The Boithday Week

This last week was the only week that matters in DD's entire year. She looks forward to her next birthday before her current birthday is over. This years preparations started, in her eyes, last year the week after her 3rd birhtday. We were going to have a princess party, a fairy party, a dino party, a halloween party, a chuckecheese party, a bubble party, and these are only the ones i can remember there were more much more.

Ultimately we decided on an OWL party! Cause hooo doesnt love owls ;)

I did lots of research on the interwebs to find the cutest owl party stuff and came across a blog where i used every thing they used(but i cut alot of corners) behold pictures:

the invite

the first 6 pillows(there were 11 in all) each one had
a pocket with a tootsie roll pop in it!

the first pillow

Then there was the cake...  i had originally seen an owl cake in parents magazine that i was going to use, but then ran across this book Cupcake Cakes in Wegmans, and thought it was such an awesome idea i had to go with it! This was not the cutest cake in the book, and i didnt do to good of a job on it. In hind sight i should have used homade butter cream icing for the white icing, instead i used a tub of icing, and it was not stiff enough to hold up over the cupcakes... i did make the chocolate icing(as per the books recipe) and it was super easy and really tasty so i am kicking my self in the butt for not going all the way and making the white icing too. The cupcakes were devils food cake and it was pretty delish :-d

We had the party at a local park, and i now know i we will never do it at our house again!! Bringing all the stuff to the park was a little bit of work, but oh how fun and easy the rest was. Cleaning up was so simple too! We let the kids play at the play area until everyone arrived and then gathered all of em up to go on a scavenger hunt. That morning(cause i kept putting it off) the husband and i went down the nature train and picked a bunch of leaves, i took pictures of them and put em this collage then taped them onto the front of paper lunch bags. We handed the paper bags out and took the kids down the trail and helped them find the items on the bag.

I was worried about them liking this since they were all about 4-5 years old, but it was AWESOME, they really really liked it!! At the end of the trail Husband was waiting with little favor boxes full of tootsie roll candy (cause its an owl theme hehe).

 Then we headed back for cake!! and pizza and fruit... it was all gone, by the end of the party, we had some hungry little owls!

notice the ballons sitting on the table in front of the cake, they were stuffed with felt Numbers that coincided with bags that had the owl pillows tucked inside. We blew up the ballos and let the kids pick one and pop it, then they got to open their own owl pillow!!

Then of course we opened presents, and then got kicked out of the park for closing time!

The big gift this year was... A BIKE, but not just any bike, a STRIDER bike. we ordered it off the google and payed for expedite shipping... and it still didnt get here on time so the monday after her party she got her bike.

we decided to test it out at the skate park, little guy had to take his bike too!

So thats it for the party let me show you what else we did that week.

FONDUE

 Some hats for some baby showers

And a much needed Recycle Can I am hoping that the pretty blue letters i sprayed on will convince Husband to stop throwing all my recycling into the trash bin on trash day and put it out on recycle day!

Well its been a hoot!! cant wait till next year, and niether can dd... she is already makin plans!

Vinyasa Hatha Dilemma

Today marks the return of my worn down beaten pregnant body, to yoga. Oh how i love love love yoga!

It is a strange thing for me to say that because it wasn't always this way... Highschool and a few years of college was spent on anaerobic exercises and trying to become "as strong as possible" and then killing myself on a treadmill or elliptical for, what seemed to me, absolutely no reason(i hate cardio).  It was one semester after a particularly intense tennis class that i decided to take "a cheat" PE class. What would be easier than YOGA, it's just breathing and silly names,  the hardest thing i could think of about this class was that it was at 8 in the morning(ludicrous). The first class was spent talking about our feeling, and the all importance of breath and oxygen, the negative aspects of judging ourselves and others, and inner peace... and i am pretty sure the teacher, though born and raised in SoCal was buddhist. I almost quit the class, were it not for the need for another PE credit, i guess i had negative energy ;)

Then the real classes started, we were being taught Hatha yoga. Slow and easy and super duper relaxing, it quickly became what i looked forward to every week!! Of course i was much skinnier and more flexible, than i am now after 2 children and lots of sunday dinners, so it came so very easy to me.

Now 5 years later i am a full on Vinyasa fan. I love that i sweat without really doing anything.  Then there is feeling soar the next day without ever exerting any energy(i hate cardio did i mention that). Really though the best part is my posture... its amazing, everything looks and feels different after yoga. Unless you dont drink enough water then, well, you feel like poop. I know that my first yoga teacher was a little out there, but now i can honestly say i understand what she was so excited for.

Allow me to expound on my yoga deficiencies...For my first two pregnancies i have been so out of it i couldn't do ANYTHING. For Baby A i was sick THE WHOLE TIME, i think there was one month(around month 7) that i wasnt throwing up daily, so obviously no time for downward dog. For baby B i was sick for only the first 3-4 months and then i used the ever so enduring excuse of chasing around my 15 month old daughter. There was something new in the mix too, my pelvic bone was just way to lose, i would be in ridiculous pain while walking, laying on my side or on my back or even sitting for any amount of time. But i blamed this on my pregnancies being almost on top of each other. So once again sliding into a sedentary life style (luckily my eating habbits were moving towards healthy by this point.

Baby #C... this is where the dilemma comes in. I am no longer "tossing my cookies" so to speak and i am feeling pretty energetic, so i went to my usual Yoga class this morning. It is Vinyasa, but is even leaning a little to the ashtanga side of things. I really felt so awkward doing it being pregnant, even though there were other pregers present. It may have had something to do with me being in terrible shape after a 4 month absence, or it could have been the honey dew sized belly i am now dealing with finding a spot for in some of the poses. Either way it was tough, and my pelvic bone is no better this pregnancy that it was last(in fact it has been painful since the 6 weeks mark). I thought that if i just go and  tough it out, feeling more aligned and having a bit of a core workout would help, but i have been walking funny ever since. So now i have to decide to stick with it and hope it doesnt get worse, move to hatha yoga(where the geriatrics go) and just stay flexible but not really get a work out, or just go swimming to keep the pregnancy weight down (i am determined not to let myself go to far this time) and i HATE swimming, in the worse way possible!

At any rate i did enjoy myself greatly this morning and i will probably go with the husband a few times, cause he finally sees the light in yoga (i couldnt resist), but i shall see if i can actually stick with it!

thats about as enlightened as i get so deal with it ;)

Procrastination is what Anitra's do best!!

Hi my name is Anitra and I have a sever case of, "I'll do it tomorrow's".... sheeewww i am glad i got that off my shoulders! Now that i have admitted to my problem, i can start working on correcting it! But that is a project best suited for tomorrow ;) Any-who, lets talk about the past. these past few weeks have been spent tying up loose ends (OH so many loose ends) and, of course, starting some new things to put off!

Case Number... lets just call it one(to simplify things): The garden! I spent the last bit of winter building a nice looking box, and then didnt fill it till mothers day!  OBSERVE:

Honey Dew

pretty cucumbers all in a row

my Box filled with bug bait*

a view from the tomato cam

* it has been a fair amount of weeks since planting and apparently i am not the only creature in the back yard that likes egg plants, and they have since been destroyed MERCILESSLY. But all is not lost, metaphorically speaking (because they really are all gone) i shall take my revenge, i have made a purchase of organic insect torture--> ORANGE OIL. i shall melt the exoskeleton's of those pesky bugs and let them dehydrate to death, all without damaging what is left of the environment, behold the power of Citrus!

But really the garden has been quite rewarding, no food yet, but it is nice to get out of the house to water it and pull up weeds, or just go sit next to it and ACT like i am doing something, just so i am not in the house!

Case #2: Baby gear! i finally finished the EPIC ruffle binding on the baby blanket. Lets have a look at the evidence:

I didnt put batting in it, and my thinking was because little Paislee is a summer baby, so I didnt want it to be too hot. Though in hind site i should have, so she could have a cushy blanket to roll around on.

Also in the box of goodies a plethora of essential, and then a few more hand made bits of cuteness!

A knitted balloon bunny,  courtesy of a free lion brand pattern!

some wool soakers designed by yours truly 

This one is my favorite, Ruffled Baby Bottoms
pattern to come, as soon as i write it :)

Case #3: Board and Battened living room: It only too a few tantrums and more back pain than it may have been worth but I can finally chalk up a win for house insert my last name!

Heres a Before-ish photo

Carpet removed and holes being patched. There used to be this really ugly built in book case on the side wall, it was so old i think it may have been structurally significant to the house, we took it out the week we bought the house!

After:

new carpet and new blinds... and there is something else different,  I just cant put my finger on it.

a new perspective

a new light fixture(lowes), and some pretty hooks (ikea)

my new window frame!! My favorite feature!

Its the little details that make the biggest difference

a huge upgrade, multi directional air flow!!

Tamper Resistance built right in!!!

Now we have a few more projects going on, the first of which is removing all the carpet in the house and cleaning the floor underneath, on Husbands last trip out of town, some friends came over for what was suppose to be a quick project (i should know better by now, that no project is a quick one) we were going to pull up the spare room and hall way carpet. We wound up pulling up the stair well carpet and the upstairs hall way also, and then discovering the disaster that lay beneath, spent the rest of the day scrubbing what ever this stuff was off of the floor!

Thats all the finished stuff for now and the rest will wait until tomorrow... or maybe the day after that 

....well eventually