Les Petites Chefs Birthday Party Report

Seriously. It was a fantastic party! Really amazing. And it would have been equally great for girls or boys. If you live anywhere in the metro Denver area, bookmark Sticky Fingers — if not for a birthday party, then for their kids cooking classes — they are a class-act all the way around. Here’s the report:

About an hour before the guests arrived, Sticky Fingers showed up to prepare the space. They brought balloons. And the most colorful assortment of kid-friendly kitchen ware. I couldn’t stop taking pictures. (You can click the photos to see them bigger.)
Once the guests arrived, it was time to decorate chef hats. With stamps, stickers, markers, ribbons and every other sparkle-rific material.


When the chef hats were sufficiently glamorous, it was time to get down to cooking (after thorough hand-washing of course). The recipe was posted on an easel and the kids made the gnocchi from scratch. At each step, the Sticky Fingers girls gave kid-friendly, patient, cheerful instruction (“When you’re using a knife, make a bridge with your hand and then cut under the bridge…”). The guests measured ingredients. Cracked eggs. Grated cheese. Mixed. Kneaded. Rolled and formed. (For those of you who are worriers, please note that there were at least 3 additional hand-washing sessions throughout the cooking process.)


While the gnocchi boiled, they worked in teams using morters and pestles to crush lavender, then mix it with honey, oil and vinegar for the pasta topping.

The gnocchi finished cooking just as the dressing was complete. Then it was time to feast. It was a pretty exotic meal as far as kid food goes — Parmesan and Ricotta Gnocchi over Peaches with Prosciutto and Parmesan plus Honey Lavender Dressing. But the guests loved it!


As everyone finished their meal, we brought out the pretty cupcakes and sang Happy Birthday.


For party favors, Sticky Fingers brought laminated recipe cards featuring Olive’s special recipe. And we included ruffle-y aprons as well (Bonus: I went to Jo-Ann’s to pick up fabric to make aprons, but found these cute red and white ones for $2.50 each. Yay! Because, really, I was out of time and not looking forward to a late night sewing aprons…)
While we opened presents, the Sticky Fingers girls cleaned up every last crumb and loaded up their car. (Best part of hiring out your party!) Olive was super pleased with the whole thing. So were the guests. So was I.
Loads more photos here.


Olive’s Les Petites Chefs Party

I’m really looking forward to Olive’s birthday party this weekend. It’s going to be a busy day — Olive will have her party in the morning, and then be baptized in the afternoon. It’s a double whammy. Although I love putting on fun parties for my kids, I am so lucky I found Sticky Fingers to handle things this weekend — the double event has me feeling too crazy to give the party as much attention as I’d like.
These are the options Sticky Fingers offered for the party activities:
Choose your meal.
• Four Seasons Pizza: roll out honey-wheat dough and personalize with seasonal toppings
• Gnocchi-n-Cheese: squeeze it, roll it, top it! Ricotta gnocchi dressed with a creamy, cheesy pesto sauce and an assortment of seasonal toppings is decadently delicious!
• Upside-Down Pasta and Tomato Sauce: fresh tomatoes, basil and cheese, topped with warm pasta to create better-than-ever spaghetti.
• Noodles & Soup: practice your (butter) knife skills on tofu for your miso soup, peel carrots for a soba noodle salad, then sit down with some chopsticks to the messiest meal of the bunch!
Choose your craft.
• Pasta Art: decorate and string fun pasta shapes onto ribbon to create bracelets, necklaces, bookmarks, & more!
• “I’m the Chef” Placemats: personalize a special placemat that’s yours to use each time you help with dinner! Placemats feature fun mealtime games and will be laminated once decorated.
• One-of-a-Kind Chef Hats: add your own unique flourish to a special white chef’s hat that lets everyone know who’s in charge in the kitchen!
• Cupcake Decorating: a classic birthday treat becomes even more delightful when decorated just as you wish with colored frosting and fun toppings!
Choose a cupcake flavor.
Pick from the many delightful daily and rotating flavors available from Happy Cakes Bakeshop, our cupcake partner!
Olive picked the gnocchi, the chef hats and vanilla-flavored cupcakes. Perfect. Basically, that means my only responsibilities are invitations, decorations (if we choose to do anything in addition to the balloons Sticky Fingers are bringing — I’m hoping to use the Cricut tonight to make up some garlands), and party favors. And let’s be honest, those 3 tasks are my favorite parts of planning a party. I think it’s going to be great!
You can find out more about Sticky Fingers parties and classes here.
Les Petites Chefs Birthday Party Invitations

It’s going to be such a fun week! Saturday, we’re having a birthday party for Olive. The theme is “Les Petites Chefs” (how chic! how French! how very Julie and Julia of us!) We’re bringing in the ladies from Sticky Fingers Cooking to teach the party guests some kitchen how-to. But more on the party details later. Today, I want to share the invitations.


Last week, I was sent a Cricut die cut machine to test out, so I decided Olive’s party invitations were the perfect reason to pull it out and see what it could do.
After playing around with the Cricut for a while to get comfortable (I had never even seen one of these machines before, so I really had no idea what to expect) Maude and Olive and I designed some invitations that would use a million diecuts and really show off our mad Cricut skillz.



Basically, we cut out oversize hangtags (I’ll note here, that cutting out all sorts of shaped tags in all sorts of sizes and colors will probably be my most used Cricut feature), and used the new From My Kitchen cartridge to cut out assorted cooking-related shapes we could display on the tags.
Then we attached the kitchen-themed tags to wooden spoons. So adorable! We actually tried 3 different ways of attaching our little tags, and couldn’t ultimately decide on a favorite. So we gave out invitations using all 3 versions (and used up a bunch of my ribbon scraps in the process — love it.)
What do you think? Next up to work on: party plans and party favors.


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I’ve Got Soul, But I’m Not A Soldier

Guess what happened 5 minutes ago.
Ben Blair found out that The Killers are playing at Red Rocks. Tonight.
So he bought us tickets.
Can’t wait.
photo here
Rainbow Rocking Chair Project: Turn Eclectic Inexpensive Rocking Chairs Into A Collection




Weekend Report


We played all weekend with our friends the Lattins. Saturday night we hit the divey Morrison Inn for chimichangas. Sunday we all spent the afternoon in our newly painted rocking chairs. And Monday we ate watermelon in their shady backyard before hitting the neighborhood pool. We ended the weekend with shakes, onion rings and burgers at Fatburger.




By the way, if you get the chance, I highly recommend the half-a-watermelon idea. It was a wonderful (easy) way to spend a sunny afternoon. Tell me about your weekend. Did it feel like an end of summer celebration? Anyone ready to start thinking Halloween?

I’m thinking this image captures “end of summer” pretty perfectly.
School Pictures

A new company called Stomping Ground has set out to reinvent school pictures. Their sample portraits are adorable!
Thoughts: Can school pictures be saved? Should our own children be subjected to the tacky school photos of our youth? Would you push your school to hire Stomping Ground vs. Lifetouch (or whoever handles your school photos)?
One last note. Ralph had school pictures taken a few days before school even started. One of the options we could pick: pay an extra fee to have zits photoshopped. Blessed middle school.
Olive’s Turn







Anniversaries

It’s our fourteenth wedding anniversary today. It feels good. Really good.
As I mentioned last week, to celebrate, Ben Blair and I climbed a 14er. 14,270 feet in elevation to be exact. I was warned how hard it would be, but I guess I didn’t really believe it, because the difficulty kept surprising me. The higher you get, the harder it is to breath. Headaches begin. Nausea visits. Dizzyness warns. During the last thousand feet of elevation, I had to fight my instinct to lie down and take a little nap on the freezing cold mountain.


Ben Blair, who is in much better shape than I, coached me gently to the top. The hike from beginning to end took us 3 hours and 15 minutes. I can’t remember ever pushing my heart that hard for that long. I found when it was really difficult, if I would just focus on progressing a few feet in front of me, I was fine. And when I needed to stop and rest and let my heart rate try to reach some sort of normal, I was greeted by tremendous views every where I looked.
As luck would have it, at the top, views were completely obstructed by thick fog. But it didn’t matter a bit. The high was still a high. And happily, my iphone had perfect reception (possibly the one spot on earth with good AT&T; coverage) and I could tweet that we had made the summit. Tweet until my fingers were threatening frostbite and we headed back down on rubbery legs.

On our hike (when I still had breath enough to carry on a conversation) Ben Blair and I talked about some of the milestones of our marriage so far. Fourteen years ago we hadn’t even graduated from college. (I laugh when I remember how young we married.) Some of the highlights in no particular order: We graduated from college. We bought a house, then gutted it and refinished it. We moved to Greece. We moved to New York. We moved to Colorado. We went through several job hunts and landed great jobs. Ben Blair finished a masters and doctorate degree. We started several businesses. We closed several businesses. We sold our house. We built a ginormous table. We had 5 children.
It is a wonderful thing to take part in a happy marriage. My relationship with Ben Blair is the very best thing in my life. Period.
On Sunday night, I was wandering through the blogosphere and was reminded of another anniversary — a miraculous one. Sunday was the one-year mark of Stephanie Nielson’s plane crash. To celebrate, Nie and Christian also climbed a mountain — a tougher climb than I could ever hope to attempt. Because they are total rock stars.

I was thinking about last year. About the auctions and fundraising. About seeing the blogging world come together in a mind-blowing way. And I had myself a little daydream. At the BlogHer conference each July, there is a Community Keynote. At the keynote, a group of bloggers gleaned by Eden Kennedy, each reads one of their significant blog posts. It is, without hesitation, the best part of the conference. How wonderful would it be to see Stephanie and her wonderful sister Courtney (who chronicled Stephanie’s journey when Nie couldn’t do it for herself) speak at the next BlogHer Community Keynote?
The conference is far away from their home. And of course, Stepanie can’t fly to New York. In my little daydream, a sponsor provided a retro styled Airstream Camper (wouldn’t that be perfect for Stephanie’s super-hip style?), and the whole family made their way leisurely across the country. Stopping at vintage diners along the way. Shopping for souvenirs. With Stephanie’s fans coming out to meet her, cheer her on, and thank her for living a inspiring life.
Of course, it was only a daydream. I have no idea if Stephanie and Courtney would even be interested. I don’t even know if Nie’s treatment regimen would allow it. (And really, as big as the BlogHer conference is, I know there are still thousands of bloggers out there who aren’t really aware of it — I believe Cjane and Nie fall in that category.) But I think the blogging community would love to hear from them in that sort of setting. To hear in person what it was like to wake up and find out you’d missed a few months of your life. To look in the mirror and see a face you don’t recognize. To find out thousands of people you’ve never met have rallied on your behalf and are hanging on your every word.
Dear Stephanie, congratulations on reaching your significant and magnificent goal. You did it! You climbed the mountain. I tear up just thinking how hard you worked to get there. I think you’re amazing.
What to Wear to 6th Grade

Button down by Peek. Tee by Old Navy. Jeans by H&M;. Red sneakers by Adidas.
At your request, here is 11-year-old Ralph showing off his back-to-school wardrobe. Today is his first day of middle school (gulp). We’ve spent the last 24 hours practicing the right-left-skip-the-number-right-padlock-unlocking-method so he won’t get frustrated when he encounters his locker combination. Oh man! I hope he loves school this year.
I’ve included source links where applicable. As with Maude, much of the wardrobe pictured here was already in Ralph’s closet. But boy clothes are pretty easy — I’m betting you can find similar items to the ones shown here at a dozen different stores.
You can see more of Ralph’s photo shoot here. (Also. I’ll post Olive’s B2S wardrobe in the next couple of days.)

Button down by Mossimo for Target. Ringer tee by Old Navy. Jeans by GapKids. Backpack by Ekco. Tie-dye tee by Maude Blair. Cargo shorts by Mossimo for Target. Black Sneakers by Adidas.

Printed polo by Wes & Willy from Juvie. Plaid shorts by Gymboree. Superman tee by Old Navy. Brown herringbone trousers by GapKids.

Tee by Old Navy. Track jacket by Peek Aren’t You Curious. Screened tee by Peek. Khakis by GapKids.

Green polo by Lacoste. Denim cargo shorts by Mossimo for Target. Batman tee by Old Navy. Jeans by H&M.;
What to Wear to 5th Grade






Build Two Toddler Beds for $75










8 to 5 Sandwich

Do You See What I See?
Rocking Chair Project

So this house we’re renting comes with a pretty fantastic yard. There are mature fruit trees — cherry, apple and peach. Two strawberry patches and a raspberry bramble. An herb garden. Lots of good cutting flowers. A large garden spot (large for suburbia anyway) which we’ve planted with tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, melons, pumpkins, salad greens and beans. Plus a good sized patio/deck with an awning.
We left our outdoor furniture behind in New York and have yet to replace it. In lieu of the traditional table and benches, I’d like to fill our patio with an assortment of rocking chairs instead. I’m thinking 7 mis-matched rockers in bright colors. I’ve set a budget limit of $50 per chair and now I’m hunting them down.
On Saturday I found a great turquoise rocker in metal for $75 that I hope to barter down this week. And a squatty, bright yellow one in front of a costume store. It wasn’t for sale, but if I show up with cash, maybe they’ll change their minds?
I’m willing to add a coat of paint to a non-descript rocker, or embellish with colorful cushions, but I do want to challenge myself to keep to the $50 per chair budget. If you’ve seen any rad rockers around, please let me know.
Also: if you live in the Denver metro area and know of a trustworthy upholsterer, I’d love a recommendation. Please. Pretty please?
image from kitby
Books by Color



Last night, we organized the book shelves in the living room by color — they’ve been so drab every time I walked by, I’m hoping this will be the fix. You like?
Other than that, it feels like a funny day. I wonder what’s up? We returned an air mattress at Target. Then bought a new lamp shade. And some light bulbs. I went grocery shopping. We made cinnamon rolls (the super easy Rhodes version).
Now all I want to do is watch movies until it’s time for bed.
Feel free to join me. Happy weekend!

How To Build A Giant Table

















Table Project Update

More sneak peeks of the table project!
Isn’t it amazing? It’s enormous. And weighs 300 pounds or so. I love it so much! I know I owe more details and sources — a full post with more pics is coming. Now. Do I leave it as is? Or try to age it to look like this one?

How To Paint a Piano


Choose a Piano That’s Not Worth Restoring
The best candidate for something like this is a piano that’s not worth restoring. Ours was perfect. It was the piano I grew up with and it was pretty beat up when my parents originally picked it up for a bargain $300. By the time I inherited it, it was even more war-torn and the first thing I did was get 3 bids on having it refinished and restored. All three refinishers told me it would be about $2000 to restore the inside and $2000 to restore the outside and that the inside was just old, and even if it was restored it wouldn’t be as good as new. All 3 recommended sending this one to the junk yard and buying new. But new was out of our budget. And so was a $4000 restoration. I got some other opinions, and it was decided that the piano was good enough for lessons for the kids (the kids were babies at the time), and that we could get a more serious piano when and if our kids became serious piano students. So we just kept the piano as it was and I dreamt of at least giving it a shiny coat of paint. I kept the dream alive for 9 years. Some years I thought a glossy black would be lovely. But then I felt like black would seem like I was trying to make the instrument more formal than it really was. Later I thought maybe a white coat that we could sand down and make sort of rustic would be nice. Then for about the last 3 years I decided turquoise would be the right thing to do, but I never made it happen. When we were moving, the piano was so depressing I almost left it behind. But Ben Blair said we should bring it to Colorado. Saturday morning I was craving a challenge so I decided to finally tackle the piano paint job. When I got to the paint store I had a vision: go big or go home. I decided on Grass Green then and there. I bought one quart of hi-gloss enamel, one quart of primer, tinted to match the paint, and a paint brush. Grand total: $40. By Saturday afternoon I had primed it and painted 2 coats of paint. At that point, I decided the green was a little too yellow, so I took the remaining paint back to the paint store and asked them to green it up a bit. Saturday evening, I added one more coat and then came back to the project on Monday. Monday I did two more coats. Tuesday I did some touch ups. And tada! It’s finished. Unexpected thing: I can already see this will be the signature piece in our home. I had never thought about a signature piece for our home, but because I went with a bold color, now we have one. Every person that comes in the house is drawn to it. Everyone wants to touch the keys. It’s been played more in the last two days than it has been in years. Ben Blair wants to host a recital and call it Variations on the Green Piano. Other unexpected thing: a piano is big. Physically and visually. It’s not just a small accent piece. Once you have a green piano, you basically have to design the room around it instead of just work it into the existing space. Which means I need to talk to the landlord about painting the walls… Seeing our newly painted piano makes me super happy. Green wouldn’t be right for every home, but it’s perfect for ours. I feel like I just bought this piano 10 more years of life. Next up: time to get it tuned.Updated To answer some of your questions:
1) The color is Benjamin Moore Yellow Green (but in my mind it looks more like grass green). 2) I didn’t use oil-based paint. 3) According to the paint store: yes, you should sand off any existing hi-gloss finish before you prime. 4) I don’t have any “before” pictures to share. I did have some. But they are gone. Because I am an idiot and mistakenly erased them. 5) Yes, I painted the bench as well. When I have the room more put together, I’ll share a photo tour. 6) I did not disassemble the piano, but an expert or less-lazy person would have. I painted with the keyboard closed. Once the paint was dry, I opened the keyboard and painted around it with a smaller brush. Happy painting! P.S. — More green piano photos. Plus, at what age should your child start piano lessons?New Sofas

We left our tired, well-used sofas on the street as we packed up our house in New York. Which means we now have very little to sit on and are in couch shopping mode. Here are four I’m considering:
1) The Florence Knoll Sofa in fabric by NJModern pictured at top.

2) The Bucktown Sofa by Chiasso.

3) The Bantam Sofa by DWR.

4) The Abby Sofa by Chiasso.
These are all between $1100 and $1800 — about what I expect to pay for a good quality sofa in not-extravagant fabric. For a total bargain, there’s also this simple silhouette:

The Buse Sofa from JC Penney. More of an over-stuffed feel than I’m looking for, but you can’t beat the price: on sale for $499.
Thoughts?