Monkey Birthday Party

Hello, again!! I have been so busy since baseball/softball/t-ball started that I haven't been able to keep up!  I have been working on some projects that I can't wait to share with you.  Until then, I thought I would share my youngest daughter's second birthday from last year.  We had a butterflies and monkeys theme.

For the monkey cupcakes, I used chocolate cake and chocolate icing.  I used a Nilla wafer cut off at the top for the nose/mouth and mini Nutter Butter cookies for the ears.   For the eyes, I turned white chocolate morsels upside down.  Finally, I used a chocolate icing pen to draw the centers of the eyes, the nose and the mouth on the wafer.

The menu inclued pork barbeque, baked beans, corn on the cob, cole slaw, macaroni salad, among other things.  To go along with the monkey theme, we had monkey bread, monkey cupcakes, monkey meat and banana pudding.

Daddy and his "little monkey."

Perfectly Chocolate Frosting

I absolutely love chocolate.  There's hardly a day that goes by that I'm looking for some chocolate.  My aunt shared this delicious homemade chocolate frosting recipe with me and I had to try it for my son's birthday.  Yum. Yum.

Ingredients:

1 stick butter

2/3 c. cocoa

3 c. powdered sugar

1/3 c. milk

1 tsp. vanilla

Melt butter. Alternately add powdered sugar, cocoa, and milk, beating on medium speed to get consistency.  Add more milk or powdered sugar, if needed.  Stir in vanilla.

If you like a more "chocolately" taste, you probably won't need to add any powdered sugar.  If you like a sweeter taste, add more milk and/or powdered sugar.

Enjoy!

Featured

So thrilled to learn today that my Rosette Headband has been featured on Jillify It



Jill has an amazing blog full of awesome DIY projects, crafts recipes.  Check it out!!  Thanks so much Jill!

Family Pictures

It is so hard for a family of six to get everyone to cooperate to get any good family photos so we just choose to do it ourselves as often as we can.  Here is our latest adventure in family photos on Easter.  I tried to coordinate colors with a yellow/blue theme. 

Being the frugal mom that I am, I tried to use what we had and add a few accents to coordinate colors and still have a little something new and different.  For Dad I chose a white polo with blue stripes across the chest paired with khackis, both of which he already had.  For myself, I paired a blue shirt with white skirt and 3/4 length sleeve denim jacket, all of which I already had.  I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a yellow cotton tank which I made the infinity scarf out of and used the scraps to make the two younger girls a Rosette Headband I paid a whopping $3.97 for the shirt.

For big brother, I paired a pair of brown/white/blue cargo shorts that I got from the consignment sale with a white Abercrombie shirt with pale yellow words that was given to him by a dear friend.  We are blessed to have a friend who has a son a little older than ours who gives him all of his Abercrombie, Hollister, and American Eagle clothes when he outgrows them.  Awesome, right??  We are blessed!  The brown flip flops I got on clearance at the end of season last year.

For the biggest sister, I found an Old Navy tank on clearance for $5.47, the cardigan at Ross for $7.99 and the shoes on clearance for $7.99.  She already had the skirt.  I spent the most on her since she isn't fortunate enough to have things handed down to her.

Big sister had the yellow dress and pearl necklace handed down to her from the biggest sister who wore them in my sister's wedding.  We already had the tank and sweater and I made the rosette headband that you can find here I used the scraps from the tank that I made my scarf with.

Little sister wore a dress with matching pantloons that was handed down from both the biggest sister and the big sister.  We already had the sweater and pearl necklace.  I made her a rosette headband also. I did splurge on the sandals at Wal-Mart on clearance for $5.00.

So, I guess that I spent around $30 for Easter outfits.  Not too bad for a family of 6, huh?