Happy Father's Day!!!

The kids and I had to settle for mailable gifts since we weren't with Daddy, or Papa as they call him, for Father's Day today. I decided to copy something their teachers did for Mother's Day and asked each kid to fill out a survey about their Papa and then make a portrait of him. I got the ideas for the questions here.

My daughter, the perfectionist that she is at 5 years old, asked that I sketch out a frame for her portrait. My 2 year old son on the other hand could care less and did a lot of freehand work on his :) For your information (and mine in the future) in the middle is Papa and to his left is his iPhone.

I promise to be back soon and give you an explanation of my recent absence... I've missed my blog! Happy Father's Day!

Summer Reading: A Jane Austen Education

Are you looking for some ideas for summer reading? I recently joined the BlogHer book club and am having a blast reading and reviewing the books. I just completed my first review for William Deresiewicz's A Jane Austen Education. You can check it out here.

I have a couple more reviews that I will complete in the next couple of months, I'll be sure to post links back to them here. And if you want to read a ton of reviews to get more ideas check out the BlogHer Book Club website.

Happy reading!

Felt Crayon Holder

Living in a different continent than my family is not easy. I miss them terribly, especially during the holidays. Luckily we get to go home often and have made some amazing friends here. Two families in particular are what I consider our family away from home... they are the people we turn to in good times and bad. Our kids are close like cousins and we have the pleasure of seeing them growing up together. Today we had our annual Easter BBQ. Besides great food, this party included a treasure hunt and many games. I decided to make a felt crayon holder for each kid since I know they all love to color.

I followed the FANTASTIC tutorial from Skip to My Lou. I highly recommend it as it is very detailed and includes pictures for each step.

I made them in each kid's favorite color and added their initial to the front.

The notebooks were hard to find, I finally got them at Office Depot. They came in a pack of three and were just the right size!

The kids all seem to really like them, one called it his "field journal". I love giving children gifts that encourage them to use their imagination.

This might become my "go to" gift for new big brothers/sisters.

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Easy Easter Cake

This cute little cake is perfect for Easter and so easy to make. We are traveling for Easter so we decided to make it a little early so our little family could enjoy it. It was fun and the kids loved it.

It's basically a boxed cake decorated with candy from the Easter aisle of the grocery store.

I used a small oval cake pan and it was perfect for the four of us. We are all fans of the milk chocolate cake! Happy early Easter!

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