Butterfly Garden Themed Table

Last weekend was out Knights of Columbus Ladies Luncheon Fundraiser.  The way it works is that you host a table and then invite people to join you for the luncheon.  It's a very nice fundraiser and fairly easy to do.  Each person pays $10 and they get lunch and dessert and we have door prizes.  Some years we've even had entertainment.

The hostess of the table has to decorate a themed table and bring a salad and a dessert to the luncheon.  This year, I went with a butterfly garden theme.

I found the tableware at Party City.  I really liked it...it was very spring-y!

I made the little napkin ring out of ribbon and flowers that I picked up at Michael's



The dessert doesn't really have to be themed to your table, but I did it anyway.

I made butterfly sugar cookies...



The centerpiece was easy.  I just got some fresh flowers and put this cute little butterfly clip on them.  I found the butterfly at Michael's.  They had lots of nice butterfly stuff.



I made a strawberry spinach salad.  I needed something easy because I had an extremely busy week.  This was so easy and very good!  It's just spinach, strawberries and sliced almonds.



I didn't have time to make a homemade dressing for it, but luckily I found this tasty, new dressing from Kraft.  It went very well on the salad.



This year everyone who hosted a table also brought a gift basket to be given away as a doorprize.

This was mine.  Again, I didn't have to theme it with my table, but I did.

I put a couple of marigold plants in it, some candles, and some butterfly notepads & notecards.



Claire asked if she could host a table this year so I let her.  Hers was a Candyland theme.  I'll post those pictures in my next post.  It turned out very cute!!

Crazy Week!!

I probably won't be blogging much this week.  How is that different from last week you may ask!

I would like to give a little update...Claire and I won the Peeps diorama contest!!  We are so excited.  Thanks to those who voted for us!  We won a prize pack from Just Born, the creator of Peeps.  We haven't gotten it yet though so I'm not even sure what all is in it. :)

We are in the middle of a jam-packed month of activities.  There is actually only 2 days on my calendar this month that don't have somthing written on them!

We have baseball games and practices, gymnastics and a gymnastics meet, a ladies luncheon, bunco, volunteer hours for my son,  art classes, field trips, reteats, you name it...it seems to be on my calendar!

This time of year is always so busy.  I'm so glad that we are finishing up with school.  Nathan is almost completely finished and Claire has a couple of subjects left, but will finish them up in the next week or two.

I will be back next week to post about the ladies luncheon.  It's a fund raiser for our Knights of Columbus.  You sponsor a themed table...its a lot of fun and Claire has asked if she could do one this year too so we are sponsoring 2 themed tables and having lots of fun with them!  I'll be back next week with photos!

What are you up to this week?

Wordless Wednesday

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

I'm linking up today with 5 minutes for mom.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!!



We made these yummy rice krispie treats yesterday.  We used muffin pans to shape the nests, added green icing and Peep chicks in the big nests and malted milk eggs in the little ones.  Very easy and cute!

Wordful Wednesday: Texas Tornadoes

We were right in the middle of a huge tornado outbreak yesterday.  If you're anywhere near Texas you've probably heard about it by now.  We were very lucky.  One of the tornadoes hit our street, a mear 2 blocks away from us.  We took cover when the sirens went off.  We lost power.  Then, I saw debris floating down from high above the trees.  It was weird...there were branches and leaves floating down from the clouds...much higher than the trees.  Then, I heard the tornado.  I had never heard one before.  It was just a constant roar in the distance.  We never actually had strong wind.  I think it kind of just sucked the wind away from us.  When everything calmed down, the kids and I took a walk around the neighborhood.  I couldn't believe it came so close!

The first 6 pictures are of the houses at the end of our street.

This is behind the back fences of the adjoining neighborhood.  There are no mailboxes on this street.  This is just how the tornado dropped this debris!



This is the nursing home down the street.  It took a very hard hit, but luckily there were no major injuries. 



This is a street in our neighborhood...one street over from ours...



Same tree, different view...



A couple houses down, more trees uprooted.  There's actually a house under there!



Luckily, our house didn't receive any damage.  We have lots of debris in our yard though.  As we walked around the kids picked up photos that we found...



There is also insulation everywhere.  Lots of drippy pink insulation all over town!

And shingles!  They are all over the street, our yard, and even in the pool.  We also found a dead rat in the pool, but I thought I'd spare you the picture of that!



As awful as these pictures are, this was by far not the worst damage in the area. 

Other neighborhoods and areas were hit much harder.  Its estimated that there were about 12 tornadoes that touched down yesterday.  We were without power for 6 hours because a tree at the end of the street fell on a transformer.  With all the devastation around us, I feel lucky that we escaped with only lack of power.

Wordful Wednesday is hosted by Parenting by Dummies.

Homeschool Hop: State Recipes

I'm linking up with the Hip Homeschool Hop today.

A while back I posted about my daughter's 50 state recipes for this year.  We have now finished studying all 50 states so I thought I'd post some more yummy food pics!

You can't study Maine without eating lobster!

We made grilled lobster tails with lemon-lime butter.

Recipe can be found here.

For Idaho we made Hashbrown Breaded Chicken cutlets.

These are sooo good!

I can't find the link for the recipe, but you basically just dip the chicken pieces in flour, then an egg/milk mixture, then in frozen hashbrowns that are seasoned with season salt.  Then you fry them in a shallow pan of oil.



For Hawaii we made Banana Pineapple Upside Down cake.



And how can you study Hawaii without a pina colada??

Claire also gets to have and end of the year luau when the pool is warm enough to swim in.



Oklahoma is a fun state to cook for.  They have a huge state meal.  We just made part of it...

Chicken Fried Steak, Corn, squash, biscuits & gravy, and strawberries for dessert.

You can see their entire state meal here.



Being from Texas, pretty much anything we make is Texas food, but when we study the state we make one of our favorites...Chicken Fried Steak.  Seems the folks in Oklahoma north of us liked it so much they started making it too!  That's fine with me...we liked having it for two different states!

We also made pecan muffins since the pecan tree is the Texas state tree.





For Alaska we made Baked Alaska...this was a favorite with the whole family!!



Louisiana was another favorite state of ours because we made fried crawfish...



and beignets!

Are you hungry yet?  I am!

I think we all gain a few pounds when one of the kids is in 3rd grade!

I organized a "State Fair" for our homeschool group this year.  It was a lot of fun.  Each child chose a state and brought up an information board and a food representative of that state.  The kids were really creative and it turned out great!  Here are my kids with their states...

If you belong to a homeschool group or co-op that has at least 50 kids this is a very fun activity to do!

In addition to sharing our state foods, I'd also like to mention that my sister-in-law has decided to homeschool her daughter.  I'm so excited for them!  She has started a blog to record their journey so I thought I'd share it here.  It's Bridget's Mom.  So, if you have a minute stop by to say hello.  I'm sure she'd appreciate the support!

Mary Poppins!

Look what we saw last night.

If you get the chance, go see this show. 

It was fabulous.  The sets, the "special effects",  the music, everything was fantastic!



The whole family went...even the "boys" and we all liked it. 

My son is rather anti-Mary Poppins so if he says its a good show you know it was awesome!!