Category: boys

2012, boys, costume, halloween, husband

Past Halloween costumes

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Past Halloween costumes

Before we do the big reveal of this year’s awesome possum Halloween costume, I thought I’d do a little recap of (mostly) the boys’ past getups.

Baby Aidan rocks his reindeer outfit – I love his chubby fingers!

This was his official costume, but on the day of, he was very cranky and spent the evening in a shirt and diaper. But he was a darn cute Superman 😀

Alexander gives us fierce with his Count Dracula costume:

We won a costume contest at our friends’ party, wheee!

The first time that elephant costume will be seen, this time on Aidan; Alex was a SF Forty-Niner, and as always, the first house was our dear neighbors’, we have been truly lucky when it comes to the people on our block.

Second year for the elephant costume, Aidan was still in the grip of elephant madness, so he wore it again.

Alexander was a little batty that year (ba-dum-pum!) and he LOVED trick-or-treating.

As you can see, we got LOTS of mileage out of that elephant costume. Aidan was moving on to dinosaurs and was a t-rex rider:

This year, Aidan was into Bakugan, so daddy and I obliged. I sewed the wings and Steve made everything else.

Alexander loved Wubbzy, so I made him the outfit, while Steve painted the face on and crafted the tail.

Aidan starts his superhero phase, and looks awesome (she said un-biased-ly) as Captain America:

And, so far, the mother of all costumes, Steve knocks it out of the park with a Godzilla costume for Alexander:

Yeah, we love making stuff, don’t we? This year is Steve’s most ambitious project yet, and it’s coming along nicely. Alexander is wearing an off-the-rack costume — we hadn’t planned it this way but it’s worked out that the boys are getting homemade costumes on alternate years, Aidan’s Bakugan costume in 2010, Alexander’s Godzilla costume last year, and Aidan’s … let’s say, “of foreign extraction” costume this year. Which is nice as I don’t think we can handle TWO fancy homemade costumes AND Halloween decorations every year. Alex did get the Wubbzy costume as well in 2010, but it was just a simple jacket and pants.

Hope your weekend is going great, and best thoughts and luck to all those in Hurricane Sandy’s path.

2012, bedroom, blue, boys, paint

A bedroom for Alex

by casadeberry4 Comments on A bedroom for Alex


While my oldest boy’s bedroom boasted a pirate theme and then got some superhero goodness as our boy’s tastes changed, our youngest, Alex, had a Mickey Mouse wallpaper border and a couple of Disney paintings. Meh.

Last week I went through Alex’s closet, which had become a dumping ground for old TVs and VCRs, and even his little bookcase was loaded with old shoes he’d outgrown.

Definitely not cool.

The project started when I decided to paint his dresser – Alex chose blue and when I showed him various pictures of blue items, he chose the rug in Emily Clark’s living room. I’m telling you, the kid has good taste. Inspired by the navy-and-off-white rug, I painted his dresser in Valspar’s Night Sky and Keystone.



Alex was so happy to see his dresser in the color he chose, he kept coming up to me as I painted the drawers and saying “that’s my blue!”.

I had some sailboat fabric that went very well with the grayish blue of the dresser, so I made a new cover for his body pillow:

Alex’s bookcase was loaded with some of his favorite books:

And his shelves were decluttered and only a few friends made it back on 😀 along with one of my all-time favorite pictures of my sweet boy.

Considering that Eric Carle books (and Bill Martin books illustrated by Eric Carle) are some of Alex’s favorites, I purchased a set of prints to liven up his walls. By the way, Alex also chose the color on his walls, Valspar’s Woodsmoke.

A new set of favorite books are the David books by David Shannon. These are hilarious stories about a little boy who gets in so much trouble but everything is well in the end. Alex read one at school and loved it, so I bought him two books from the series.

Here is Alex’s all-time favorite page in the No, David! book – David running nekkid down the street. Hmmm, must remind him of someone, huh?

The final touch, for all those creative moments, was a table I had, which I painted with chalkboard paint.

My boy was very happy with his room and as soon as he saw his David books asked me to read them with him, so we hopped in his bed, with his new pillows, and read them a few times.

I made just a few subtle changes to Alex’s room but now it reflects his preferences, which was the goal, to have a room that has things he likes and colors he chose. Also, the Eric Carle prints can be changed as Alexander’s tastes change, which I am sure they will.

Hope you enjoyed a peek into my sweetie’s room!

2012, boys, california, outdoors, summer, travel

Fifty Shades of Brown

by casadeberry2 Comments on Fifty Shades of Brown

We had a blast on our camping trip – but let’s face it, there were less-than-glamorous aspects that we had to contend with for four days. The first one was the aforementioned wasps; they got a couple of the kids, so we had to designate off-limits areas. The second one, or rather, uh, number two, was a most odorous situation. Meaning, no-flush toilets. Our friend P, who, along with my husband, decided to aim their headlight down the long-drop toilet to have a look, christened it Fifty Shades of Brown. That’s boys for ya, because I used those toilets as much as they did and not once, NOT ONCE, did I feel the compulsion to aim my headlight so I could see better. Bleargh.

ANYWAY, on to better things now.

The man tackling the wasp situation

The day before we came home we went to a river, it was such fun – the boys busied themselves with building a dam.

Friendly river duck 😀

Our youngest enjoys a jam session with our friend J:

See? This is proof that I was cleaning those boys up whenever I could ;D

The next morning, it was time to pack up and head home:

“Thank you very much, good night!”

And that was our four-day adventure at Yosemite. The boys love camping, playing around in the woods, and being manly men with their buddies. We love hanging out with friends and family and having great food. And wine. Wine is good.

Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

2012, boys, california, family, friends, kids

Camping in Yosemite

by casadeberry6 Comments on Camping in Yosemite

We spent a fabulous four-day weekend camping in Yosemite — it was the boys’ second time camping and they had as much fun as the first time, which is to say, A LOT!

Our day started early on Thursday, I think our oldest could have used a couple more hours’ worth of sleep 😀

Our youngest got right into the spirit of the thing and started carrying manly amounts of fire wood:

He also loved helping daddy set up our tent:

Dinner that first evening was basic camping goodness:

With one twist:

Dear auntie L. had a birthday so we got her favorite cake – German chocolate!!!

Friday was Dirt Day. Or Filthy Friday. Or Messy Monkey Day. Or something.


I swear I wiped them down about 56 times that day, but five seconds later they were filthy again.

It was a losing battle.

But the food was awesome.

Breakfast rocked — hot and fluffy pancakes, yummy fresh fruit, and bacon, lovely bacon.

Dinner was delicious flank steak, asparagus, salad, and baked potato (I didn’t have one).

The squirrels were in love with our food:

Even diving into the trash can to retrieve bits of it!

Our friend K made the most stunning, the most amazing (yes, I love MasterChef!) the most refreshing gazpacho. Seriously, it took all my willpower not to grab her plastic container and run with it into the woods:

But the tracker jacke–, I mean, the wasps, were kinda scary.

Lovely port.

Don’t remember much after this shot ;D

More camping adventures later this week!

2012, boys, photography

Payback

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Payback

I did a lot of camera-aiming at people this weekend. We went to Yosemite and had a great time camping and at one point I turned and my oldest was doing this:

I didn’t wash my hair for four days so I will not be showing you the picture he took ;D

But I will share some of the others later this week.

2012, birthdays, boys, craft, entertaining, kids, parties

Lego Birthday Party

by casadeberry12 Comments on Lego Birthday Party

My youngest turns six today. We celebrated on Sunday with a small birthday party in the theme of his choosing — Lego Dinosaurs. I did a simple invite based off the Dino Lego website, using the Legothick font I downloaded for free:

The day was beautiful, a little warm for my (arctic) taste, but my in-laws lent us their canopies and we had a great time chatting in the backyard and watching the kids play.

For the cake, we chose to do a Lego brick cake — actually two, since I made one chocolate and one vanilla cake. My son’s choice was blue frosting on his vanilla cake, so I made the buttercream, too. First time, and I think it tasted pretty good. The chocolate cake was covered in green buttercream. We had liquid food coloring at home so I used that, but it took so much coloring to get the shade I wanted that I think next time I will use gel food coloring. My son saw the blue buttercream and gave it a thumbs up. Then he tasted some and wanted to eat the whole container so I had to refrigerate it for a while ;D

A couple of friends suggested Ding Dongs for the Lego studs on the cake:

Here’s my sweet Alex blowing out the candles:

It worked out perfectly that I made a six-stud brick and he was turning six, I just stuck a candle into each, uh, Ding Dong stud. Man, that sounds bad, huh? lol

For the piñata, my husband made a fabulous, Alex-sized version of one of the Lego Dino wranglers:

Here you can see the “model” on the shoulder:

Clothing details:

It’s alive!

My husband gazes at his creation one last time before the kids go at it!

Alex with his piñata:

After the carnage, my oldest made sure to save the head for our future “trophy room” — seriously, we have saved the heads off a few piñatas and costumes, and I told my husband we should mount them on the wall the way others mount moose and tiger heads 😀

Hope you’ve enjoyed looking through our Lego party – have a great Tuesday!

Thursday Favorite ThingsWeekend Bloggy Reading

2012, boys

Icing on the Cake

by casadeberryLeave a Comment on Icing on the Cake


The boys and I are continuing our cupcake adventures with a visit to Icing on the Cake, a local shop in Los Gatos — my friend G is a fan and we met up a couple of days ago to sample some goodies.


The shop is adorable, it has not only cupcakes, cookies, cakes, etc. but so many bowls, cupcake stands, paper straws, aprons, party accessories, and more, that I was surprised at my own willpower because I seriously wanted to blow the month’s grocery money right there and then.

My youngest checked out the cupcakes but then headed over to his favorite section – cookies!

He ended up getting a chocolate chip behemoth that he shared with his big brother. Big bro, in turn, shared his vanilla cupcake with my little man. My husband got a carrot cupcake and I got my chocolate fix. I have to say that I liked this chocolate cupcake a lot better than the ones I got at our two previous cupcake outings (Sprinkles and Kara’s). This cupcake was very, very chocolaty, there wasn’t an obscene amount of frosting so I could enjoy the cake itself, which is what I like the most.

We hung out with G and her adorable daughter for a few minutes and then the boys and I had to go grocery shopping (see? good thing I didn’t spend all that money 😀 )

2012, boys

A visit to the Oakland Zoo

by casadeberry2 Comments on A visit to the Oakland Zoo

This past Sunday, my husband and I took our boys to the Oakland Zoo.

It’s been a favorite since the other large local zoo disappointed my oldest by not having elephants.

The zebras were some of the boys’ favorites 😀

But my youngest’s absolute favorite was this one elephant. He was super sweet and came over to our side, hung out for a few minutes, and then went back for some food.

One of my favorite details was this high-relief trail of ants, set on one of the little pathways.

This meerkat was a total poser 😀 turning this way and that, making sure we captured all his good angles.

These rabbits were adorable!!!

My youngest liked this leaping lemur – both my boys loved Zoboomafoo!

We had a great time on the Sky Ride, our oldest and I rode behind my husband and our youngest.

My oldest does some yoga poses atop a wary frog.

The last ride was the zoo train, and then we headed home after a great time.

It was a really nice day in Oakland, a lovely breeze kept things from being too warm and the employees walking around were very nice and helpful, stepping in to tell the boys about whatever animal they were looking at, etc.

I hope your Wednesday is a wonderful one!