Before I Begin Halloween Recovery

Unlike previous Halloweens, we went for easy this Halloween.

Even so, after making six costumes last week, my house is a wreck.

After splitting an entire warehouse size bag of candy with my husband last week (and having to replace it before Halloween trick-or-treaters came), my stomach is a wreck, too.

Finally, after getting my first cold of the season last week, my to-do list is also a wreck.

So I have a lot of reconstruction this week, I guess I'll see you later.

We all went for things from space this year. Originally I thought we could each choose a planet (since the loss of Pluto's status as a planet, there are eight of them), but the kids had other ideas. I let them go with their own choices. Yes, my kids were geeky to come up with these ideas on their own. Even Matthew. It does a mother proud.

From left to right:

• A Comet (Elise-13) Elise made her own costume this year, which was really nice.
• A Quasar (Ryan- 12) If you don't know what a quasar is, look here. Or see one here.
• An Alien (Ethan- 9) The writing on the side of his control panel says
  "Earth Takeover Handled by Alien Nations"
• An Astronaut, in pink (Kirsti- 8) Her writing says
  "Keep Intergalactic Rogue Spacemen Terrestrially Interdicted"
• Jupiter (Joseph- 6) He wanted all 63 moons, but I couldn't figure out how to do it easily. We settles for the 4 Galilean ones, but 2 fell off at the Trunk-or-treat before we took the picture.
• The Asteroid Belt (Matthew- 4) For some reason this has always been his favorite part of the Solar System. And yes, we have favorite Solar System parts in this household.

Teddy Bear into an Elephant. (In cake surgery)

I've decided to take up surgery as a hobby. To be more specific, Species Changing Surgery. I have all I need: knives, prosthesis, frosting. No training needed, on the job experience is enough.  Did I mention that the animals I'm working on are made of cake? That's right, I recently turned a teddy bear into an elephant.  (Or as my friend called it, an teddyphant)

I've shown before my transformation of this same teddy bear into a monkey.  In case you missed it, here is the before/ after.

For Joseph's birthday I transformed the same teddy bear into an elephant.  I actually got the idea from the pan maker's site (Wilton Stand Up Cuddly Bear) He had wanted one for at least the last 7 months. Here is the process

1- Make cake. I use a recipe called WASC (White Almond Sour Cream), which uses a box mix and tastes yummy while adding density.

2- Cut out elephant ears from cardboard.  Wrap in aluminum foil.  Tape dowel rods to back.  Add dowel rods to marshmallow for arms and trunk.  (I put 4 for the trunk, but cut one off at the end because it was too long.)

3- Make buttercream frosting and use Wilton gel dyes to color.  I needed white, black, pink and LOTS of gray.

4- Frost front of ears pink.  The edges don't matter as they will be covered by gray.

5- Cut off bear ears.  Add elephant ears, arms, and trunk by inserting dowels into cake.  Frost bottom of feet pink.  Frost eyes following (more or less) shape of cake.

6- Start adding gray.  Continue adding gray until you think there is nothing left in life but making tiny gray stars.  Then take a break for a couple minutes to regain sanity and continue. (see how the trunk it too long?  Looks much better in the final picture with just three marshmallows).

7- Add finishing touches like outlining the eyes, adding small white tusks, making gray frosting dots along hands and feet for toes, and writing "Happy Birthday."

8- Make a wish and blow out candles.

A 4-year-old Birthday Party Under the Sea

Doesn't it seem like I'm doing this a lot? With my once every 4 years rule, this is the last "friends' party" I obligated to throw for two entire years; it might take me that long to recover! So, what does one do for a 4-year-old's party when he has requested a 3-D turtle cake for the last 11 months? Make it an "Under the Sea" theme, of course!

We decorated with lots and lots of fish cut outs. There were fish everywhere! Thankfully, I found them all at the party store so I didn't have to trace them all with my projector. Did I mention the use of fish cut outs in decorating?

Given the attention span of most four-year-olds, we provided plenty of short activities:

• 
  
  magnetic fishing with activites printed on the back (that would explain the crab-walking, fish-face-making kids)
• decorating cardboard fish to glue on gift bags
• creating octopi from paper cups and streamers
• reading the Rainbow Fish
• playing "minnow, minnow, SHARK"
• pinning fins on the fish
• breaking shark pinatas
• and (of course) eating cake and opening presents.

And, at least until we move in a few months, no party at our house would be complete without playing on the beach. Especially appropriate for the theme, too.

It was plenty of fun, even if the wind made it so Matthew only pretended to blow out candles. There was always the fun adrenaline rush from hearing helium filled balloons and/or those 4/$1 punching balloons randomly popping. Thanks to everyone for coming, especially Matthew's special request for his awesome primary teacher to attend. Also, thanks to my friend, VT, (whose blog is private) for taking all the pictures: they're great!

A 12-year-old Boy's Birthday Party

Throwing a twelve-year-old's party is not the same as an eight-year-old's. Especially when that twelve-year-old is a boy. For some reason the thought of pin the tale on anything wasn't appealing to him. I didn't even try suggesting crafts.

After weeks of prodding and disappointment over a *slight* overestimating of my cake making abilities (a stand up 3D version of Super Smash Brothers is not something I could do), he finally decided on a golf cake.  Well, he wanted the clubs and the ball and it was the least I could do after denying him his first option.

Instead of a big couple hour party, he opted for a sleep over with just a few friends.


We started the night with Monster Mingolf. I think we hit a record for most balls hit out of play in one round.

Then it was home for pizza and beach. They would have stayed out in the water longer, if they didn't have to share the water with jellyfish.

And then video games and more video games and finally threats if they didn't stop playing video games and go to bed.

Most of the evening we had the cake out and ready, but only a couple boys ate a piece. When I woke up the next morning, however, the entire thing was GONE. As was most of the 4 large pizzas. Sleep was no match for the bottomless stomachs of boys!

They interrupted their morning playing of games long enough to scarf down some pancakes and then the party was over.

I'm pretty sure they all had fun. Repeated calls of "That game is sick!" is a good sign, right?

A jungle birthday party and my idea of slightly overboard.

So Kirsti's party was today and was a huge hit.  I had 12 kids (plus my 6 for 18).  I thought I would give you an overview of what I consider "a slight bit overboard" on birthday parties.  If you look closely at the background, you can also see what happens to a house when mom is busy planning a birthday party for two weeks.

First of all, the cake.  She wanted a 3D monkey cake and she got it!  I had extra cake mix so she had some cupcakes, too.  Good thing, because I had to write happy birthday somewhere!
This cake was made from a 3D Wilton Teddy Bear cake pan with the ears cut off and reattached lower and hand molded Rice Crispie Treats for the hands, feet, and tail.  I came close to just adopting it and making it part of the family; I loved the outcome that much. Also, it took nearly as long as my labors to get it here.  Especially since the first go around fell apart.  When in doubt, use this recipe for 3D cakes, I guess, because that is what made it  work.

Next came the goodie bags.

• I designed and made the actual bags myself.  Fabric stores now sell gorcery bag material and mine carried it in zebra stripes.  Awesome!!  
• I also designed and made all the monkey masks.  This site has great blank templates for masks.  I'll be coming back later in the summer for crafts.   
• The foam puppets were bought in bulk and separated out.  
• The monkey keychains were the craft.   I judge age appropriate craft by my kids' ability to do it, forgetting they have extra practice in crafts, but it turned out okay and the kids liked them. You can make your own with this pattern.  Due to a lack of brown beads in all three local craft stores, I special ordered the beads. Kwik crafts had a fantastic deal and they arrived 2 days after the order was made.

Then there were the decorations.

• I printed out coloring pages of animals and enlarged them onto poster board with my tracer.  What?  You don't own a tracer projector?  I'm on my second already.  Then I traced over the lines with a sharpie, colored them all, and cut them out.  
• I filled 23 balloons with helium, 5 of which survived till the end of the party.  
• I also bought animal birthday hats, animal shaped paper plates with matching cups, some table covers.  
• God provided the rest of the decor, it was lovely.  I wrapped all our presents to her in brown paper with animal print ribbon and thought it looked fantastic!

And finally, the party itself, where I forgot to take pictures until lunch time).

• We began with coloring bookmarks backed with animal print that I laminated during the party, added a hole and some hemp rope.  
• Then we played pin the tail of the Zebra (I was particularly proud of the zebra I made, almost wanted to adopt her, too).  Then onto the beach for an elephant race. Basically you reach between your legs and take the hand of the person behind you who does the same until there is a long chain and then race.  
• We settled down for the keychain craft and then headed onto the beach/sandbar for several minutes of play.  
• Then pizza, pinata, cake, & presents.  (Sadly I could not think of a word for cake that started with "P".) 

Was that as exhausting for you as it was for me?  Probably not.

Too many hours to admit to prepare, 2 hours set up in the morning, 3 hour party, 1 hour clean up.  Four more years till her next friend party.

Here is a picture of the birthday girl opening our family presents because we ran out of time before the party ended.  Happy birthday Kirsti!!

My Mind is Fixated on Making Birthday Cakes

My kids get a friend birthday party every 4 years, but my timing of children means every other year half the kids get a party.  This year two of those kids get them in a row, starting next week.  So I have birthday party planning on my brain.  So anyway, I thought I would post something relevant.

My birthday cake making skills didn't really start until midway through my husband's medical school.  That is when I took a class the taught how to turn any coloring page into a cake.  It is so EASY!! {I found a link to a tutorial}  This is how I did cakes for years.  Then last year I found a website with video of step by step instructions for easy dimensional cakes.  So I made a train cake for Matthew's birthday and then a pirate for Joseph's.  Suddenly all the kids wanted 3D cakes, culminating in the disaster of Elise's 13th birthday.  Still, we've recovered and I will be making a  monkey cake next week.  Hopefully it doesn't explode!

It does take time to figure out how to make the shapes and a bit of time to decorate, but my kids put their plans in months ahead and look forward to my creations.  I'm not perfect, but I'm good enough to make happy memories for the kids.

Below are some of my favorite cakes from years past.  You'll notice even Peter asks for special designs.

If you're interested in stepping up your cake making skills, but are not ready for fondant or Cake Boss, these are some sites with (easy-ish) but fun ideas:

Betty Crocker  (with videos and great tips!)
Coolest Homemade Birthday Cakes
Family Fun
Parenting

Sometimes the kids are quite specific with their wishes, but google has yet to not give me at least a starting place for how to do it!

Again, I found someone who already did a tutorial for the coloring page technique and it turns out I had forgotten some steps over time, so I'm glad I found it!

At least someone loves my parents enough to visit.

My poor parents had the misfortune of giving birth to a not-prone-for-homesickness sort of person.  I never wonder where my children inherited their lack of separation anxiety, it all came from me.  (And having to never worry about my kids freaking out when I leave them anywhere, I would like to take a minute and thank myself)

When I went to college at the tender age of seventeen (my 18th birthday a distant month away), I did not go back home till probably Thanksgiving.  It wasn't like a huge ordeal, either.  It was a 40 minute drive from Provo, Utah to Sandy, Utah.  (I just mapquested it and it was 37 minutes / 31.71 miles).  At least I called often, right?  Wrong.  I was and always will be the worst caller on the face of the planet.  Back then I, as a computer/electrical engineering major, had access to one of the only computer labs connected to the internet, but e-mail was a brand new concept and wasn't going to be a way to communicate.  (Lest you think I remained in an engineering program, I did not.  After my sophomore year I transferred to physics education- you know to teach high school physics.)


So anyway, half way through my freshman year I started dating some guy 3 1/2 years older than myself and newly home from a mission to Norway.  Guess what he loved?  Going home to visit my family.  So all of a sudden we were headed over almost every Sunday.


Fast forward five years.  I've married this guy, we have 2 children and live 17 hours away from my family (Mapquest says 17 hours 4 minutes / 1185.25 miles) while said husband is in his second year of medical school.  I had argued, quite successfully I felt, that we should stay home for Christmas.  It was too much hassle to load up the car with all the presents and drive 17 hours straight (yes, that is how we always made the trip, without stopping unless the car was hiccuping its last fumes of gas) for only a little over a week.

I know, I am a true sentimental.  Sue me.

Anyway, Peter finished classes up and came home with this look.  "I really, really want to be at your parents' for Christmas."  I was in the middle of protesting when the two by four made contact with my head (this is a figurative two by four, my husband wanted to go, but not THAT badly).  Hello?!?  My husband was begging to make an insanely long and cramped drive . . . to see my family.  How backwards is that?  So I took a deep breath and said,  "Yes."

We loaded up the car that afternoon and set off immediately.   We told no one except my sister and her husband (because someone needed to know if we never arrived).  With the exception of a terrible snow storm through Nebraska and a deer who nearly killed us when we almost hit it, we made it through great.  Actually the snow storm and deer hit (figurative again) at the same time and the storm prevented us from stopping to save the deer.  It was saved by jumping out of the way at the last second and gave us the adrenaline to not worry about getting sleepy for the rest of the trip.

The next morning we pulled up to the house, set our two kids on the front porch, rang the doorbell, and ran to the side of the house to observe the results.  It was awesome!  My family couldn't figure out why two little kids were on their porch at first, then they were recognized and reality hit.  One of the best Christmases ever.  Totally worth the 17 hour drive without being able to move my legs (I insisted we could only go if we fit all the presents into the car.  I was literally -not figuratively- packed around and drove the whole trip with presents on my lap, under my feet, and around my body.

So anyway, loving family, just know that someone in this house loves you enough to make sacrifices.  And you're lucky I married him.

The End.

(This post is part of 5 for 10: Yes! and also a response to a pleasant memory I had when reading Momza's blog this morning)

What we packed into that tiny car:

 Luckily, Peter's brother loaned us a car top for the return trip:

This was our first year with matching pajamas.

My mom made them after we showed up

(please do not note the flat topped hair

and yet to ever be plucked eyebrows):

The whole family (why are you not there Brenda?) at temple square:

Lest you think my husband heartless

we spent New Years in Las Vegas with his parents.

He loves you guys, too:

Lump of coal for Mother's Day?

I am a good mother...

My kids always eat healthy:

They're well groomed when we go to the store

(both in hair and shoes):

I provide only wholesome, educational entertainment:

I take pride when they follow my example:

I always provide adequate supervision:

Their chores are age appropriate:

I only provide well put together outfits:

They always have the best birthday cakes:

I would never make my sick child go to a party because I spent 500,000 hours making costumes:

I stay well rested so I can give the kids the energy and attenetion they need:

And the house is always spotless:

And that is why I was given a couple of lumps of coal for Mother's Day

(although they went through a few million years of pressure before I got them):

Happy Mother's Day!

Easter candy makes me a little unfocused.

My 3 year old thinks we killed eggs for Easter.  After all, we "died" them.  And so we kicked off our Easter festivities with murdered, I mean dyed, fingers and 48 boiled eggs.  (I used the method The Damsel in Dis Dress recommended to boil them, I hope it works!)

This Easter happens to fall on the same weekend as our church's semi-annual world wide conference (which I blessedly can watch from my television).  In case you don't know, General Conference has four 2 hour sessions (2 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday).  Want to know a great idea for keeping little ones still for two hours while watching people speak?  It's a solution only a genius such as myself can come up with:  have your Easter egg hunt in between the two Saturday sessions so they are hopped up on sugar for the last 2 hours.  Oh yes I did.  I, know, you are in awe of my great idea making abilities.

But seriously, I do have a great idea.  When we hide eggs we give each child their own color.  A bag comes with (lucky for me) 6 colors of plastic eggs.  I fill the eggs evenly (each color gets 1 jelly bean egg, 1 peep egg, etc) and then the eggs can be hidden by skill and age level.  Little kids can find theirs easily while the older kids scour the yard for theirs.  No older kids hogging the eggs or someone "accidentally" ending up with all the malted robin eggs.

We invited friends over for the hunt, it was a lot of fun.  Also, the neighbor kids were bursting with excitement and eventually came over to help find the eggs.  I wondered if they celebrate Easter (I've never seen kids so excited to find other people's eggs).  I'm 95% sure I saw a Christmas tree up last year, so hopefully we didn't cross some sort of religious holiday line by letting them help.

Ryan couldn't find his last egg, and when I finally made him recount ("I've already counted it three times, it is short by one!"), it was in his basket all along.  We looked an extra 1/2 hour for that "missing" egg.  It was our friend's boy who ended up with the traditional unfindable egg.  I'm sure it will turn up sometime in the next year.  (It is due to that tradition that we hide plastic eggs and not the real ones, by the way.)

So the dyeing eggs and hunting plastic eggs is finished and, due to it being conference weekend, the need for dressing in new church clothes won't be around until next Sunday, we can focus tomorrow on the real reason for Easter.  Surprisingly it isn't all the spring sales or spring break.  It is the atonement and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  This holiday is immensely personal to me, and I love it.

I would write more, but my brain is a little dysfunctional tonight.  My kids aren't the only ones overdosed on chocolate.  I happen to know where the extra malted robin eggs are hidden.  Right next to the extra Snickers eggs, Reeses eggs, and Hershey's Kisses.  Wow.  I'm surprised I can even focus for longer than 3 sec ... Was I saying something? ...  I need more chocolate ... Did I post about us almost getting flooded out of our neighborhood last week? ... Oops.  That will be my next post ... if I can remember that long ...

Birthday Cake . . . The Rest of the Story

I'd asked Elise for a couple weeks what she wanted for a birthday cake.  I've noticed my kids are getting more daring with their cake ideas, and knew I would need time to make whatever she choose.  So far I've been able to make whatever they've thought up, but Elise took the cake (HaHa!) when she finally chose her design.  I really shouldn't let them watch Cake Boss anymore.

She wanted a topsy turvey cake.  That was by far more difficult than anything I'd yet attempted, so I started googling.  I spent at least 2-3 hours looking up the right way to make the cake, how to make a box cake mix dense enough to carve, and the best way to make a smooth frosting (since I am not ready to try fondant yet).  Then I bought the supplies: 3 cake mixes (with the dense rich recipe made it more like 6 mixes) and 3.5 batches of frosting (2 lbs powdered sugar each), 2 cake pans each of three sizes.

And then I started baking.  9 layers baked, frozen, stacked, carved, frosted, re-frozen, stacked again, frozen again, frosted again and then decorated.  I made it early (just in case I couldn't do it and needed an alternative cake).Oh hubris, I even took pictures as I went.  I knew from the beginning it would be either spectacular or spectacularly disastrous and thought the documented journey would be fun either way. 

It was spectacular!  Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm the next cake decorating diva.  What I mean is that it was the hardest cake I'd ever made and it turned out better than I expected.  Elise loved it, I loved it, and that made it spectacular.

Without further ado, here is the cake:

And here is how it looked the next morning:
(2 days before I needed it)

I guess the boxed cake with extra dense additions wasn't strong enough.  Or I moved it too often trying to get pictures, or I should have kept it frozen until we ate it.  You can see the dowel sticks stuck in for support.  They failed.

This is the first time I've had a cake that was both spectacular and a spectacular disaster.

I'm thinking I might smack the candles on top of the mess and still use it (no friends party just our family).  What do you think?

_____________

I can't believe I forgot to do the beautiful blogger last post!  The next person on my list is Jane at Seagull Fountain.  Jane writes beautifully and thoughtfully.  She is able to give her opinions directly without being offensive (I don't always agree with her but never feel attacked), probably because her ideas are always so well thought out.  Her writing is a wonderful mix of the angst and joy involved in motherhood and life in general.  She also twitters as @SeagullFountain

I must confess I have extra love for her blog because she was my first.  That's right, back when I was checking friend's side bars trying to find long lost friends I clicked over to her blog.  Back then I would usually move on if I didn't know the person, but her writing drew me in and I read and read.  I found I was always searching for her blog on that side bar to check for new postings and finally added her to google reader.  About 6 months later I finally had the courage to comment on her blog. I still get excited to open google reader and see that she has posted.  I'm excited to meet her in May.


Please note I am not some sycophant stalker, I just believe in giving credit where credit is due.