Pinkalicious!

Today was a Relay for Life fundraiser day at our school. The theme was to dress as your favorite storybook character. AK couldn't decide who to be because I had forbidden Hannah Montana or Ariel because it's cold and the costumes she has are pretty bare. This caused a bit of turmoil on the drive home from school yesterday, but we finally compromised on Pinkalicious. For those of you who do not know Pinkalicious, she is a little girl who ate so many pink cupcakes she turned pink! She had to eat green foods to turn back to her normal color. I felt it was pretty appropriate for my pink loving sweets snacker. So here she is...all in pink.



I'm not too good at pigtails, but she looked pretty cute :) Some of the other characters in her class were Bad Kitty, Goldilocks, and the Gingerbread Girl.

My class had a few characters today. Here they are...can you figure out which characters they are?

Backyard Bird Count

I decided to participate in the Backyard Bird Count again this year. However, I ended up with a serious crick in my neck all weekend. It was impossible to turn my head in any direction without severe pain until Monday. I did count birds for a few minutes on Saturday because they were having such a good time at my feeders. I tried my hardest to get some good pictures, but it's like they knew I was watching them and they didn't want to participate.

I got a couple of shots where if you look very closely you can see the bird through the leaves.


There's a tiny chickadee right in the middle of this shot. See him??


You can sort of see the House Finch on my feeder here.


This was taken through my dirty living room window.


Mostly I saw this guy hanging by his toenails as he cleaned out all of the sunflower seeds!



This was a common shot. I stood very still a few feet away from the feeder. The birds would approach and grab a snack, but then fly away quickly before I could push the camera button. Hmmmm...what could have caused their fear?

I believe this was the culprit...



We had fun though :)

Six More Weeks of Winter

Even though General Beauregard Lee did not see his shadow on February 2, I think Winter will never end. We got 2-4 inches of snow here on Friday. This is the 2nd (or 3rd?) snow/ice we've had this year. That's a lot for Georgia. They predicted snow for this morning, but it never showed up. Now the weather report shows snow for Friday! AK has a good time in the snow. Her friend MM came over Friday afternoon and they played until their hands were numb. On Saturday AK and her daddy built a very leafy snowgirl. She is slowly loosing inches off her waist as we speak!



These were taken Friday.

The next pictures were taken Saturday...you can see it warmed up a bit!

Signs of Spring

Look what I found today...

Ah...pretty flowers. Unfortunately, I did not find them blooming outside. They're on the little African Violet in my living room. Spring will be here soon. I keep telling myself this while it is 25 degrees and very windy outside. Soon...

Hugs and Kisses

AK and I started on a Valentine's Day adventure this morning, and finally wrapped it up this evening with a little shopping in between. I had decided to make these cookies for her teachers this year. Now, keep in mind I am no baker. I can do brownies out of a box, but that is about as fancy as I get. However, in my quest to be crafty, I ran across this blog that was link from who knows where because I've read so many great blogs these days! Here is our journey...



Here are the ingredients. You can see I already got flour everywhere before I even started mixing and stirring. That was my first warning.



How could I forget this?



My little helper. Notice the flour on her forehead. Warning number two.



Mix and stir!



There was flour flying everywhere! Third warning.

And here is where we ran into trouble...



This is some seriously thick dough. I didn't know if it would ever come off of the beaters, but my handy spatula came to the rescue!

Here is the dough ready to be chilled for 2 hours.



After the dough chilled, I got ready to roll out the dough. Well, it was hard. The dough, that is. After I mashed on it for a while it softened up nicely. Instead of rolling (because I don't have a rolling pin...I told you I'm not a baker) I pressed out the dough. I used our cute little fondant cutters to make circles (hugs) and squares (kisses).



And here they are cooked.



Nice and golden brown on the bottom!

We added the finishing touches...



And here they are!



I plan to package them in these cute little boxes once the icing is dry. Hope they like them!



I forgot to say we had a wanna-be helper...here's Kramer :) He was waiting patiently for something yummy to fall to the ground.

Knit and Purl

I have been interested in knitting or crocheting since I discovered crocheted wash cloths several years ago. I love them, and have wanted to be able to make my own, but never took the time to learn. My mom even bought me a knit a wash cloth kit about 5 years ago. I just opened the box about 2 months ago! It had some really pretty yarn, and very detail-less directions. I ended up Googling how to knit, and let me just say, I wasn't very successful. My self taught lesson lasted all of 30 minutes before I gave up. That pretty yarn hasn't been out of the box since.

Fast forward to today...I had my first official knitting lesson. Lin Barnett of Ewe Knits sat down with me for 2 hours tonight and taught me the knit stitch and purl stitch! I am so excited and proud of how well I did. Take a look...



Ha -ha!! Just kidding. This beauty came from Brooke's Column of Leaves Knitted Scarf Pattern.

Here's what I created...



It doesn't look like much, but it's a lot of happy little stitches all tied up together. I go back for my second lesson next week. I wonder what I'll learn next?

Let me begin by saying how excited I was to have three...THREE...comments!! When I say excited, I mean EXCITED!! I was beginning to get discouraged. I know my mom checks in from time to time, but she doesn't comment. Thank you, thank you to those who commented. I love it!

So onto my first day of using non-plastic water bottles. I didn't actually start on Feb. 1 or 2 because when I went to fill up my bottles before work, the Brita pitcher was less than half full. It takes it a while to filter so I didn't have time to wait. That taught me a good lesson though...I have to fill them up at night. What a revelation :) So last night I spent about 30-45 minutes filling bottles and waiting for the pitcher to fill. This morning I packed them in my cooler...with a little help from my favorite little girl.



I enjoyed my pretty bottles today, and I'm looking forward to using them from now on!