Two more weeks!

School starts for my girls in two weeks! I can't believe it! Time has flown by so very fast! Amy starts kindergarten this year... She says "But what if I can't stop sucking my thumb..." She's been a pretty tough one to break of that. Any ideas that won't traumatize her? She sucks her thumb when she's nervous or tired. I can tell that she wants to stop. When she thinks I'm not looking she takes it out of her mouth and gives it the evil eye as if to say "Why are you so goood?" Haha

On the 28th is Kimber's birthday party! We usually don't have big hooplas for birthday party's because we have four kids and doing a big celebration for every birthday adds up... But this time we decided the kids had a fairly boring summer (by their own guidelines) and we should turn it into a birthday/back to school party. We reserved a bounce house, and will swim and grill out and just have a blast. No pressure. Food, pool, jumping, it's all fun. I can't wait. I've been experimenting with some scratch cake and icing recipes. The cake part has been a little harder, but the icing recipes have been marvelous! I decided to do cupcakes, chocolate with fudge filled center. The icing will be two different kinds. I'm going to line up the cupcakes in such a way that they look like a beach scene. I found a mouth watering peanut butter cream icing for the sand (with a little bit of crushed up toffee bits for added scenary, and then a very yummy buttercream icing in blue for the water. Then some of those cute little drink umbrellas on the beach and some flip flops, shells, crabs, etc, made out of modeling chocolate and fondant or gum paste. Perfection! It will look so good it'll be hard to eat!! NOT!

I printed off several pages of flip flops for the girls to color and we can hang those as part of the decorations! Cheap, fun and memorable. I found flip flops on clearance at Walmart for 50 cents a pair. So I bought 4 pair and tied ribbons and tulle to the straps. nice table/counter decoration that my girls can wear afterward! =)