Brooke's Birthday Stuff / Things I'd Been Wanting To Try

So for Brooke's birthday this year I decided to take the opportunity to try a few things I'd been wanting to do out.  Luckily Brooke was a pretty good sport about it.

Tie-Dye Cupcakes

We made tie-dye cupcakes to take to school.  They were super easy and fun to make together.  Although I always tend to get a little heavy handed with the food coloring on things like that and the colors looked a little dull when they were baked.  I forgot to take a picture of them at the end, but they were cute- we just did white frosting with sprinkles.

Fondant

I've been wanting to try fondant forever, but it made me nervous and seemed like a big deal.  Brooke picked out a cherry cake from the May issue of Better Homes and Gardens that also had a recipe for a candy clay.  So while I techniquely didn't use fondant I think the candy clay was close.  I decided not to frost the whole cake in the candy clay/fondant because the buttercream was so delicious.  So I just made the flowers and swirls out of it, it was super easy to work with and kind of fun to try something new.  Also don't mind the finger swipes through the cake, I apparently have no control whatsoever over my son.

Brooke loves her new scooter!

Did I mention my little girl is a bookworm.  We had to wait for her to finish her book, so that we could blow out candles and eat cake.

We didn't have a party this year which I thought I might miss, but which I must say was so wonderful.  But we did let Brooke invite two friends over for a little playdate.  They had a lot of fun and Brooke really didn't seem to mind the lack of party.

I'd been wanting to make a fruit bouquet for a while and figured that would be a perfect snack for my little girl that LOVES fruit.  It was really fun and easy to make and Brooke thought it was super fancy! So that was our birthday celebrations, I really like having a reason to try some of the cool ideas out there!

Happy Birthday Brooke!

Happy Birthday Sweetie!


Brooke is such a sweet girl.  I love that her birthday is so close to Mother's Day, because I think it helps me to treasure this sweet little girl that made me a mom, a little bit more.  I am just so grateful I get to be her mom.  Here are a few things I love about her.

1.  She is thoughtful.  She is always thinking about nice things that she can do for people.  For mother's day she gave me a stack of pictures about 3 in. thick that she'd been working on for weeks.

2.  She loves to read. I often find her up, long after bedtime snuggled in her blankets reading.

3.  She is creative.  She is always thinking up new games or writing stories or working on some project or another.

4.  She is funny.  She has a great sense of humor, and she even tolerates her dad's incessant teasing pretty well.

5.  She is a great big sister.  The other night she asked Owen if he wanted her to read stories and tuck him in and he said yes so she went and put him to bed for us.

6.  She is pretty easy going.  For the most part this little girl can deal with things when they don't go her way and still be the happy girl she usually is.

I love you Brookie! Thanks for making me a momma!

Things We've Been Up To

We went to the zoo. It was fun, although I really think I'm going to need a leash for Owen if I ever want to leave my house after the baby (did anyone see that Modern Family?)

Brooke's friend Kaitlyn slept over one night when her parents were out of town.  They surely did enjoy themselves, between dressing up, painting their nails and having ice cream they had quite the night.

Brooke played soccer this spring.  She had a lot of fun.  I think more than anything she really loved interacting with the other girls and being part of a team.

 Every game Brooke tried to get the girls to block the goal with her and kind of thought it was weird that her coach always made them move.  Obviously blockading the goal is a pretty sure fire way to win, right?

We went to a Smokies baseball game. 

Our seats were right above the dugout, and Brooke got a ball after one of the innings.  She was quite excited about that!

This is Diamond one of the Smokies mascots.  He was hanging out by our seats for awhile, and Owen was quite enamored with him.

The fireworks after the game were my favorite part.  I am always impressed with their firework displays they are always so cool.

Buddy Bear came for a visit.  Buddy Bear is Brooke's kindergarten class mascot.  She was so excited to have him come home for an entire weekend and I was so excited that she wrote almost the entire journal entry by herself that I couldn't help but take a picture.  She really loves to write and she is getting so much more confident with spelling and things its so fun to see how much she has learned this year!