gracie's bday

easter saturday brought us another birthday party - my beautiful niece grace! donna and the kids have recently moved to perth while jared commutes back & forward from kalgoorlie, and we are loving having them all here... we headed up to their house for afternoon tea and an easter egg hunt! maddie got the hang of things pretty quickly, running from place to place, putting the eggs carefully in the little basket that donna had given her. was so cute!

our adorable niece emma kate - always ready with a cheesy smile for the camera! she is such a sweetheart and speaks with an adorable little munchkin-esque voice. love her to pieces.

miss maddie with her haul... i am sure they'll keep her busy for a while. she loves trying to peel the eggs, but gets very bored very quickly and always passes them off to mummy or daddy before too long so we can get the chocolate out for her.

my friend jen gave me a babushka cake tin for my birthday last year so i thought i would take it along and provide some fun for miss grace who got a whole pile of babushka themed gifts for her birthday (we got her a canvas print and fairy lights...) she had a ball decorating them once they finally cooked. so cute! i'll have to remember that for when maddie gets a little bigger...

miss g and the finished result!

donna & jared's house has this adorable cubby house that backs onto the bush. maddie was obsessed and spent ages in there, cooking up a pretend storm... putting things in and out of the oven and just loving it. maybe we will have to look at getting her one of her own in the future. i remember always wanting a tree house - i still think they are pretty much the coolest things ever!!

donna made this awesome cake! it was amazing! tasted so good and looked incredible. it had a chocolate cream layer in the middle and was covered in malteasers. i swear i could have eaten the whole thing on my own... lucky there was so many people there - haha.

i found a lizard in the kitchen and ben decided to adopt him. i don't know if he named him or even kept him for more than 20 minutes, but he was having a good time with it, letting it crawl all over him and then up his neck. ewww. i am so glad i have a little girl.

i treasure photos like this, they'll be gone so soon, for so long, and i am trying to enjoy every inch of these wonderful people before they disappear. best parents i could have possibly ever hoped for.

we had a wonderful afternoon, can't wait for the next catch up. ♥

charlee turns six!

my beautiful cousin dion invited us to spend the afternoon with them on good friday, for a little family birthday party as miss charlee was turning six! it was such a gorgeous afternoon catching up with her and her sister amber, their children and my aunt and uncle (my dad's brother...) charlee and taylor are the most polite children and were so gorgeous with madeline, dancing around with her and playing games... there is no more wonderful sight in this world than happy children!

dion made the most gorgeous party treats (totally brought me back to my childhood...) including these beautiful treats (above  between the brownies and fairy bread:

1 cup rice bubbles

1 cup cocoa pops

80gms mini m&ms

1 cup white chocolate melts

melt the chocolate, pour over the cereal and put in the patty pans! that's all there is to it - and they are yum!

and that cake! i believe it was one of 4 cakes that were had during the week (yes, we goodlet's still believe in - and most certainly encourage birthday week! a week either side, of course!) dion told me she bought it in a box from a place a friend had told her about - cake to the rescue what an awesome idea! everything is in the box with step by step instructions, and they are not even expensive. plus - the best bit! although it's packet mix, you would never know - because they take incredible! totally looking into this...

i totally couldn't resist taking a picture of the fairy bread though. how freaking cute. no one else would cut them into a heart shape. best. thing. ever.

we had such a lovely afternoon, it was so wonderful to see them and i am eagerly looking forward to our next catch up. just to tide you over though, here's a pic of the cutest little girl i know, she was so excited to be able to do some slam dunks with daddy's help! ♥

oh how i love her...

work bunny

the people i work with are not so religious - but this year i wanted to share my love for easter and all that it represents - with them in some way that everyone could appreciate. so... i made cupcakes!

i started with the best ever cupcake recipe (not only is it actually called that - but it really is...) and then iced them, before rolling the icing in desiccated coconut that i had mixed with green food colouring... and popped m&m speckled eggs on top to make a little nest.

i had so much fun making them, and hope that they were as much fun to eat. just wanted to share the easter love!

cuteness overload!!!

every now and then, i feel the need to dump a whole pile of pictures of my maddie on here for you people to ooh and aah over. haha. above here she is having her first meeting with a tub of dip. she loves crackers and when she saw us dipping ours in there, she squawked and pointed until we lifted her up and join in. i must confess with the runny nose and cough she had all week there was no way i was touching it again after she double dipped like a boss. hah!

here she is after church on sunday, still dressed up all pretty - singing popcorn popping with her daddy. so funny, the minute the song is over, she will say "more? more?" until you start again and then make the popping motions with her hands whilst saying bopppp bop bopppp. which of course is her pop pop noise.

she and taytay had a lovely time at family home evening last week... i love that maddie copies peoples facial expressions now - it's so fun to watch and makes the best pictures!

we are blessed with such a wonderful home life and being able to have doug's sister niques to look after maddie while the two of us work full time. she is such a sweet heart and makes sure to send me pictures of maddie during the day so that i don't feel as though i am missing out on too much. she made her a pancake the other day that was bigger than her head - and although she got into it straight away it wasn't long before it was on the floor. i am not a bit surprised!

she also makes yummy lunches. i am the luckiest mummy in the world. i know she's not only being looked after - but i get to watch and be a part of it. x

she also tried on my work shoes this week. they are almost as long as her arm, but looked down right adorable - especially when she started to shuffle through the house in them. flipping clown shoes! funniest thing i've seen all week by far. until she does something else funny of course!

i just can't get enough of this kid!!

x

three white dresses

in our church program for young women (ages 12-18) we have a night once a year called new beginnings. my friend bianca is part of the yws program in her ward and they decided to base theirs around the three white dresses in a womans life. what a wonderful idea! bianca asked me if she could borrow mine as her baptism and blessing dresses are still at her parents house in south africa and her wedding dress wasn't completely white. so out they came - along with maddie's blessing dress as mine isn't really in a displayable state, it was so long that i could play in it for years - for so long that i can actually remember doing so! 

a beautiful display was made by the leaders with things about family and the temple and eternal marriage with our dresses set up at one end. each of the girls mothers wrote them a letter remembering their blessing and baptismal days and detailing their hopes and dreams for them and their desire for them to have a temple marriage in the years to come. none of the girls knew what was coming - and as the night went on there were tears of joy as they read their letters and participated in the activities of the evening. it sounds like it would have been the most amazing night and i am totally filing away the ideas for if i am ever called back into young womens!

i found this picture above from ken corbett art (which is available to purchase here) when we were talking about the activity originally and saved it, along with the poem, i have seen the poem before and thought how lovely it would be to give to one of my nieces and my own girls on their baptism day. i am sure maddie's will be here before we know it!

bianca is the best kind of friend. my dresses were returned the next day along with this beauty. the best chocolate there is. yummm.

bath time

bianca and rob came for dinner last night so bianca could borrow some things for a young womens activity that they have coming up. make sure you check back in, sounds like it is going to be amazing! so... we popped mase and maddie into the bath together once dinner was over. oh my gosh - they were adorable. splashing each other and gabbling away in baby talk... i could have watched them for hours.

all this time they get to spend together... betting start saving for the wedding.

maddie and her little boyfriend...

just saying...

i saw this on gorgeous little picture on facebook today after church and was blown away by how true it is. there has been a lot of nastiness around me lately that i can't do anything about, other than trying to repay it with love. i hope more than anything that i'll always be able to do that and try to remember two things - one i learnt from my pre-primary teacher "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" and the other i learned in primary at church - "kindness begins with me!"

i know that being kind to people who aren't, is always the hardest thing to do, so i am trying to remember this everyday. wish me luck!