Brownies - YUM!

I needed to make brownies to take to mutual tonight for brownie sundaes.

Kyler was at school and Ryker was taking his nap so Corden and I got to make them together, just the two of us. Corden loves to help out in the kitchen.

I think he's going to be a wonderful cook someday.

The girls will love that!

He cracked four eggs in the bowl and we didn't have to retrieve any egg shells.

He was really excited about that!

Such a cute little mixer man!


Now he's just making sure he got everything off of the sides of the bowl mixed in.



And the finished product...
Two perfect pans of brownies!

Who doesn't love chewy, chocolatey, brownie goodness?!

And yes, I did promise to leave some home for Stan and the boys to eat!

I think he was the most excited about that!

This is what Ryker and I do every Monday morning from 10:00 - 11:00 at our library. It's called Little Listeners. They start off singing the name song. It goes like this:
We'll have a happy day today no matter what the weather
We like to sing our names this way because we are together
This is __________, and this is ___________, and this is ____________.
Each child fills in their name as the teacher goes around the circle, filling in the blanks. Then they sing some more songs followed by some stories. Each Monday there is a different theme. Today's theme was Spring. After stories the kids go over to the tables to do crafts.

The first craft was a paper to color and then put cotton balls on the cloud.

These are all of the kids in the group. (That's right, three tables pretty much full!) And a bunch of mommies too!

The second craft they did was make a wind sock. The kids colored them and put stickers on them, and the moms helped staple the crepe paper on. Ryker thought he could just put his inside, but they didn't stay when he lifted it up.

Then when crafts are done everyone picks out some books to check out and read at home. Ryker really likes checking out the toot-toot books. ("Train" for those who might not know what a toot-toot is.) I love having this opportunity for Ryker to enjoy. What a wonderful community we live in!

Crayon Rolls

These little bundles of awesomeness are called crayon rolls. I found them one night while blog hopping and just had to have some.
The tutorial told how to make the smaller one for the crayons. I made a couple of them and they turned out so cute! I like the kids to use crayola twistables at church so I wanted to have a couple crayon rolls to put them in as well. So I added one inch in height to each of the pieces and they fit perfectly!

How amazingly cool are these things?!

I picked out three different fabrics that I liked and a bunch of ribbon and ric rac to match.

If you would like to make one of these just let me know and I can let you know what you need to do or where you can find the tutorial for them. This was a very easy sewing project. Exactly how I like my sewing projects to be! Anyone can make these, I promise.

Our Elders Quorum Pinewood Derby The Woody El Camino
The Boys and Stan worked together to build this fabulous specimine. Now those are some serious car building skills!

The track

The Big Race

Even though they didn't win, it was still a blast! Congrats to the fam on the big race!

Stamp - N - Wrap

Today is Corden and Kyler's friend Trace's birthday party. Instead of just doing plain old boring wrapping paper, they thought it would be more fun to make their own personalized wrapping paper. They picked out the stamps that they wanted to use and this is the finished product. I think they did a really great job! And had so much fun doing it too. All you need is brown butcher paper or a brown paper bag. (And of course stamping stuff.) Then just let them go to town and decorate it however they want.

For the bag I showed them where to punch the holes and then I tied the ribbon on. So I guess I did help just a little. They chose this striped ribbon because they thought it looked like racing stripes. I was thinking that the dot ribbon would have looked really cute but I think that they thought the dots were a little too girlie so they chose "racing stripes." Gotta make this crafty project look as rugged as possible I guess!

Party Party Party!

Birthday Party at Leo's Place! There was a new train up at Leo's. It went back and forth on the wall.

Ryker loved that!

Food * Family * Fun * what more could you ask for!

Daisy Cake for My Mom

We're celebrating my mom's birthday tonight. I said that I would make the cake so this is what I decided to do. My mom's favorite flowers are daisies so I wanted to make a cake that looked like one. I think it turned out really cute. With the exception of the sides! Don't look too close. Remember, this is my first attempt at actually decorating a cake by myself. Usually I just cook a 9x13 cake and slap some store bought frosting on it. (I actually made this frosting from scratch!!)

Did you notice the ceter of the flower? That's right, it's totally 3-D. How cool is that?!!

I put lemon filling in between two 8" round cakes and a little circle cake for the center. Even though the sides don't look very pretty, I think it's incredible! I can't believe I actually pulled it off. You can totally tell what it is even!