Beautiful Creatures

I love the books, but of course I am referring to our three girls.  Yes they made me throw up for about 23 months total.  I lost countless hours of sleep.  Don't even get me started on the number of diapers I have changed.  But these little girlies (not so little anymore) sure fill our home with lots of love, laughter, and joy  (also tantrums, crying, millions of lost ponytail holders, and countless pink items; but I digress).  Anyway, here is a little visual catch up on the female side of the Pyper clan..

Ellie and Bekah

Bekah

Ellie 

Rachel in her show choir costume.  

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What's for Dinner?

So since this is supposed to by my version of a journal, I thought it would be a good idea to keep track of some of my daily stuff.  Like cooking.  Which we all have to do several times a day.  I love a good roast chicken.  So here is a naked chicken!  I am probably breaking some kind of chicken nudity laws, so let's dress it up a little!

Rub it all over with olive oil, kosher salt, and ground black pepper, and 400 F and about 1 and 1/2 hours later...

Voila!  Yummy roast chicken!  Now what to serve with it?  Thank goodness for Pinterest!  I found this great recipe to try on there the other day--parmesan roasted potatoes.  

Gather your ingredients,  yukon gold potatoes, paprika, olive oil, kosher salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese.

Cube the yukon potatoes and then toss with the 

olive oil, paprika, salt, pepper, and cheese.  

This is what you end up with...yummmmmmm.

Of course, every good meal needs some greens--this is one of my favorite and easiest salads

Gather up some mixed greens, with spinach preferably, feta, dried cranberries and pecan pieces.

Yummy greens,  now add the toppings:  pecans, cranberries and feta.  Which for some reason I didn't take a picture of.  Just pretend there are some crumbly bits of white cheese on there.

And now the secret weapon:

This dressing is FABULOUS!  Girard's champagne vinaigrette-- and the best part is, you can get it right here in Enid, OK in our little ol' Walmart!  It really enhances the tart of the cranberries and the sweetness of the pecans....Go get some!   And enjoy!  And have some tomorrow for lunch!  Now, what is for dinner tomorrow?

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Chinese New Year Singing Time

from photobucket-robinkingcullen

I decided to put my singing time ideas on here.  Or the ideas I got from looking at everyone else's fabulous blogs!  :)  Tomorrow we are going to have a Chinese New Year singing time.  I got this great idea from i heart primary music and added a few twists.  She suggests we play rock, paper, scissors with a child and if the child wins, we let him pick a gold coin with a song on it. If we win, then we all review As a Child of God.  Since I could not find any gold coins on a Saturday night, :(  I thought I would make a few of these:

from marthastewartliving.com

Felt Fortune Cookies!  I do have felt around from one of my many craft project remnants!  I am going to put the names of different songs inside as fortunes.  We will probably sing As a Child of God with some different "ways to sing" cards, just to mix it up.  I also thought it would be cute to put these in a takeout box, so I picked one up at Hobby Lobby.

After primary is over, I am going to give the kids one of these:

I am putting a fun size starburst on there.  Once in a while it is good to reinforce learning with food, right?  :) If you want to make some for yourself you can download the file here>  Also, you can download the fonts from here and just make your own!  I used Shanghai and Chinese Zodiac.  Have fun!

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Kitchen Treats

So we all know that I love to create.  And cook.  And often I create through cooking.  I love to make things that bring happiness to other people.  So when I saw this fabulous idea for hot chocolate on a stick, I knew I had to try it!  So here is my first attempt at making this treat.  

I just used ice cube trays for the chocolate mold-not super cute, but the only thing I had to use.

So maybe I don't have a bright future as a chocolatier, but I know where to find cute stuff to wrap treats in!

Glassine bags from garnish, one of my favorite new online stores!  Even their receipts are cute!

And of course, I had to put the marshmallows in cute packaging as well!  I used peppermint mini marshmallows, and vanilla caramel marshmallows.

clear candy tubes from garnish

I put everything in this super cute kraft box and tied it up with a bow!  Who wouldn't be excited to get this in the mail?  I hope it tasted all right.  Although, I think some of my nieces and nephews just ate the chocolate right off the stick instead of making it into cocoa!  :)  Whatever works!

kraft boxes from garnish

I hope to send a few more treat packages out this year.  Just for fun!  So you know that I am thinking of you!

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Booing

I don't have a picture for this one, but for one of our activity days, we made some boo bags.  I thought this would be a fun service project.  I was able to pick up some little halloween colored cloth bags for 4/1.00 at Michael's and also a big container of sticky foam halloween shapes.  They decorated the bags, made a card, and then we filled them with candy and little halloween treats I picked up at Target, sticky hands, pencils, spider rings.  We then left a goody bag for each house in our cul-de-sac.  The girls were very giggly and had a great time going out on their stealth missions!  They all took a bag home to boo someone in their neighborhood.  It was a fun time!

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Send in the Clowns...

And I just happen to know some!  Look how cute they are!  Daddy and Ellie were the hit of

Bekah's circus birthday party last week.

We did lots of fun games--like the balloon relay!  Bekah is trying so hard to pop her balloon!  I think it took her a while!

Here is one of our clown assistants setting up the Can Knockdown.  She had to do it like 5 million times!  It was a very popular event!

I had to show off my powerpoint skills--I made cute signs for each activity.  I am sure it took me way more time and effort than a lot of other people, but I am happy with the way they turned out!

The donut eating contest was another hit!  It was very fun to watch the girls try to get their donuts into their mouths without hands.

The birthday girl with her birthday cake.  Which you can't see because it was so windy that we went into the garage to light it and then it took so long to light that the litttle paper bunting I made caught on fire.  Oh well. Thank goodness there was a clown around to put out the burning flag with a squirting flower!

A group photo with mustaches, big lips and clown noses!

 Rachel did the face painting--thank goodness she can draw!  I would probably do just smiley faces!

This is the prize table where the girls traded in their tickets for prizes like clown noses, chinese finger traps, pencils, candy, rings, etc.

 Our treat table.  Popcorn, cotton candy, caramel apples, cupcakes, and chips.  And little packs of animal crackers.  Most of the cheetos blew away because it was so WINDY!  So did a lot of the cotton candy.  

The girls got to guess how many pumpkins were in the jar.

Another favorite was the potato sack race!  Here is Vaughn giving the girls instructions--they loved this game and did it several times each.

And once again, our clowns!  Vaughn actually taught himself how to make several kinds of animal balloons!  What a great hubby!

Of course, everything did not work out the way I planned it!  It was so windy we didn't even put up balloons or streamers.  I was doing party prep until the very last minute because I procrastinated some of it!  And the cake caught on fire.  And all the cheetos blew away.  Did I mention it was WINDY!  But overall, we had a good time and it was a great afternoon!

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Activity Days

So one of my new callings is the Activity Days leader!  I am so excited to work with these great girls.  For our first activity last week, we had an Unbirthday Party!  I made this cute little bunting for the sheet cake I picked
up.  Of course, the icing colors totally don't match, but I didn't have much to choose from.  Just look at the bunting instead!

We also played the white elephant present game.  I just picked up several things from the dollar store.  And we also played hot potato.  That one is always a hit!  Why is it so nerve wracking to think that you will end up holding the object when the music stops?  It was a fun way to start off the year and we also sang to Ellie, since her birthday was just two days away.  We passed out calendars and a parent letter and then played duck,duck, goose until time to go.  I think I sent everyone home on a sugar high!  Hopefully, they crashed as soon as they got home and went to bed!

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