Little Girls Paint Party

so I got the idea for a paint party from Ashley Ann's blog Under the Sycamore.

as it got closer to little girl's birthday I asked her if she would like to have a paint party. she loves all things crafty so she was in love with the idea. I asked her what it would be that she wanted to paint. her immediate response, no hesitation, was a butterfly.

I got to work purchasing the canvases. (12x12 ones) the transfer paper to trace the butterfly on, the easels, paint and brushes. I had her tell me all of the colors that she wanted to use for the butterfly too. we got on pinterest and searched for butterfly designs that she liked.

If you can kind of see, this is what all of the girls butterflies looked like

I bought paint pallets from Wal-Mart for under a dollar and decided to go with a set of five brushes for each girl to use to paint with.

my initial thought was that they would all paint it the same. we had an example that we painted the week or so before. but once the girls got there, they were all asking if they could paint it any way that they wanted and I didn't have it in me to tell them no. it was fun to see all that they came up with and they did ask for held in mixing the colors up for different colors.

we ordered pizza and had cookie cake (birthday girls request)

she wanted this pretty pink lemonade and sprite. we wanted to make sure that everything we were doing was what she wanted and she told me one day. well mom, I love everything but I would really like to have sprite at the party.

I am so proud of how they all did

The Making of a Grandparents Photograph

My parents got out numbered with grandchildren when my sister had her oldest. It is just me and my younger sister. I have two kiddo's and she has two kiddo's.

kind of sweet since that is how we grew up (a family of four)

we went to visit my parents over the Memorial Day weekend at their lake house and the night before we left I mentioned to my sis that we needed to get a pic of mom and dad with the kids. that morning, mom mentioned that she wished she had gotten a picture of the two of them with the four kids.

we headed out to the front porch and set up.

I told them I was just getting the camera ready, which truly I was but then once I looked back through them I thought it would be fun to make this blog post about getting a picture with four children.

setting up here and figuring out where everyone should sit.

thank you mom for taking care of this.

(I sometimes fell like I am terrible at this)

the youngest is with Honey

now he is with Bear, and we still aren't ready

four out of the six but still cute

four out of the six again. this time one of them is different than the last picture

now only three of the six (come one people)

I would say this one is pretty great except for my son in the background, who had such a large piece of gum in his mouth it looked like he had chew in there.

wait, another almost good one. (note to self: next time we get a family picture with mom and dad, have kids spit out the gum)

sometime you just have to embrace the gum faced mouth and claim this one, THE ONE!

this one may be my favorite, even thought little girl isn't looking at the camera, I love her expression. the love

again another favorite even though golden boy has a silly face

and not matter how much I snap the break down happens at some point

 and I yell "ok silly picture"

which of course everyone loves

they were all really good sports to sit through all of the pictures, even though it happen so quickly.

What I learned May

That i can paint: my friend Kelly invited me to a paint party. I have only ever been to one other of these. it was strange going but overall i think we both did pretty good and now we can say we are painters.

here is the before. the instructor sketched a bit of a layout so we knew where and when we were painting

here are the two of us in different stages of our painting

here is another stage of my picture

trees added

i didn't like my swirls. they looked weird to me

the finished product

and both of us with our finished paintings

WE ARE ARTISTS!

that i could be a farm girl: I went on a field trip with my daughters class to a local farm. fully functioning farm and I love every single but of it. I even got to milk a cow.

that we can have chickens (we will see if that happens): In keeping with the above farm theme I found out that we can indeed have chickens. I am hoping that works out.

that camping continues to be my favorite: this was the second year that we went camping with my parents and had a lot of fun. we added another day to the trip so that made it nice too. we ate some great food and went on a nice hike. and of course when Bear and Golden boy are together there is going to be fishing.

I am still in love with steel city pops: last year when i found our we were getting a steel city pops i wrote this post about all of the flavors that I wanted to try. (really i just want to try them all) but this month i had my first Popsicle of the summer, Avocado. it was amazing and reminded me oh how i love Steel City Pops. my other post lists some that i still have not tried but to add to the list here are a few more:

Cherry Sour Cream

Blood Orange

Champagne White Tea

Lavender Lemonade

Mango

Raspberry Lemon

Strawberry Balsamic

this is the last month that I will have a five year old: how did we get to this point. I mean wasn't is just yesterday that she was born.