I can’t believe I am still doing this, even after falling behind, even on weeks that are super boring, even though when I started I had ONE KID and was pregnant with Caroline. The blogger friend who inspired it hasn’t blogged in years. And yet I refuse to give it up – it’s like the longest baby book in the world.

Sunday:

Feeding baby goats is fun even if you’re a cool 8-year-old

Baby snuggles, front and back

We are SO GLAD it’s spring

Monday:

This is a good look

Selling some of my favorite baby wraps

Unicorn helmet is life

Tuesday:

This is why I usually wear him

So far, the Caffeine eye cream and the Niacinamide are fantastic

I’m being attacked by balloons

Wednesday:

Eight today!

Sup, frog?

Linc has to ALWAYS be touching someone

Thursday:

Rainy day walking

Super excited to be at the doctor, I guess

I don’t know what’s happening here

Friday:

Skillz

Everyone loves Bumpa

Oreo cake was requested, Oreo cake was purchased

Saturday:

Still 8, and I still can’t believe he’s so old

They made hand puppets out of the silverware sleeves

Bubble bath + tub jets = LOTS OF SUDS

We turned off the heat in the house, which means I’m putting away the winter coats but also wearing a sweater all day because it’s actually still pretty cold. But the trees and flowers and blooming and that means winter is OVER. I had forgotten how dirty children get when they’re out in the garden. I should buy stock in a bubble bath company.

A Cake Off you say? Don’t mind if I do.

When it comes to Team Cake vs Team Pie, I am Team Why Can’t I Have Both? There’s no such thing as too much dessert. When I was looking for inspiration for a cake to submit for this contest, I searched Pinterest for cake and might have ended up eating half a box of cookies because it made me so hungry. This is why I am not a food blogger.

Half way through mixing the batter I realized I needed 3 9-inch cake pans but all I had in my cabinet was 1 9-inch cake pan and 2 8-inch cake pans. I thought really hard about how to make that work before giving up and sending my husband to the store to get the right pans. Be smarter than me and make sure you have the cake pans you need BEFORE you’ve already separated all the eggs and have the mixer going. This recipe has kind of a lot of steps, but I promise it’s worth it for the results: moist but light cake with an amazing flavor and super light frosting with exactly the right amount of sweet.

Mixed Berry Cake With Lemon Whipped Cream Icing
Adapted from A Latte Food

• 4 eggs, separated
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 1/2 cups flour all purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp cornstarch
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup greek yogurt
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice, fresh
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

• 2 cups mixed berries (I used raspberries, blackberries, strawberries and blueberries)
• 3/4 cup sugar

• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1 8 oz cream cheese
• 2 Tbsp lemon zest (about the zest of 2 large lemons)
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice

 

Wooooooooooo Date Night!!! My super old husband turned 32 yesterday. I get to call him super old until I turn 30, so it’s a good thing I’m only 22.

We celebrated in style with a little birthday music:

A super delicious carrot cake:

Swear to God, the best cake I've ever baked - and it was from a box and made with applesauce instead of oil.

I managed to light all 32 candles with only one minor thumb burn:

Plus we only burned one tiny hole in the tablecloth!

Then we put the kids to bed, left our babysitter on the couch with the remote and hit Mohegan Sun. It’s handy that we have two of the biggest casinos in the world right down the street.

E's yearly cigar, one of the many cool light fixtures, Leffingwells Bar

Fake sky over Leffingwells

Indoor river, riding the elevator, ceiling over the craps table

You know how people throw coins in fountains for good luck? At casinos, they throw CASH.

We brought home hats "for the kids", Birthday Krispy Kremes, my handsome husband

Terrible cell phone photos are what happen when you're too embarrassed to take a real picture at home in front of the 19 year old babysitter.

Sparkly top: Dress Barn (I’m not even ashamed, they have cute shirts)
Jeggings: Nordstrom Rack
Ridiculous platform heels: Charlotte Russe
Earrings: I don’t remember and it doesn’t really matter since you can’t see them.
Clutch: Ditto the earrings

We lost, of course, because that’s what you do at casinos but it was SO GOOD to be out and doing adult-type things without having to wipe anyone’s nose or mouth or butt. We chatted with grown-ups about things other than our kids. We made angry faces at the douche-canoes who sat down in the middle of our blackjack shoe (because we’re so fancy and worldly we know that’s poor manners). The kids slept the entire time and didn’t even know we ditched them. Let’s do it again soon!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband and Happy Sunday to you!

The Theme: Winter sparkle snowflake party, with glitter, pale pink and blue accents
The Location: The entire first floor of my house

This post is going to be HUGE, so if you have no interest at all in Caroline’s party please come back in a few days when it’s been bumped off the front page. I don’t want to put in a page break and have people think I’m trying to trick them into more page views. I get my page views the honest way – exploiting my children and friends!

The Decorations:

Dining room

Tree branch sprayed with snow-in-a-can

Ruffled crepe paper trees from this tutorial found on Pinterest

Living Room

Snowflakes cut from printer paper (Google “snowflake templates” for ideas)

My clothes pin photo display re-purposed as Caroline’s year in photos display!

Epsom salt in mason jars to look like snow

Glitter play dough party favors (more details in this post), yarn wreath, mirror frosted with snow-in-a-can

Yarn wreath, $1 picture frame ornament from Target

Chandelier decorated with dollar store garland & ornaments

Doily garland

The orange high chair didn’t match my theme, but a paper table cloth and a little tulle fixed it!

Fake snow everywhere!

The Food:

Hot cocoa and cocktail bar – the Keurig made it SO EASY!

I bought every single Christmas mug at Goodwill

Mini marshmallows, egg nog, powdered sugar, crushed candy canes, vanilla syrup, pink sprinkles, whipped cream, coconut flakes. Also on the bar: dark and milk hot cocoa, cider, Bailey’s, vanilla vodka, coconut rum, peppermint schnapps, mini candy canes.

Cucumber sandwiches, candy cane blossoms, red peppers & dip

Smoked salmon, dill & cream cheese on herb bread

Cupcakes (from a box!), my favorite frosting, edible sugar paper snowflakes bought at Stop & Shop

Sparkling cranberry brie bites. You know how sometimes you seen an idea on Pinterest and think “yeah, there’s no way that idea is going to be as awesome in real life”? This one was JUST AS AWESOME.

Thumbprint cookies, gooey vanilla sparkle cookies, fruit & dip, sugar cookies, ginger cookies, mini pastas on sticks with vodka, marinara, and alfredo sauce.

Coconut snowballs

Cream cheese mints, lemon meringues

The pasta on sticks was a great idea… for grown ups. Next time I’ll get less pointy things.

Milk bottle snow men. Not quiet as cute as on the interwebs, but still cute.

Lemon cake (more boxed mix!) tinted 3 shades of pink

Tiny cake baked in a tomato can, covered in sprinkles & topped with “Caroline” written in chocolate

Don’t even THINK about taking her cake away

The Fun:

Glitter play dough & cookie cutters on a kid-sized table

All the planned activities in the world can’t stop the kids from getting every toy out of the toy box

DIY pull string pinata (more here) was a hit, even though it didn’t work exactly as planned. I had to shake most of the candy out after the ribbon holding it up broke, but the kids didn’t care one little bit.

DIY snowglobes were cuter in theory than in reality. They were kind of leaky and some of the trees dyed the water purple and the glue was messy, but everyone went home with one!

Sharing strawberries with a friend

Refusing to wear her hair bow

Dance party!

These two are TROUBLE

Playing with Grandma

Somebody got a pony for her birthday! (She’s kind of scared of it though)

Family photos with two kids – there is ALWAYS someone not looking.

Holy crap, that was ridiculously long. I think I got all the links and recipes in there but if you’re looking for something let me know. My Pinterest board for the party (with most of the ideas I did use and some really good ones I didn’t get around to) can be found here.  I’m sorry most of the photos are terrible – it gets dark REALLY early here so I had to use the flash after the first 30 minutes of the party. It was definitely a great time and I know Caroline enjoyed herself. I hear everyone’s kids slept really well on Saturday night so I think they ran off all the sugar I pumped into them before they went home. Thank you to everyone who came and especially to my mother-in-law Carol who flew all the way from Ohio just to help me make the food and watch Little Evan for a few hours!

And Happy Birthday Caroline!

Even though I spend the majority of my pre-party planning on crafts and decorations, I spend 75% of my money and day-of preparations on food. I love food. Food is the reason I have parties at all.

Here’s an overview:

1. Mini-cupcakes
2. Marshmallow lollipop
3. Cucumber sandwiches
4. Mini quiches
5.Swedish meatballs
6. Mini doughnut cookies
7. Hand-made chocolate truffles made by and shipped from my friend Erin
8. Caprese salad sticks
9. Fruit salad
10. Veggie plate
11. Cheese and cracker plate
12. CAKE

Now here’s the deets:

Leftover cake batter (because I had to TRIPLE the recipe to have enough for the cake but only needed a little bit of that 3rd batch) turned into mini cupcakes in polka dot wrappers topped with peanut M&M’s on a cake stand from BJ’s.

I came up with these on Thursday morning when I found marshmallows on sale at Target. I stuck them on sticks and dipped them in colored melting chocolate and sprinkles. The little stands are Styrofoam balls cut in half and wrapped in tissue paper. They were SO EASY and delicious and popular with the kids.

The cucumber sandwiches were the only thing we ran out of. It’s just Wonder Bread with garden veggie flavored cheese spread and cucumbers, but they are SO DELICIOUS. And I even used the secretly whole wheat white bread to make them a little healthier. The mini quiches are store-bought and my absolute favorite party food in the world. They have been since I was about 12, when I decided eating mini quiches automatically made me look both older and classier.

My mom used her grandma’s recipe to make Swedish meatballs and I used my awesome crafting skills to glue felt circles to colored toothpicks to make them fancy. One of us worked a lot harder than the other.

My friend Kimberly sent me a link to these a couple weeks ago when I mentioned I was looking for round food and I fell in love with them. I actually baked and decorated them last weekend and stuck them in the freezer. They defrosted beautifully and were both adorable and delicious.

This idea came from Amy at Soup or Salad Blog – tomatoes, piece of basil and cheese. I just picked up the little mozzarella balls from the salad bar at the grocery store and made my aunt assemble them for me. The cute little stand was from last year’s birthday party!

Even all my fruit was round, thanks to my mom’s mad melon balling skillz. Cantaloupe. watermelon, red grapes, green grapes, blueberries and black berries. You can also see the corner of my round veggie tray – cucumber, carrots and radishes cut into circles.

I didn’t get a close up of the truffles Erin made, but there were extremely yummy and also adorable – she somehow put colored polka dots into the coating. She did vanilla and strawberry for the kids and then orange liquor and Kahlua for the grown-ups. I ate the leftovers for lunch. And dinner.

And finally, my cake:

It is not as pretty as I had imagined. It also doesn’t have the precise color coordinated stripes of dots I had planned on before I realized the “20-25 minutes” it took to bake this batter as cupcakes was more like 50-60 minutes in large cake pans in my crappy oven. Then I ran out of batter and when I tried to make more I was a cup of sugar short. Luckily, my run to the grocery store didn’t end up ruining anything besides my plans to make the frosting perfectly smooth and delicately place all my jelly beans in exact lines.

You know who cared about the uneven frosting and the random dots? NO ONE. Not a single person, including me, cared that the cake didn’t look like it was from a professional baker.

The main reason is because it was DELICIOUS.

I ended up making it all from scratch, using recipes from I Am Baker for everything. The cake is white cake with buttercream frosting and lemon curd filling (the recipes are in those posts, but you’ll have to scroll for them – which shouldn’t be too much of a hardship because her cakes are GORGEOUS). When I test drove the cake as cupcakes last weekend they were perfect. When I tried to make it as cake it stuck to the pan and came out a little dry, but honestly, it was such an easy recipe I’m sure that was baker-error and I can do better next time. I kept apologizing for the dryness, but I may have been the only person who was bothered by it.

The frosting is like store-bought cake frosting, which I love but no one else does. It is very sweet, but the lemon curd filling tempered the sweetness. The filling was DELICIOUS. I should have cut each cake layer in half and done three layers of filling in each tier, just to get more lemon curd into each slice. I may have put lemon curd on toast for breakfast today. And lunch. And dinner.

2 year olds can blow out their own candles

The number of sweets in my house (all the baked goods combined with all the candy from the decorations) is EPIC. I need to have another party just to get rid of the food from my first party. But I heard from all the guests that despite the sugar overload their kids all slept REALLY well on Saturday night and spent all day Sunday talking about the “balloons!” and “ball pit!” at “Baby Evan’s party!” I call that a success. An extremely delicious success.

p.s. I need to add that NONE of the food would have gotten finished if not for my amazing family’s help. My mom and my dad and my aunt never batted an eyelash when I insisted they cut every slice of cheese into a circle or told them to ONLY use certain colors of jelly beans on the cake. They cut and slices and cooked and arranged so I could focus on my cake. Even E helped with the food when he wasn’t wrangling toddlers and babies. Thank you all SO MUCH for the help!