Basketball Star!

 Luke dribbling down the court. He looks so tall!

He shoots!

Luke is playing Upward Basketball at a church this winter. Luke & Silas are on the same team which is fun. I have been very impressed with the organization of the league and the people running the program are so kind. Luke's coach is great with the kids. They have a little team devotional and earn stars to iron onto their team undershirt after each game. Different colored stars have different meanings. Luke loves seeing the stars ironed onto the sleeve of his shirt! He plays every Saturday. For the kindergarten team they practice 30 minutes and then have a 30 minute game. Before the game starts they call the team in and they run through the gym doors across to their bleacher. So cute. The kids think that is awesome. Luke is on the Pumas. They don't keep score, they are mostly trying to talk the kids through how basketball is played even during the game...you have to dribble AND run etc. We spend a lot of time laughing in the bleachers because it is just so funny to see them playing. Luke made 2 baskets this past Saturday at the game and earned the defensive star this week! Yay Luke! Oh, and he wants to be a professional basketball player when he grows up now. :)

Luke with part of his team & the coach. There are 8 kids on the team.

Go Pumas!

My Birthday

 Me and the Boys

33 candles put off some serious heat! Andy made sure to buy enough candles. The boys got a kick out of that.

The cake.

Andy outdid himself. He made this on his own! I had shown him a cake from a blog a LONG time ago that was similar. I love colorful things. I loved rainbows when I was young. Colors make me happy. Anyway, I knew the frosting was the whipped cream cheese icing but had no idea what was on the inside until he cut it open. I was very impressed! The boys thought it was very neat too! Wilson says this is the cake he wants next year. Andy made me feel very special & loved. Thanks baby!

This was a great birthday! I felt very loved by family and friends. Thank you for making my birthday special!

Recipe Binder

So I've had a recipe binder for a while. It has looked like this for a long time. Yep, I once turned on the wrong burner on my new to me then stove and melted plastic onto my ceramic stovetop. Andy thankfully was able to clean it off. Notice all the white papers sticking out the side? TONS of printed recipes that were just loose hanging out. When I looked for a recipe I had to flip through all of those plus the ones in plastic sheet dividers to find what I was looking for.

The dividers weren't wide enough to show past the page protectors. They were invisible. Couldn't ever find the section I needed. Plus I had never labeled them.

 The new goods. I love my new binder I found out Target. IT is a 2inch binder with a brown background and cream flowers. The centers of the flowers are different colors of the rainbow. I bought coordinating folders to use as dividers. The green cardstock is for gluing smaller recipes cut out of magazines so all recipes are 8 1/2 by 11. (Both of those ideas were found on one of my new favorite blogs, here.) I put two on a green sheet when possible to make the most use of each page. Also used the front & back to glue recipes on since the page protectors are clear and show both sides! I spent $18 plus tax. We already had some plastic page protectors.

I opted to hole punch the folders without cutting them in half. Andy did that part. Then I glued them closed so they wouldn't be flapping open as I was flipping through to find recipes.

The three colors of file folders...blue, brown, & green with the coordinating flowers. *love*

I used my handy label maker to make label the dividers. I had clear label tape at first and then had to go buy more and Wal-mart was sold out of clear...had to switch to white. That bugs me a little bit. BUT oh well! These are recipes I have found on the food blogs I read or from Pinterest etc that I print out. I still have some cookbooks and I still have some recipe cards. The cards are organized in a spiral photo album and just tucked into the photo sleeves. I decided to not add them to this binder.

The categories in my binder:

DIY- (homemade taco seasoning, dressings, croutons, etc)

Drinks

Appetizers

Breakfast

Bread

Salad

Sides

Main Dish

Dessert

Top View

Is it bad that the last section (desserts) is the biggest?! The one right before that is main dish, so at least it is somewhat balanced!

Check out my updated 20 in 2012 post!

Pinterest Food on the Menu

This week's menu featured a few more Pinterest inspired recipes. I promise I pin lots of things that are not recipes! It's just I have to cook dinner so I might as well make it fun and interesting!

Crockpot BBQ Chicken - This was good. Will make again. It was good as leftovers too! We had this with "the Best Broccoli of your life" and my favorite garlic rice pilaf (from good ol' Annie's Eats). OK so the broccoli was okay, I ate it and enjoyed it but no one else did. And I would be just find not eating it that way again. We decided plain steamed broccoli is enough for us! This one involves roasting, lemon zest, parmesan cheese etc. Good but probably won't make it again. Aleady deleted the pin. Everybody loves the rice recipe. So good. You should definitely try that one!

Easy Breakfast Potatoes - These were pretty good. I might make them again but they weren't spectacular.  But easy! We had these with turkey sausage egg mcmuffins. I learned from Pinterest to cook eggs in a muffin tin and bake them. We like to scramble the eggs before baking so the yolk is mixed in. Then we put them on whole wheat english muffins with turkey sausage and a slice of cheese. Yum! This is my second time to make the mcmuffins.

Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting- you all, I came home from work on Monday and the house smelled like cake. Andy had made me a birthday cake! It was a surprise though and I wasn't allowed to know what kind. It about killed me. Surprises aren't really my thing I guess. Come to find out he had seen me on Pinterest and saw me pin this icing and I had said something along the lines of cream cheese frosting being the only kind I actually like. While I was at work on Monday he got on Pinterest, found my recipe board, got this recipe, and frosted the cake he made me with it. How sweet was that? Just wait till you see pics of what the cake looked like. I almost cried because he made me feel so special. I'll post pics and tell you about my birthday this weekend.

I have a fish recipe on the menu but haven't made it yet. I'll post it next week if it is good!

Cake Pictures

 Wilson's police badge cake (Lego City Police Dept. & he turned 8). He refused to let Andy put his name on it. I baked the cake. Andy did everything else on this one!

 Luke wanted cake pops. I wanted a way for him to still get to blow out candles and this was my last minute idea. Luke loved the little green monsters!

And that's a wrap on the 6 & 8 year old birthday party!

Party Pics!

UPdated Blog Layout

I updated my blog sidebar. Yay! New pics of the boys, a cloud of list topics, updated list of blogs I read (plus I fixed the links of a couple that changed). I added two of my new favorite blogs I found recently. The first one I found via Pinterest because of some really cool hair pics. That blog is The Small Things Blog. The other blog is called I Heart Organizing. Hoping to get some good ideas from that one. Check them out!  Yesterday Andy got about 2 years of pics off his fancy camera and put the on the computer so I'll have lots of pictures to post in the near future. Don't worry. I won't post 2 years worth ;) .