Roundup of new designs

It's been a really really busy couple of days! First we had General Conference which is always fabulous and I feel so envigorated by all the talks. One of my very favorite quotes was this one:

and you can see it in my Etsy store 

This is one of my kids' favorite songs and we sing it all the time

Love is Spoken Here

And finally Conference always makes me think deep thoughts and while I was enjoying some thinking time, I remembered that Queen Esther is my very favorite heroine from the Bible. I read over her story again and I came across this amazing quote. Esther is young and beautiful, married to the king and secretly a Jew. The king's advisors are plotting to exterminate all the Jews in the kingdom. Her choice is to watch her people be slaughtered or to reveal her secret and face death herself. Esther is telling Mordecai that she's afraid of confronting the king because she could be put to death for coming into his presence unbidden. To me, its as if Mordecai tells her that she might have been put on this earth for this exact moment and there's no one else who can perform her duty.

And Esther says "bringeth it on."

Really its an amazing story and you should read it for yourself. And if you love it as much as I do, you can also get this great print!

April Visiting Teaching message

Visiting teaching message is now available for April - get it here! I loved working with this crisp and modern style with a spring-but-not-pastel palette. Your download includes a full-page version as well as smaller handout-sized ones.

Frozen party invitation

Let it go..... let it gooooooooooooooo. Has your little princess danced around, built snowmen, insisted the cold never bothered her anyway and sung this song eleventy kabillion times? Then this is the perfect birthday party invitation for her.

The Frozen party invitation can be purchased here. You can also add cupcake toppers, water bottle wraps, treat bag toppers or any other printable your clever mind can think of.

I Am a Child of God printable

I was commissioned to create a chalkboard print of this quote and I LOVE how it turned out. It's often inaccurately attributed to Nelson Mandela, but was actually said by Marianne Williamson, an author and lecturer. Get it here.

Sasquatch birthday

Dash wanted a Sasquatch-hunting birthday.  We had lots of fun learning all about Sasquatch and making all his party items.

First we got all the guests with this official-looking invitation. I put it (and the other pieces) in my store so you can do your own easy-peasy Sasquatch party.

Joe built each guest their own marshmallow gun and we had pictures of Bigfoot hung on the walls as targets. Which lasted about 2 seconds because it was more fun to shoot each other. While we made pizza, we learned all about Sasquatch - where he lives, how to track him and different methods of trying to capture one. We also watched Bigfoot Hunters on Netflix.

After pizza, we spotted (GASP!) Bigfoot himself digging around the trash cans in the front yard. The hunt was on! A neighbor had agreed to wear a ghillie suit and lurk around as Bigfoot. We also had a really scary-sounding moose call that totally freaked the boys out. We tracked him through the neighborhood, finally cornering him in the garden where the boys tackled him and brought him down. The real Sasquatch had better look out, because if he ever tries to scare a herd of Cub Scouts, he's dead meat.

Cake was cream cheese pound cake with strawberry filling, chocolate buttercream and some novice-level fondant work for the trees and lurking bigfoots.

Maybe my favorite was the water bottle labels. Printed on regular paper, we covered them with clear packing tape so they'd stay waterproof. Mmmmm, Squatchy!

March Visiting Teaching message

The Light of the World. I had a lot of fun with these spring colors and I loved the two quotes so much that I couldn't choose between them. Get it here.

February Visiting Teaching message

The Good Shepherd.  The February message didn't seem complete without hearts and love and all sorts of sweet colors.  Get it here!

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Birthday!

It's been a busy month with JackJack's birthday. This naughty stinker has turned 3 with a vengeance!

Here is his last-minute, not-that-great pirate battle birthday cake. It looked great until the layers came to room temperature and started falling apart. Fortunately it was still delicious.

January Visiting Teaching message

Can you believe it's a new year!? I still don't know where 2013 even went.

January 2014 Visiting Teaching message - Our Exemplar.  

December Visiting Teaching message

Shown: October and December Visiting Teaching messages (November is the Conference issue and no message was done)

Get them here!

New Etsy store!

I'm super excited that I've started a store on Etsy. I'm going to do invitations, wedding stationery, holiday cards and whatever else I can think of.

The thing I love the most about having my own store is that I can work on whatever ideas are floating around in my brain, instead of trying to set them aside for a time when they might be useful.

Come and visit PicadillyLime on Etsy!

I had a lot of felt, OK?

Smitty baby is not old enough to have developed opinions about his Halloween costume (unlike the zombie-hunting, scary-fairy other two). Since he can be whatever I want him to be, this year he wants to be an owl.

 

The costume was sort of based on this tutorial (at least the wing template) but the feathers and mask were different. Because lets all pretend that a 21-month-old is going to leave felt goggles on his face, no matter how adorable mom thinks they look. 

If anyone actually wants a template for the footies, say so in the comments and I'll make one.

A few notes - the wings were heavy so I put suspenders on underneath his owl shirt and safety-pinned the wings to the suspenders to keep the neck of the shirt from stretching out too much.

I stitched a bit of ribbon to the underside of the wings and then tied it to his arm - this made the wings move with him instead of hanging behind like a cape.

Black girl's leggings made the perfect bottoms.

Why Miss Janae is the best

Dash got lost while we were on vacation.

It's one of those scenarios that keeps me awake at night. We're walking along Downtown Disney, at night, with  maybe 500,000 other people and I stopped to check the park map. It probably took me 45 seconds. I looked up, reached for Dash's hand... no Dash.

I turned in circles for a minute looking for him but he was nowhere. Joe ran off in one direction, Braden and Grandpa in another. I closed my eyes, said a prayer and opened them. Still no Dash. But there WAS a Disney police guy. Good enough for me. He took a description and radioed in a lost child.

This is where Miss Janae comes in. Miss Janae was the kids' preschool teacher. We all love her. In addition to the normal preschool things that they learn (letters, numbers, sounds, etc) they also learn valuable life skills. Playground rules, mom's phone number and yes, What To Do If One Becomes Lost.

So when Dash realized he was lost, he knew what to do. He didn't keep walking. He didn't wander off looking for us on his own. He didn't hide. He just went up to someone working in one of the booths and said "excuse me, I'm lost." The shop girl called security. As soon as my security guy had put out his call, Dash was found. He had gotten about 100 yards away from me and was enjoying being fussed over and covered with stickers.

 So the dual morals of this story are:
1. teach your child what to do if they get separated from you and
2. Miss Janae is one of my favoritest people on the planet

Also we have Disneyland pictures on our family blog. You know, if you are invited to it.

Draw Something

Possibly one of the most entertaining games ever. Stick figures are hilarious.

 Violet plays on her own account and her drawings are amazing.

Fashion and babies and Bleu

World, meet Bleu. I'm pretty sure he's going to be Baboo II.

This was one of those 'kill two birds with one stone' moments. The baby did not want clothes on. He wanted to hold his blanket and run at the same time. He wanted to smell his Bleu but did not have time to sit down with it. He wanted to chew on the blanket corners. He also wanted the fuzzy side facing him and not the silky. He wanted to be running AND playing hide-n-seek AND being silly.

In fact, this was like killing a whole herd of birds with that stone!



I didn't say he'd be easy to catch.
Only that he'd be happy.

The science of a birthday

You too can have a fabulous Mad Science birthday party by following these simple instructions.

1. The birthday girl. Find a daughter who turns up her nose at boring store-bought princess-themed parties (read: parties that are easy to pull off) and instead turns her crazy brain to thoughts of secret lairs and crazy potions and things that explode.

2. The invitation.We went with old-fashioned cartooney fun.

3. The decorations. I'll admit that it really really really helped that Joe spends half his day in a chemical lab (testing drinking water) and that the lab director is the nicest of human beings and let us borrow most of this stuff. Monica is the best!! But we found some educational science stores and websites where you can get most of this inexpensively.

The decorations were all safe and edible - candies and colored water and a Poison Your Neighbor's Drink station where you could put test tubes of punch into beakers of soda. Except that then the girls started putting the candies in their drinks and it really was poison.

4. The cake. Mad scientists love bright colors. It's a known fact.


5. The entertainment. We found the craziest of scientists to entertain a herd of sugared-up 2nd graders.

They explored the science of the digestive system and made ooey gooey slime blobs.

6. The explosions. We went with Diet Coke/Mento cannons.

In which we share a donut

It is one of those mornings. We bailed on our run for a previous engagement only to have the engagement cancel on us at the last minute. So instead of running in the chilly, sprinkly April outdoors, we shared a donut. And a tater tot.


Maybe it was two tater tots. You don't count those sorts of things. Either way, everything was crunchy and warm and tasty and not April outdoors.

Can you hear me now?

Dad? It's me, Smitty. I can't hear you very well. I'll squish it harder against my head.
Dad!
What's wrong with this thing. Dad! Are you there? Shaking stuff usually fixes it. Also tasting it.
It's true. I'm hilarious. Smitty's out. Peace!

Davy Crockett birthday party

Two birthdays down and one to go! Dash wanted a Davy Crockett-themed party. The invite:
The cake:

Why oh why did I not take pictures of the inside? It was dark chocolate cake with ooey gooey marshmallow buttercream (supposed to be like a campfire s'more, idea from Pintrest) and the milk chocolate frosting on the outside. Delicious. Totally delicious. And Bear Tracks ice cream. Keep the theme alive!

I told Joe he was in charge of the actual party and I would do food. He came through in a big way. We had a good old-fashioned mountain man rendezvous, complete with hatchet toss....
bow-and-arrow shooting...
stick-wrestling...
leg-wrestling...
and cute babies underfoot. Is that not what a real mountain man rendezvous is made of?
With each event they won pelts which they strung on a leather strap and turned in at the trading post for drinks and candy and stick-on mustaches. They also got to wrestle a barr (attack an angry-bear pinata) for candy.
It was hard to find a real angry bear at the party store.

Finally, when everyone went home, this is what they got for a thank-you.