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Happy Birthday to me!

Today was my birthday. The big 3-5. Thank goodness it was on a weekend – I enjoyed relaxing with Scott and the girls. We slept in a bit, then Scott went to get pastries from Panera for breakfast. I opened my gifts – they got me lots of good stuff. I think my favorite gift is going to be the “One Line a Day” journal that Scott gave me. A few years from now, it will be neat to look back and see what we did on the same day each year. Later in the day, we went to Macaroni Grill for a late lunch/early dinner. Had my favorite, Mushroom Ravioli, and a glass of yummy chianti. Followed by birthday cake at home.

They were kind enough to let me do what I wanted for the rest of the day, so I spent most the day sewing sewing myself a new purse. I’ve been carrying one I made over a year ago, and have been in the mood for something new for quite a while. I used the “Phoebe” bag tutorial I found online. I added extra pockets and used fusible fleece interfacing on the outer layers. I love how it came out. I loaded all my stuff into it and it seems to fit ok (without much room to spare, which is a good thing). Click the photo to see additional views. I can’t wait to start using it!

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All in all, a wonderful birthday.

Almost fall

We went to my parents’ house for an overnight, and they had a fire in the fire pit that evening.  The next morning, the boys stirred up the coals, and started it back up.  We spent the entire day outside, with the kids swinging, cooking on the fire, and just enjoying the perfect almost-fall weather.

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Beauty Spa

The other day, the girls decided to turn their room into a beauty spa.  They set out nail polish (complete with naming the colors) and raided my makeup for old things I don’t use (read purple and pink).  We filled up a container of warm water and dissolved some epsom salts in it.  First they soaked their feet then we did their toenails and fingernails.  Then we moved on to makeup and Megan did Molly’s hair.  After that they got dressed up and we walked to Panera for an afternoon treat…days like this make me happy to be a girl mommy 🙂

All set up:

Beauty Spa

Beauty Spa

Beauty Spa

And in action:

Beauty Spa

 Beauty Spa

Beauty Spa Beauty Spa Beauty SpaBeauty SpaBeauty SpaBeauty SpaBeauty SpaBeauty SpaBeauty Spa

What a fun day – I think they enjoyed being pampered!

Riding Lesson

We registered Megan for a mini horsemanship lesson through one of the local recreation councils to see how she liked it.  Surprise, surprise, she didn’t want to EVER leave.  She was a little disappointed that she had to have someone hold onto the horse the entire time, but she eventually realized that she didn’t quite know how to control the horses on her own yet. I think she will be going back for more lessons soon.

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Happy National S’mores Day!

I learned this morning that today is National S’mores Day.  August 10, every year.  How could I have missed that?  Since we had all the main ingredients in the kitchen, I could hardly resist.  I have seen several recipes for s’mores bars around the internet and thought that would be a fun way to mix it up since we can’t exactly build a fire in our back yard.  We didn’t have all the ingredients for any one recipe, so we kind of made it up as we went along – the girls did most of the hard work while I took photos 🙂

Molly crunched up some graham crackers.
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Megan sliced up the big marshmallows we had into smaller pieces.
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Then they mixed the crushed up graham crackers into some melted butter.  I also added a little salt and some sugar, but after tasting them, I think we could have done without the sugar.
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Molly buttered the pan.
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Then we pressed the graham cracker crumbly mess into the bottom of the pan.  Molly had the bright idea of using Nutella.  Since we only had a little bit left, I thought “Why not?”  On top of the Nutella they scattered about half a bag of chocolate chunks.  Then they arranged the marshmallows on top.
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We had set aside a little of the graham cracker crumb mixture to sprinkle over the top.  Here they are jockeying to see who can do sprinkle more of it.
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We baked them for about 20 minutes till they got nice and toasty brown on top.
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I let them cool for a bit, and then we cut into them.  They were hard to cut because they were so sticky – I think refrigerating them would have helped a lot, but there wasn’t time for that before bedtime.  Two happy girls:
[flickr]photo:6030923628[/flickr] [flickr]photo:6030923704[/flickr]