I really can not believe that we are already celebrating Clara’s 3rd Birthday!!
She is so grown up and her own little person now. She of course looks up to and loves doing everything her big sisters are doing. Most of all she always makes us laugh, whether it is one of her cute facial expressions or something funny that she is telling us. I can’t wait to see what new adventures are in store for us this year!!
In honor of Clara’s third birthday, which we are celebrating this week we deciede to make goody bags to donate to Birthday Wishes. Birthday Wishes is an amazing organization that plans birthday parties for children that are living in homeless shelters.
We have been baking cupcakes to donate for the parties for the past 6 months and the girls are always excited to help me make them and decoreate them. They also collect goody bags which they give out at the parties. I have been wanting to have the girls make them, but haven’t had a chance until now. Since we are not haveing a friends birthday party for Clara I thought this would be a great activity to do together and we were able to spend the money we would have spent on goody bags for her friends on these goody bags.
We went to Walmart and Dollar Tree to pick up all the things we would need to fill the bags. The girls worked together to decide what would be fun to include in each bag. It was cute to hear them talking about the things they like getting.
In the end we decided to fill each goody bag with:
I set everything up on our low folding table, which was the perfect height for clara to be able to take a bag and then walk around the table and pick one thing from each container to put into the bag.
The girls worked together to put all of the bags together. They were careful to check when they were finished that each bag had everything because they didn’t want anyone to miss out on anything.
Clara was so proud of her finished goody bag, she was actually able to put them all together on her own. I just helped her tie the twist tie to close it.
Together we made 25 goody bags to donate to Birthday Wishes. I can’t wait to bring Clara to drop them off.
We actually had so much fun picking out the items to go into the goody bags and putting them together that the girls said they want this to be one of our new birthday traditions. I couldn’t be prouder of them for wanting to give back to others as part of their birthday celebration.
If you would like to find out how you could help out Birthday wishes be sure to visit their website and their Facebook page.
Check out some of the other ways our family is helping others and volunteering in our community.
Emily and Juliette each had their own room until I was pregnant with Clara. We only have 3 bedrooms in our house so we decided that Emily and Juliette would get to share a room. Since the bedrooms in our house are pretty small the only option was a bunk bed. I began scouring the internet and furniture stores for bunk beds, however I couldn’t find anything that I loved and when I did find something that I at least liked I was amazed at how expensive they were.
During my search though I did find this amazing custom double built in bunk bed, from August Fields. It had everything that I wanted, a little shelf for the girls to put their “treasures,” a light for reading and I loved that there where stairs instead of a ladder that stuck out into the middle of the room. After shopping around with my husband one day I came home and showed him the Pinterest board that I had put together with different bunk bed ideas. I thought he was going to tell me I was crazy, but instead he said “I could do that.” (Definitely one of the great thing about being married to a contractor!!) We got to work planning them right away and as we were showing the girls what we were going to do they were beyond excited for their new Bunk Beds!!
We were able to cathedral the ceilings in their room which was great because it made a small narrow room feel much bigger and we were able to make the bottom bunk bed higher so even my husband could sit in it and read with the girls without bumping his head.
The other really great thing is that the beds are actually built in to the studs in the walls so it is probably the strongest bunk bed ever. My husband can sit up in the top bunk with the girls to read bedtime stories without any worries. I thought that was important because Emily was so used to having us snuggle in her bed to read at night, I didn’t want her to miss out on that!
I absolutely LOVE how their bunk beds came out! Here you can see the steps leading up to the top bunk on the left hand side and they each have their own little built in shelf to put their treasures on and their own reading light
This year we drove upstate New York with Aunt Christina and Uncle Scott to visit our cousins and go apple picking. This is the second time we went to Indian Ladder Farms and we all really enjoyed it, even after driving about 4 hours and getting lost (darn GPS!).
Emily at Indian Ladder Farms.
(Juliette was not in the mood for a picture)
Before we went to the orchard to pick our apples we enjoyed some yummy apple cider doughnuts and Apple Cider. Then we went to the petting farm to see the animals.
The kids loved feeding the animals.
Finally we headed over to the orchard to pick some apples.
This is one of my favorite picture from our trip!
Carrying the bag.
Pulling the wagon. 
On our way to find the Cortland Apples.
Juliette did a great job filling up our bag too!
If you are near the Albany area I highly recommend Indian Ladder Farms. We drove over 3 hours to visit and views and the fresh delicious apples are really amazing and seeing our cousins made it even more special!
Now let the apple, eating, baking and creating begin!!!
What is your favorite thing to make or do with apples?
I will be sharing some of ours during the next few weeks. We do have about a bushel of apples to work with :)
Grandma and Grandpa got a new puppy!!
Emily, Juliette and their Cousin Brianna were so excited to see Zoey for the first time. Emily couldn’t wait to pet her and hold her. Juliette was not as sure, she took a little time to warm up to her. But now she asks to visit Zoey every single day. It will be so much fun to watch them grow up together!
