Gizmo's Birthday Party

In keeping with my blog fashion of posting things a week or two after they happen, I decided that now would be a great time to post about Gizmo's birthday party. This was the first birthday party that she has had with friends in a few years, so it was very exciting for her. Most of her friends were even able to spend the night. Her nonstop excitement for the party nearly drove me insane in the week previous to the big event, but I am glad she had such a wonderful time.

When we were trying to come up with a theme for the party she told me that she really wanted to watch Howl's Moving Castle, her favorite movie, with her friends. I suggested that we have an Asian themed birthday party to go along with that. While at first she seemed to think it was a dumb idea, she soon loved it.

She and I made most of the decorations together. We went to Jo-Ann's craft store while they were having a scrapbook paper sale and got a bunch of paper she liked. Most of it was sparkly, which really looked neat.

I drew the letters freehand while looking at a font that we liked, then I cut them out. Gizmo glued them on the shimmery blue paper, and we worked together to string them along some yarn.

We didn't make the paper umbrella. That was something Gizmo loved from the party store.

A view of some of our decorating.

Sparkly paper lanterns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While waiting for her cake to cool the night before the party, I decided to make some origami lillies for the table. Spike woke up and helped me make one. If you look carefully, you can see that he stuck a little paper airplane onto his contribution.

Princess wanted to be just like her big sister, so they both wore some Chinese clothes that my parents picked up in Chinatown and had chopsticks in their hair.

Her cake. I managed to keep it a surprise like she wanted.

Thinking about her wish.

Opening presents.

What we put in the favor boxes.

The favor boxes all closed up.

The girls were just silly enough to be fun, but not enough to drive me and Brady crazy. They did stay up later than me for sure, and one of her guests brought silly string in her present so I was finding bits and pieces around the house the next day though. Mostly that just made me giggle. It was wonderful seeing Gizmo have such a fun time with her friends, even if I am a bit sad about the fact that she is growing up so much.

Bento Boxes for the Fair

Even though I don't have to pack a lunch every day for the kids since I am not sending them off to school, occasions do arise when a packed lunch is necessary. Since me and Gizmo are gluten-free, and I am casein-free, it just makes sense to be prepared for lunch instead of seeing what we can find when everyone gets hungry. Even without the dietary restrictions, I would probably chose to pack lunch anyway, since healthy fast food options can be costly and hard to find when you are talking about feeding a crew like ours.

The problem with packing lunches is that it gets quite dull. Gluten-free sandwiches are alright, but the bread is expensive and the kids get bored of them quickly. I have previously been slightly obsessed with Japanese bento boxes. I played around with preparing bento lunches with containers bought from Target. It was alright, but not enough to hold my interest.

After being stuck somewhere with no good food options available once or twice I decided my lunch packing skills needed improvement. I bit the bullet and ordered me and each of the kids a bento box, along with some cute picks and bento accessories. We also all went and picked out a new insulated lunch bag.

Our field trip to the fair was the second time that I had used the boxes. Since the kids were excited about seeing the animals at the fair, I decided to make their lunches fit the theme.

The bento boxes that we have are two-level ones. I filled the bottom level of each with onigiri (shaped rice) in the shape of a chick, a cow (Gizmo's favorite animal), and a pig. The rice used for the chick was colored with tumeric, and the pig was colored with powder that I made from dehydrated beets. With the beet powder especially, a little went a long way. That is why my pigs are so much brighter pink than what I planned. The chicks beak is a piece of carrot, and the cows' noses, pigs' snouts, and pigs' ears are made of ham. All the eyes and nostrils are nori. I did not succeed in hiding the fact that nori is seaweed from the kids, and next time I will be using something else since they all voted against it. Around the animals, I filled in the space with broccoli. In the top half of the box, I threw in some summer sausage and cheese (minus cheese for mine), and a Wilton silicone muffin cup with nectarines from our tree. The cute little panda in the picture above is a bottle for soy sauce to sprinkle on the rice. The kids each have a different animal for theirs.

This is the boxes stacked up and ready to be put into lunch bags along with drinks. So far, I am really having a lot of fun packing bento boxes, although I do not think they will be quite this intricate every time. The prices are not bad, this is the box that I am using now, and I am happy with the quality. It is much darker in real life though. My box is the dark blue one in the picture.

There are more expensive options as well. I have been considering splurging on this one for myself.

Gizmo's Birthday

Twelve years ago today me and Brady became parents to an adorable baby girl. It seems odd to me that it really has been that long, but I guess all parents feel that way about their babies growing up.

Gizmo was certainly a handful when she was little, and we were sure young, but she has been such a blessing to our lives. I am so proud of her and what an awesome young lady she is.

I am a bit late getting her video put together. Even though it is still her birthday, it is late and she is sleeping. Too bad digital cameras were not a popular item when she was little, because scanning our old photos is not all that fun. I hope she likes seeing her belated video when she gets up tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to our wonderful Gizmo!

Utah State Fair

For the past two years, we have loaded up and made the drive to Salt Lake City for the state fair. The kids really look forward to it, and homeschoolers get a killer deal on admission. In the past, there has been one day of the fair scheduled for homeschoolers to get in for a discount, but they changed the rules this year. We had to take in our paperwork, but got to go anytime. Since we had more freedom to pick what day we wanted to go we were able to go on a Saturday. I prefer during the week since there is less crowds, but our schedule has just been so busy that it really was better to go today.

Our first stop was at the photography exhibits. One of Gizmo's friends, who is also homeschooled, won a blue ribbon for a photo of hers. That same friend's little sister won a best in show ribbon. We had not realized that they had entered, so it was fun to find a familiar name. I really need to get on the ball and get the kids submitting something to next year's fair.

Here are some of the highlights of the day.
This is Spike waiting for the girls to finish up cooing over some baby pigs. By this point, he was getting pretty tired.
We finished up the day with a few rides. Princess chose the carousel, which was no surprise. She also picked the most girly horse on there, which was even less of a surprise.
The big kids chose a bigger ride. One of those ship type things that swings back and forth. All of my pictures that I tried to take of them on it did not work out, so here is one of them waiting to get on.And in case you are wondering at this point, Squirt was with us. He was not having a good photo day though, since everyone I took of him he is blurry from his constant need to move. He did enjoy petting a three-week old calf while we were there, and he enjoyed the sights, so it was a fun day for him.

And now my aching feet and I are going to rest and watch a movie with my honey...

Will Learn Times Tables for Ice Cream...

I felt that Gizmo and Spike needed to work on their multiplication facts a bit this year. Gizmo has had them down pretty good in the past, but Summer break does take its toll, and a refresher course never hurt anyone as far as I know. Especially when the reward for doing so is a banana split. For each set of times tables that they pass off to me, they get to color that corresponding portion of the worksheet. Every number has a designated item, whether it be a scoop of ice cream, a banana, or even the bowl. Since Princess is learning her numbers, she gets to color the numbers that she has mastered. I have heard of similar ideas to this before, but didn't see anything online. What is a homeschooling mom to do? Draw one, of course. This was the result...

The date for our Sundae Party is October 15 and they can have whatever they have earned, so I am excited to see if they will be able to do everything.

Gizmo's Projects

Ahh....it is lovely to have had at least part of my evening spent at home and not playing chauffeur. To celebrate, I figure I should post up Gizmo's latest Photoshop project.

Her take on the same photo that Spike had used earlier (it is the photo being used for their current large assignment).

She had a blast playing with the Gradient Map adjustment layer. During some of her free time, she decided to play around with one of her own photos.

Fell off the gluten wagon...

Times have been busy here, and I am still not through with my allergy elimination diet. Like a sucker, I put soy sauce on my Mongolian barbecue when we went out to dinner, completely forgetting that it was not okay. I certainly paid for that mistake. It has been about two weeks and the nausea is still lingering. Since we need a quick answer on what I can and can not eat, I am just going to bite the bullet and get the bloodwork done. Tomatoes and eggs seem to be alright, since I have tried those and felt just fine, so that is something to be happy about.

Life doesn't slow down though, even when you feel like it should. Although we did miss playgroup and chess one week, the kiddos were very understanding. We are not back in full force with Girl Scouts, swimming, chess, playgroup and....as of tonight....I have found Spike a Webelos pack (ya know, the younger Boy Scouts). Hurray! Happy kids make all the running around worth while, even if it wears me out.

I thought I would share part of Spike's photoshop work from today with you. We had a nice one-on-one lesson while Squirt napped, Princess played, and Gizmo was off with her book club. This isn't the main assignment we are working on, but just something I let him play around with for fun. The photo is one of the practice photos we receive with our Practical Photoshop magazine subscription.
The original looks like this: