Abbie in Wonderland

A very merry birthday to Abbie! She turned 7 today and was so excited. She has been asking for weeks "how many days until my birthday?" We whipped up some decorations for the house to make it a little more "wonderland"ish. Fortunately our guests did not have to produce a key or cry a river in order to get through the door.

Now you know it's all about the cake at our house these days. In order to make the Alice in Wonderland cake I had to take the majority of the day off from working. It took about 6-1/2 hours to do by myself (the downside of Drew working in SLC is that he can't get off early to help with cakes any more). It is a little crowded because I wanted all of the elements to show from the front and placement is not really my forte, but all in all I'm happy with the results.

The Rabbit's pocket watch and the club painting the roses
The Mad Hatter's hat, the Cheshire Cat and the "eat me" cookies (note: the "drink me bottle is down at the bottom on the cake board)

The doorknob

Another big day this past week was the first day of school. Cary is in 3rd grade now and Abbie is in 2nd. We are all very excited to be starting a new year!

New Rooms!

Oh, where to start? We've been pretty busy around here. Drew has been working on remodeling the basement for the past couple of months and the project is now complete! We switched around everyone's bedrooms to try and give us all a little more space. Carly moved out of the room that she used to share with Abbie and into Savannah's old room. Savannah moved in with Brooke to our old bedroom, and Drew and I moved down to the basement. I have to apologize for the pictures. It's hard to get a shot of the whole room with my dinky little point-and-shoot.

First on the list is Brooke and Savannah's room. We searched high and low for a big girl bed for Savannah and lucked out with a find on KSL. We painted the room green (used to be blue when it was our bedroom) and hung wallpaper along one wall. I sewed some simple curtains out of the old bedskirt that went to the crib set and then made some pillows for Savannah's room so that her bedding would match the baby's.



Next up is Abbie's room. We didn't make too many changes here, just moved her bed to the other side of the room and moved her Barbie house in. I also got a dresser for both her and Carly because we were tired of hanging up all the pants, skirts, etc. and now that there was room for more furniture, why not?

Here's Abbie's dresser that I got at a yard sale for $15. It needed a little work.
Here it is after. I cleaned it up ( it had been stored outside for who knows how long and was pretty nasty), painted it, and glazed it. Total cost: $45.


Now onto Carly's room. We didn't repaint in here either, just bought her a new quilt set that matched the walls and got her a dresser too.

This dresser set me back $20 from a yard sale.

Here's the after with a fresh coat of paint and stripped hardware. Total cost for this one was around $45 too.


And last but not least, our room. I'm so excited with how this has turned out. Drew put in a lot hours and did it all himself since I was very pregnant or taking care of the new baby during the process. So a big thank you to my sweetie for working so hard.


These projects have sucked us dry as far as money goes, so I was pretty mad when I couldn't find decorative pillows for our bed for less than $20 a pop. I was able to find the white one for $10, which I was willing to pay, but the other two I made for about $2 a piece. The black one has some ruffles on it that you can't really see but I'm happy with how they turned out.

One of my favorite parts of the room is the walk-in closet that Drew built. He had to tear down the existing wall, move it over a few feet and then build all the shelving in the closet by himself. He did a great job and the pictures really don't do it justice (sorry that they're sideways too).
We also made a cake for a friend of Drew's a couple of weekends ago. It is from the movie "Firefly." I guess the birthday boy is a big fan of the show and one of the characters wears this hat. We hand piped all the knit detail so it took quite a while.I also made another pillowcase dress. This time it was for our friends who just had their 4th baby too. I had a little extra fabric so I made a matching burp cloth.


And the parting shot this time around is of our little cuties. I found this super SWEET hot pink crushed velvet chair at a yard sale this summer for a whopping $4. I bought it for the sole purpose of taking the girl's photo in it. We took a whole bunch of pictures but for the sake of time I'll just post one for now. Enjoy!

Summer in Full Swing

Although it seemed to take its sweet time, summer has finally arrived! It's kind of a love/hate relationship for me. I love doing fun things with our family during the summer but I also go a little crazy with the kids home from school all day. I love being able to take walks in the warm evenings but hate the heat of midday.

Here are a few of the ways we have been celebrating the summer:

Just hangin' out

Lovin' Daddy on Father's Day

Painting our own nails (can you tell? Notice the legs)

Eatin' popsicles

Goin' to the zoo

Headin' to the splash pad at Liberty Park

Makin' cakes for wonderful friends

Livin' it up on the beach of Bear Lake

and havin' an awesome 4th!

We hope you all are enjoying your summer so far as well and had a great 4th of July!

Brooke's Blessing

We had Brooke's baby blessing this Sunday and it was really nice. Having so many family members and friends gathered was wonderful. A new little life is certainly worth the celebration! We couldn't help but notice that the circle of priesthood holders was a little smaller this time around though and we truly missed having Grandpa Mackelprang with us. Brooke and her daddy

Our family...complete!

These are the shoes I made to go with the dress. I had to cut the pattern way down and they were still just a little roomy. Love those tiny toes!

Other big news around our house includes the fact that Abbie lost her first tooth! I think that she was a little disappointed that it didn't happen while she was at school because apparently they give you a special envelope to put your tooth in or something, but oh well. She was very excited to hit the dollar store once she received her reward from the tooth fairy.

School also came to an end this last week. I've kind of been dreading this for a while because now I have all four girls home all day. I'm not sure I'll survive, but the girls are pretty happy to be out for the summer. Carly had a big end-of-year project for the Wild Animal Fair. The kids were all assigned an animal to research and write reports on. They made big display boards at school and had to bring a 3D representation of their animal for the display. Carly wanted to do a cake so I had her mix up the cakes and do all of the frosting. She also helped with sculpting the cakes, coloring the fondant, and decorating the finished product. She was happy with the results and said she drew a pretty big crowd during the fair with kids asking, "Is that really made out of cake?!"
Once again I have to part with a few more beauty shots of the babe. It's just too much fun to take her picture! Notice the peach fuzz on her shoulders in this first shot...that is so my favorite! In fact, I better go give her a kiss and a snuggle right now.

Savannah Turns 3!

We officially have a 3-year-old at our house! Yesterday was Savannah's birthday and we celebrated "Purple Rapunzel" style. Unfortunately I am still not running on all cylinders (perhaps I never really am) and felt way behind on getting things ready for her party. I spent the day putting together a few decorations, wrapping her gifts & of course making the cake. But somehow time got away from me and I wasn't able to really start on the actual cake decorating until 5:00. Since her party started at 6:30 this was not nearly enough time. So needless to say the cake was mediocre at best. But to be honest, she didn't really care. She was just happy to have her cousins, aunts & uncles, and grandparents all there to celebrate with her.

I realized that with my time off from blogging before Brooke arrived, I didn't get the chance to post pictures of Easter. I wanted to be sure and get them up because my mom deserves a shout out. I had intentions to make all three of the girls coordinating dresses this year, but I found one for Savannah that was really cute and went with the fabric I had already bought. So I saved myself a little time by buying her dress. I made Carly and Abbie's dresses and then turned them over to my mom for the finishing details. That is what really made the dresses. She did all the pleating on the bottom of the dresses by hand and I know it was very time consuming, so thanks Mom! They turned out great!
I can't end this post without a couple of pictures of our sweet baby. They just don't come any cuter!