Sunday, November 14, 2010

Happy Halloween 2010


October 30, 2010 - Zuben's 5th and Zofia's 3rd Birthday Party

For this year's 2 for 1 birthday party we went back to the Halloween Costume Birthday Party idea ...
 Zuben LOVES the trampoline ... I'm pretty sure he would be happy if the entire world's surface was a trampoline ... !!!!


                                 Foam pit is a hit with EVERYONE, several dads included !





 I was tired of always making cupcakes for every occasion, I was starting to feel like I should be called "The Cupcake Lady"! SO ... this year I made a cake instead, a Bride of Frankenstein cake!!!!

Ross and his mom, a.k.a. Grandma Willa

Special Thanks to Ms. Andria Williams for her excellent photography ... Thank you!!!!

October 2010 - At the St. Louis Zoo with Grandma Willa






A cardboard box gets upcycled

Star Wars fever has been raging high around here lately. Zuben asked if I could make him some kind of vehicle out of these boxes. They seemed to have fun with them, for a whole 15 min at least.
Please be so kind as to ignore the massive mess in the background ... =-)

September 2010 - Apple picking, Zofia's first school field trip








Saturday, November 13, 2010

Caterpillar on our front lawn ...

Life cycle of a caterpillar in our own backyard ....

This summer, for the first time, I dared challenge my black thumb. Black thumb = opposite of green thumb. I planted at home in containers: basil, mint, parsley and lavender. Apparently, caterpillars like to lay their eggs on the back/under side of parsley and this is what happened next... Can you spot them all? (click on the picture to enlarge) Answer: there are 7 in the picture, there were a total of 9!



 Slowly, the munched away at my parsley, and not very slowly they got pretty plumpy. (moto, moto!)

 As you can see, my poor little parsley plant was eaten down to the nubs.


The bigger they got and the more sparse the parsely got, I noticed there were less caterpillars. A couple strayed, but I'm guessing those plump and juicy caterpillars where easy prey for some bird. So, since there was hardly any parsley left anyway, I put them in our bug catcher box.

Notice the very thin silk strand it wove to hang from, sooo cool!

Shortly thereafter, the cocoon ....

 I actually don't remember how long, but I think a couple of weeks later, they came out of their chrysalis.


Fly butterfly ... fly .... be FREE!!!! It took them a while to dry their wings and then they were gone ...

August 2010 - First day of school for both, Zuben and Zofia



On any given day we ....

Go to the library...


                                               Have a picnic at the park ....


Make chocolate cupcakes and make a huge mess of ourselves after ....