Squirrel, Cupcakes and Christmas Trees

Look at Chippy in her beautiful winter coat!  I think she is smiling.  I love how her belly fills out in the winter.  She always looks so round compared to how we see her in the Fall.  If she would just come inside and let me snuggle her, that would be awesome.  We had a Chippy photo shoot.  

"More peanuts, please?"

Smudge has a cold and wasn't feeling like playing chase.  He was content to watch. 

What a good boy.  He never hurts Chippy, they just chase up and down the tree and always stop short of each other. 

We had a lot going on yesterday at Henle House!  One of the kids brought some cupcakes to share with friends.

My first thought when I see store bought cupcakes is how quickly the frosting will end up on faces, shirts, chairs, table, floor, everywhere.

This is my solution:  wipe the frosting off almost completely before serving.  

The kids still love the cupcakes.  There is far less mess, no upset tummies or amped up on sugar behavior.  

We decorated some Christmas trees for art.

I got over my dislike of Elmer's glue and let the kids each use their own bottle.  My struggle is the large blobs of glue.  It's messy, it takes hours to dry, and the kids tend to squeeze out half of the bottle to glue on something small.  I haven't let them use it freely in over a year.  They surprised me and did an amazing job!  No glue blobs, they all handled the bottles correctly.

They just worked at their own pace decorating the trees how they chose to.  

The results were festive!

Poor Smudge.  He was pretty clingy yesterday.  I'm sure he was injured in a fight a couple of nights ago because he was slow and some of his fur was coming out.  He's had a cold for a while and is now taking some organic herb drops in his food four times a day to see if it will help his cold.  I'm trying to avoid the vet.  We will see. 

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥