Friday Quick 5: Birthday Edition

Our sweet Norah Lou turned 2 on Wednesday.  I know every parent says it, but I cannot believe she is 2 years old already.  

1.  Started the morning off with a surprise in the kitchen...her own little kitchen.  

2.  Next surprise:  Daddy came home from work to take us out for breakfast at our favorite place!  (We're practically like family there...the manager made sure Norah got 2 candles in her pancakes.) : ) 

3.  "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" cupcakes...a success.  (Tutorial later if you're interested.  These were SUPER easy to make!)

"Wait, why did you wake me up from my nap? "

"Well I'm not too excited about this cake business, but I'll lick all the frosting off the top.  And eat a few other people's mice off theirs too while I'm at it..."

4.  Presents.  (She did get the Mary Poppins DVD, as requested, from Papa and Grandma.  I wish I would have gotten her reaction on video.  "Mary Poppins!!!  (Huge grin.)  It's magic!"

5.  Lots of love.  Thanks to all who came and helped us celebrate.  Norah had a great time, and loves you all!

What to do...

...when your 2-year-old quits napping. First, no matter how forlorn you feel about the loss of that nap, wipe that look off your face, and your child will quit mimicking you.

Then, get your "crafty" on and find some creative new ways to pass the time!

Trace your hand and make a turkey.
Turn fall leaves into mice.

(Warning, this requires EXTREME CONCENTRATION and careful attention to detail!)

Decorate a pumpkin. Don't want the mess of carving? No worries, your 2-year-old doesn't know what that means yet. Just get out some stickers and markers, and she'll be a happy camper.

Note: using washable markers is, in some instances, actually messier than permanent.

Play dress-up.

Make some homemade play-dough!

Find fun new ways to try new foods.

Capitalize on your own child's creativity. (One day my 2-year-old kept building "caterpillars" instead of towers with her Legos. So we grabbed one of Daddy's old socks and made our own caterpillar, using some batting, rubber bands, & googly eyes. I drew the face and hot-glued the eyes, she did the rest. I was so impressed with all her color choices, isn't he pretty???)

Do some cookin' together! Just be careful, otherwise this might happen.

Let her watch you decorate a birthday cake for a friend. (She colored a Thomas the Train picture while I frosted.)
Then make cookie monster cupcakes with the gobs of blue frosting and extra cupcakes you have leftover.

Um, yeah. That one was a favorite. Check out this satisfied face!

What are your creative ways to spend time with your kids when the days get long?

This 'n That

I love this face:

These are the cupcakes I made last week for my mom.
Getting larger by the day. 39 weeks.

You know you're really pregnant when...you're running out of maternity clothes that will actually cover your belly. This is one of my only items of clothing that is actually long enough anymore. The curse of the long torso strikes again.

On a positive note, I've been super productive today. I ate breakfast, had a quiet time, did 2 loads of laundry, the dishes, made dinner, checked my email & Facebook, fed Audrey breakfast, changed her diaper and got her dressed, got myself dressed (make-up included!), teeth brushed (that in itself is a near miracle happening before noon,) read a book to Audrey, did a puzzle with Audrey...all before 11 a.m. Ahh...if only Audrey would sleep in until 9:05 every day. :) I'm not getting my hopes up, but it sure was nice today!

Now we're off to Hobby Lobby to buy a few supplies for my latest crazy nesting endeavor. I've been somewhat obsessed with vinyl wall decals on www.etsy.com lately, and really wanting to get a big tree for Audrey's room. I haven't found one that I absolutely love, and haven't been able to bring myself to pay the prices they're asking. So...I painted a tree on her wall yesterday. Free hand. Call me crazy. I've been putting it off, thinking I didn't have time to do it before baby gets here. But seeing as baby has yet to show any signs of coming soon, I figured I'm going to take advantage of the time we have. Project for today is adding leaves and flowers to the tree. Then I'm going to order some vinyl bird decals from Etsy to dress it up a bit. Pictures to follow!

Spring Cupcakes

Check out my new blog for pictures of my latest frosted creation. These were super fun to make! And very appropriate given the 70 degree weather we've been having.

Please note the change of website address. My cake/cupcake site will no longer be located at http://www.sweetsnstuff.blogspot.com/. All new posts will be under my new "name," http://www.frostingbychristy.blogspot.com/.

Thanks!

Feeling Famous

I'm feeling just a tad famous today. Check out my cake blog to see why.

More sweets...

...check out my latest creations here.

It is Finished

The cake is done. And my premonition was correct, I did run into a few problems. But a few broken leaves, and a few more trials later, this was the finished product...

The gal I made the cake for loved it: a success! Incidentally, I made this cake for the lady who gave us the free swing, so it was a great way to return a favor.

For more details on the whole cake process, visit my other blog.

No Turning Back

I am knee deep in baking and decorating a cake right now. For someone I don't know. It's a brand new design for me, something I read about in a book but have never tried before myself. And I have to deliver it tomorrow. And I realized just now that I have no back-up plan. And I'm worried it's not going to turn out like I expected. And Audrey just woke up too early from a too short nap. Yikes...I am feeling the pressure!!!

Introducing...

My new blog!

Check it out at: http://sweetsnstuff.blogspot.com/

And wish me luck!

Good Day

Audrey slept in until 7:10. Amazing.

We walked to our favorite restaurant for scones, coffee, and Chai for breakfast.

Then we hit a few garage sales and I spent a grand total of $3, for:

• a shape sorter for Audrey. (Playskool, vintage 1981.)
• an ISU onesie for Audrey.
• a HUGE Tupperware container that will be perfect for Christmas cookies
• a tiny Tupperware container that will be perfect for baby food portions

Audrey went down for her afternoon nap like a dream. She was asleep within 5 minutes. LOVE IT when that happens.

I got ALL my dishes done. It took an hour. I spent all afternoon and evening yesterday frosting the Shrek birthday cake, so the kitchen looked slightly like the aftermath of a tornado. A tornado spewing green frosting. :) But this time I used my normal, tried and true frosting recipe, (courtesy of Tim's grandma), and though messy and greasy, it worked SO MUCH BETTER than the cream cheese frosting fiasco I dealt with when making Audrey's monkey cake.

I must say, I was pleased with how the cake turned out. And I was worried. This is the first time I have ever recreated an actual "character," so I really wanted him to at least be recognizable! It took a few attempts to get the frosting tinted an appropriate color of green. (I guess I hadn't ever really paid attention before, but did you realize he's actually almost yellow???)

Here's what I came up with:

Here is the cake in process:

And here is the finished product:

So I'm feeling pretty good today. Cake done, kitchen clean, baby sleeping. After I finish dinking around on the computer I'm off to price our stuff for the 2nd annual Tim&Christy garage sale.

First Birthday Fun

The first birthday party has officially come and gone. The party went well and I think everyone had a good time. I grossly overestimated the amount of food I'd need, so we'll be eating ham and cheese sandwiches for weeks to come. I think Audrey had fun...though she refused to take an afternoon nap before the party started, so she was one tired girl! Thankfully there were no major meltdowns, but she had that glazed-over-super-tired face on for the entire party, as you'll see from the pictures.

My goal for the cake was met. Though I didn't capture the moment on camera, when she got her first glimpse of the cake she reached for it and made her monkey noise, "ah, ah, ah!" YES!! I was one happy mama. She didn't get too messy when she dug in...partly because the cream cheese frosting was pretty heavy...and partly because she just really isn't that into food. But it was probably for the better; no post-party-sugar-high to come down off of. :)

My cousin Brad even liked his monkey cake, too! Although we couldn't get him to make a monkey noise like Audrey. Oh, well.

Audrey had lots of help opening her presents. She was most interested in the cards and the tissue paper. :)

What's that one say, mom?
I think I'll just read this one myself.

Hmmmm...I wonder what's in this big box?Me: "Ooh, diapers! Just what we need!"

Audrey: "Aw, man! More diapers? Don't I have enough of these already?"

Audrey: "Oh, goody! It's not really diapers after all! Thanks Grandma & Grandpa!" I can't wait to see how fast this thing goes!

Finally my own set of fridge magnets! And tissue paper!

And here's her present from mommy & daddy. Tim decided that by getting her a shopping cart, we're either teaching her to become a consumer, or live in poverty...one or the other. Guess we'll just wait and see what she chooses. :) So far her own "groceries" have been a big hit.

I had to wonder if Audrey would even remember opening her gifts last night, since she was soooo tired, so this morning she had lots of fun exploring all the new stuff she found around the house. I can't believe what a big girl she looks like in these pictures! Since she's been fighting 2 naps with all her might for the last few weeks, I decided to just attempt one nap (on purpose) today. So we got up and went to the early service at church. At 10:45 we loaded up to head home and she was asleep before we even left the parking lot. One tuckered out little birthday girl...

And one more video just for fun. In honor of her first birthday, she whipped out her first official dance moves.

Mission: Birthday Cake...My Cake Wreck

Making Audrey's birthday cake didn't go so hot. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself. After all, this is for MY OWN CHILD. I really wanted it to be perfect. But it was far from perfect! Thankfully it wasn't my first, so I knew enough to plan way ahead, and allot extra time for the entire project, just in case something should go wrong.

The party is tomorrow, but I started getting ready yesterday. I spent all afternoon Thursday baking a banana cake from scratch. (And Miss Audrey decided not to take an afternoon nap, so I had to try and entertain her while baking. She got a huge kick out of clanging this stainless steel bowl around with an ice cream scoop...and notice she doesn't look a bit tired even after only sleeping one hour for the entire day!! This kid!)

Anyway, to make the cake I used as many organic ingredients as I could find at the store. I made one big cake, a small cupcake for Audrey, a small cake for my cousin who's coming to the party and who shares his birthday with Audrey, and another small 'test' cake for Tim & I to taste test to make sure it turned out okay. I was lucky I had extra cake on hand, because the first disaster of Mission: Birthday Cake was sinking. Her cake totally sunk in the middle. So sad!

So...I trimmed off some pieces from our 'test' cake and pasted them in the hole.

Next step was glazing. I learned this handy trick in a cake decorating class, and it makes a huge difference! Just mix 1 Cup of powdered sugar with a little bit of water until it's the consistency of Elmer's glue, then spread all over the cake to seal in the crumbs. This makes it much cleaner to frost.

Then I frosted the cake with my next major mistake: homemade cream cheese frosting. I decided to go with cream cheese frosting, thinking it would be a little more natural than the Crisco/Sugar based frosting that I usually use. I used organic cream cheese and organic butter, but just couldn't get the consistency right. I overbeat it, so the cream cheese broke down, and I ended up with chunky frosting. Which, I later learned, is a NIGHTMARE to pipe! Here's the first coat. Notice the hole is disappearing nicely.

As the piping began, I had to stop about every 10-15 seconds to dig little chunks of cream cheese out of my frosting tips because it kept getting clogged. What a pain! The other problem with cream cheese frosting is that if it is too warm, it gets all melty and doesn't hold its shape. So it has to be cold, which means my hand totally got a work-out squeezing the piping bags super hard to get the frosting to come out. I barely have the strength to type this tonight...okay, it's not quite that bad...but I really think my wrist and fingers will be sore tomorrow! Here's step one:

This is as far as I got when my (generic) frosting bag sprouted a hole. I tried patching it with packing tape but it wouldn't hold, so I put it in the fridge and ran to Hobby Lobby to buy some more (Wilton brand this time!) piping bags. Meanwhile I got a phone call from Tim, who had gotten home from work, tried to sneak a little squeeze out of my frosting bag, and split the entire seam open. He sounded more than a little nervous about my response...then relieved to hear he wasn't the one to cause the initial hole.

All obstacles aside, it turned out okay. It does look a little more "homemade" than I was hoping for, but hey, who am I kidding, I'm not a professional!

Will Audrey appreciate all my hard work and long hours? Probably not. At least not yet. Hopefully she'll look back at pictures some day and think "man, my mom was so cool! Look at that monkey cake she made for me!" Actually, my goal for tomorrow is for her to look at the cake and at least recognize that it's a monkey. Anytime she sees monkeys anywhere she makes her monkey noise, "ah ah ah." So if she looks at the cake an says "ah, ah, ah," that will be all the affirmation I need. :)

Lastly, I finished the small cake for my cousin, but I had totally run out of steam, and was running out of frosting and all my bags were clogged, so it's definitely not as cute, or detailed, as I originally intended. Hopefully he won't mind! (The ears are Nilla wafers. Thought that was a fun little touch that did NOT require the use of frosting!)

I'm off to bed to try and get some sleep before a long day of party-prep tomorrow. Still need to make the main dish for dinner and clean the house! Pictures of the party and video of her digging into the cake to come in the near future...