Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Overachievers

Every week in Megan's Pre-K class, they study a letter.
For extra fun, they have show-and-tell at the start of every class.
Students are tasked with bringing something in that begins with the letter of the week.
Before we were used to this routine, it created some scrambling in the morning.
It went something like this . . .

"Oh no!!!!!! Mom, I forgot I need a b-thing. "
This, in turn, led to a wild, sweaty, frantic search for a b-thing*
Cat. Nope. Elmo. Nope. Guitar. Nope. Farm. Nope.
Princess. Nope. Puzzle. Nope. Dog. Nope.
Seriously?

Needless to say, we now plan ahead.
We have our show-and-tell item all ready to go in the morning to prevent last minute scrambling.

This week, we lined up our G-thing with great anticipation.

Thanks, GG, for visiting Pre-K.
You were the best G-thing ever!
(And much more appropriate than a G-string . . . not that I have one of those or anything)

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

My Cake Workshop

A while back, after answering the fifty-thousandth email I had received from a friend/neighbor/acquaintance/sister of a brother's-uncle's-mother-that-I-went-to-high-school-with with a cake question, I decided to have a cake workshop. I figured it would be totally fun and much faster than answering fifty-thousand cake question emails.

I created a little website for my venture and decided to use the cabin in NY to host the event. I thought I would be lucky if one or two people actually signed up and was shocked when I had to sell out the workshop just days after I opened the registration.

Our cake extravaganza was this past weekend.
We had so much fun!





Let's play a little game.
Remember the song . . .
"One of these things is not like the others.
One of these things just doesn't belong."

Yeah, that would be my dad who showed up at my fancy, girly cake workshop dressed in his deer slayer clothes hoping to grab some quick lunch. (The only thing missing from this picture is the giant bow and arrow he was carrying.)
I guess you are never too old to be humiliated by your family.

I moved past my embarrassment and created this simple, little Christmas themed cake.



Everyone left with a ton of new skills and a cake they decorated themselves using my techniques.
I honestly can't wait to do it again,
only this time perhaps without the deer slayer as our special guest star!

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Quit Whining, Start Blogging

So I finally thought of a solution to my "poor-me-I-am-so-behind-in-my-blogging-I-just-can't-sleep-at-night-problem." The solution . . . quit whining and start blogging.
So here goes . . .
Halloween 2010 began with the annual pumpkin carving contest.
Megan got into the action this year making the contest a three-way race.

She carved this pumpkin all by herself (with the use of a template and a non-sharp pumpkin carving thing-a-ma-jig. (technical term)
Still, quite impressive for such a youngster!

I think she has her momma's competitive gene.

John and his spooky spider provided some tough competition.

My spooky pirate skull thing was definitely a contender as well but the top prize ended up going to the four year-old. I mean, seriously, who has ever heard of a four year-old carving her own pumpkin? She must be destined for greatness (or at least we think so.) And I'm destined to lose this pumpkin carving contest so long as she is all cute and little and such.


And since I was unable to come up with any new, creative Halloween snacks this year we recycled the Frankensnack idea from last year. This, by the way, is how meaningful traditions are born.

So now our meaningful, Halloween traditions include these green headed pudding cup things. Then we made mummy dogs . . .

Caution: Megan's scary mummy dog face ahead.
If you frighten easily, stop reading now!

No Halloween is complete without the annual door-to-door quest for candy.
This year, Megan said she wanted to be a bowl of spaghetti, no a cupcake, no a princess. no a cupcake, no a bowl of spaghetti, no a cupcake. She also has my gene for decisiveness I guess. ha!She finally settled on the cupcake and I was excited. I figured, how hard can it be to make a cupcake costume?
Then I spent 48729037532 hours making, remaking, and fixing this costume, I decided next year's costume is coming from Walmart. (yeah, right)
Here is my little cupcake cutie. I think her costume turned out adorable.
Megan said, "I look so good I want to take a bite out of myself." ha!

Here is my superman, wearing a costume that is a size 3t-4t.
Remember folks, he just turned ONE!
He looks like he's ready for kindergarten.

Our neighborhood friends.

And that's all I have time for today folks.
Quit whining, start blogging. How's that for a new motto?
Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me soon.