Molly turns 4

We celebrated Molly's 4th birthday today! For breakfast we went to McDonald's, her choice. My sister and her kids came over and we had a fun time. We had a little friend party for Molly and I think it went well!

The theme was Strawberry Shortcake, but I don't love the new Strawberry Shortcake especially, so I found a free download with invites and other printables for a strawberry party. Found here. I made these bean bags for a little bean bag toss.

My mom had this cute tray! We also used some of my mom's strawberry shortcake glasses to drink from. I don't think I took a close up of them.

Molly helped me with the party favors.

I pulled out a sign I made a couple years ago to hang up.

Here's how the party went. When the girls first came they could color some Strawberry Shortcake pages. We then served some food. Then we played a bunch of games. We started with a bean bag toss, then hot and cold, duck duck goose, ring around the rosy, and red light green light. Then we had cupcakes and ice cream followed by presents. Then the girls just played until they went home.

We served sandwiches, strawberries, strawberry lemonade and cupcakes and ice cream.

Molly enjoying her cupcake.

The cute party girls.

Ready to open presents!!

Trying on her gifts :)

She opened a nightgown from us.

Dear Molly,

We love you so much! You are such a happy, kind girl and we love having you around. You are so creative and love to imagine things. You love to draw and make pictures with stickers. You still talk about Mimi and your other imaginary friends and it's so funny to hear you talk about what she's doing. You are a good sister. You are very good at sharing with Ali and you love her so much. She looks up to you and wants to be like you. You are such a sweetheart and are always worried about others. You never want anyone to be hurt or unhappy. You are a good friend and love to play with other kids and family members. You are obedient and want to do what is right. You like to ask every morning what we are doing and where we are going. You love to read books and play games. We are so happy you are part of our family.

Love,
Mom and Dad

Fall leaves

The leaves are starting to change! The mountains look beautiful here!

My dad, Grandpa Galbraith, Justin, Molly and I drove up Sunday towards East Canyon where my dad had been on a hike the day before to show us the leaves.

Grandpa is a big fan of Molly. She is so cute with him!

It was a bit windy, but the colors were beautiful.

And of course Molly and grandpa had to try out the trail.

The pioneers came through this way when they came to the Salt Lake Valley. I'm sure they wish it would have been during the beautiful fall with these leaves.

Birthday recap

Last Tuesday I turned 28! I woke up to these beautiful flowers in the kitchen, some chocolate, and a sweet card from Justin and the girls.

I have such a sweet husband who loves to spoil me with flowers.

That was a surprise too. Justin has a 7:30 am class (yikes, right?) on Mondays and Tuesdays, but he had someone take notes and let me sleep in! Happy Birthday to me! That was lovely.

Justin went and picked us up some doughnuts for breakfast. Then we pretty much did the daily routine. But my parents were nice and watched our girls that night so we could go to dinner together. We ate at the Blue Lemon in Salt Lake. It is yummy!! We would definitely recommend it! We are getting one close to us, so we thought we would try it out.

I'm getting a light scoop (yay!) for my camera, but it's not here yet :( and my sister Natalie was very nice and has offered us a day to watch our girls so we can go and do whatever-shop, eat, see a movie, who knows. So we will be taking her up on that and I will be enjoying the rest then :) Thanks to those who called or texted! It was a fun day. Now we get to celebrate Molly's on Friday!!

Apron and chef hat

I finished a couple gifts I've been making for Molly's birthday next week! Yay. Cross it off the list! Now back to the party planning :)

Isn't this a fun little apron? My mom bought the pattern and let me borrow it :) I thought it was so cute and girly. The necktie has velcro on the strap and on the back of the apron to connect the two. The pattern had you use buttons, but I thought it would be nice to have it adjust. So I sewed in some velcro.

I bought the fabric probably a year or so ago and am finally just finishing it! I thought the fabric was so cute and would work so well for an apron.

And then I found a cute chef hat tutorial and since I had so much left over fabric of the coordinating fabric, I figured why not? I will complete the ensemble!!

It velcro's in the back so you can adjust it however you like. To view the tutorial, go here. The directions were simple and it made up very quickly.

It would have been cute to add a few more embellishments, but I just wanted to be finished!

So hang it wherever you want...

Find some tools and get your little one working in that apron! Hmmm...maybe Molly can learn to make me cookies?!!!

Here is the pattern I used for the apron. Sassy Little Sisters is the company and it's called Child's Apron. It has 3 sizes, small, medium and large. I made a small (size 3-4 I think).

Backpack before and after

 Here's Molly's backpack that we bought (again, at DownEast for $4.99) that needed to be fixed. I was planning on having it done before she started school....but that didn't happen. Well I finally got it done! Yay!

 My other problem with getting around to this project was that I had a bunch of different ideas for this. At first I wanted to have it say Molly instead. I called my mom's friend about her embroidery machine, but sadly it was broken. Well my machine does have embroidery. I tried it, but it was too small and it wouldn't let me make the letters any bigger.

 This is finally what I came up with. I decided who needs it to say her name? My backpack never did!

 I already had all the stuff in my stash, so after a few other ideas didn't pan out, I went with this! Now I can look at her bag and be happy since someone else's name isn't on it! Even though Molly doesn't know that :)

P.S. Back to pinterest for one last time, then I will be quiet! I didn't' realize you have to use a facebook or twitter account to sign up. I don't have either of those and to be honest, I don't really want them! I'm not into social networking except for blogs. I start and end there. I waste enough time online with blogs and my email. So I'm wondering which is the lesser evil. What do you think? I think I might go with twitter. Then I won't get harassed by people on facebook...I'm just kinda anti-facebook. Sorry to everyone who loves it. I see good things with it, but I'm just not interested right now!

I'm in

No worries, everyone! I got my invite to Pinterest this morning. Haven't done anything about it, but I feel much better about the situation :)

I can't wait to delete some of the tabs on my computer and "pin" them instead!! I still don't really get all of it but I'm sure I'll figure it out!

Didn't know

Today I thought I would join the bandwagon and join Pinterest! So I got on the website and tried to register. Well there was only a spot to login. I also saw "Request an Invite". So I did just that. I checked my inbox thinking they would automatically give me the info I needed to login. But no! The email said, "thank you for joining the Pinterest waiting list." What?! Since when is there a waiting list? And why? Anyway, I just thought that was odd. I'm not totally familiar with their website, but I think the idea behind it is really cool. I hope they let me in soon!! Are you on Pinterest?