A quick winter dress for baby and me!

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bakers man

Make me a dress as fast as you can!

(pretty please, Momma?)

You gotta roll it, pat it, mark it with a "B"


And don't forget to make one for baby AND me!


YAY!!!!

Thanks Momma!

And how could I do anything less for that squeezably round little face?


But I'll tell you, when I sat down to make her pat-a-cake dress I was stuck. All I could think of was this adorable long sleeve peasant dress I saw at the Little Bean Workshop.

And then it hit me like a pie pan to the face. Isn't copying the highest form of flattery? And I DO love so many things on Amy's blog. And what better way to honor my personal #1 copycat than to copy this cute little dress that's stuck in my head anyway??

So I did.

In almost every single way down to the perfectly fitting argyle fabric that happened to be on sale at JoAnn's all week :)

It was so incredibly easy to make that I threw one together for baby too!

Then, to spice it up with my own little spin I put 2 teeny pockets on the front just the right size for those chilled winter hands to warm up in.

Thanks for the great tutorial from Little Bean Workshop!

Hard hats required for this birthday zone

Our little man had his first birthday a few weeks ago and I couldn't think of a more fitting party theme than this!

Our house quickly became construction central with dump trucks, building blocks, tools, dirt and lots of hungry boys hanging around.

Wait, that doesn't sound too different than normal!

Ok, a little different from normal... unlike our normal construction zones, this Birthday Zone was specially made for little diggers 3 and under!

Even the birthday cake was a just like playing in the dirt!

Jonah blew out his first candles in the back of his dump truck filled with dirt cake!

Each kid even got their own mini trucks to dig around their cake with.

When we weren't covered in chocolatey dirt we were very busy constructing giant cardboard block towers.

Well... actually they weren't so gigantic after all.

It's no surprise really if Jonah thought it was this much fun knocking over little blocks...

We could've expected our big block towers never to rise much taller than this...


The kids still had fun and loved helping Jonah break in his new favorite toy from Aunt Dani...

You didn't, did you?!

You DID!!

Our little boy has his very own, very manly, QUAD!

Adorable.

Here's the yummy, super manly (but could also be girlie with a slightly different angle) Dirt Cake Recipe!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 2 (3.5 ounce) packages instant french vanilla pudding mix
• 3 1/2 cups milk
• 1 (12 ounce) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 1 package of chocolate oreo cookies with creme filling

Directions

1. Smash, crumble or chop cookies into a small pieces. You can use a food processor or a meat mallet and a ziplock bag seem to do the trick :)
   
2. Mix the softened butter, cream cheese, and sugar in bowl until smooth.
3. In a separate large bowl mix milk and pudding. Incorporate as many of the pudding globs as possible before adding the whipped topping to the mixture.
4. Combine pudding mixture and cream mixture together.
5. Layer in a lined dump truck or flower pot starting with cookies then cream mixture. Repeat layers.
6. Chill until ready to serve.
7. Decorate with mini dump trucks, paper flowers, gummy worms, etc
   

Note: As with all cakes, they're not exactly easy on the diet, but the best secret I've discovered with this is that using fat free or low fat dairy ingredients doesn't really change the taste! I've been doing it for years and my husband has had no idea :)