Good thing I’m the boss here at Lemon Week SAJ because anybody else would be FIRED! So it’s day two…sort of. I didn’t say I’d do all the days in a row! Whatever, right? Just write something already.

So far we’ve made lemon scones, lemonade, a vodka drink for me (that I called SAJ-quil because I was fighting an irritating cold that I am now over) and Lemon Bars!

I love LOVE lemon bars. It’s really bad. I inherited this love of lemon and sugar and butter from my mom and now just like my mom, I find myself battling extra pounds on my body that make me less lithe than I’d like to be. Dumb genetics! I shouldn’t have made the lemon bars because it is next to impossible for me to walk by the refrigerator door without hearing those little bars screaming for me.

Shut up! Lemon bars, shut up!!!!! (I can hear them all the way from my seat at the table.) I am so taking them to a friend’s house and leaving them there. Ack.

Weight schmeight. (My attitude becomes me, I know.) In my book, you can’t have a lemon week without lemon bars so here I am introducing them to Bug just like my mom introduced them to me. Hopefully, Bug takes after her dad and doesn’t inherit my thunder thighs or my incredible lack of willpower.

Bug loves to cook with me in the kitchen, the poor kid. She also has to put up with my harebrained method of recipe-reading that involves frantic number-checking and re-checking and then weeping and wailing because I cannot read a recipe from top to bottom in order without skimming or leaving out major parts.

I’ve always thought I was retarded because I cannot keep numbers in my head longer than a butterfly sneeze. I’ll read 1 1/2 cups and then by the time I walk from the cookbook back to my mixing bowl, I’ve forgotten whether it was 1/2 or 1 1/2. I know most of you will laugh at me but this is a serious problem for me when it comes to baking. In fact, this is why I don’t bake usually. It’s way too much work for me. You should see me racing back and forth across my kitchen trying to put together a list of three ingredients. It’s insane. And then sometimes I mix up teaspoons with tablespoons and you can see why things don’t always come out right.

I’ve self-diagnosed myself with dyscalculia, which is sort of like dyslexia but with numbers instead of letters. I’ve always hated math ever since I was forced to play “math baseball” in second grade. I remember I practically peed myself in fear as I stood at the blackboard staring at the squiggles while the class shouted at me to add or subtract. I’ve managed through the years, figuring out ways of counting on my fingers secretly or making up complicated dot patterns. But recently with motherhood it’s gotten worse. Sometimes when I’m at the bank, I have to write my account number three times before I get it right. It can be pretty embarrassing.

Anyway, this is not a moan-fest about how much I hate math. I just wanted to include that so you can see why baking is extra fun for me. I can design notecards and web banners and even packaging while using a ruler and fractions and picas just fine but for some reason when I’m in the kitchen, I get struck with major anxiety about reading numbers or just plain reading. It’s weird.

I mostly wrote all those words about math anxiety and dyscalculia so that you don’t laugh when I tell you that I misread the lemon bar recipe (thanks Calee for the link!) and somehow couldn’t figure out how to make the shortbread crust that goes under the lemon bars. I thought it wasn’t included in the recipe so I found another recipe online and used that. But it wasn’t enough so I had to make two batches. Amazingly, it all turned out fine. I don’t know how but it did. I guess shortbread crusts are indestructible.

But because of my crazy-making recipe reading, Bug had to wait quite a bit between the crust-making and the lemon-bar-mix—making which is fine. Patience is a virtue right?

The lemon bars were divine.

Me and my many chins enjoyed them mightily.

My Dad (the knitting truck driver) knitted up some new slippers for Bug that we think are the Cat’s Pajamas—or maybe I should say Bear’s Pajamas. They are soooo cool. They look just like bear feet.

And when you have bear feet, you have to walk like a bear…

And growl like a bear!!!! Roooaaaarrrr!

Sometimes all that growling will make you tired and then you’ll have to go find a cave to hibernate in.

If anyone else needs some bear paw slippers, my mom has listed them in her shop!

A great big color explosion went down in our house this weekend to celebrate somebody turning FOUR. I cannot even believe it myself. Where did my baby go?!! She’s FOUR and that means I’m OLD and stuff. Just kidding.

I can handle four. I hear it’s the magic age. This side of three has definitely been fun so far. I think the rainbow theme matched her personality pretty well. Happy, bright, colorful with lots of rain and drama mixed in… If you’re looking for a way to liven up a dreary winter day, I cannot recommend this theme (or 3.5-year-olds) enough. It was really fun to put together.

I tried to make this year’s party low-key and not go crazy like other years but somewhere along the way, I got inspired by rainbows and then went a little teeny bit over the top. But! I did keep it small and only invited nine little girls. Which didn’t seem like that many at the time (just cousins and girls that we have play-dates with regularly) but it probably wouldn’t be considered a small party-guest count.

No boys were allowed. Which was tough because Bug has a huge crush on a boy at school named Jake and she asked me nearly every day if Jake was coming. Bug hasn’t been in school for nearly half a year now (due to it being expensive and the fact that we’ve been out of town so much that it’s not worth paying for days she isn’t there) so getting an invitation to Jake would have been impossible. I don’t know him or his parents or his last name. Bug suggested I walk up and down the street knocking on doors until I found him but I convinced her that it would be super cool to have an all-girl party, like it was a secret club or something. I’m not sure she bought it but it did cut down on the guest list and my costs and possibly the craziness. From what I hear boys bounce off the walls and run around like wild turkeys. I could be wrong.

Anyway we got plenty of crazy without any boys in attendance. Rainbow-colored candy may or may not have been a factor.

There was a ball-tossing game—thanks to the marvelous rainbow balls that Bethany crocheted mere days before the party. You know you have a great friend when you randomly decide you need rainbow-colored hacky sacks to fit in your flower-pot party favors and she volunteers to make puffy round fiber-filled ones for you instead because the hacky sacks at the store were not acceptably rainbow-y enough.

There’s more to that story but it exhausts me just trying to think of a way to explain it. Just imagine a crazy inspired person realizing that her plan A was meh and this other plan B was super-exceptional, causing her to completely switch gears on the party favors one week before the party. That’s how inspired people work. You gotta be flexible and have friends who are very laid-back and understanding.

There was coloring, of course. If I’m going to go crazy making all these graphics, I might as well turn them to black and white outlines and make a coloring page too. Girls love to color! I’ll share that here if you’d like to play along at home. No contest this time. Just have fun.

We also did a craft (because that’s what we do) involving seeds. (Beans are seeds, right?) We glued beans onto a paper plate to make mosaics. This was actually really fun and easy for all ages. I thought it would be a huge mess but all the little girls were quite meticulous, some of them spending a long time getting their plates just so.

The big girls were meticulous too. I think there is something soothing about sorting small beans. Maybe being a bean counter is not such a bad job after all.

My Mom (not pictured above, that’s Calee) headed up the seed-planting activity. She’s much better at that than I am. As you know, I struggled with the seed part of this party theme. I love it that my kid has her own original ideas and she picked something outside the box for her birthday-party theme but I really didn’t really want to have a gardening party.

While I like gardening, I’m not very good at it. But you can’t have a seed party without planting something so I let my mom be in charge of that. Thank the Lord for my green-thumbed mother. I think she did a great job because everyone was very happy and quiet while they planted (besides my kid who had a crying jag when I tried to rush off and do dishes while she wasn’t looking) AND there wasn’t a giant hose-water mud mess when they were done. Amazing, no?! Not that a muddy water-fight party wouldn’t be fun. That would be a blast. Just not so much in January. And not so much for me who might have to clean it all up at the end of the day.

Anyway, I think the seed planting went splendidly and everyone took home a nice little pot of freshly-planted sweet peas. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wanted to share about the decorations.

They were SUPER easy!!! All I did was cut out circles from some brightly colored construction paper with my handy dandy circle cutter. Then I sewed them together with my sewing machine and some white thread. I left this bit of the party to the last minute and I was so worried that my machine would just chew up the paper but it didn’t! It worked better than I imagined and within minutes my house was transformed into a disco of giant rainbow-colored dots.

If you’re looking for a quick easy way to decorate for a party and you are not afraid of a sewing machine I say get down with your circle-making self! I thought the candy bar I set up would be the biggest decorating feature but these simple cheap circles stole the show.

Serving a rainbow of food was pretty easy. Seeds were a bit trickier. We had lots of different kinds of nuts, bagels with seeds on them, peanut butter and Nutella for spreading (we made sure no one was allergic), hummus (of course) and even some rainbow-colored chocolate-covered sunflower seeds. I was pretty proud of myself for finding those.

Bethany made the cupcakes with this recipe. They were very yummy. I decided to be selfish and choose a flavor I liked instead of going for the wow factor of the rainbow batter since we’ve done that a few times already. The little lollipops came from here.

Of course there were presents. Toby and I wanted to say “no gifts” on the invitation since Bug is quite spoiled with every toy imaginable already but I knew that would ruin the fun for my mom who has been buying her stuff since last year anyway. So there were presents after all. And I have to say she got the most thoughtful, wonderful gifts. There are a few I haven’t taken pictures of but everything she got just melted my heart. You guys really know my girl.

And that’s pretty much it.

Party done! Now let’s get on with the rest of the year!

All photos taken by CC or Bethany. Thank you guys!