The Fair Grounds: It's the Little Things :)

It truly is the little things in life that make it grand...like waking up to Nathan's arms wrapped around me or laughing at Cadence lobbying us about something extremely important that we only wish we could understand.

Here are a few little things that have added some extra sunshine to my days lately:

Cadence let me put a bow in her hair for the first time!!!

I'm lovin the sweet curl :)

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SOCKS!!! I finally got new socks :) So, I'm (plainly) a sucker for knee-high socks since I really only wear them in the winter time or in place of tights (which I pretty much hate) but every single pair I have has worn through this winter...until now! I'm sad to finally say goodbye to my favorite patterns of old but my toes are not, they were sick of poking through ;) Thanks for the Target gift card Auntie Holly!

*notice that half of them are plain - I'm trying to be prepared for the working world ;)

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I helped serve at an agriculture banquet last night (catered by A Sharper Palate). The Virginia Green Industry Council had provided about a bagillion plants as centerpieces and decoration, which guests were allowed to take with them with they left. Even though there were over 800 guests and many people left with 2 plus in their arms, there were more than even the staff could take home at the end of the night! My aunt and I stumbled across an entire row of them that we don't think anyone even noticed on their way out and that's where these beauties came from! There was a much fuller version of the one in center that I had my eye on all night (which of course was taken home by a guest because it was b-e-a-u-tiful) so now I'm extra motivated to make sure I give these lil darlings the right amount of love so they can grow to be just as big :)

The Calla Lillies were decorating the stage so I think they were pretty much all adopted by staff since we were there breaking everything down and the owner of the nursery they came from was giving them away while he loaded up the bigger bushes and trees.

I snagged one for my Mom (her birthday is Monday!!!), one for my best friend Katie (who has the greenest thumb I've seen outside my family! - me excluded :P), one for my best friend Cat (who recently found out she's pregnant!), and one for

Cadence and I cut one stem to put in a vase, which then had to go in her playroom ;)

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Cadence and I made rice crispy treats this afternoon, it was a first for both of us :P

I decided to use fruity marshmallows instead of the plain ones because I thought it would be yummy and it would be fun to see the different colors...like tye-dyed rice crispy treats! I didn't realize that you melt them all down into a sauce first...

So, we followed this meticulous review posted to the recipe I looked up, since I'd never done this before. The woman was very adamant about melting the butter sllooooowwly bc if any of it turned brown you'd have dry treats (I've never seen butter turn brown but I went with the lowest heat setting anyway). After all, she said she was the designated rice crispy treat maker bc no one else could do it like her :P

And then you were supposed to melt the marshmallows "just as slowly"...there were a lot of marshmallows! But Cadence only wanted to add them one at a time anyway ;) After she got the thrill of throwing a few in and stirring a bit and throwing a few more in and stirring a bit more she was reassigned to the uber-important stirrer-of-the-cereal position :P

Everyone knows that patience is my strongest virtue, so the super slow melting part was definitely my favorite. It was smashing great fun and I was not at all tempted to turn the heat up to 5...or 8...to speed up the process a lil bit.

The colors swirling together did amuse me for a while but what I feared would happen also came with that - they fused into one color - brown. Which would've been just fine except that I was set on color-ful.

so I added a little Wilton Rose Gel Icing Color to the mix and voila - got the fruity look back :)

Then came the truly messy part!

I ended up using my hands - I wish you could've seen them! Recommendation: if you decide to dig in, you should probably grease your hands somehow - dip them in butter? bahah - unless you want to feed your garbage disposal a snack like I did. Not that he seemed to mind.