Birthday Fun and Favorites

July has been a fun and eventful month, between my daughter and my birthdays and family summer outings we have had a fun and busy month. I had a very nice birthday celebration and spent a nice day hanging out with my family. 

During the early part of the day I had my sister over with my niece and nephew and my newest little baby niece. I love spending time with family and we had a fun time. The rule in our house is that the person celebrating their birthday is King or Queen for the day, which entitles them to pick all of the television shows and meals for the day and of course, no chores for the day. We all think this tradition is pretty fun. So for lunch I decided that we would have McDonald Happy Meals and watch vintage 1980's cartoons. I thought my niece and nephew would enjoy that, and I love sharing vintage cartoons with younger generations. We watched an episode of Jem, since the live action movie is coming out soon, I figured they had to know where it all began! I loved Jem when I was younger, it was definitely on the top of my Saturday morning cartoon viewing list! Next we watched Strawberry Shortcake, the original cartoon, I love Strawberry Shortcake, we all got a kick at how funny and really old these 1980's cartoons are looking compared with today's animating, it was really fun.  

We had Happy Meals for lunch because I love Happy Meals and have since I was a kid. Since I have to be on a low fat diet, the only fast food splurging I do is the tiny kid's meal size of hamburger and the mini child size fry they serve now, and who doesn't love a toy surprise!! For my cake, I kept it super simple with a Krispy Kreme Doughnut "Cake". Plus Krispy Kreme's July special doughnut theme was Birthday Cake Batter doughnuts, so I thought that would be fun and easy. Everyone enjoyed all the doughnut choices. :)

My special gift from hubby was this awesome Fuji Film Instax mini 8 Camera. I have wanted this camera for over two years now. I love the fun of mini Polaroid type pictures, and used to really enjoy my Polaroid camera until the film became so hard to get. This camera is fun and really easy to use, there is no real focusing or special effects, and you get what you get as far as the picture goes, I like the idea of that. I am excited to think of a few photo projects to do with this camera, and I love the different themed film you can buy like Hello Kitty and Little Twin Stars, some of my favorite Sanrio characters. I also love the pretty pastel colors this camera comes in, I had a hard time choosing, but finally decided on this pretty yellow color.

The kids knew just what to get me as well, I don't share about it much, but I am an avid toy collector, and my latest fun little collection are little blind bag and blind box toys, which are like surprise toys which you can collect. I plan on sharing more about these toys in a future post. The kids got me various toys to help build my various collections and I was really happy with their choices. I also got some pretty flowers, a Starbuck's gift card (yum!), and some other cute goodies. We wrapped up my birthday evening with a family movie night and BLT sandwiches minus the tomato for me. :) We watched Disney's Maleficent which was an amazing movie, I loved it, and would highly recommend it! All around a fun birthday!!  

During the week I popped into Sephora with my daughter and my son's girlfriend to look around. I don't wear much makeup, but I love seeing all the choices. I picked up a couple of bottles of one of my favorite products, Evian Mineral Water Facial Spray, it is so hot lately the cool mist is nice, I also love it when the air dry's out in the fall and winter. Such a simple and wonderful product, and one I have kept on hand for years! I also picked out some fun mini nail polish colors to match some of my summer outfits. Then, because it is my birthday month, when you sign up with their rewards program called Beauty Insider, which is free to sign up for, you get a little birthday gift! This year it is two Nars lip pencils, I am excited to try them out, what a fun treat!

No real update on the garden for this week, it is growing like crazy, and veggies are ready to go. The garden has been too hot lately and some of the plants are having a hard time, luckily this week it finally rained a bit! However, something interesting is happening in my neighbor's garden. I was standing at the sink doing dishes, and noticed a couple yellow flowers in my neighbors tree, I thought I would get a closer look, and realized a rogue squash plant of some variety has decided to use the tree as a trellis and it even has squash growing on it!! I am curious if they are pumpkins, they certainly have a pumpkin shape. I am wondering if they will let the pumpkin grow up there until it is ripe, it doesn't seem to be hurting the tree at all. I just thought that was interesting, and not something you see every day, and pretty fun and interesting to spot! :)

This past week was also the Portland Scottish Highland Games, which we attend every year. It was so hot this year!! I saw one woman with an old fashioned style parasol, and thought that would be a good idea for walking around on such a hot day. Despite the very hot weather, we had a fun time. We enjoyed the kilted mile race, and the kid's fun run, I love how cute the little children look in their tiny kilts and tartan dresses. :) The food was delicious as well, although I stuck with just tiny bites this year, heat plus rich foods just don't mix well for me these day!

I loved all of the bagpipe music, I could listen to it for hours! This year they also had a harper's circle, which was beautiful to listen to. The day ends with the caber toss which is always exciting and the mass bands which is always impressive. As always we love this event and look forward to going every year. You can read more about the Portland Scottish Highland Games in some of my previous years posts- Highland Games 2014 and Highland Games 2012.

Lastly I thought I would share about a new treat I found while I was out grocery shopping the other day- Oreo's newest cookie- Oreo Thins. We love trying all of the special edition Oreo flavors around here, so I am always on the lookout for the newest flavors. Then I spotted these Oreo Thins, they come in Golden Oreo flavor, classic chocolate Oreo flavor, and chocolate mint. I decided to try classic and golden. I am in love with the Golden flavor- they are so thin and crispy with just the right amount of filling. I was surprised how good they were, I normally am a fan of mega stuffed Oreos, and I was worried there wouldn't be enough filling. But with the thin cookie it is exactly the right proportion of cookie to creme filling. Perfect little afternoon treat, I think they may be one of my new favorite cookies, and the whole family loves them! Yum!!

Overall it has been a really nice July, I am looking forward to August, and more summer fun and family time. The county fair is just around the corner, and I have a few more family fun outings planned before summer winds down. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer as well!! 

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