Suzie Homemaker

Hopefully all my posts about how amazing my kid's birthday cakes are don't make you too jealous. Here's another one for you to admire.

My oldest started junior kindergarten this year. He wears a bow tie to school. For real.  All kids need an art shirt - one of dads old button downs to protect the uniforms from glitter and paint. I got the bright idea to embroidery his name on his, as my sewing machine is super fancy and does it all for me.

Sort of.

After watching two instructional videos online, rethreading the machine 8 times, and a frantic search through all the drawers and cubbies in my office (a terrifying thought in and of itself), 45 mins later this is what we came up with.

You are so jealous that your kid doesn't have his name embroidered on his art shirt, right? I know it. 

Actually, I have figured out all the problems i was having and next time it should be very straightforward with no issues. Good thing i practiced on something thats just going to be destroyedd anyways... :)

Favorite Kids' Books

We have a LOT of books at our house. Not too many, because i don't think there is such a thing. We keep coming back to certain books that are favorites of both the big and little people, and I thought we would share.

Amazing Airplanes 

Jacob went through an airplane phase a couple of years ago, and Aunt Jessie got him this book for his second birthday. We all loved reading it. Jacob even memorized it. Then, we left it somewhere. We were sad, him especially, so i went online to buy it again. Imagine my surprise when i found there was a whole series!

i bought the series and found the rest of the books as delightful as amazing airplanes was. so delightful, that when this set had been taped and repaired and pieced back together number of times, i bought it again. These books are that good.

Every day after lunch, each kid gets to pick a song to sing and then we read a book. Aliza ALWAYS asks for the monkey book. This is a favorite of Jacob's too. We received it free from the publisher (Thanks Simon and Schuster!), but I would gladly pay cover price for it.

Warning: Do Not Open This Book

Clever and interactive. I enjoy reading this one time and again.

There are monkeys, toucans and alligators. And, on Aliza's personal favorite page, a banana.

Our final favorite book is one of a series, but we have only one. The kids beg miss jenna to read this one every time she comes over to babysit. I bought it when i was pregnant with Jacob because the cat kinda resembled Cricket.

Skippyjon Jones

He is a crazy, mischievous little guy with a big imagination.

There are fun songs, silly voices and wild adventures. The giggling is non-stop. I look forward to more books featuring this guy.

What are your kid's favorite books?

Don't Laugh. No, Seriously. Don't laugh.

We had a little girl turning three over the weekend. We threw a fantastic backyard party. I got the bright idea to make a watermelon cake. After looking at some tutorials I was all "It does seem THAT hard." Boy, was i wrong. First, go check out how to make one here.

I made the whipped cream on Thursday. It was actually insanely easy. I set everything up in the kitchen aid mixer and a couple minutes later it was done. However, making the whipped cream so far ahead of time was my first mistake. By the time i got it out of the fridge on Saturday to frost the watermelon, it wasn't quite as fluffy as it was supposed to be.

Second mistake: i didn't cut the watermelon exactly roundly. From my experience frosting cakes with buttercream, i thought i would be able to smooth out the bumps with the frosting. Flat whipped cream was not so forgiving.

The poor cake looks like a cake wrecks fail cake. HOWEVER, the watermelon, berries and whipped cream were incredibly refreshing on the hottest day so far in August and both cakes got eaten up.

Party Prep - Popsicles!

My kids love sweet treats as much as the next kid, but we really limit sugar, especially refined processed garbage. Im a crazy hippy. Its been stupid hot here, so I've been making them popsicles. I use plain whole milk yogurt and chopped up fruit.

One of the littles has birthday coming up, so i borrowed a bunch of popsicle molds to make treats for all the kids. I got two 2lb tubs of vanilla yogurt and a bunch of strawberries. I chopped the strawberries, mixed them into the yogurt and put them into the molds to freeze. I used about eight strawberries in each tub. Each tub made about a dozen popsicles, but i had two different sizes of molds. If i had all of the smaller ones (the ones we usually use) i could have made closer to 18 from each tub.

Kids totally dig these and if you use plain yogurt instead of vanilla there is no sugar! Enjoy!