Photo Friday! A day with the Family!

As a part of my birthday gift I asked my sister to take some baby and family photos of us...

So I thought I would share my favorites with you!

Have you had any new family photos taken lately? If you have a family member or friend that has a good camera and an eye for portraits you can do it on the cheap!

Happy Friday!

Tell The Truth Thursday! I love my jammies....

I have a sick obsession with my pajamas I wear them a lot...and by a lot I mean I only get dressed if I am going out. Yep right now I'm wearing pajamas that have little cocktails all over them...

If I know that I am not leaving the house on a particular day I don't put on real clothes... not even sweat pants. I lounge in my jammies all day long, and if I do get dressed to go out or to have visitors as soon as I am home again or when the visitors leave I slip back into my comfy jammies. (you know because I don't believe in the pajamafication of our world... to me there is something a little wrong about wearing your jammies in public... but that is a whole other post.)

All of this wouldn't be so bad but you see I now have two kids.... When I was single or even when I had no kids it didn't matter what I wore around the house, I could have gone naked all the time (not that I did...) and who would care.  However now that I have two kids they look to me for their example... and Momma is making it OK to wear your jammies all day. I let my kids wear their jammies all day if we aren't going out, and that wouldn't be so bad every now and again right... but we only go out a few days a week... so about 4 days out of 7 we are in our jammies all day... 

Part of me says who cares it is clothes and it's still covering them up, they are warm, they are comfortable, they are happy (and that is what matters to me). But then that other part of me, you know the Momma part that feels guilty about almost everything... she knows that I am teaching them things that they will carry on through their lives, things that will shape them into the people they will be, and that part wonders if wearing your jammies all day is a good habit, is it productive, does it tell them that we are lazy, or that we don't work hard enough?

So my confession today is that we are all (yup the four of us) wearing our jammies all day and we do most days! 

Do you hang out in your jammies or do you get up and get dressed every single day no matter what you are doing?

Delaney's 3rd Birthday Strawberry Shortcake Style!

We recently celebrated this little girls Big 3rd Birthday Strawberry Shortcake Style!

We had a lot of fun but unfortunately I don't have many photos of it or of what we did for it... there were lots of pictures taken and in fact all of these are from my sister, my mom or Robyn's mom... I never take any photos at Delaney's parties, I am usually too busy and I really should try as I find no one really takes pictures of the things that I would, for example the decorations, the food, the activities.... you know everything that you would want to show off on your blog... (oh right barely anyone I know knows that I have a blog so why would they... oops)

So here is how it went... 

(Keep in mind that I am not posting all the photos taken as I don't want to post photos of family and friends without there knowledge)

Friend's of ours own a bouncy castle so we borrowed it for the afternoon and it was a big Big BIG hit! I recommend it for every kids party!

And of course we had presents! 

She was spoiled with lots of fun new Strawberry Shortcake and Princess toys, and games.

One of her favorite gifts was this one... She got a brand new Princess Tiana (from the princess and the frog) dress up outfit straight from Disney! The ensemble came with the dress, tiara, gloves and purse... She loves it! My best friend and her new hubby had just visited Disney as part of their honeymoon and picked this up from the bibbidi bobbidi boutique as her gift from all of our friends!

And how can you have a Strawberry Shortcake party with out a Strawberry Shortcake Cake! 

I made her cake (as I always do) using my pound cake recipe found here and my butter cream icing recipe found here! To make it Strawberry Shortcake theme I just iced the cake in green 'grass' made a brown sugar 'path' and placed a Strawberry Shortcake doll (that came in a happy meal) on the path... So easy which I needed while taking care of a 3 year old and a new born!

Personally while I love the look of fondant I don't enjoy it on a child birthday cake... to me its just too much and they don't eat it anyway...

As you can see she loved it! 

Unfortunately I would have liked to have a more elaborate DIY party but due to my "taking it easy" before Max made his arrival, and the fact that I had a C-section just 2 weeks before her party I had to cut down on some of the things I planned.

For decorations we kept is simple with pink and green balloons, pink and white streamers and a generic Happy Birthday sign (all of which I picked up at the dollar store) as much as I wanted to make her birthday sign it just didn't happen this year... Robyn's mom picked up some Strawberry Shortcake plates and cups and such for the kids and for the grown ups I just picked up plain pink forks and knives and plates...

One semi creative thing I did do was to print out some of these coloring pages and use them as signs to indicate where the party was (again I don't have a picture) I printed them on pink paper and used green painters tape to put them up on the fence and windows... I also printed some of the coloring sheets and set up a coloring table for the kiddos...

If your hosting a Strawberry Shortcake party this is a great place to start... they have lots of activities and also party hats you can put together as well as invitations that you can print too!

Have you had a Strawberry Shortcake party recently? are you planning one soon? I'd love to hear all about them if you have!

Make it Monday! Easy Date Night Meal!

Now that we have two kids most of our date nights are right here in the living room watching all the shows that we missed watching throughout the week while Robyn is at work or a movie from two or three years ago that we didn't see as we had a newborn/little girl, ironic how we have come back to this.

So in the spirit of date night I thought that I would share with you an easy meal that we like to share.

Easy Chicken Cacciatore

There really is no recipe for it but here goes...

You need:

4-5 Chicken Thighs (I use frozen)

Green Pepper (about 1/4 of a whole pepper)

Onion (1/2 of a whole onion)

Can of Spaghetti sauce

Angel Hair Pasta

To Make it:

Put the chicken thighs in a baking dish, add the onion and green pepper and cover with the sauce. Bake at 350 for about an hour and 20 mins.  Serve with the angel hair pasta. (or if your like me and never have everything that you need for a recipe you can serve it on spaghetti)

This could be a great family recipe as well if your kids don't mind food with sauce, unfortunatly Delaney is very selective of the food she will eat with sauce on it so on nights that this is our meal I cook it late so Robyn and I can eat alone and make her a grilled cheese...

Do you have your date nights at home? Do you order in or cook together? What do you make on date night?

New blog hops!

If there is one thing that I love its a linky party or a blog hop!
Not only do you get to show off what you've made or invite a brand new crop of readers to your blog all in one link but you also get to find other new fun projects that you can make, or be inspired by and also you can find a few brand new blogs to read and follow! 

So when I go to my favorite blogs that have a tab or link to all of the places they link up I have a look and see if there is some place I've never been, there always is at least one on their list that I've never seen or been to before! (check out my list and see if there is a new place for you to check out!)

So today I went to link up to the Friday blog hop at A Mommy's Blog Design Studio I found out that she has a new site that lists different blog hops for everyday of the week!
Its called Blog Hops Everyday!
Check it out, you can add your hop if you have one, or just find a new blog hop or two! 

So today I am linking up to a few new places including the following!

So stop by these blogs and add your link so that you can not only get your name out there but have fun looking at other blogs too!

Happy Sunday!