let them eat cupcakes

a couple of weeks ago we all went to hear five's heartbeat for the first time. :)
always fun.

afterwards we got cupcakes and went to the park. it was a gorgeous fall day.

i can't believe this little monster just turned 2. TWO!

 did i mention there was cupcakes?

yummmm....


you have no idea how it tortured them to take this shot--"look, but DON'T TOUCH!!!"

 some of us ate the whole thing...





some of us just like the icing...

and leave the rest of the cake for daddy

and believe it or not, some of us just like the cake...

and leave the icing for mommy...

but in the end, there was no cupcake left to be found.

then we burned off some of our cupcake-y energy on the playground.

this is pretty much why i married him.

and i got this as a bonus...

sorry, excess pregnant sappy hormones escaping. :)



i heart faces

the photo challenge this week over at





 is "in the orchard" so i decided to enter this one:

p.s. i really wanted to enter this one:

but it is "i heart faces".... :oP

lobster tails...cape cod part 2

there are so many reasons to visit cape cod. our family goes every year, late september/early october.

opa gets very...frustrated if anything gets in the way of his cape cod trip. (including a certain daughter who decided to get married on october 24th. that particular year, he left for the cape on october 25th)

one of our must stop places is lambert's.

there's quite a few in massachusetts. the lamberts themselves are related, but each little market is separately owned.

and even though it's not the closest one to where we stay, the one in sandwich, ma is the one i prefer.

it's the one that has lobster tails

layer upon layer of crunchy pastry...

filled with a not-too-sweet pastry cream....

oh my.

lobster tails, people. FORGET the ones in the ocean. you want THESE.

oh, sure, they have other things...
sandwiches i hear are quite tasty...

cape cod chips (of course). and you can visit the factory in hyannis (free samples! yum!)

but really, it's all about the lobster tails.

but all good things must come to an end. and so we head home, but on our way, we stop in mystic, ct, for a slice of heaven.

the downtown area is beautiful, like something straight out of a movie (haha)

of course, when baby bear spied this in the window of a shop:

and yelled "MOMMY", well...it kind of tells you something...

unfortunately, after that it was back to reality.
home again, home again jiggity jig.
:-)

home again home again jiggity jig

miss me?


i was away.


enjoying some of this:

and then we had a little of this:

(not me...my cousin and her new hub)

but i'm back now.
your regularly scheduled programming will now resume.
:0)



come on...did anybody miss me???

wordless wednesday~gone pickin'

final tally: 25 lbs of apples, 18 lbs of peaches; which became 2 apple pies, 6 qts of apple pie filling, 3 pints of applesauce, 6 pints of blueberry-peach jam, 4 quart canned peaches, and 3 half-pints of peach honey. pheww.

**the majority of these photos were taken by girlfriend girl, a budding photog!**

a tiny post, or, romancing the poppy

party party party!

right before school started i let each of my bigger girls invite three friends for a teeny, tiny party.

i saw the one done by Lindsay over at the Pleated Poppy (HERE and HERE) back in June and i just fell in LOVE! it is the most adorable thing!

basically, i pretty much stole all her ideas :o) if you google "tiny party" you'll find lots of other inspiration, but hers was by far my favorite!

okay, so i did manage to come up with a few {lame} ideas of my own....but the good news is most of my IRL friends don't read other blogs as voraciously maniacally much as i do, so i come out looking genius! :o)

onward to photos:

water balloons on straws make perfect "tiny" balloons. and a tray of "miniscule cupcakes" waits for little hands to devour them!

basically, at some point while planning, i thought i might go mad if i said the words "tiny" or "teeny" again. Enter the handy thesaurus, where i looked for every and any synonym....thus, miniscule cupcakes.

and...

mini cookies, mini celery sticks & tiny carrot sticks, hershey's miniatures {of course!}, and MUNCHKINS! brought by a friend {GENIUS!}

miniature grilled cheese sandwiches, diminutive pizza slices, and bitty chicken nuggets (popcorn chicken)

there were three things from the pleated poppy's party that i HAD to have:

#1 being the tiny milkshakes. too cute! (little bathroom cups from Target, the orange of the cups determined our whole party color scheme~they looked the least like "bathroom cups")

yummy!!!

#2 thing i stole was inspired by from TPP's party was the adorable tiny party hats!! two packs of headbands from the $1 store, scrapbook paper and trims from the stash, and there you have it!

sadly, i didn't get a good shot of them all together before they went on the girls' heads. but trust me--they were really, REALLY cute!

after lunch we did our tiny painted masterpieces

(#3 from TPP)<--totally sounds like a rap song

they came out so cute!

next we did a couple of games:

yes, that's a tiny donkey. and he has tiny tails.

a miss.

don't judge my donkey. i drew him in about 20 seconds right before we played. (thus the need for clarification)

they had fun anyway.

then the girls took turns playing with a mini golf game and mini baseball game we had picked up at the party store.

i also sent them on a little lion hunt, searching for little lion erasers i had hidden around the living room.

okay, we're near the end now {promise}

they each got a tiny bag filled with tiny (aarrrghh! that word!) treasures:

i bought a 1/2 yd of 4 coordinating fabrics at joanne's, and mixed and matched them...

they had their initial sewn on, along with some tiny buttons and a ruffle.

a special shout out goes to googiedaddy, who stayed up and helped me sew them the night before the party! (yup, googiedaddy can get his sewer groove on like nobody's bidnezz...)

the small tag read "thank you for coming to our teeny tiny party"

contents: a tiny tiara, mini paint set, bitty notebook, undersized lollypop, diminutive bubbles, and some little lions

all in all, i'd have to say it was a tiny success...

even if it didn't have such a tiny price tag :o)


Linking up at some of THESE fine linky parties!