so very proud today.

Academic Excellence Awards from Christine Arrocena on Vimeo.


I was just gushing with pride over my triplets today...

:)

(Don't forget to disable the music player at the very bottom of this page so you can hear the sound on this video! Just press PAUSE...)

babies and chilies.

So... I just popped dinner into the oven. About 20 more minutes and we'll be eating GOOD. Mmmm.

I decided to blog about dinner (or some aspect of it) while chopping up green bell pepper just a bit ago. I was shaking my head at myself because I was trying to chop up the bell pepper so very tiny. I mean really tiny. Ridiculously tiny. The reason I do this is below.



This is my daughter, Kaia. She's the cleverest little 5-year old girl you will ever know. Believe me. (BTW, she's one of three... the middle girl of my triplets.) And she tells me the most thought-provoking things... more on that later. But a while back, I served her dinner that included the yummiest bits of sautéed green bell pepper, which is one of my favorite veggies of all.

She REFUSED to eat it. I explained to her that the taste was sweet-like, not yucky. She shook her head at me and said so matter-of-factly, "You know, Mommy... Mommies really shouldn't feed their babies CHILIES. It's not a very kind thing to do."



Whaaaat?

So, since then, I've had to chop up bell pepper as small as I possibly can. Seriously. In the hopes that she will not notice it in her food, of course. No matter how good the food tastes, if she knows what those "little green things" are... it is all over. She will go to bed hungry if she thinks they are chilies. I have to tell her that they are something else... something like, "green healthy vegetables that help you grow strong!" Seems to do the trick, and she just gobbles it down.



So this was what was on my cutting board tonight. Practically PUREED bell pepper! It was pulverized. I really should have just put it in my blender instead of exerting all that energy! I just kept chopping and chopping and chopping, getting it as small as I could. Then it occurred to me that it was soooo silly. But necessary, at least for a while. I'm hoping that she'll grow out of this way of thinking very soon. But for now, a Mommy certainly cannot feed her baby chilies. It just isn't a KIND thing to do.

{BTW, I made Baked Spaghetti for dinner tonight... If I have time to post the recipe tomorrow, I will...} :)

Catch-up.

I completely forgot to share what I had whipped-up to celebrate the new President on Inauguration Day (January 20th)... {Remember, I said I was going to show you LATER that night? whoops!}

Now... I adore cupcakes; both baking them and eating them! So here was my little red, white and blue edible celebration:




Mmmmm... Devils Food with Cream Cheese frosting! We all devoured them after dinner that day!And speaking of cupcakes, and my adoration of them... you know I had to whip some up for Valentine's Day, too! Look...

Red Velvet with a simple chocolate frosting! Heaven!Here are a few more pics from that night... we had a Chocolate Party!







Wish you could have been there, too! LOL




...now just one more thing...



The day after all this fun, I woke up bright and early and went with my good friend, Melissa, to the Orange County Scrapbook Expo. Oh my! Look at the loot that I came home with! Can't wait to dig in, I just haven't had the time yet!

Project 365 update + more.

It has come to my attention that I have not blogged in FOR-EV-ER (it's been more than a month, I think) so here I am. Sometimes I wonder if anyone will even notice, but then out of the blue, someone will ask me to update it. That's so nice... and it gives me the motivation to write another blog post!!! So here I am!


Project 365. Okay, so... it didn't work for me. I wasn't lucky enough to get a kit... Creating Keepsakes ran out of the January Kit of the Month in mere hours, and they apparently haven't been able to get it back in stock. So I lost my drive by the time February came around... Not exactly sure why. I knew I wasn't going to get the cool kit that Becky Higgins was praising up and down for what seemed like forever... Getting me all excited about it and stuff!!! {LOL} So I guess I knew this wasn't going to turn out the way I had planned so I pretty much just gave up.


So, I've moved on.


But I did manage to document the entire month of January 2009 in pictures, so I was considering making a mini album all about January. What do you think? I've got so many chipboard albums in my stash, not to mention my Zutter Bind-it-All... seems like the perfect opportunity for a project. And with Christmas and Valentine's Day projects now behind me... what else am I gonna do for some fun??? LOL


Well, one thing I DID manage to do was to follow the lead of the 3 Little Birdies and create a quick and easy fabric wreath to hang in my home for Valentine's Day. I'm planning to keep it up throughout February... what do you think?





I must have cut 100+ squares (seriously, I have no idea)... but it was fun! I think I'll use this technique to make other wreaths in the future! Thanks for the idea, Birdies!


In case you want to know how I did it, here are some pics of the process:












I'm keeping my heart up throughout February. Still another week to go.