August 2015, Latest & Greatest News

A Splashing Good Time

Last Saturday, we gathered together to celebrate our little man’s 4th birthday. Very early into the planning, he declared he wanted an Avengers party, so I was excited to find this invitation on Etsy.

The shop I worked with is called, Cupcake Tops. Now thru Sept. 30th, use code: casademurphy and you can receive 20% off any purchase of $5 or more in their shop 🙂

Bday Party Invite

Liam LOVES to swim & play at splash parks, so we thought it would be fun to have his party at the Oviedo Splash Zone — part of the Oviedo Aquatic Facility. Basically, it’s like a playground in about 1 ft. of water. SO MUCH FUN for all!!

When we booked the party, we chose the morning time slot, as we thought there would be virtually no chance of Florida showers that early. Well…..Murphy’s Law — it stormed AND poured for literally the week & a half prior to and days after the party. I’m talking HEAVY rain peeps. Poor Tampa was under a state of emergency there was so much rain. I just kept praying it would let up for those few hours. We had no back up plan. Driving to the park, it started to sprinkle — I was less than thrilled, but Liam was so positive (as always). He said, “it’s okay Mommy. Sprinkles are not bad :)”. Love him! We were blessed as the rain stopped AND the sun came out. The weather was beautiful for the entire party ❤ …..and then, it poured again as soon as we got home….LOL!!

I have a lot of pictures to share, so be warned that this post is long 😉

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This is one of my fav shots of the morning. I have to tell you that Liam was a little stinker throughout the party, and almost every time I asked him to pose quickly for a pic, he said ‘no’ or ‘after cake’ or made a face. We had to work HARD for this shot!

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Knowing that we would be doing a water party with lots of kiddos, I thought cupcakes would be best & most easy to manage. Publix came through like champs with these! I gave them little direction, and we were thrilled with the end result. They even surprised us with these fun rings as toppers.

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We had a table set up under a ginormous umbrella. Again, so fun! Perfect for shade from the sun or rain. Since it was a morning party, we opted for breakfast snacks and coffee for parents. Thanks to Dunkin’ Donuts for coming to the rescue! I called ahead and we walked in just before the party, and they had our whole order ready to go. HUGE time saver!

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How awesome was this park? The kids {and adults} thoroughly enjoyed themselves!

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Cute mushroom!

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Liam & his cousin, Sierra ❤

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The orange slides were a definite hit with all the kiddos.

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It was SO hard to get any kind of a group shot. Even this is not the best pic of all 3 of these guys, but this is Liam with his bestie, Kenadie and a pal from school, Jase.

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Again….couldn’t get all to cooperate, but still so cute 🙂

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Here’s a quick clip of Liam & friends playing…..

Amidst the craziness of the party, I completely forgot to take a pic of the box of favors I put together for the kids. However, I had taken this pic at home beforehand, so I had some saving grace. I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. I found the favor tags from an Etsy shop called ICandyEvents. The shop owner was awesome to work with & customized the tag for me.

I put a few of Liam’s fav things in there — glow sticks, stickers, temporary tattoos, and a ring pop. All superhero themed, of course!

Goodie Bag

Shortly before the party ended, we pulled everyone out of the water to do cake & sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the birthday boy. You can see below just how happy he was that we made him get out & stop playing….hahaha!!! 🙂

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We had such an awesome time celebrating Mr. Liam. Thank you to all who came out to have fun with us!

Happy 4th Birthday, Liam Michael — you are one LOVED little man ❤

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Until next time, friends!

Script Signature

July 2015, Sponsored Post

Summer Fun with Fruttare Fruit Bars

Summer is here and it is HOT peeps! What better way to cool off on a scorching summer afternoon than to enjoy a yummy frozen treat, right?!?!

I stopped by Publix the other day & picked up some of these lovelies to bring home to the boys.

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Fruttare is a refreshing, feel-good summer choice because each frozen treat is:

Low in calories and offers a good source of Vitamin C

Made with real fruit

Sourced from sustainably farmed fruit like strawberries, bananas, coconuts and limes

Best of all….all of us mommas don’t have to feel bad about giving them to our kiddos (or stealing one for ourselves), as the Fruttare Fruit & Milk Bars are just 110-140 calories/bar & the Fruit & Juice bars are just 60-70 calories/bar. 🙂

Liam’s current FAV is the Black Cherry!

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I, personally, am not going to feel ashamed to say that I might have consumed an entire box of the Coconut over this last week…..it is SOOO good 😉

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Fruttare is a line of delicious frozen fruit bars made with real fruit you can taste – a great treat for the fruit obsessed!

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And, for when the kiddos are off to bed, why not cool off on these HOT summer nights with a super fun Fruttare mocktail recipe!

MANGO TEQUILA SUNSET

Fruttare Mocktail

2 Servings

Prep Time: 10 Minutes

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 Fruttare Mango Fruit & Juice Bars, chopped
  • 2 cups ice cubs (about 12 to 16)
  • 1/4 cup tequila
  • 2 tsp. grenadine

DIRECTIONS:

  1. Process all ingredients except grenadine in blender until smooth. Pour 1/2 mixture into 2 stemmed cocktail glasses.
  2. Add grenadine to blender and process until combined. Pour into glasses. Garnish, if desired, with lime slice.

**For a non-alcohol version, simply omit tequila and add 1/4 cup orange juice.

 

Nutritional Info: Calories 70.00 , Calories from Fat 0 , Total Fat 0 g, Saturated Fat 0 g, Trans Fat 0 g, Cholesterol 18 mg, Sodium 0 mg, Total Carbs 18.00 g, Dietary Fiber 0 g, Sugars 14.00 g, Protein 0 g, Vitamin A 6.0 %, Vitamin C 40.0 %, Calcium 0 %, Iron 0 %

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All Fruttare varieties are available at local retailers including Walmart, Publix, Winn-Dixxie and Target for a suggested retail price of $4.29. Fruttare Fruit & Juice Bars come in 6-count multipacks, and the Fruttare® Fruit & Milk bars come in 4-count packs for this price.

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For more information on Fruttare Fruit Bars, please visit FruttareFruitBars.com or visit the Fruttare Facebook fan page at Facebook.com/FruttareUS and follow Fruttare® on Twitter at Twitter.com/Fruttare and Instagram Instagram.com/FruttareFruitBars.

Have you tried Fruttare Fruit Bars yet? What is your favorite flavor?

Until next time, friends!

Script Signature

*I received product as a thank you for reviewing this item & post. However, all of my opinions expressed in this post are my own.

Latest & Greatest News, September 2014

Week-In-Review

I am that mama who always has the camera in hand (or within reach), and is ready to take a picture at a moment’s notice. I am not ashamed of that, and I literally have thousands of pics of this amazing little man, at this point, in his young life. One day, he may think I am a crazy mama, and I am totally OK with that:)

That said, yes, I am also THAT mama who has been stealing moments at gymnastics. I can’t help it. It is just too cute….and we’ve only just had our 2nd lesson! I am SO in trouble! Last week went much better than the 1st….in that, I mean, Liam was much more comfortable with the class & listened well. This class focused a lot on the balance beam. He was not a huge fan of that, but we were really proud of him for giving it a 100% effort. You can really see it on his little face….how focused he is & how hard he is trying. At one point, he came over to us and said, “I can’t do it” …*sigh* break my heart…we are softies, this is true…but, we stayed strong and told him, “Yes, you can. Just go back out there & your teacher will help you.” And, she did help him. She held his little hand as they walked across the beam. Then, he “beamed” because he was so proud of himself and jumped up & down and said,

“I did it, I really did it!”

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On Saturday, Daddy had to work {bummer}, so Liam & I decided to go check out Bithlo Park. Umm, hello…..this place was so cool! A park AND a splash pad! Liam had a blast! There was hardly anyone else there and at one point, it was just us in the splash pad area. Awesome!!

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The splash pad was so big! He called that feature in the middle the “shower” because of how much water it dumped on you….it looked like a shower to him 🙂 ….He literally ran laps around this place.

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Under the “shower”…lol!

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Had to get some swinging in before we headed back to the car.

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On Sunday, we decided to get a bit creative with our grocery shopping outing to Publix. Lately, Liam has boy-cotted any kind of ride in the shopping cart. He wants to walk. MR. INDEPENDENT! — OMG! It definitely has made shopping….umm, challenging? Getting him to hold my hand while Stephen pushes the cart or vice versa doesn’t always work. Usually, one or both of us would end up completely frustrated by the end of the shopping adventure. For some reason, we glanced at his shopping cart Sunday morning on our way out the door and thought, yeah, why not take this with us? He could push it and it would keep him busy. He was game for it, so we went with it.

It ended up being a great success! He loved it and pushed the cart around the entire store. He also loved ALL the attention he was getting …people thought he was just THE.CUTEST.THING …..I thought his little head was going to explode by the time we were done. Such a little hamm!

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We also got some power-wheels fun in this weekend. I did not realize how long it had been since Liam had drove his Jeep until he sat down in it….Wow, he looked so much bigger sitting in it. We practiced with him to show him how to steer this time, instead of just driving in circles. He did pretty good!

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Sunday night, Daddy & Liam baked cookies. Yummy! Don’t judge, peeps, but yes, they were “break & bakes”…lol! That’s as fancy as we were getting up here in Casa de Murphy this weekend! Ha!

Liam loves the Macadamia Nut cookies so that was the flavor, but it was hilarious when he blurted out & called them “Mouskadamia” cookies. It was too cute for us to correct. So that’s what we’ve been calling ’em!

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Until next time, friends!

~H

July 2013, Latest & Greatest News

Latest & Greatest News — Weekend Randomness

Hello Everyone! Hope you had a fantastic week & weekend 🙂

The big news of the week is that Mr. Liam officially started transitioning into the Early Preschool Department! I am proud to report that he has been doing fantastic and seems to really enjoy the new room & his new teacher, Ms. Jenn. I think it helps that since he is one of the youngest of his little group of friends, he is then one of of the last to move to the “new room” as the kids transition. So, as he’s transitioning, he’s going into a familiar setting with his little friends he likes to play with. He has to have his very 1st backpack in his new room [yup…already ordered…and yes, it’s super cute]. I will be sure to share pics in the coming weeks.

He won’t be full-time in this new room for another 2 weeks. His new teacher, Ms. Jenn, has asked us to start working with him on drinking out of a regular cup to help with weaning off the sippy cup so we’re starting to work on that slowly at home. It’s honestly something we hadn’t even thought of yet until she mentioned it to me last week. We bought little bathroom dixie cups to practice with, at Ms. Jenn’s recommendation and so far, not too shabby in the spillage department 🙂

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The weekend got off to a bit of an early start, as we had to keep Liam home from school on Friday due to him not feeling well on Thursday. He felt good enough by late Friday afternoon that Daddy took him for a swim in Mimi & Papa D’s pool. He is LOVING his new puddle jumper float …definitely a WIN for us!

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Having Liam in a toddler bed is becoming a challenge when out & about on the weekends, here lately. In particular, going down to my mom’s house for the day, he used to nap in his pack-n-play. That’s not really an option any more. Not too sure what we’re going to do at this point, but here’s my make-shift option we utilized this past Saturday ….

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Napping in Grammy’s bed. Sooooo, cute, right?!?! ….yeap, sure. But, it only lasted 30 minutes :p ….not a successful nap.

This next picture is REALLY what our weekends are all about, people. Yes, we do try to do at least one fun thing with Liam every weekend, but let’s be honest…every working family knows ya still gotta clean & grocery shop…so, we try to do ours with a bit of entertainment in the mix! This is what I like to call race car shopping [thank you, Publix]

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Finally, on Sunday, we decided to check out the Tanja King Park in Avalon. It has a splash pad and a playground. It was a very fun time for our little guy. I don’t every remember going to splash pad’s when I was little….maybe it’s a new thing…or a Florida thing….either way, Liam’s making them his thing  [or maybe just playing in water outside]. He is seriously SO CUTE sometimes [most times] that I can’t even stand it!! LOL …man, we love that kid SO SO MUCH!!

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Hope you have a great week!! Until next time…..