I got a pitch from the American Licorice Company and E said “FINALLY YOUR BLOGGING IS PAYING OFF TELL THEM TO SEND ALL THE LICORICE.” Clearly I couldn’t let the guy down.

So they sent regular Red Vines and black Red Vines and Natural Vines…and they were all gone before I could take any pictures. I’m not entirely sure E  even took the wrappers off before he ate them he was so busy shoving them into his face. Luckily I saved some of the black licorice for Evan’s birthday (I called them “rails”) and let the kids try it.

They aren’t 100% sold on black licorice yet. E is a HUGE fan. My mom loves it. I would rather eat my own toenails (although I love all the other kinds of licorice).

An industry leader in manufacturing and marketing candy products, the American Licorice Company is one of the original licorice manufacturers in the US candy industry. Since its establishment in 1914, American Licorice has brought happiness to consumers with their Red Vines®, Snaps®, Sour Punch®, Super Ropes® and Natural Vines® candy. Additional information is available online at www.americanlicorice.com.

My husband thanks you, American Licorice!

How about you? Are you a weirdo who likes black licorice too?

Sometimes when you ask your almost-four year old what kind of birthday party he wants, he says “Goats!” and you panic. And sometimes when you ask again he says “Choo choo trains!” and you’re super happy about it because you can DO trains. Trains are awesome. You also happen to have a massive collection of electric trains in your basement from both your childhood and your husband’s childhood, so a theme is born. BOOM. Vintage train birthday party it is!

I will do this mostly in pictures, since that’s the best part. HUGE post, apologies, feel free to skip if you hate parties, etc etc etc. I’m going to put a truly insane number of photos on Facebook and Flikr too.

Decorations:

I printed banners and food labels on brown cardstock and cut pennants out of scrapbook paper (some new, some leftover from previous party supplies). The vintage stuff lying around (suitcases, globes, lanterns, etc) is from my own supply of junk collectibles or borrowed from my parents. All the train and sign clip art I made using a free fonts from dafont.com – Eisenbahn is the vintage train; old seals tfb and PostageStamps are on the water bottle labels; wmroadsigns, wmthe50s and wmtransport1 are the rest (for the record, the old fashiondy font on almost everything is CM Old Western Shadow, also from dafont.com).

My dad made the railroad crossing sign out of scrap wood in my basement and I painted the letters using a stencil I bought at A.C. Moore. Dad also built the wood table to set up the electric trains. Evan and E painted the Melissa & Doug wooden train on the food table together. The tablecloths are a collection of sheets/fabric I keep in a box just for occasions like this.

I made the Arrivals/Departures board out of just a piece of composite board painted with chalkboard paint. I made up trains and times based on family names and dates.

Food:

I made train cars with disposable aluminum trays and black cardstock to serve the food, including a coal car, veggie car, and a berry boxcar. I served lemonade in glass “milk” jars (actually Target frappuchino bottles I used for Caroline’s last two birthdays) with fancy straws, old fashioned root beer in bottles, “Chugga Chugga” water bottles and juice in Take’n’Toss cups for the kids.

Here’s my train inspired menu –

Steam Puffs – coconut macaroons
Coal – Krispie treats make with Cocoa Puffs
Train shaped cookies
Train shaped cucumber sandwiches
Rails – black licorice (courtesy of the American Licorice Company! Happy National Licorice Day!)
Railroad ties – vanilla sandwich wafers
Soft pretzels
Switch Cheese Sandwiches – grilled ham and swiss on wheat bread
Cheddar-nooga Choo Choo Sandwiches – grilled cheddar cheese on pumpernickel-rye swirl bread
Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Southwest Dip – Heluva Good black bean queso dip (REALLY delicious)
Veggies
Berry Boxcar – Fruit
Conductor Cubes – cheese cubes
Stoplight Kabobs – watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melon
Short Line Shortcake – mini cups of pound cake, strawberries and whipped topping
Golden Spike(d) Lemonade – I left the spiking up to my guests so no one accidentally got their kid drunk

And the cake is a good old-fashioned super sweet grocery store cake from Big Y. It was a Thomas cake until I took Thomas and Percy off and put a little Amtrak train on it. Boom! Custom vintage train cake.

Games:

I made the child-sized trains out of cardboard boxes I’ve been collecting for a few weeks. I covered the boxes in plain paper (the kind you buy at Ikea to go on their art easel) and cut out construction paper shapes to make them look sort of like trains. The tracks all over my house are electrical tape purchased at Home Depot. We used approximated 8 60-foot rolls (they come in packs of 10) and E free-handed all the tracks.

As a craft, I bought cheap paint, brushes and wooden cars at the craft store and let the kids decorate their own wooden trains.

My dad worked really hard to set up both model train sets so the kids could run them. That was all stuff we/he already owned but the Tyco HO gauge electric trains are really inexpensive on Ebay. The kids also played with the Thomas/Ikea/Brio wooden tracks and trains.

The kids took home their painted trains, conductor hats and train whistles as favors.

Sources & Supplies (if I missed something you’re looking for just ask!)

Vintage travel posters (plus a calendar I dismantled) – AllPosters.com
Train whistles – Oriental Trading Co.
Conductor hats – Oriental Trading Co.
Wood trains for painting – A.C. Moore
Train lollipops – Oriental Trading Co.
Train car serving dishes – ShopRite
Train shaped cookie cutter – A.C. Moore
Train shaped sandwich cutter – gift, available on Amazon
Sisal twine – Home Depot
Tiny clothes pins – Amazon.com
Photo book & prints – Shutterfly.com
Brown burlap – Home Depot
Orange burlap & fabric – Joann’s

Whew! That was exhausting but super fun. Now please come over and eat all this leftover cake before I do.

So so many thanks to my parents for their help and to Kim for letting me borrow some of her photos!

I’ve basically given up on parenting until the weather gets better, so the fact that I took ANY pictures this week that aren’t just of us staring at the television is impressive. We’re supposed to get more snow at the beginning of next week but it might be 50 on Friday, at which point I will start wearing shorts and flip flops.

Sunday:

Private bowling alley is awesome

Why am I always tempted to steal the bowling shoes?

Bowling wears out toddlers

Monday:

Hot dogs for breakfast. Not worth an argument.

Bathtime

Editing photos from the bowling party – turns out my camera does NOT know what to do under a blacklight. It pretty much totally freaked out. Thank goodness I shoot RAW and could fix them!

Tuesday:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS PONY I WILL PROBABLY HIT YOU WITH IT

This is called “Not being a good listener”.

Wednesday:

Gymnastics buddies

Quiet day at the library

I will never, ever cut those curls

 Thursday:

Have I mentioned how much I LOVE going to the gym while the kids are in school? ALONE!!

Hide & seek at the yarn store

A man in uniform giving a baby a bath. SWOON.

Friday:

Looking for more snow (there wasn’t any, thank god)

Do these sound perfect for morning sickness or what? I can think of about a dozen people I should send them to.

Loooong week = crash on the couch

Saturday:

Crafting like a champ

That looks safe.

Super excited by an emergency bathroom/Powerball ticket stop at a gas station

This weekend starts a few really busy weeks in our future. It will be mid-April before any of us get a day to relax again, but it’s all FUN stuff so I’m looking forward to most of it. The highlights are a fancy brunch at a fancy restaurant for Easter, Evan’s birthday party and a fancy dress ball I’m being forced (FORCED I TELL YOU!) to attend with E.  I’m hoping to get back to regular family/life/everyday blogging too, but it’s hard when I’m trying to stay on top of  family life every day. See what I did there?

We bought a cow. Well, part of a cow. We split half a cow with some friends so we ended up with one-sixth of a cow. Well, one-sixth of a cow post-chopping up, so it’s not like I have a whole bunch of hooves in my downstairs freezer (although we did send my friend Erin home with a rather large bag of bones). The cow came from a very nice small family farm in rural Pennsylvania where she ate grass and wandered around fields and lived as happy of a cow life as she possibly could have until she came to live in my stomach instead.

I have very high hopes for my cow, although I’m sort of nervous to DO anything with the meat. Is it a crime to put stuff on it? Should I just barely cook the steaks and eat them straight up? Also, I’m going to need some ground beef recipes besides taco salad and spaghetti with meat sauce (although I’m pretty sure E would be fine with 30 nights of taco salad).

Since my freezer is huge, this doesn’t look like an overwhelming amount of food but it is…a lot of meat. Really, I could use ANY recipe for beef, since I’ve never cooked/heard of some of these cuts before. It turns out when you’re getting a large part of a cow you get stuff like “farmer’s steak” which Google isn’t really helping me with although it looks sort of like a london broil? I’m just scared to ruin what should be REALLY GOOD FOOD.

I’ll let you know in 6 months when we eat it all if I think this was a good $400 investment, but I’m pretty sure the answer is already YES.

I have instituted a no-falling-behind-in-the-housework rule for myself over the past week, therefore I have no energy left for the words.

Sunday:

Please notice the nice healthy cheese snack and ignore the cookies.

Dual couch nap! On a Sunday! Nirvana!

You know that commercial about doing two things at once? This is Evan’s version.

Monday:

Macaroni necklace making

Caroline is fake-napping because she is fake-sick so Evan is fake-doctoring her

Hey, you’re not allowed to sit like that. Stop. Immediately. Stop.

Tuesday:

I sleep in a drawer!

Gym warm up

We stopped at the boat store so I could talk to the boat guy & I found them “fishing”

Wednesday:

Spider walks

Practicing her beam/dunking skillz

I made a lot of dip this week

Thursday:

This is how I get to stay in bed an extra 30 minutes

Waking up to this instead of the dishes from last night is nice

Trying to climb onto the cutting table at the fabric store

Friday:

I can tell she’s my kid because she loves Home Depot

ATTACK OF THE GIANT CAROLINE

I got to eat about 30% of this – Caroline ate the rest

Saturday:

An ominous start to a road trip

Caroline’s favorite toy everrrrrrr

Tiny slumber party

That was exhausting. Only EVERY OTHER WEEK OF MY LIFE left to go!

Did you take iPhone photos of your week? Link up with one or several below! Please consider joining, even if you haven’t done it before – it’s really fun!