It has been awhile.

I am embarrassed that it has taken me so long to get back to posting. Last week was crazy busy and I have been sick again.

Not only did I have My Boy's birthday, we also celebrated Baby Bugs Birthday. We had family over for cake and ice cream to celebrate both birthdays.

My son's only request was that his cake was to be chocolate. Since I was going to put quite the effort into his hamburger cake I just bought one for the family party.

I got this beauty at Samm's club. I bought large star sprinkles and matching star candles at Walmart. hint: shop in the party favor section, the candles are cuter and cheaper. The sprinkles were from the cake decorating section in crafts.



Baby Bug loves Raspberries. So I piled them high on a made from scratch Raspberries lace cake. I find anything piled high on a cake to be impressive. Try chopped up candy bars or even gum balls.

What do Giants eat?

I had the Giant party yesterday. It was a giant pain and a giant success. When the kids arrived we secured their little feet inside file boxes. These were their giant shoes. Next they wore dish washing gloves for their giant hands. We played a few games in this getup then let them take them off to smash the giant present pinata. After eating a giant slice of pizza I revealed what giants eat.

A giant hamburger, fries and a drink. This was large version of Bakerella's mini burgers. Eat was so easy to make.

What a cake!

I am so glad the boy is 6 and the party is over.

What's the big idea?

My baby boy is turning 6 next week! I dragged my feet as long as I could about whether or not to have a party. After a lot of outside opinions I gave in.

It's not going to be just a party. It's going to be a Giant party.

Here are the invitations.

I will work on getting these last minute giant invitations delivered. Come back next week to see what I Giant eats at a giant party.

That's how we roll

Although summer is almost over, I still like a cold treat whenever I can get one. This frozen log of love (oh yes, it's a log and it is full of love) is good in any weather.

Homemade Ice Cream Cake Roll (MIL recipe):

1 chocolate cake mix

6 eggs

2/3 cup water

2 half gallon blocks ice cream any flavor (Blocks are hard to find. I had to use the cylinder and it has less ice cream in it.)

Beat the eggs a couple of minutes then add the water. Beat the cake mix into egg mixture till light and fluffy. Cover to jelly roll pans (cookie sheets) with waxed paper. Divide batter evenly and spread out on pans. Bake 16-18 minutes at 325 degrees.

While cake is a warm from the oven, sprinkle a plain cotton dish towel with powered sugar. Turn warm cake upside down on sugared towel. Peel of wax paper and roll the cake with towel.

Let cool. This will help prevent big cracks from forming when you roll the ice cream and cake.

Cut ice cream into slices.

Place slices onto unrolled cake.

Using the back of a large spoon press ice cream and smooth in cracks.

Roll up length wise.

Some cracks will occur. No worries. Just wrap tightly in plastic wrap and cracks will disappear. Freeze until firm. It helps the rolls quality to also wrap a couple of grocery bags around finished roll before freezing longer than a couple of days.

Slice and serve. You could also drizzle with your favorite topping.

Remember: this recipe makes to Ice Cream Cake Rolls, so there is enough to share or enough to last through your favorite TV show.

Piles and Piles of Presents

Ahhhh, I'm late! I am just catching the tail end of Tuesdays Trash for Treasure with Kimm @ Reinvented. Wait, it's Tuesday right?

It has been a rough day. Starting with Baby Bug being covered in an awful rash and ending in Wild Child falling asleep with a Migraine and a whole lot of crazy in between. Still, I love my trash and wanted to share another 2x4 scrap idea with you.

So, stain your scraps. Size doesn't really matter. (In fact go larger for a bigger impact.) Any scrap will do.

Then Mod Podge scrap paper to your blocks and tie on some ribbon.
There you have it. You can make piles and piles of tiny wooden presents to add a bit of Christmas flare to any shelf or counter top.


Wrap them up in cellophane and you have a great friend or neighbor gift for this upcoming holiday season.

Rock Star

This past Saturday I attended a baby shower for one of my little cousins. I say little, but of course that is just my perspective. Oh I am getting older and none the wiser. Anyhoo didly doo, it was great to see my cousins. While there my cousin (hmmm, I didn't ask to use her name) S, showed me a cute little rock covered in melted crayon. So cute, so fun and of course cheap and easy.

For this activity you will need to send your kids on a rock hunt. Just about any rock will do. However, a smooth rock looks better.

Place rocks on a baking sheet. Heat rocks in oven until they are hot. I just put them in while the oven was pre-heating to 375 degrees, then removed them when the oven had reached it's goal.
Give each child a piece of wax paper. After giving a lesson on not touching hot things, place the rock on the wax paper and give your little artist some crayons. This is a great way to use you broken crayons.

The crayons will melt as soon as they touch the hot rock. Caution: the rocks stay hot for a long time.

Even Baby Bug (2) was able to color a rock.

My kids had a blast and I hope yours will too. Thank you Cousin S!

By the way, if you do any of the crafts, activities or other idea's be sure to let me know. I would love to see what you have done.

Achooo...

Flu season is upon us and we have been promised that it will be bad this year. We have already experienced the pure delight of high fevers, aching bodies, vomiting and sore throats at my house. Prompting me to evaluate what I have on hand to ease my families pains this season. Also, as a SAHM and with no one to take care of me, I have had to look for convenience items an have a plan to take care of me.

Here are some of my favorite ease the symptom products:

These really work as long as your little one will leave it alone.

Have ready made or frozen soups on hand. I have several frozen soups and they have saved me from taking my sick self and 3 kids to the store.

Ziplock bags. Throw up right in the bag zip it and throw it away. Bye bye smell and yucky cleanup. You can also use cleaned out coolwhip and large yogurt containers. The opening is wide and kids have a better chance with it stiff construction of keeping all in one place. Put the lid on and toss in the trash.

Plenty of tissues.
(check out the new shape)

I don't know about you, but I love a clean bowl to throw up in. Better yet, I love disposable brushes. I can't stand to look at a dirty orange colored brush when I am sick.

I also like baby vapor rub and bath to have on hand during the cold season. I don't want to forget Ibuprofen!

Good luck to all, may you and your families stay healthy!

Yogurt = Milk, well sometimes.

While making dinner or shall I say, "While scrounging up something for the family to eat" I discovered that we were completely out of milk. So the muffins I had planned on making were out of the question... or were they?

For this yummy recipe just follow the instructions on the back, but instead of milk use 1 small container of yogurt (any flavor).

Candy countdown

Wild Child received this cute candy countdown chain from her Pre-school teachers. It had five treat chambers on it when it was first given to her. She gets to eat one treat everyday until school starts. What a cute why to avoid the when does school start question.

This could be adapted for a Christmas Advent Calendar. It would be a great gift for friends with children.

Have you seen it?

Watching a movie with your girlfriends is always a good time. Watching a good movie with your friends is side splitting great time. A couple of nights ago my gals and I went to see Julie & Julia. It wasn't a film I was dying to see, but I was happy to be going. I am glad I did. It was funny and interesting. We laughed and talked a whole lot more than we should have.

It had a few moments where we heard a few words that caught us of guard other than that is was pure good fun. I was excited to look up the real blog the movie was based on. So I did yesterday. Let me tell you, in the movie she mentioned that she used some profane language in her blog. That statement was greatly down played. She uses it a lot. For that reason I am not posting the link. The writing was not nearly as entertaining as my fellow bloggers. Good examples are: http://viv-spot.blogspot.com/ and http://4livinginfrance.blogspot.com/. Those two ladies have talent. http://www.mytrendytykes.com/can take everyday happenings and things that aren't happening at all and make them funny. Try those links instead, but do see the movie if you are old enough!

Hot diggidy dog

Let's here 1 cheer for the first week of school. Hooray!!! I am glad it is over, unfortunately, kindergarten testing is next week. So, no school for my guy. Then we will have the first week of school all over again. I think we are catching on to this bus thing. We haven't missed it since the first day.

I am still trying to juggle school, dance, cleaning, cooking and everything else. The blog, oh the blog, is still here and I am trying to get back into the swing of things. I have a lot of crafts and idea's that hopefully will come together soon.

For now please enjoy this butterfly. The kids and I made these for the lunch the first day of school. I snatched the idea from the Gourmet Mom on the Go. Recipe here.

Slim Quick Years

I have always looked forward to my so called "Golden Years". Don't get me wrong. I don't want them to hurry on their way. It's just that there is something about those years that have some perks. One of those I always thought was that you didn't need to worry about your waist line anymore. My Grandpa always said I had to watch my figure or else nobody else would. So for my later years I have had big plans. Those plans include a lot of chocolate, butter and bacon.

So, to my deep sadness yesterday I saw a lovely older women, mid -70's maybe, in the parking lot of Walmart and in her shopping bag was.... Slim Quick! What? Why in the world is she worrying about getting slim quick. She could not have been more than 100lbs. @ about 5.5 feet tall. Again, why in the world is she taking a diet pill? If this is what my "Golden Years" will be about, then I don't want any. Thanks for asking.

Cut it out.

Summer break might be over, but summer boredom may still continue. You can adapt this activity to almost any age that is able to use scissors. I am sure you or even your kids have made a collage. Here are a few idea's to stretch the collage idea and the imagination:

Make a Christmas wish list

use only one color (do a collage of just orange cut outs or all colors)

Alphabet ( a collage for each letter including pictures)

Alphabet ( Cut out the ABC's out of the letters you find in the magazine)

shapes (how many squares can you find?)

Make an alien out of bits and pieces of pictures

A monster

Create your own animal ( this is great if you get hunting mag.)

Make a menu (Let your kids create a meal out of pictures, then serve that meal.)

You get the picture. Use your imagination and your old Magazines.

A bit behind

What a week and it has only just begun. Yesterday was the first day of school for my Kindergartner. He is my first kid to go to school and I don't quite have the hang of it yet. As we drove to the bus stop we could see the bus drive away. I had to chase the bus down and throw him in. No I love you, no kisses, not even a picture. We did a little better today.

So with school starting, I didn't get a chance to finish my trash to treasure for today. Here is a sneak peak for next week. Yep, shoe boxes.

Be sure to go check out Kimm @ Reinvented and check all the awesome links for trash to treasure day.