Jennifer Lambert

A Sacred Balance

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Frugal Birthday Celebration

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March 13, 2014 By Jennifer Lambert 3 Comments

I’m decorationally challenged.

I loathe kids’ birthday parties. I am always stressed.

Some of the stress is from growing up, surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins and having rather large gatherings for my birthdays, along with kids from my class at school.

We just don’t have any of that.

I tried. I wasted time and money on Liz’s birthdays for years. Some were rather successful and others flopped miserable, with no one even RSVPing or showing.

My husband didn’t grow up with big birthdays so he didn’t understand any of this.

So we discussed downsizing our idea of birthday expectations.

We’ve been having simple family dinners at home for a few years now.

No pressure. Teaching our kids that they’re special to us and we don’t have to blow a lot of money or impress people to show that.

So I’ve had to dig deep to find ways to make birthdays specials, frugally and without stressing out about it.

Because it’s not about things. I want my kids to learn that and honestly, they’re teaching me that too. They’re better at contentment than I am. And I love this post by my friend, Amber: When You Can’t Give Your Kids Disneyland.

Here is what I did for Tori’s 8th birthday.

I scored this rustic burlap pennant banner at Hobby Lobby.

I printed the letters on teal paper. I found the printable banner letters. I’m not really a fan, but Google to the rescue!

Birthday Banner

I used the same letters on skewers to decorate the cake with some long skinny blue candles and a cocktail umbrella Kate found in our cupcake drawer.

Tori wanted a white cake with chocolate frosting. This is my grandma’s recipe and it turned out amazing. Is it me, or is there just never enough frosting? I have bald spots on my cake!

Birthday Cake

What do you think?

I’ve also used this recipe to make 24 cupcakes and I’ve also thrown a half cup of cocoa powder into the cake batter to make a chocolate cake.

It’s almost time to blow the candles out! Dad picked up a lovely bouquet of flowers from the store on his way home from work.

Chocolate Cake with Blue Decorations

Tori’s favorite meal is Korean BBQ. Now, she’s never actually actually been to a Korean restaurant. She loves the Korean BBQ sauce flavor.

Which is basically a type of teriyaki sauce.

So we buy some nice strip steaks (no bony, fatty kalbi short ribs for her!). The kids don’t like to work for their food.

I plated it rather pretty on our Celebrate plate:

Celebration Dinner

Here’s our happy birthday girl. Eight years old!

Birthday Girl

I scored a Marie-Grace American Girl doll back in November for $40 on sale on their website and kept it hidden in my closet until now. It’s not the one she was wishing for (Caroline looks more like her and is into fishing!), but it is her first American Girl doll and she’s happy.

Whew!

One birthday down, two more to go this spring. Then Liz’s in the fall.

A great steak marinade:

Print

Korean BBQ Sauce

Cuisine Asian
Servings 1 cups

Ingredients

  • 4 T ground sesame seeds We use a coffee grinder
  • 8 cloves garlic pressed
  • 1.5 c soy sauce We like gluten-free Tamari
  • 4 T sherry
  • 6 T honey
  • 4 T sesame oil
  • 4 T water
  • 4 t fresh ginger grated
  • 4 t red pepper flakes optional

Instructions

  1. Whisk ingredients together in a bowl and store in a plastic squeeze bottle in the fridge for when needed. I like to garnish meat with more sesame seeds and chopped scallions.

 Our favorite cake:

Print

Easy White Cake

Cuisine cake
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Servings 2 layers

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter (2 sticks) softened
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 4 large eggs room temperature
  • 1 t vanilla
  • 1/2 t almond extract
  • 3 t baking powder
  • 1/2 t salt
  • 3 c cake flour
  • 1 c milk room temperature

Instructions

  1. Cream butter and sugar.

  2. Add eggs and vanilla and almond extract.

  3. Sift flour, salt, and baking powder together in another bowl.

  4. Alternate milk and flour into butter mixture until just mixed.

  5. Pour evenly into cake pans.

  6. Bake for about 25 minutes at 350*

Print

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Cuisine cake
Servings 2 cups

Ingredients

  • 1.5 c butter (3 sticks), softened  or 1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening
  • 1 c cocoa powder
  • 5 c powdered sugar
  • 1/2 c milk
  • 1-2 t vanilla
  • 1/4 t espresso powder optional

Instructions

  1. Whisk cocoa to remove lumps.
  2. Cream butter.
  3. Add vanilla and espresso (optional).
  4. Gradually add sugar, 1 cup at a time, scraping bowl often.
  5. Add milk until desired consistency.

Linking up: Enchanted Homeschooling Mom, The Life of Jennifer Dawn,  3 Boys and a Dog, Our 4 Kiddos, Kiddie Foodies, Kitchen Fun with My 3 Boys, The Jenny Evolution, Crafty Moms Share, 

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Filed Under: Recipes Tagged With: birthday, cake, frugal, grilling, recipe

Birthday Unit Study

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 26, 2013 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

Springtime is birthday time.

2 in March, 1 in April, 1 in May.

We try to make each child feel special on her or his birthday. They get to choose the décor, meal, cake or sweets, and a fun activity.

My middle daughter had an ocean theme for her birthday dinner. She requested Kalbi, rice, and stir fried vegetable. My little island girl!

blue ocean birthday tablescape

She turned seven years old! wow

birthday girl

My birthday was next. I am 37. She loves it that we both have sevens.

So we did birthday printables for fun and watched The Wizard of Oz.

I had the girls write a biography page about me. Adorable! And they know me so well.

about mama notebooking page

I love how my youngest daughter “decorated” my dress.

mama notebooking page

My son is obsessed with graphing. He rolls that little paper die and marks off the colors of cupcakes on the dry erase board. He loves it.

birthday graphing

He giggled so much when we played this hide the cake game! I made him close his eyes and hid a little paper cake under a number and then I told him the cake was “under number 2” or “under a green number” and he did perfectly! Then we just played a guessing game, which was not near as entertaining. He loved the hiding and closing his eyes.

counting

She just loves patterns. She asked me to find her some more and harder ones. I think she can just cut these all up and make her own.

birthday patterns

Want to have a fun birthday unit of your own?

Birthday Resources and Printables

  • Birthday Preschool Pack
  • Happy Birthday Printables
  • Birthday Fun!
  • Preschool Birthday Party and Birthday Bash links
  • Birthday Tot School 3 Part Cards
  • Birthday Tot Trays
  • Cupcake Unit
  • Amanda Bennet Birthday Unit
  • Famous Birthday Lessons and Unit Studies
  • Birthdays of Famous People
  • Birthday Unit
  • Birthday Themes
  • Preschool Birthday
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Filed Under: Homeschool Tagged With: birthday, fun, spring, unschooling

Turning 2 Years Old

This blog may contain affiliate links: disclosure. Please see my suggested resources.

March 28, 2012 By Jennifer Lambert Leave a Comment

So, Alex turns 2 Sunday. He’s a big boy now!

All of a sudden, he’s not a baby anymore. He’s a little boy. He’s so big and talking and so independent!

After three little girls, this guy sure is a needed change! I’m learning so much from him. He is so different from his sisters. He has no interest in doing the Tot School activities I did with the girls. He likes some of the Montessori works that I have on his shelves. And of course, I never get any pics of him doing those because I’m right there with him. He loves being outdoors. Just when I thought I had homeschooling figured out, he throws me a curve!

Here’s a little bit about our blonde, blue-eyed Bubba.

Alex likes cheese. I mean, really likes cheese.

Big Boy

He was so excited for his Cars birthday celebration.

Cars Birthday

He blew out two swirly candles on his cupcake.

Blowing Out the Candles

Then we put lots of frosting on it and he licked it all off. He left the cake.

Colorful Cupcake

Alex likes orange, so I made him orange buttercream frosting. (The pink and blue and green frosting were more for his sisters to decorate their cupcakes.)

Frosting Finger

Alex loves his iPad. He loves his cat, Rubeus. They’re buddies.

iPad Kitty

Alex loves the kitchen and begs to cook! He knows where everything goes and what everything is used for and we have rather more than enough when it comes to tools and appliances…

Helping in the Kitchen

He’s my handsome little man who looks just like Daddy, all the way down to that smirk.

Growing Up

He’s my big boy!

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