Girls Night December 2009

The last Girls Night of the year I decided to have everyone come over to my house and get crafty. I had a lady come and bring us all of her beads and show us how to make bead watches. From there we all decided to make bracelets and necklaces as well. It got kind of crazy. But WAY fun!!!
Amy, Ellen, and Julie

Yes....two entire tables full of magical wonderful beads. It was heaven!

Michelle, Heather, and Melissa

Paulette is over on the left side of the table with her girls. They helped all of us figure out how to get it all put together and were super awesome. Thanks so much Paulette!

We had a lot of fun that night and I have some really cute jewelry to prove it. :0)

Still no takers for January Girls Night.....hopefully someone jumps in with an idea and saves the day so we can keep the fun going! :0)

July Girl's Night

This month we decided to have a Progressive Dinner. We all started out at Alicia's house for appetizers....then moved on to Amy's house for dinner....and then ended up at my house for dessert. All of it was such yummy food! :0) I was disappointed that my blondies didn't turn out very good, but luckily I had made a chocolate mousse cake as well. It was INSANELY delicious. Of which I was glad because it took just a BIT of time to put it all together. It wasn't a hard cake to make necessarily, just time consuming. But....when you took a bite of the dark chocolate cake with the chocolate mousse filling, and the chocolate ganache frosting.....it was like dying and going to heaven. Good stuff.....

Mackenzee snuggled up right next to Michelle.

It was so fun to just sit and eat and chat with everyone. We may be short a member next month if she has her baby a bit early {which she is counting on}. Either way, Michelle is in charge and is going to put us to work! :0)

Girls Just Wanna Have Fuh-un

I finished getting my outfit for 80s girls night together this last weekend. I must say I am super excited to take it out on the road.....to the bowling alley. :0) I have been planning this outfit for over a month now and I think I have done a fabulous job of getting in touch with my inner Cyndi Lauper. I'll post more pictures after girls night next week.....this picture is minus the hair and makeup that will be necessary to "complete" my look. :0)

December craziness continued...

This month is almost half over! Holy cow! Is anyone else tired?

I feel as though I've been going a hundred miles a minute for the last several weeks. We had the Arnold family Christmas party at my Grandma Casperson's house last weekend. This event always includes a rousing game of gift bingo. Me and Mackenzee went home with our arms full of fun treasures {a Dora letter book, Hello Kitty light up stamp, Dora necklace, oven mitts, iTunes gift card, coasters, and colored pencils to name a few}. Jaysen....he won a tube of chapstick. :0) Oh! And because my grandma felt sorry for him she gave him the gift certificate to Cold Stone that she had won.

I had my annual Christmas goodie making day this last week and have so much sugary sweet goodness in my kitchen right now it's scary. This year I ended up with fudge, sweet Chex Mix, White Chocolate Popcorn, Orange Creamsicle Fudge, chocolate truffles, peanut butter cups, peppermint patties, oreo cookie bark, peppermint bark, and crispy peanut butter balls. I broke my no sweets rule that day, too. :0) I HAD to sample everything to make sure it tasted good!

I also helped the kids make gingerbread cookies. In the past, they have both wanted to help roll out the dough but couldn't because my rolling pin is so heavy. So, I was so excited when I found a junior wooden rolling pin and a mini plastic rolling pin set in the dollar section of Target this year. Both my kids each rolled out their own dough and made all sorts of Christmasy shapes with cookie cutters. Sure...I couldn't tell you what each cookie came from which cookie cutter...but they had fun. And, they had even more fun frosting and decorating them. Me? I got to have "fun" cleaning up the mess left behind. Can I tell you how glad I am that we don't have carpet in the dining room anymore? :0)

Mackenzee watched the Polar Express for the first time this year and is infatuated with it. The day after she first watched it she NEEDED to go and see Santa Claus. Landon was with Jeff and so it was just her we took this year. :0( She was so funny about it though. She could hardly contain her excitement and picked out a special outfit to wear for the occassion. She told me that she was going to give Santa a hug and tell him that she loved him. And, actually, she was sure she needed to take Santa a present. It was cute. She told Santa that she wanted Dora for Christmas. I'm not sure if that means she literally wants Dora to come to our house, or if she will just settle for a Dora toy. I'm hoping for the latter. :0) After we left she became really upset because she didn't get to see Santa's reindeer or go on a train ride like the little boy from the movie did. Silly girl.

Last night was girls night and we did a gift exchange similar to the kind we did at my grandma's house. Everyone went home with something fun and we got to eat lots of yummy treats {again!} Insanely, at 9:15 the girls remaining decided they wanted to go to the movies. I had to finish up a homework assignment and so I told them to have fun. Apparently this was unacceptable to them. After we found out we had 20 minutes to get to the theatre, I was told that they would help me finish up my homework so that I could go too. So, we all crammed into my computer room down here to get it all done in time. Let's just say that this was the first "educational" girls night I think we've ever had and those girls are WAY more informed about proper nutrition throughout the different stages of life than they were before. We made it to the theatre about 10 minutes after the movie had started. CRAZY! Thanks so much ladies for your help though! That was the quickest I have ever finished up a power point presentation. I'll let you know our grade! :0)

Tomorrow is Landon's birthday party, so we will continue to be busy as the week ends. I am going to be attempting a Ben 10 birthday cake today...so wish me luck. Next week: Landon's Christmas play, my Grandpa's birthday, family Christmas, and class party.

Ready......

BREAK!

Girls Night

We went to Hands On for Girls Night last night. I have never actually painted pottery before and I really enjoyed it. I could have stayed there for hours to be honest with you. Very relaxing, and it doesn't require a lot of thought. So, you could sit there and chat while you painted. I picked a Christmas tree and I'm so excited to get it back! We get to pick them up on Monday after they've baked them and glazed them and all of that good stuff. I think the girl that worked there thought I was wierd though. I painted the tree green, and then put a white wash finish on it to make it look "snowy" I guess. ;0) And it turned out cute! Trunk brown...you get the idea. Well, it needs ornaments right? I asked for gold paint as I thought of putting a gold garland around the tree, but they don't carry gold or even silver. The best they had was a butterscotch color. Not good enough for me! ;0) So, I just picked red. So, there are little red circles all over my tree. I thought it turned out cute. The Christmas colors I use in my house are green, red, brown (tan) and gold. Classic colors of Christmas right? So, I was trying to keep along those lines with my pottery piece. Well, the lady came to check on us and she wanted to know if I wanted more colors. I told her I didn't need anymore because I was finished. She had this look on her face like "Are you kidding me?" She said, "That's the only color of ornaments your putting on it?" So, I said, "Yes....I'm a plain person." She was speechless. Literally. It took her a second and she said, "Oh. I'm sorry, I've just never heard that phrase before." I just told her that with me, less is more. She just walked away. My tree is cute dangit! I'll post a picture of it when I get it back. There is nothing wrong with one color of ornament! ;0)

Anyway...I'll definitely be going back.

And....to top off girls night...we went out to Tomatos for food afterwards. We finished up painting by 6:45 and honestly, none of us wanted to go back home quite yet. So, we went for it!

All in all a fun night!