Annual Sausage Making Day 2013

Today was our annual sausage making day.  I really believe that this day is one of Matt's highlights of the year.  Matt's parents and his brothers bring together all the deer and wild hog meat together from their hunting expeditions and make sausage. 

 

Us girls had "baby duty" and spent most of the day making sure little hands didn't touch the raw meat and stayed out of the way.  But we did get to help wrap the sausage once it was smoked.  We ended up with 204 sausage links!

 

They first cut the meat up into small pieces.  Then they put it into a grinder.

 



Then they pack the sausage into casings and tie them off the length you want each link.  I was busy tying the links, so my hands were too messy to take a picture of this step.

The sausage links are hung onto a stick and placed in the smokehouse.  A few hours later, out come tasty-lookin' sausage links!

Of course there's lots of play time while the sausage is smoking!

 

 

So for this next picture....Cody and his daddy were playing basketball.  I wanted to take a picture of them so I told them, "Hold your balls still."  Well, you can imagine were the boy,s minds went.....but they ended up taking a great picture together.

 

When all was done and every thing was cleaned up, Cody made roasted marshmallows for everyone.  Then we all went off to our seperate homes to take baths and crawl into bed.  Even the pups were tired from their long day of running in the country.

 



Happy Bee-Day, Sandy!

This past Saturday we celebrated Sandy's "first trip around the sun" with a "sweet-as-honey" birthday party.  {Just in case you're not up to par on your science facts, one trip around the sun is the same as one year.  So Sandy turned 1 year old!}

I can't say since the day she was born, but I know shortly there after I had decided she would have a bumble bee birthday party.  I don't even know why I chose that theme, but it probably had something to do with all the cute bumble bee parties I saw on Etsy and Pinterest.  For several months I collected all my ideas on Pinterest and couldn't wait until the final days before her party came to start putting it all together.  I was ready for all those pictures to come to life! 

I literally was antsy waiting for the week before her party so I could transform the garage into "Sandy's Hive."  When the Monday before her party rolled around I was ready to tackle the garage.  For the rest of the week I spent my nights going up and down a ladder approximately 80 times {because I hung 72 party lanters/pom poms} and walking back and forth from the house to garage countless times.  I finally went to bed on Friday night, the night before her party at 3:00am with an aching back, but a wonderful feeling of accomplishment.

Most of my decorations were made from scrapbook paper or ordered from Oriental Trading or small gadgets found at my favorite store Hobby Lobby.

This truly was a labor of love and I would do it all over again for my little honey-bee.  Here is my work of art....Enjoy!

I handmade all her invitations.  I picked a stack of scrapbook paper I liked and went to work.

This style was my favorite!

The party room!

I just adore these little "bee" girls I found on the internet just searching for clip art.

Watching Sandy grow one month at a time.

Her first year scrapbook.

The food table before the food was set out.

The playhouse ready for some little friends.

Beehives ordered from Oriental Trading.  They came with stickers for the kids to decorate.

Party favor bags were filled with lemonade packets, candy, bubbles, and jumbo crayons made by Brazos.

Here's a quick look at Brazos making the jumbo crayons.  We just broke crayons into tiny pieces and then melted them in a muffin pan.  Spray the muffin pan with cooking spray first so the cookies will come out once cooled.  We made the mistake of letting the crayons cool in the freezer and they all broke.  So we had to make a second batch.  Then I wrapped each crayon and stuck a tag on them so the kids wouldn't think the crayons were candy.

Now here comes my favorite part....the cake table!



The cake I made for Sandy.

Those are gumballs along the bottom of the cake and Wilton candy bees.

Look at these cake pops made by a friend of mine from Brenham Cake Pops!  Look them up on Facebook if you're interested in some cake pops for your next party.  She does an amazing job!

A sweet high school girl from Burton baked and iced the cupcakes for me.  I just added some picks and candy bees to dress them up a bit.  They were delicious double chocolate cupcakes!

And we had a few more sweets for everyone to snack on...

Marshmallows dipped in almond bark

Easter eggs filled with fruit snacks.

Oreos rolled in yellow sugar.

Hand wrapped candy.

Suckers 

My mom made this awesome "fruit cake".  Everyone was afraid to take it apart to eat it, but luckily she had a bowl of "leftover" fruit that everyone snacked on.

The main meal was turkey stew made by Nana and Popo.  It was yummo!

The littlest party guests enjoyed smiling for the camera in the bumble bee cutout.  I painted it on Friday night/Saturday morning around 1:00am.  It was so worth the sleep deprivation!

Party goers of all ages dressed up as Queen Bees.  Even the guys got in on the action, but I promised no embarrassing photos.  You'll just have to use your imaginations.

Time to open presents!

Sandy was happy with all the goodies she received.

We want to extend the warmest thanks to all of our family and friends who buzzed over to Sandy's Hive to help her celebrate her first birthday!  Each of you are so special to us and we're blessed to have wonderful people to share our lives with.  It takes a village to raise a child and I think we have the best village around.  Sandy has so many sweet kids to grow with and we can't wait to see all the  experiences their journeys hold.

Happy Bee-Day, Sandy!  We can't wait to see what this year has in store for you!  

{And Mommy is already thinking about next year's party plans!}