Monday, August 26, 2013

Punch Buggy Purple

Today was our Sitster's birthday.  She introduced GGirl to the Punch Buggy game, which was followed by the Bruiser Criuser game.  No one is safe from the slugs that come when those two types of vehicles are sighted.

For her birthday, it only seemed fitting to give her a punch buggy. The base was layered icecream cake with coffee and chocolate icecream.  The car was carved out of chocolate cake and butter cream frosting. 

After looking at a lot of other folks VW Bug cakes [that look much more professional], here's how it's done by an amateur:

Start with a round cake and cut it in half for two semi-circles.  Fuse them together with butter cream frosting just like you would a layer cake.  If I were doing it again, I would chill the cake thoroughly at this point.  Stand the cake up in the flat edge.  Carve out the windshield and hood.  Carve away a little along the bottom to give the appearance of aome clearance.   Frost that Buggy.  I you happen realize that you have no idea how to do the windows, and all of your frosting is, say-purple, throw some cocoa powder in some of the leftover frosting and call them "tinted windows."  Open up two chocolate sandwich cookies and throw them on for wheels and voila!  A VW Punch Bug Cake.

Serve it up to your favorite almost-seventeen-year-old with a slug in the arm and enjoy a yummy treat!

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Sacrificing Some Garden...

...for some peace & quiet.  Hey, sometimes a Mama's got to do what a Mama's gotta do.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Enough Already!

It seems that the summer bugs are running rampant in our family: fever, stomach bugs, viruses, migranes, allergy/colds.  You name it, we've been fighting it.  For the last 6 weeks, it seems like as soon as it looks like we are all well, someone wakes up sporting some new symptom.  It's really getting old!

I've disinfected,  pushed vitamins, homeopathic remedies and natural options.  We've been through antibiotics, prescriptions and OTCs.  And yet, *insert coughing fit here* we are still under the weather. 

I was the hold out.  It wasn't until the end of week 4 that I got sick, but it was a doozie, and 3 days into it, HandyMan left for the week.  Thanks to a lot of help from my friends, I made it through the week.  Just as I got well, MMan started the cycle again with a runny nose...and here we go again *sniffle, sneeze*.

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

"My name is Chubby..."

A few weeks ago HandyMan spent many hours on a bus with a bunch of high school students.  At one point when I called him, he was being pulled away for a game of Chubby Bunny.  The Chubby Bunny game I knew involved lots of marshmallows and usually gets messy-he assured me that this was not the same game and gave me a brief overview and it got lost in the minutia of the day.

Fast forward to this afternoon.   I'm sitting on the footstool in our playroom and GGirl comes up to me, with flat hands squishes my cheeks towards my mouth and says "Mommy!  Say 'My name is Chubby Bunny.'"  Apparently HandyMan or one of the teens from the trip taught GGirl the Chubby Bunny game.  She went on with other lyrical lines, but in between laughter and trying to repeat my lines, my mind went back a -ahem- few years to my grandparents house and my cousins teaching me a similar game about Chubby and his motorcycle.

While the new version is a cleaned up rhyme, it is still fun and brought some good laughs to this Mama and the 4 and a half year old.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Look Mommy!

On this rainy afternoon GGirl is watching movies and MMan was playing happily in the play room.  I was enjoying the quiet and reading when MMan toddles around the side of the couch, very proud of himself.  His look very clearly conveyed "look Mama, I know what it's for and I put it on myself!"