Happy Friday

I was inspired to make this shirt because Bri is going to take Bryce over to her sorority house this afternoon after school.

Hello Kari!

Another birthday party went off without a hitch.  I was secretly thrilled when Kari changed her mind from an M&M theme to Hello Kitty.  Hello Kitty was, ahem, the cat's meow when I was her age, and the merchandise was a hot commodity. Pulling off a HK party back in my day would have been a near impossible feat.

Nowadays, you just pull up to your local party store, and BAM!  HK party.  Pretty simple.  I did, however, make the invitations.

Since this was a girls only party this year, we did all things girly and pink.  First up, as soon as everyone arrived, each young lady chose a headband with kitty ears and then selected their choice of a bow- a Hello Kitty headband!  Once everyone was adorned with HK ears, we did a small photo shoot with the big pink frame.

A few weeks ago I was up at IKEA with Natalie and Pam and came across this big, huge, UGLY picture frame.  I had an idea so I took a chance and splurged.  It was a good gamble that only needed a small can of spray paint for its makeover.  The girls absolutely loved posing and hamming it up for the camera!  We did this early on during the party so that I'd have time to upload the pictures to Walgreens and for Kevin to pick them up in time for each girl to take home a couple copies.  Party favor?  Check. Yay!

We followed up with decorating cupcakes (thanks to Aunt Laura for the endless supply of sprinkles!!)

We primed everyone's appetite pump with the cupcakes and figured we better move on to the little meal.  Since the party was between meals, I didn't prepare anything fancy.  Hot ham and cheese sandwiches on Hawaiian rolls, fruit and veggies.  Easy.

We wrapped up the afternoon with painting fingernails which was another big hit.

The two hours went by quickly, that's for sure!  We continued the theme of giving to others in lieu of gifts.  Figuring out who and what to donate was easy this year.  After this fall's devastating tornado only a few miles south of us and displacing an elementary school in our district, we opted again for school supplies.  Kari's friends were overwhelmingly generous and we can't be more excited to make arrangements as soon as possible.

Pancakes and Pajamas Birthday Girl

It's almost impossible to fathom how quickly time flies by, but think about it this way and it should sink in. Our little girl has now lived 1/3 of her life in our house before she will (presumably) head off to college.

And I think it’s safe to say that it’s been 6 relatively easy years.  This was what we’d term a transition year from a birthday standpoint. Gone were the days of having the grandparents head to our house for a themed party.

Instead, we let Kari invite a handful of her closest friends from school to our house. The format was a bit different this year as Kari requested to have pancakes but because of previously scheduled programs for Kari on Saturday mornings, we had her friends over for dinner, thus a theme emerged: Pancakes and Pajamas. There was a pile of pancakes, bacon, sausage, hash browns, and of course, all kinds of sugary, sprinkle-y goodness.

They burned off those calories by running and jumping in the basement before returning upstairs for a simple craft project. Earlier this fall I found some really neat fabric at IKEA meant to be colored and decorated.  The kids each got to color their own string bag. Each child then got a little notepad and mechanical pencil as their party favor to go with the bag.  This proved to be a good way to wind down before winding back up with cake and ice cream!

The traditional star cake made yet another appearance and this year was adorned with a lovely purple icing, which Kari helped make. All in all it was a fun couple of hours. Kari’s friends – Molly, Asaiah, Nolan, Abby, Isabelle and Ruth - were all well behaved and very good eaters!

With this being a new chapter in birthdays at our house (friends, no grandparents), I urged Kari to consider a gesture to help others who are less fortunate.  I suggested that since she gets so many nice thoughtful gifts from grandparents, us and close family friends, that perhaps we'd ask her friends to make a donation rather than bring birthday gifts.  Kari was on board, and from there, we chose an item to donate.  I gave her three ideas from which to choose and she quickly selected school supplies.  She couldn't hardly imagine kids her age without nice pencils, crayons and markers.  I was scared out of my mind she was going to change her mind the day of the party and insist on gifts, but she never wavered.  Her friends were so generous with their donations and shortly after the party Kari and I donated the items locally to an organization we were familiar with through church.  We're looking forward to this being a new birthday tradition in our home.

Kari's Thanksgiving Program

This afternoon was really special.  Kari's kindergarten class put on a little program.  They sang turkey and Thanksgiving-themed songs and then each had a letter of the alphabet with a key word related to Thanksgiving and the Pilgrim's journey to America.  Kari was "D is for dangerous."

In addition to making turkey hats and vests, the kids also made "Thankful" placemats that have been laminated and ready for use!

A Blue Day

To help all the kindergarteners learn their colors, each day is designated as a specific color.  Today is blue.  Kari does not have much blue in her wardrobe, but this was a recent addition after finding this super easy pattern.

Kari's looking forward to another fun week at school!

Four Generations

We're always grateful to be able to spend holidays with family that we don't get to see but a few times a year.  After church yesterday morning we headed straight to Fort Wayne in anticipation of getting the cousins together, a four generations photo op, good food and catching up.  We succeeded in all areas!  Becky, Danny, Great Grandpa, Tom, Cindy, Jim and Phee all contributed to a great meal and a wonderful day at Becky's house.

Easter basket cupcakes, Kari's contribution to the Easter Sunday meal.

 Four generations, the Keckler name carries on.

 Becky has been overwhelmingly generous over the years with beautiful hand-me-downs for Kari.  We've been so blessed and thankful every time she thinks of us.  Yesterday, we not only helped clear out closets, we also helped clear out their garage.

One of the little girls in our neighborhood has a Hotwheels convertible just like this and Kari squeals every time Aeva is out driving her car. Kari oves hijacking it at first opportunity.  Aeva's dad showed me how to take the governor off and Kari and Bryce took off blazing down the street.  A short NASCAR-inspired race took place, complete with drafting and minor fender-benders.  I fully expect a bunch more drag races to take place this summer.

Weekend Warrior: Pallet Wall

We've been slowly making the transition from baby Bryce to toddler Bryce to big boy Bryce and we made a big leap this past weekend with a major room makeover.  At some point this winter in the midst of our frustrations with his lack of sleeping through the night we switched out the crib and put up the toddler bed.  From there, I thought it was about time to start thinking about a new color scheme for his room.  The apple green and white wainscoting was perfect for two babies whos genders were unknown prior to birth, but as Bryce got older, the need for something a bit more masculine grew.  Enter: the Pallet Wall Project.  I take no credit for coming up with this decorating idea; I might be the world's best rip-off artist.

I showed my room idea to Kevin who nodded reluctantly to the makeover, all the while silently questioning my construction abilities.  I knew this was a project I couldn't tackle alone, and quite to my surprise, my good friend Pam jumped at the opportunity to take part in the project.  I don't think I could have asked for a better friend to be a part of this- she's a methodical perfectionist- like any good pharmacist- good at math (and reading a tape measure), and had good family connections to a wide variety of much needed power tools.

Like any good construction project, there are always surprises.  Fortunately the only big surprise came early in the project as I was prepping the walls Friday afternoon.  Pulling down the wainscoting, I soon discovered it had been nailed AND glued to the wall.  So, much more time went into wall prep than anticipated.  As Pam and I said several times, there's nothing like a good piece of furniture to help hide solve wall imperfections.

Bye bye, apple green walls!

We got started Saturday morning tearing apart the pallets (compliments of SDI) with our beloved Sawsall.  That thing cut through the pallets like butter and we had ourselves a nice pile of boards.  We sanded the boards with a belt sander, which could have been the most mundane task ever, but was necessary to keep the wall from being a future source of splinters.  I felt fairly confident about the the pallets (very unlikely to have a sordid chemical-laden, raw meat or similar history) considering they were practically brand new from a paper company.  Even still, we sprayed each of the boards with a couple clear coats of polyurethane.

The sawsall was the perfect tool for the job.

White washing (1:1 paint to water) was the next step.  This truly allowed us to use creative license.  We started off with white and blue, but quickly realized that we needed gray and black to achieve the desired color scheme.  Paint is expensive, even at places like Menards, so Pam and I were absolutely tickled to find a quart of black on the mis-tint/clearance shelf for $1.

Based on other blogs doing pallet projects, we had planned to lay out all the boards on the floor and number each one in order.  We quickly found out that just wasn't going to work for us because each board was a little wonky and warped and we couldn't make a sound decision until we were up in the room butting them up to the previous row.  We likened this whole project to a big puzzle, no picture, and any piece could fit.

Doing a pre-layout, even with chalked-in lines, didn't work for us.

We took care in marking the studs with painters tape and penciled in lines horizontally every 12 inches so we could stay as close to level on each row.  The pneumatic nail gun was probably our favorite power tool and made the job go quickly.  Once we worked around the window, things cruised right along and we were quite lucky that the last two rows of boards matched up perfectly to the carpet, minus the baseboard trim. In the end we decided to not put the trim back on the pallet wall.

In the end we used about nine pallets for an 8x9 wall with several boards left over for some future coordinating decorating projects and took us 3 1/2 days to complete.  Thanks again, Pam, for helping bring this all together!

The walls are still bare but I do have some plans to decorate them in the rustic wood style shortly.

Slow Learner

Warning: Picture below may cause fits of laughter.

I can say that because I'm talking about myself.  I've been wanting to learn to knit for a while now.  Natalie had given me a pair of hand-me-down needles, yarn and a "teach yourself" booklet which proved to be nothing more than a source of frustration and dust collector for the past few years.  Enter Aunt Laura for a weekend visit and we're ready to rock and roll!

Ahead of her visit she asked what I would like to start with and suggested a dish rag or a scarf.  I was confident and asked if we could start with a simple hat for Bryce.  She reluctantly said, "Sure, we can give that a try!"  And so our lesson began.  She held my hands and helped me to get the casting on and the knitting motions.  She patiently corrected, re-corrected, corrected yet again each time I got stuck, lost or dropped a stitch.  At some point, Aunt Laura said, "Holly, I really think we should start with a dish rag."  And so we switched gears and got going on a simple square dish rag.  Now, any knitters out there know that consistent tension is a big part of a good knitting project and an achilles heel for many new knitters; I was no different.

Square dishrag?  Hmmm, not so much.  New York?  Nevada?  A pair of undies?  Yes, all those shapes have described my little dishrag:

I've already started on dishrag #2 and I'm happy to say things are going much, much better this time around.  Thanks again, Aunt Laura!

Pony and Cowgirl Birthday Party

I asked Kari several times as her birthday approached what type of party/theme she'd like to have.  Not even once did she waver from a "pony party."  I negotiated a bit with her to see if she'd tolerate a more general cowgirl motif and to ensure that this wasn't going to turn into a My Little Pony party.  Fortunately she was amenable to the minor modifications and we rolled forward.

The invitations set the theme and turned out really well.  I had a bunch of Kari's old jeans with blown out knees and I had no idea why I was holding onto them until this.  I'm so happy I had stashed them away.  Of course this encouraged guests to wear all things cowboy and plaid!

Source

Developing the decorations took relatively little work.  Mom brought down Dad's cowboy hat and boots and each boot served as the centerpiece at the tables. I equipped one of the boots with a vase and gerber daisies.  Pink bandanas and horseshoe confetti rounded out the table decor.

Next we came up with the menu.  That was super easy- white chili, red chili, deep fried turkey, Spanish cornbread and lemonade served in cowboy mugs from Oriental Trading.  The food was delicious and so appropriate!  We were able to continue the Western and rustic decor in the kitchen too.  I had recently scored some old storage boxes from a lab at work.  They served as perfect serving containers.

 Okay, so My Little Pony wasn't totally omitted from the day. At least she wore a cowboy hat.

For dessert we had our traditional family star cake, Uncle Lee's sugar cookies using a horse, horseshoe and star cookie cutters and these super nifty cactus sticks.

 Source

This was a super easy party with lots of resources available with little effort.  Already looking forward to planning Bryce's party in August!