Our Black Friday Treasures

I usually check out the movies that are on sale for Black Friday, but this year we had no spare money at all, so I didn't even go.  Dan, of course, "got" to work again.  Walmart had early sales at 8:00 pm and 10:00 pm on Thanksgiving, so he had to be to work at 5:00 pm.  This year, he was watching the queue line for an HP 320 GB laptop.  He got off work at 5:20 am and he did come home with 4 treasures for the kids ☺

The kids LOVE the huge balloons.  William really liked the "Wii" one because it was similar to his name ♥

Decorating the Christmas Tree

Today being the Saturday following Thanksgiving makes it "Put up the Christmas Tree Day".  I am feeling ill, and didn't really feel like doing it.  But I figured the kids would really like to do it, so up the tree went.  It is the first year we are using this tree as we bought it after Christmas last year.  It is a "pre-lit" tree.  I assembled the tree and "fluffed" the branches, added the star and tinsel and the kids did the decorating.  This is also the first year that I let the kids decorate the tree all by themselves.  I did move a few ornaments as they had 2 or 3 hanging on the same branch in some places!  The kids kept being "monkeys" to put the breakable ornaments "up high".  The silly thing was, they were all doing it!  I'm not sure who they thought they were hanging them out of reach of! 

Personal Pies

I had seen an ad for My Lil' Pie Maker and apparently William had also.  He asked if we could make baby pies when we made the pies for Thanksgiving.  (I had already planned on doing so ☺) I used my large muffin tins so we had deep dish mini pies ☺

We had 4 cherry and 2 apple pies

Each top was labeled with an initial so we could know who each belonged to

Rainbow Cake Photo Tutorial

Prepare a white cake mix as directed and divide into 6 even amounts
Note: My cake mix called for egg whites only, but I added the whole egg as it didn't have to be pure white. 
I had 2/3 cup of batter in each bowl

Add food coloring

Pour 3/4 of red into pan 1 and 3/4 of purple into pan 2
Pour 2/3 of orange into pan 1 and 2/3 of blue into pan 2
Pour 1/2 of yellow into pan 1 and 1/2 of green into pan 2
Pour 1/2 of green into pan 1 and 1/2 of yellow into pan 2
Pour 1/3 of blue into pan 1 and 1/3 of orange into pan 2
Pour 1/4 of purple into pan 1 and 1/4 of red into pan 2

I dragged a toothpick through to make it "tie dyed" but it wasn't noticable in the finished cake, so not needed!

Turn out and cool completely

Frost between the layers

Frost the outside

The birthday boy with his cake

Ta-da!

Paired with "Scooperman" ice cream 

William's 5th Birthday Party

William turned 5 on Friday.  I brought treats (Pilgrim hat cookies) into his class on his birthday and we had his party on Sunday.  If you want to see the post about his birth, look here

Will's class singing to him

Will's teacher passing out the treats

Yummy ☺

Will's first "big boy" Lego! (from Mom & Dad)

More "small" Lego from Dean & Lisa

Long awaited craft supplies from Grandpa & Grandma

Puzzle from Andy

Book from Sarah

Still more Lego from Rachel & Jason

Suncatcher paint set from Emily

Hmm, what is this big thing?

A giant foot!

It's a huge frog

Will's main present from Mom & Dad

I think the smile says it all

Admiring baby Anthony (who is wearing an outfit William wore as a baby)

checking out his toys

Surprise, it's a rainbow cake! (look for the tutorial here)

Rainbow cake and Scooperman icecream

painting his suncatcher

Putting his Lego together