Saturday and while it looks more appropriate for a lunchtime meal but it was perfect for our current non-appetites. We could have skipped this week, but I saw it as a challenge to be creative and adapt to my family's needs. We still needed to eat dinner but we catered it to our particular tastes of the day.

~Welcome to the Lord's Table~

We decorated the table with some more of our gardenia blossoms. They were beautiful but were almost too fragrant!

We made peanut butter and honey sandwiches combining two of the symbols into one, bread and honey.

 Ginger ale was as close to wine as anyone wanted to drink. It was very soothing on the tummies.

 Fruit was on the table but it was mostly just nibbled on.

Since I didn't want to make anyone's tummy rumbles worse by serving our beloved Blue Bell ice cream, we opted for some coconut milk ice cream. We could have just skipped it, but the cold treat was comforting to some sore throats. Honestly, we'd never tried this brand before but the mint was better than the chocolate. I prefer So Delicious when I can find it.

Don't forget to link up over at Catholic Cuisine and show us how you are celebrating Easter this week! BigBoy pleaded for a dragon cake for St. George's Day tomorrow so I'm working on a dairy free option for that today. Here's the tutorial again for anyone interested and links to past dragon cakes...

Part One: Dragon Cake Tutorial
Part Two: Putting it together
Frosting the dragon
Dragon Cakes Past (2007-2009)
Happy Feast of St. George (2010)

 

{p,h,f,r} April 19th

Today is the 17th anniversary of the day he asked the question and I said "Yes!" Look sweetie, it's a beautiful day with not a tornado in sight! And look at where that "yes" finds us now...

{pretty}

Pretty little Cupcake wearing pink poodles ~ makes her big sisters squee!

{happy}

She is happiest when playing with the phone or a remote. Dwija's right... don't buy your baby toys. Although, someone gave us one of those wipey warmers and my baby's tushie loved it. And yes, her daddy does think she's the icing on the cupcake!

{funny}

Mommy, why does everyone keep laughing at me and saying , "She's sooooo tiny?"

 Our Target has the deepest carts in the world! I know she's short, but come on...

{real}

Really bad picture, but this is real life! I discovered that you can use painter's tape to help you caulk a nice straight line when I recaulked the kids tub. Apply the tape over and under where you want the caulk line to go, squeeze on the caulk, smooth with your finger or a tool and then pull the tape off. Let it cure completely. Easy peasy!

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
with the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter

Library Day!

We haven't been getting to the library as often as we did before Cupcake was born but I'm sure we'll be back to our regular visits as soon as those dog days of summer make us start whimpering for relief. Today though, we planned it and it happened! Whoo hoo! My kids missed searching the shelves for their old favorites. I usually hit the New Acquisitions Shelf and pull off what I think they might like. Today, I moseyed on over to the Texas Bluebonnet Books and look what I happened to see...

Zita the Spacegirl is up for a Bluebonnet Award! For those of you who don't know, the Texas Bluebonnet Award is a kid's choice award. Libraries, school and home school associations, teachers, and parents submit nominees and then children between the third and sixth grade vote on their favorite. You must read at least five of the nominees before you can vote. Since we own a copy of Zita, we checked out four others and plan to vote as soon as we get them read... which should be in a few hours! My kids have been starved for new things to read! They are devouring our crate full of books like ravenous wolves!

So all you Texas people, git on over to your library, grab yourself at least five Bluebonnet nominees and vote! (Vote for Zita!) Most libraries keep them on a special shelf to make picking them up so handy dandy!

UPDATE: Just discovered that our librarian gave me some misinformation. Voting does not happen all year long. It only occurs during the month of January. So, you have all year to read the 2012-2013 nominees and then you can vote (for Zita!) for your favorite in January of 2013. The award will be presented in Spring 2013. So get busy reading those books and I will remind you to vote (for Zita!) next January!

Other finds of the day for The Professor...

The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict (The Mysterious Benedict Society) by Trenton Lee Stewart
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord (inspired by his Aunt Heather's interest in all things Titanic)
Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal

...for Sunshine and Shortcake...

Blue Willow by Doris Gates
The Doll Shop Downstairs by Yona Zeldis McDonough
The President's Daughter by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley (Sunshine has enjoyed the other books by this author, One-of-a-Kind Mallie, Ruthie's Gift and Weaver's Daughter)

... for BigBoy...

The Book of Dragons by Michael Hague (I think he thought it was the E. Nesbit book with the same name. It's not but it still looks promising.)
100th Day: A Spot-It Challenge by Sarah Schuette
Red Legs: A Drummer Boy of the Civil War by Ted Lewin (an unexpected ending even caught the older kids off guard)

...for me...

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell (I'm previewing it for the girls, actually)

These were not all of the books we took home, only a selection of the ones new to us. Our receipt of items checked out was actually taller than BigBoy! And now... we bask in the exceptional quiet of the afternoon. Sigh. I love library days!