Lilah Asenith: Who I Am

This is just a tiny bit late, so please except my apology Miss Lilah.

Everything you'll need to know about Lilah Asenith at Two Years Old!

This is her normal everyday look. Wild hair, little to no clothing, and a sticky face that I'm constantly wiping. Lilah is still my baby, she chooses to be with me 90% of her day and if she can get away with having me hold her for the majority of it then she will. She's into dress up and putting on her own shoes.

She came upstairs from the playroom dressed like this so of course I had to take a picture! It was so hot outside, but she didn't care! She still wore her ugg's anyway hahaha. The 10% of time she spends away from me is spent with her sister. She has to do EVERYTHING her sister does. If Emmy is playing with a certain type of toy, Lilah will go get a similar thing to tinker with. If Emmy is building something then Lilah will try and do it too. If Emmy is gets excited about something, Lilah is right there cheering along with her. Very cute!

She likes to pick her nose and when you tell her to stop it she'll then do it over and over and laugh at you. We are hearing her speak a lot more lately. Lots of spontaneous words will pop out and she will copy me when I ask her to, the newest word is DARK. Whenever I walk into a room at night that doesn't have a light on she yells out "dark" haha. Kim thinks she'll have the stronger Australian accent out of the two of them based on some of the words she says.

Every time I turned around I was having to pick up the magazines in the toilet and put them back into the holder. Usually it's daddy to blame, but instead of just one or two out it was every single one! I finally caught the guilty one...little Miss Lilah!!
Since this picture was taken (well over a week ago) she's not been pulling them out so much since I started making her pick them up every time I found them all a mess. She's still a monkey too! She gets in trouble at least once or twice an hour for climbing on top of the kitchen counters. She'll push a chair up and once she's up there her favorite thing to do is to play in the sink with the faucet. Obviously she loves water play and takes up to two baths a day.

The girls LOVE their new bath tub and will have really long play sessions in there! Because it's so big and they are so little I can fill it right up and they think they are swimming. Lilah's favorite is lots of bubbles and color tablets that make the water a pretty tint. Her favorite bath toys are the mermaid dolls and Barbie's Mermaid Falls, but really she loves any and all bath toys.

She still doesn't care much for TV but the little that she does watch still remains the same.... Teletubbies and Baby Signing Time although she knows alot of the theme songs to the shows that Emmy watches and will sing along with them and then goes off to do something else.

Everyday she signs "car" and asks to go to the store. I hate to admit it but I've actually made a trip out to the store because she's asked to go and when I told her that we were not going to go anywhere that day, she just looked so sad.

Lilah isn't too fussy when it comes to food and she's usually the easier of the two to convince to try something. She has 2-3 bottles/sippy cups of milk per day. Her boob obsession continues even though she's been weaned for 6 months the end of April. Every time she's on my lap during the day the first thing she does is shove her hand down my shirt and if she finds what she's looking for then she pinches while rolling her fingers back and forth. Yes, it's still an OUCH! IF she's tired or it's bedtime then she's much more aggressive about it and will persist over and over and over again as I smack away her hand each time. I am so over being the boob defender! I can't wait for this obsession/love/habit to stop!

On a positive note.... she nearly makes up for the pinching by giving awesome back scratches. She learned how to do them when her Auntie Abby was here and she scratched Mommy's back lots and lots. Anytime I'm busy with a project or on the computer she'll get behind me and start scratching and she knows she'll grab my attention that way....of course there is lots of positive reinforcement haha. For being 2 years old I'm always amazed at what a great job she does, but it's because it's filled with so much love! xo



When Kim and I were first together (something crazy like after 3 weeks) I came across this picture in a magazine of a little Native American baby and I showed it to him and said, "This is what our babies will look like." and I've kept it all this time. What do you think!?

Our Birthday Morning

Surprise!!! It's our birthday today!!!

Look at what they woke up to!! We blew up the balloons (Kim helped with a few of them) the night before the party after the kids went to bed. I hadn't planned it to be this way, but it ended up that I didn't get around to doing them until really late so I thought we might as well do something fun with them! I did have planned that they'd wake up to their presents sitting out for them to enjoy!

CLICK HERE if you don't see the video below of the kids this morning!

Lilah woke up first then Emmy, and they were so excited for Kim to be there that they didn't turn around yet and notice the surprise. We asked them what they could see and it didn't take long before they were racing out of the bed!

They kicked the balloons for a while first!

Emmy got a Barbie PC!! She had really really really wanted one of these!

She didn't waste anytime opening it up and playing it!

Emmy also got FurReal Go Go My Real Dog. Brodie really liked her!!

Lilah was a bit slower unwrapping her presents. I think I taped them too good. Sorry!!

Both of the girls really liked this! Butterfly in a Jar!! This was voted Best Toy in 2010 in Japan. I didn't know this until after I had already bought it. I stumbled upon it while I was window shopping and just had to get it for her!! Here's a video to show you how cool it is! CLICK HERE if you don't see the video below.

Lilah got a Sit-and-Spin. A classic toy that every child should have!!

This was the first thing she did with her Sit-and-Spin hahahhahaha I think it was because she was hearing me tell her it was a SIT and spin and it looked like a nice little place to have a sit hahhahaha!

After all the unwrapping Emmy was back to using her PC.

While Emmy was playing with her computer, Lilah was getting lots of Daddy cuddles!

It didn't take long until Emmy went down to get herself some Daddy luv'n too!

Look at the devilish look she's got on her face!!! She waited with a hawks eye for her moment to get up there so she could have a go. The second Emmy got up!!

Party Preparations

Happy Birthday Emmy Rose & Lilah Asenith!

We went with a rainbow theme this year. Can you tell?? This was the front of our invitations. I used Vistaprint's Over-sized Postcards. I was very happy with the color quality and how they turned out and feel I got a decent deal. 50 was the minimum order quantity and they were "free" but after you add on all the extras plus shipping they were $25.

Their shirts were hand appliqued with felt by myself and then my mother in law used a running stitch to put the girl's name and age on the clouds. Normally I hate clothing or backpacks or anything with a child's name on it for safety reasons, but I made an exception this time. It was like the cloud was saying....write something on me....do it now!! haha

How super cute are their hair bows!! They both really liked them and I think we'll get lost of use out of these since they have so many colors in them. Emmy's really into the big hair bows now. The bigger the better is what I think she thinks and Lilah doesn't like to leave the house with out them in. If I forget to clip on a hair bow she will grab her hair and make her 'eehh eehh' sound.

We even found some rainbow earrings at Big W! They really thought that was special to change out their normal jewelry for the party ones!!

I customized their cups with their names on them. I ordered the stickers through Vistaprint as well. This was the only free picture they had with a rainbow. I would have had to pay an upload fee to use the invitation photo and honestly I think the unicorn is pretty darn cute. At the time of ordering these we were suppose to have a pony at the party, so the unicorn was on the same path, but some unexpected troubles came up so we changed party directions and went with a Rainbow Fairy.

I had alot of fun with the goodie bags this year! I used card stock, a scalloped punch, and a 2"circle punch to do the job along with cellophane bags.

They were filled with lolly pops, gum balls, taffy, powder candy, balloons, necklaces, and stickers.

Of course I had to try out my new handmade by me stamp!! I love how it turned out and was well worth the ebay purchase.

Here we are making our Rainbow Cupcakes. I used boxed cake mix and gel food colorings. Each layer was about 1.5-2 tsp per color. The girls were so delighted with the colors and as you can see they kept showing me while they were eating them hehe.

How pretty!

uummm yummy!

I like how you can see the rainbow layers through the paper. I've seen rainbow cupcakes that others have done online and their paper is nearly see through and it really makes a dramatic effect. I'm not sure if it's a special kind of paper or if it's just really thin and happens to be a positive side effect of poor quality papers. If anyone has the answer to that I'd love for you to leave a comment and let me know!

How cool is that wrapper!

Here's the cake all assembled and ready for icing. I had no idea what I was doing when I made this and I've never ever made a layered cake before. I wanted the icing in between the layers to not show white so I colored it to match the layer below. From this picture you can see how bright all the layers turned out except for the purple....it looks brown on the outside, but don't worry. It turned out the prettiest and brightest purple ever on the inside! Over all my layers baked very flat after a tip I found on you tube. I'll share that with you. If you are using a metal pan then all you do is cut a long piece of towel the same height as your pan. Wet it down and wring it out then wrap it tightly around your pan then bake as normal. It keeps the temp of the pan more even allowing the cake to bake at a more of an even temperature.

I really wish I had a better picture of the cake before it started to crack from the weight. I had a bit of an icing nightmare and I'm still not sure what the heck happened. It was suppose to be fluffy and very 'peaky' if that's a way to describe it. Instead I ended up with play-doh like icing that I had to mold onto the cake. When I tried to smooth it out it would just come off in large pieces. Running late and only hours from the parties start time I was beginning to freak out. My mother in law saved the day by suggesting that we press shredded coconut all over it for a nice textured effect. Brilliant!!

I made the candied rainbow decoration out of a giant lollipop. I slammed it down on the counter top and then arranged the broken pieces onto some baking paper and warmed it slowly in the oven on a low temp. I watched it closely and when it was melted just enough to hold it's shape I pulled it out and let it cool. Perfect!

I wanted the cake to be white, very plain and unimpressive on the outside....and I think I more than achieved that...ekkk! My wow factor was on the inside with all the colors. I so wish that my icing would have not melted away like it did, but that's what happens when you have warm weather and an icing mishap! I also should have used skewers through the cake to give it some support because after a little while of being cut it eventually gave into gravity and fell over. At least it tasted good! I think in the future I'll stick with fondant. I've never had anything go wrong with fondant decorating and it's more predictable for me. You live and learn!

Would you like to taste the rainbow?? Here's the drinks the kids had to choose from. Cherry, Orange, Lemon-Aid, Green Apple, and Blue Mountain Kool-Aids and Cordials.

I can't believe that I didn't take up close pictures of the Editable Crayons, Cookies on a Stick, or the Lollipop Stand, this cropped mega zoomed in picture will have to do. You know how it gets....so much to do and not enough time to do it in. I really took the time this time around to enjoy myself so the memories will just have to live on in my mind :) You could also see in some of the pictures of the cake the sugar cookies I made with 6 different colors of icing. The Cookies on a Stick were also sugar cookies with gel food colorings mixed into the dough. The lollipops were customized with 2" circles that said Happy Birthday or Rainbow. We also had Gum Balls, Skittles and Rainbow Twizzlers, all the way from America, thanks mom, out for grabs!!

I had so much fun making these! Originally I wanted to use glitter, but when I priced it out it was going to be crazy expensive to fill them all up with different colors so I had to get creative. I came up with the idea to just color plain white sugar. I hot glued the lids on and if by chance one of the children did get it open then it was just sugar and no harm would be done if they ate it. The labels were hand punched and wrote. Way too cute! Can you guess who got to hand out the fairy dust??

Our Rainbow Fairy!! My dear sweet friend Kelsey agreed to dress up as our fairy and she did a wonderful job. She looked beautiful and really did a great job interacting with the children. Thank you so much Kelsey!!

I definitely didn't want to make the pinata again like I did last year so I was over the moon when I found this one! Strange thing was that it didn't have any red on it. It started with orange on the outside. It looked totally weird and not right so I added the red layer myself. I don't think anyone could tell that it didn't come that way!!

Also not pictured is the Fairy Ring we had. Our fairy sat in it for awhile at the beginning of the party as the children arrived and handed out the fairy dust. It was really sweet. I just recycled the toadstools that we made last year. You can see it pictured below or check out how we made them HERE.

Our Fairy Ring from 2010

I also rented a bubble machine and that was alot of fun. It did a pretty good job of keeping us in bubbles the majority of the time, but I wouldn't have complained with it had put out more. I think if you were really wanting to fill all of your party space with bubbles then I'd recommend renting 2-4 for an outside setting.

Our party day was so fun but some of my planning resulted in me being pretty upset when things didn't go as planned and it wasn't coming together like the picture in my head. I really had my heart set on the cute party table with all the children around it with their little party hats on and when our site was occupied by other families we were short on tables and forced to choose another spot. I wanted the balloons to hang in rainbow clusters from the trees and and the beautiful tissue paper pom poms I spent 3 nights making didn't even get hung up for guest to enjoy and just laid at the base of the tree. Because we were short on tables all the presents ended up being tossed under the candy table in a jumbled mess.

No one else would have been bothered by these things or thought that they should be any other way, so when things don't go as planned you must go with the flow. I put so much love and attention into the details and I truly believe that love IS in the details. I know how special and loved I felt growing up when my mom would go that extra mile so I do as much of that as I can because these are the moments are memories are made.

I have alot more birthday pictures and stories to share, but I'll save those for another two posts. Be on the look out for "Our Birthday Morning" and "Our Party".

Yard Sale Find

While we were out and about this weekend running errands we drove past a yard sale and I spotted this slide so we stopped. $25 and this sucker was mine!! I was so happy. It was right out the front and the first thing you saw when going to this yard sale and it was later in the morning around 10:15 am, so I don't understand why it was still sitting there, but it must have been waiting for me! These slides retail new for $200 so I'm very happy with saving lots of $$$ and the girls love it! I hope to hang their swings back up soon under the new porch and we'll have such a cute little play area. Next I guess we'll need to get a sand pit.

Easter Eggs

We dyed Easter Eggs this weekend! It's a little bit early, but we wanted to do them with Auntie Abby and she's only here on the weekends and next weekend we're so busy with birthday parties and a wedding so we planned a head just a little bit and did them sooner rather than later. It's better this way because now Emmy will get to play and admire them for two weeks instead of just one!
Lilah sat in her high chair with us snacking on a crayon while she was coloring. I was afraid to even let her touch an egg since she's allergic to them in case one had a crack or if she were to smash one. When she's older and understands I don't think it'll be a problem and she'll be able to join in!!

When we were doing with the eggs and it was time to let them dry Emmy had a total meltdown. She was so sad and upset that our craft time had come to an end. I ended up getting her a handful of small smooth stones to dye in her cups. It actually stained them a bit...I was surprised. She gave up using her dipping tool and went in for them with her hand and by the end of it she had 100% blue avatar hands lol!! It's nearly all gone now from lots of hand washing and playing in the backyard.

That face cracks me up!!

Check out that frown! haha Emmy is serious about her art!

Pretty Painting!

They came out so pretty! I was worried that the eggs wouldn't go pretty colors since they are brown eggs but we got really pretty rich colors and this picture really doesn't do them justice on how pretty they really are! They also have glitter sparkles on them that doesn't really show up in the picture.