Happy Birthday Bo!

Yesterday was my little nephew Bo's first birthday. This is my brother Matt's third child. (That sentence in and of itself is mind blowing, if you know my brother!!)

Little Bo (Bowen) had some complications when he was born, so to see him one year later is a blessing. He's a healthy boy :)

So yesterday was his one year birthday. It was a family affair! We all met at Matt and Tera's house for the festivities. There was no shortage of entertainment, that's for sure! Between the unending supply of toys, menagerie of animals (3 dogs, 2 rabbits, and I think maybe some fish)and of course, all the kids, it was definitely a par-tay!

Here's a recap of the night in pictures:

My sis, Mandi, and her little bit, Evan


Evan with the birthday boy, Bo


Aunt Staci with Bo


Birthday cake time! Tera brings Bo his cake. (see post below for play-by-play of cake!)


Not real sure of what to do with it.


Finally gettin' the hang of it!






Present time!

It was a really fun night!

Birthday Cake Construction

One of the things I like to do is bake. I've been lucky enough to do some showers, birthdays, and even some weddings. This weekend I got to make the birthday cake for my nephew's first birthday and thought some of you might find it interesting what goes into make a cake.

Step 1: Bake the individual layers and let them cool overnight.


Step 2: Cut off the tops to make them level. (This can be tricky!)


I try to clean up along the way.

Otherwise, I'd probably STILL be doing dishes!

Step 3: Apply a crumb coating. Just a thin layer of icing and then put in the fridge to let harden. It's not very pretty at this point.

As you can tell it takes quite a bit of room in the fridge, so I'm always shoving food in every drawer, nook and cranny to make room!!

Step 4: Apply a second layer of icing that's thicker and will be the final layer.


That final layer of icing is the HARDEST thing to do. I just DON'T get how the pros get it soooooo smooth! It almost doesn't look real!

Step 5: Prepare cake for stacked construction. Put dowel rods in each layer so the layer above it is supported.


Step 6: Stack layers. This is pretty self explanatory!


Step 7: Begin decorating! This is the fun part!


Step 8: Finished product!


Now, the challenge is transporting the cake! I wish you could have seen the transportation of this cake! A lot of times, I have to transport these by myself and basically it entails a lot of very slow driving, but thankfully, my sis and bro-in-law were going to drive me. I held the cake in my lap. It was hilarious!!

Top 5

What more could people possibly want to know about me? Well, settle in and prepare to be wowed and amazed! Or not.
First off I was tagged by Erin, a new bloggy friend I met from the Ultimate Blog Party! She is an amazing testament to God's goodness. Please read her testimony. Really, it'll give you chills!

Top Fives:
5 things you cannot live without under $10 (really?!? It HAS to be UNDER $10???…okay…)

1. Ice cream
2. jewelry on the clearance rack at Target
3. chips and salsa
4. Propel
5. mechanical pencils

5 favourite movies

1. The Holiday
2. Dirty Dancing
3. Steel Magnolias
4. Finding Nemo
5. The Sound of Music

Baby names you love(but won’t use) This is hard being a teacher. There are certain names that are just off limits once you have a student with that name!

Girls

1. Brownen
2. Georgia (because Mandy beat me to it!!)
3. Lilly
4. Helena
5. Shiloh

Boys

1. Jack
2. Ashton
3. Sawyer
4. Luke ('cause I'm pretty sure my sister's gonna use it!)
5. Walker

5 songs you could listen to over and over:

1. "In Better Hands" Natalie Grant
2. "I Could Not Ask For More" Edwin McCain (it's gonna be in my wedding...I'm already claiming it!)
3. "Amazing Grace" Crystal Lewis
4. any Celine Dion ballad
5. "School's Out for Summer" Alice Cooper (ok...this one's a bit of an exaggeration!)

5 things that stay in your purse all the time:

1. chapstick
2. wallet
3. calendar
4. Bible
5. camera

5 obsessions you have right now:

1. blogging
2. LOST
3. new recipes
4. the end of the school year (!)
5. ...i'm too obsessed with anything right now :(

5 places you would really love to go:

1. Australia
2. Italy
3. France
4. Switzerland
5. on my honeymoon :)

5 people you would love to see do their top 5 (I’m tagging some of my new blog faves):

1. Josie
2. Kelly
3. Mandy (This will be an easy way to update your blog!!)
4. Sarah
5. Rebekah

Easter Weekend

I love Easter because it's the promise of spring! This has been a weird winter with cold, icky weather, snow days that didn't amount to anything (from a teacher's perspective!) and tornadoes on top of that!

This weekend was absolutely picture perfect which makes the true reason for Easter even more exciting. Seeing the trees blossom and the flowers bloom bring a joy to me that reminds me of the tremendous love Jesus has for us. A love that literally took Him to hell and back for me.

He has literally spoiled me with blessing after blessing. One of those blessings being my family. I've always loved my family. Ya know, in that "I have to love 'em" kinda way." But as I've gotten older, I appreciate them more. Especially as our family gets bigger!

This weekend was so much fun as we celebrated Easter together. We actually celebrated on Saturday which was kinda nice because it was very laid back. No one was rushing after church.

As I pulled into my parent's house, it was a picture perfect scene. The sun was beaming! Mandi, mom, and my grandparents were sitting in lawn chairs under the big sprawling tree in the front yard. Evan was hitting baseballs with his tee ball set. When he recognized my car, he started running towards me. His little 2 year old body bouncing toward me with a smile that took up his whole face. My heart melted!

Once the rest of the clan got there, we all sat down to lunch. Which was a bit of a challenge since the kids wanted to tear into their easter baskets first! Lunch was a smorgasboard of ham, roast, broccoli casserole (a Brown gathering staple), green beans, potato salad, slaw salad, mac and cheese for the kids and deviled eggs. Delish!

Then it was time for the easter egg hunt! I've nominated myself as the easter egg hunt planner. I had this hunt planned since the beginning of March. I knew the kids would get so much candy, so I wanted to do something that didn't involve candy in every egg. As creative as this is, I can't take credit for it. I ran across it online somewhere.

Each kid was assigned egg colors and they could ONLY pick up their egg color. Inside the eggs were puzzle pieces. I lined all the kids up and sent them on their way:






One group shot after they found all their eggs:

Bo had his own eggs to find. No puzzles in them...just "Little People" toys.
Once they found all their eggs, they would go inside to see the box of their puzzle and begin working:

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The puzzles were a hit! Evan got his together first and went around to every single person showing off his achievement:

Blake and Brooke's took a little longer. They did such a good job!





Then the kids were dying to get into their easter gifts. The big hit were the bubble guns from Nana-Gamma and Papa Tom.





Here's some random shots throughout the day:






Today, I went to my old church. Here's what I ended up wearing after a last ditch effort at the mall last night. WARNING: vain pictures ahead!!


Hope you had a great day, too!

Great Shower Idea

I have to brag on my sister in law! She's the room mom for Blake's class and his teacher is getting married, so they threw her a surprise shower today. All the kids (ok...most of them) dressed up. You just don't see kids dressed up like that anymore. Blake is the one in the yellow shirt and tie (!) And look how cute all the little girls look in their Sunday best!


What I thought was the absolute neatest gift was the basket on the corner of the table. Tera had all the kids send in a recipe and one ingredient from the recipe. She then copied them all onto cute little recipe cards and put them in a recipe box. Then the box and all the ingredients went into the basket. What a great way to stock your pantry! I just thought it was the neatest thing ever!! Oh...and the cake doesn't look too shabby either, does it?


And just because he's so cute, I threw in a couple of Bo! Looks like he was show and tell at school!