8th Birthday Special Celebration!

 Even though I can still hardly believe it, a few weeks ago my daughter Skylar turned 8 years old!!

In our faith, 8 is a big deal!  We believe when children reach the age of 8, they become accountable.  This means they can now understand the difference between right and wrong, and they can choose to be baptized and become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

It is an exciting time, and I wanted to put something together for Skylar that was fun but also meaningful as well.  

For a few months before the big day, Skylar kept saying she didn't want a party...she just wanted a day at the spa with me :)  Um...YES!  Sounds good to me! ;)

The more I got thinking about it though...I realized what a wonderful opportunity this was to express something so important to my precious little girl.  Instead of spending a whole day focused on our Outer Beauty (which is fun and wonderful!) I wanted to take the day and focus on ALL of the things that make my little one TRULY beautiful.

When we got in the car, I told her to get ready for a Day of Beauty!  Then I handed her this note rolled up and tied with a ribbon.

She was SO excited, and could not wait to find out where we were going!

Our first destination was all about celebrating her Beautiful Mind!  We went to our local Children's Museum and then picked out a fun new book at the bookstore.  She loved every minute of it, and I really emphasized all the things I love about her mind...how good she is at reading, what great imagination she has, and how she LOVES to learn!

The next stop was very special.  After a yummy lunch we went shopping for the perfect white dress for my little girl to wear to her baptism!  While we were shopping we talked all about her Beautiful Spirit, how proud I was of the choice she was making, and what a good example she was to her brothers and sisters.

Yeah...I totally cried :)  

Finally, we finished the day with some good old Outer Beauty too ;)  A trip to the salon for manicures and pedicures was the perfect way to end our day.

I cannot tell you how wonderful this day was.  We are raising children in a world that will teach them the MOST important things are just that...THINGS!  I am so grateful I had an opportunity to share with my daughter was makes her TRULY beautiful.  Yes, I think she is gorgeous...but she is so much more than that.  She has a heart of gold, and TRUE desire to choose the right.  She teaches me about forgiveness and love every single day.

\

So I would love to know...what have you done for your childs birthday that has become a special tradition in your family?!

First Day of School!

 It has been a crazy few weeks at our house, but with school starting today I feel like it just might be possible to get us back on schedule :)

Here is my ADORABLE little Skylar...ready to take Second Grade by storm!  I love her spunk and her joy...she radiates happiness.  I hope this school year is everything she hopes it will be...I know she will make it a great one!  

Next week Kendall goes to Kindergarten and a week later Britton starts Pre-School.  It's the start of a whole new way of life for us, and I think we are all ready to embrace the changes headed our way!

I know fun posts have been few and far between, but I promise they are going to be making a comeback ;)  We are coming up on my favorite season...FALL!  I have so much I want to do with my kids, home, and self so definitely stay tuned :)

Build-your-own Breakfast Sundae's!!

 Wow!  Could I be a little LESS consistent with my blogging?! :)  I have always struggled with balance...I am always all or nothing...you can tell the blogging has been leaning towards the nothing lately ;)

I did want to share a really fun breakfast we did for my daughter, Skylar, on her birthday.  Every year I try and do something really fun for the kids breakfast to show them how much I love them and to start the day off right!  I know this may be unheard of in blog land...but I'm really not into birthday parties.  I used to be...when I had one or two kids.  Now that I have 4 (and 3 of them have birthdays within a 3 week period!) it is just not realistic to throw huge bashes for every birthday.  As much as I LOVE the darling tables, party favors and all the teeny details that go into those amazing parties...they just don't work for me and my family right now.  Instead I try to do a fun, themed breakfast for my kids.  So far they have all been major successes!  If you want, feel free to check out our Princess Birthday Breakfast Bash, A Dora Birthday Breakfast Adventure, Skylar's Smoothie Shop and Birthday Breakfast at Tianna's Place :)

One thing that Skylar and I both share is a passion for ice cream :)  Seriously...we LOVE it!  I thought it would be perfect to create a Build-your-own Breakfast Sundae Bar where Skylar could make a delicious Breakfast Sundae to kick-off her special day!

Now, lest you think I am completely irresponsible...we did not have ice cream sundae's for breakfast :)  Instead of ice cream I got 3 different flavors of yogurt and used that in its place.  The kids got to choose between vanilla, strawberry, or peach yogurt that we put in waffle cone cups.

Once they had that all ready to go they went CRAZY with their toppings! :)

We had strawberries, bananas, Cookie Crisp cereal, crushed Oreo cookies, sprinkles, white chocolate chips, coconut, milk chocolate chips and Nilla Wafers.

Oh yeah...it was delicous!

Here is the beautiful birthday girl herself...my big 7 year old!  

So if you have a special birthday coming up in your home, but a huge bash is just not realistic with your time or money...try something like this!  Your kids will LOVE it...but mostly they will know just how much you love THEM.  

Thanks so much for coming by Blue Skies Ahead today!!

Little love notes for my 1st grader

Well, I did it! I survived dropping off my big girl at her first day of all-day 1st grade :) Yes, there were tears (just mine and her brother and sister :) but I know she is probably loving EVERY minute of it.

I have loved all the internet printables I have seen floating around blogs for little notes to send with your kids in their lunches. I STILL remember once when I was in 1st grade and my mom wrote me a little note on my napkin and put in one of those funny little Troll dolls. It totally made my day and I wanted to make sure I did some simple little things like that for Skylar.

One of my greatest weaknesses if following through on things. I know me, and I know I have great intentions to do these fun little things but I also know life gets crazy and before you know it, we will be taking last day of school pictures! So this is one simple way I came up with to let my Skylar know how much I love her every week for the whole school year :)

Using my Silhouette I cut this cute little card holder and wording.

Then I went through and picked out 40 pics of my girl that I absolutely love, that bring a smile to my face and had them printed off in a 3x5 size at WalMart. Once a week I will take one of these pictures, write a little note on the back, stick it in the card holder, and hide it in her lunch box.


Throw in a little fun-size treat and you have some special memories in the making:) Then when she brings the card holder back home that day I will take it and save it for one day the next week, pick out an already printed picture and let her know one more reason why I love her.

This is what my little cutie found in her lunch box today, I hope she loves it and realizes how crazy we all are about her. I got one of those plastic photo holder things with all the different pages and thought it would be fun for her to put all her pictures in there, and by the end of the year her book will be filled with special memories and notes from her mommy.

Happy first day of school Skylar, I am so excited for you to learn, grow and develop even more of your precious talents!!

Class of 2023!!

Isn't that wild?! The principal introduced all the graduates that way..."The Class of 2023!!" Of course, I started crying and Paul started making fun of me :) Today Skylar graduated from Kindergarten. I am SO proud of my big girl. She is a wonderful reader, constantly surprising me with the things she knows. She is a budding artist and is very sad that school is out for the summer. I wonder how many more years that will last :)

Here is Paul with the graduate herself :)

Skylar and I...isn't that big gap where she lost her front tooth the cutest???



Skylar LOVED her teacher, Miss Glover. We moved in the middle of the year and Miss Glover really went out of her way to make sure Skylar felt welcome and involved. I am so grateful for good teachers!

My mom taught me that you should celebrate ALL the good moments in life, big or small. I try to do that with my kids, and what would a celebration be at the Johnson house without a good themed treat?? :) Here is my rendition of the cap treats...usually I saw them online as toppers on cupcakes...but I figured these alone would provide quite enough sugar for my kids :) It is simply Reeses Peanut Butter Cups on the bottome, Ghiradelli chocolate squares on the top, with frosting and chocolate chips to finish it off.

We love you and are so proud of you Skylar!! Happy Graduation!!

Skylar's Smoothie Shop

For my kids I always try to do something fun for breakfast on the morning of their actual birthday. Last year we did a fun princess theme for Skylar you can see HERE and a cute Dora breakfast adventure for Kendall you can see HERE. This year I tried to think of what type of things Skylar was really into and it came to me!! (There is a plus to being wide awake with a baby at 2 in the morning...lots of good thinking time!) Skylar is crazy about smoothies. She asks me every day if we can go to Jamba Juice and get a smoothie. So for her special day I created Skylar's Smoothie Shop with fun flavors to choose from and her very own menu.

I didn't get a good picture of them, but in the frames are the different choices the kids had for smoothies. We had "Blues"Berries and Cream, Garfields Grand Berry Mix, Strawberry's Banana Berry Bash, and Princess Peachy Pleasure. I just chose some of Skylar's favorite characters and scrapbooked a page for each flavor of smoothie.

This is the little sign I had hanging up when Skylar came downstairs. She was SO excited and couldn't wait to order her smoothie! :)

Here is the darling birthday girl herself!

And these are the menus I made. Once again I just scrapbooked the different choices including smoothies and muffin options, then printed them out and laminated them. Then I gave the kids dry erase markers and they circled what they wanted. I think their favorite part was that I wore an apron and pretended to be a waitress while I took their orders :)

Just a side note: As I was at the store trying to get all the ingredients for 4 different choices of smoothies I found Yoplait Smoothie Mixes. All you have to do is add milk and WALAHH!! The truly awesome thing was they had 4 different kinds and they just happened to be the 4 flavors I was already planning on making. SO, that made it much easier to make about a million smoothies (Skylar loved that the smoothie shop was open all day!)

Skylar's Smoothie Shop was a hit! It is so fun to try and find something that is special to your child and incorporate it into their special day. Now I just hope I can think of something to do for her next year....:)

Some fun birthday ideas for the little artist in your life

Just two days ago my Skylar turned 6 years old! I cannot believe it has already been 6 years since I held my little 4 pound baby for the first time. Now she is preparing for her Kindergarten graduation, reading everything she can get her hands on, performing in dance and trying out soccer for the first time, and being the best big sister and helper I could ever ask for.

Once again her birthday came RIGHT after the birth of our newest baby so we decided to just do a little something at our monthly family dinner. Skylar LOVES her cousins and was so excited to celebrate her special day with them.

For the last few months Skylar has become obsessed with coloring! She will sit at the table for hours just coloring away. I have loved seeing her develop this interest, and we thought it would make the perfect theme for her little party.

For the cupcakes we went very simple (remember....one week old baby here!:) I just made some yellow cake cupcakes and we frosted them in all different colors. Then just because Skylar and I thought they needed a little something more we stuck a crayon in each one. Sidenote: I found spray on food coloring at the store....LOVE IT!! It was SO much faster than using food coloring to color 6 different batches of frosting. This way I frosted all the cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and then quickly sprayed them whatever color I wanted.



For the activity at the party I found the coolest website that will allow you to upload any pictures that you have and it turns them into coloring pages! I simply uploaded pictures of all of the children and then printed out their very own coloring page. This is Skylar's...isn't it cute?! Just go to THIS website to get started on your very own personalized coloring pages.

Finally we made these adorable crayon treats for the little gift bags. You simply take pretzel rods, break them in half, then dip each end in melted white chocolate chips. Now, originally the directions tell you to color the chocolate...we had to improvise. Apparently the gel food coloring makes the melted chocolate harden instantly! Skylar saved the day when she suggested we just cover the melted chocolate with sprinkles! I actually think it turned out even cuter this way....the girls a genius I tell you! :)

THIS awesome site is where I found the directions for the crayons and the free printable crayon wrappers.

Then we wrapped four crayons in a cellophane bag, attached little name tags I made with my digital scrapbooking program and tied them all up with a ribbon. I think they turned out adorable and I am thinking these will have to be an annual back to school treat or teacher gift...they are just too cute! :)

Skylar LOVED her coloring party....it was bright and fun just like she is! Stay tuned for another fun birthday breakfast idea and cute baby pictures!! :)

My favorite girls

I don't know what it is, but every time I get close to having another baby I feel a strong desire to spend as much quality time with my children as possible. I know their ( and my!) lives are about to drastically change...for the better I believe...but still a change. Its always an adjustment bringing a new baby home and I need my kids to KNOW how important they are to me, even once a new baby is taking up all my attention. Actually I am working on a family home evening for next week that deals with just that, so stay tuned! But I digress! :) This is a post about my cute girls :)

Friday night we went out for the most perfect, cliche girls night out ever! :) Dinner at Zupa's, shoe shopping, and topping off the night with frozen yogurt. It was just as much fun as it looks and I want to do it again soon. My girls LOVE to take pictures so you get to see one of me with each of them.




The best part about our night was being reminded of what incredibly amazing, different little girls I have! I learned alot about them, which seems crazy since I am with almost 24 hours a day, but for some reason they showed such personality when it was just the 3 of us. Kendall has a gift for telling stories...LONG stories :) But they are incredibly detailed and funny too :) I have always thought of her as my shy one, but she is proving me wrong. At Zupas she was in the center of the restaurant dancing and then proceeding to teach me how to get her moves "just right". I love her spunk...she is by far my most stubborn child but she has such a tender heart as well.

Skylar is the life of the party! She is a wonderful big sister that is growing up faster than I can believe. I depend on her so much, mostly for the example that she sets. She has the innate desire and ability to be obedient even when I am not telling her what to do. She knows the difference between right and wrong and strives constantly to make the best choices. Her siblings couldn't have a better example in our home. She says really funny things and is the most affectionate child I know...every few minutes she would kiss my arm and tell me how much she loves me.

I am so grateful for my girls, the two that I have, and the one that will soon be joining our family. Raising daughters sometimes feels overwhelming and scary to me, I so badly want to do a good job and help mold them into the women they are meant to be. I want to teach them self-confidence and to stand up for whats right...no matter what. Its not an easy job, and I KNOW it is going to get so much tougher as they get older. I also know what beautiful daughters my Heavenly Father has blessed me with and that makes me think everything is going to turn out just fine.

A little back to school fun!

I know I am ridiculously late on this, but some of these pics were too fun not to share! This was a big year for us, my oldest daughter starting Kindergarten! She was so ready and not the least bit scared. I wanted to make sure it was really memorable for her, and do something special so she would know how much I love her and look forward to the first day of school from here on out :)

I had heard of the book "The Kissing Hand" from several people and figured I had to include it in our back to school traditions. If you haven't read it, you should!! As I read it to Skylar while we ate our back to school breakfast I couldn't help but cry, it is such a sweet story with a wonderful message for any child that is nervous or scared about any kind of big change in their life. (The funny part was Skylar kept saying, "Why is he scared to go to school Mom? I can't wait for school!":)










As far as breakfast goes, Skylar loved it!! (Please tell me you can see that is supposed to be a big pencil...my husband couldn't figure out why I would make her a rocket for her first day of school!;) Its just sliced strawberries for the eraser, pancakes for most of the pencil, whipped cream and chocolate for the top! Quite delicious if I do say so myself :)









And here is the big Kindergartener herself! She is such a poser...cracks me up all the time! Kendall (and maybe me) cried when she left to go to school, it is a big change in our lives. Kendall has never taken a nap without Skylar in the room with her, and I miss our carefree, easygoing days. With that all said...school is the best thing for Skylar. She needs that social interaction and she LOVES to learn. It is an adjustment, but we are loving it.









And of course, you must have fun snacks when you get home from school! I made these for my Young Women last year when they went back to school and have been planning them for my own kids ever since. I got the idea from Family Fun, you simply make cupcakes, frost them, and then use chocolate covered graham crackers as the chalkboard. I used the white Good and Plenty's for the chalk, and just frosting for the apples (I KNEW I was forgetting the skittles at the store!!)



That night when Skylar went to bed she said "I wish EVERY day could be the first day of school!" Mission accomplished folks! There are so many hardships in life, sometimes I look at my kids and feel scared about all they are going to have to deal with. One thing I can do to counter those hardships is to make sure I don't let any of these fun FIRSTS pass us by without celebrating and finding joy in them!! Hope everyone had a great Back to School! ( And lets be totally honest...I am loving 3 hours of my day with one less munchkin to chase around!:)

A little more birthday fun!

Since we were already having our monthly family dinner with Paul's side on Skylar's birthday, I decided to throw a little something together for Skylar and her cousins so she didn't feel like she got TOTALLY jipped on a birthday party :)

It was so lovely to not have to do invitations, tons of food, and get my house spotless, but to let Skylar celebrate her special day with her cousins. This is just worked out a lot better with our crazy life right now :) Ok, I am no professional or anything, but I thought this all came together pretty cute and was very simple:

The first thing I love to think about is the cake! I usually go with cupcakes and this time was no different. Skylar LOVES the Disney movie Princess and the Frog, so I decided to go with that for a theme. It also worked out nicely because its not TOO princess-y for the boys :) So I made half the cupcakes frogs and the other half were purple with Tiana cupcake toppers. The toppers didn't turn out that great, but hey, you get what you get :) I loved the frog cupcakes and was surprised at how easy they were. You simply frost your cupcakes with green frosting and then sprinke with green sugar. Then cut a marshmallow in half and dip the tops of the halves in water. After you have done that roll the top in green sugar to create the eyelids and then stick in a chocolate chip! I used toothpicks to keep the eyes steady and pink frosting for the mouths.

For a fun simple game I borrowed my friend Krista's darling idea :) I had Paul draw a big frog (isn't he talented?!) and then I cute out a bunch of big lips. The kids then played Pin the Kiss on the Frog. It was a hit that even the younger kids could participate in.

Finally, the party favors! I gotta say, I thought these turned out pretty cute and SO simple! I got some Princess and the Frog stickers, placed them in a cellophane bag with Haribo green gummy frogs and you guessed it....Hershey Kisses!! Get it?? :) Tied up with purple and green ribbon and there you have it!!

We had a lot of fun and Skylar felt very special :) I love my big girl and cannot believe my baby is 5! This next year is going to be so exciting for her with so many opportunities for learning and growth, I love you Skylee-Boo!!

Cutting the Chaos, Week 6!

Hello everyone!! This weeks project is a little different, but turned out SO fun and cut out a lot of chaos at our house this week. My darling little Skylar had her 5th birthday yesterday!! For ever she has been dreaming up a grand birthday party with every kid she has ever met, piles of presents and cake and treats as far as the eye can see.

Well, thats great in theory, but when I really started trying to plan it, the timing was not great. We are moving in 3 weeks, trying to save every penny that we can, and in general just trying to simplify until we get into our new place. But here was the problem: How could I still do something special for my little darling without breaking the bank and throwing me into a nervous breakdown? ;)

This is where a stroke of genius came into play :) You may remember a recent post where I talked about how we eliminated enriched flour and high fructose corn syrup from our home, well the hardest thing for my kids to let go has been their breakfast cereal! They LOVE all the sugary stuff, and have been pretty sad to see it go. This is where I came up with the idea for our very own Princess Cereal Birthday Bash!! When Skylar woke up on Sunday morning this is what she saw....

I simply chose 4 of her favorite cereals, incorporated 4 of her favorite princess, and WALAHHH! A breakfast fit for a princess :)

Ariel's Underwater Treasures (Lucky Charms)

Jasmine's Royal Jewels (Trix)

Princess Aurora Puffs (Cocoa Puffs)

Cinderella's Glass Slipper Squares ( Cinnamon Toast Crunch)

Add fun glass jars, cute ribbon, and adorable chipboard cutouts of princess and there you have it!

Skylar had such a fun morning trying out all her favorite princess cereals :) She also kept saying, "Mommy, this is the best birthday ever!"

So if you are ever feeling like me and a birthday party is just too overwhelming, try something like this! Just find something simple that your child loves, tweak it to fit their personality, and instantly you have a hit!

In the coming weeks I have a feeling I will be overtaken by CHAOS!! You can expect a few posts on packing and organizing, and definitely dejunking :) Hope you're all having a wonderful week, and getting closer to being more organized so we can all enjoy the fun things in our lives!! :)