Today is my daughters birthday party and I’m running around getting everything set up and ready to go, so make sure you check back next week to see the wrap up post. I’m a little down since my mom is still in the hospital and will miss today’s party, but I’m determined to have a great day anyway.
 
I’m going to share with you some random projects I’ve been doing that don’t really warrant their own post.
 
First, party related items:
My daughter requested a birthday hat last minute, so I whipped this up with supplies on hand:

 You can trace an existing party hat, or visit this post and download their party hat template.

Tooling around on her birthday gift.

I used a piece of 12×12 scrapbook paper, crepe paper streamers, and a small piece of elastic thread to create these.
 And of course, brother wanted one too, so we made this together:

 Her actual birthday was the 16th.  I had to work so she went to daycare and they had a mini party with cupcakes, so I didn’t really want to do more cake that night.  Instead I decided to dip some oreos in some milk chocolate chips and sprinkles I had. We stuck them on skewers and sang “Happy Birthday” and she loved it!  SCORE!

On a sour note…my poor 6 year old front load Fridigaire Affinity Washer has been giving us horrible problems lately… seriously acting up.  How you ask?  By not going through the spin cycle.  We’d go downstairs to check the load and it’d be hanging out in a boat load of water… bummer.  After trying everything… that means I tried different cycles and powered it off, I decided to get the Hubby involved.  He looked through the manual, but the E20 error we were getting could be a number of things.  He proceeded to take my machine apart {and make a mess of the laundry room}:

After taking hoses and such apart looking for blockage he decided it was most likely the pump and asked me to look up the part information.  While doing that I happened upon a post (this one if you’re interested), where one guy was having the same problem and discovered that there was a boot under the coin catch that had become clogged with some unlikely items (considering the holes to get through the coin catch are pretty small)… I shared this with my husband who said he hadn’t looked there yet and proceed downstairs to give it a gander…. and came back upstairs with a crap load of stuff!  YAAAYYYY! Well, not the fact that stuff managed to get there (design flaw, anyone?), but that we found the problem!  There were 8 quarters, 5 nickles, a spattering of dimes and umpteen pennies… and my daughters sock.  Now my washer is back together and we’ve ran several test loads and we’re good to go!  Phew! I really didn’t want to buy a new washer.

 We DO have to replace our 5 year old swing set.  Bummer.  For a $700 swingset, we have not been impressed.  The wood was cheap and it just wasn’t something that was going to last.  For now we took the part that broke off (see that crooked part), so now we just have the slide and platform.  My hubby is going to use some 4×4’s to add some swings until next year when we will replace it (ghetto, I know, but we just spent MUCHO GRANDE on the house (see below for deets) and are going to Disney in October, a swingset has to wait!).  The canopy was also shredded, and I didn’t want to spend $30-$40 on a new one since I know we will be replacing it soon, so I purchased a plastic table cloth and ended up with this:

I know, I know.  Still not GREAT, but better than before, right?  RIGHT?  Humor me here.
“Here lies Goofy. He lived a sheltered life, but was rarely crabby.
May he go to a lovely place that is full of empty, shiny shells that will never tarnish”
OK, so I totally stole that from my cousin who left it on my FB page.  LOL.
Yes, Goofy the Hermit Crab, my sons pet, passed away.  We created this little headstone to mark his place in our lawn… and of course my husband promptly ran over it with the lawn mower.  OOPS!  Guess we’ll be making a new one.
My Husband’s Gram passed away on Monday.  The family asked me to create a slideshow and prayer cards for the service.  I found this quote online and fell in love with it and put it on the front of the card.  I had to share because I know there are others out there it will strike a chord with:
 Now let’s end on a happy note:

Another fun thing I did with the kids a short time ago was bring home glowsticks for them to play with in the bathtub.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and new I had to give it a go.  They had so.much.fun!  I mean, over an hour, in the dark.  I want to do this again this summer in the pool one evening… surprise them with a late night swim.
 
Phew – did you make it all the way through?  I’ve been a busy gal! I wanted to share with you my house upgrades – new siding, windows and shutters… but the shutters were just put up yesterday and I had a busy day with my husbands Grams funeral and my mom in the hospital.  I’ll share soon because I love the end result!
Happy Creating! ~Kim

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