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Birthday Cake Making Dreams

Posted on September 19, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

This weekend, we went to visit my brother and his family. My niece, SG, turned four on Saturday, so it was time for a birthday celebration. When we arrived, her cake was sitting on the dining room table. Check this out and guess the theme:

This gorgeous cake was made by a co-worker of my sister-in-law. Here is her business card in case you happen to live out in western NY.

Not only are Molly’s Cakes delicious, her work is gorgeous. She also worked around a slight complication for my niece. SG is highly allergic to eggs. As you can probably guess, this can make baked goods complicated. We make cupcakes with no-egg substitute in them for birthdays to allow her to enjoy what everyone else is eating. Molly made SG’s top layer of the cake with no egg. It was a pumpkin cake. The bottom two layers had chocolate and vanilla with egg. Oh and the fondant was a new kind that she was testing. While I did not try any, others raved about it.

Did you guess the theme of the party? Here’s a little more decorations to help you out:

Here is a photo of the cake with the cute little toppers added right before everyone enjoyed the cake:

The birthday girl seemed very happy with her layer. Check her out with her cloud cake layer.

Of course, seeing SG’s cake made me realize how much I would still love to take a Wilton Cake Decorating class. They are given at several of the local craft stores. One of these days, I may. I think I am ready to explore with fondant, but then again – I really love my piping fun with cupcakes.

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Birthday at Buca di Beppo

Posted on August 27, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Dear NHL,

Your birthday was a few weeks ago. One of our traditions for birthday celebrations is to head out to dinner where you like on your special day. Daddy and I were pretty sure we knew where you would pick, but you do have a few places that you really seem to like. Sure enough when it came time to go, you wanted dinner at Buca di Beppo.

When we arrived Buca’s you immediately announced to the people that it was your birthday. Then without skipping a beat, you asked if we could sit in the kitchen for our meal. That is when I recalled that I had not called the restaurant to reserve the special table. I told them not to worry because I had messed up. The man and woman told us to wait a minute. They looked and there were no reservations, so the table was ours!

Although we have eaten at Buca di Beppo many times, we had never eaten in the kitchen before. You were SO excited to see the chefs and other members of the Buca staff making the meals before your eyes. It is a really big and busy kitchen.

While you looked at everything around you, JSL colored/played with Wikki Stix, and of course Daddy sent out a picture to Twitter and his blog.

There were a lot of cool items to look at on the walls around us. Daddy thought it was funny to see Gene Simmons, Sylvester Stalone, Carrot Top, Danny DeVito, and Charlie Sheen eating together with other celebrities.

When our food arrived it was fantastic as usual. JSL had Macaroni and Cheese, you had Linguini Alfredo, and Daddy and I shared Eggplant Parm.

Our server asked if we would be having a dessert to celebrate. We told him that we were heading to Nana and Papa’s to see them and have the cheesecake that you had requested. Even without the dessert a bunch of the staff came to sing to you and there was a fun surprise with candles too!

It was a fun meal out with good food and a new experience sitting in the kitchen. I hope you have many memories of this day for years to come.

Love,

Mommy

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If you want to participate in Dear Kid Saturday, head on over to Cutest Kid Ever by clicking on the button below.

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Sweet Temptations Surprise

Posted on August 20, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Dear NHL and JSL,

Sometimes surprises are the best thing. Wednesday, we went and picked up Daddy for lunch to celebrate NHL’s birthday together. After lunch, we were going to go shopping for a few things, but then I had an idea. I thought we would head over to one of your favorite ice cream spots. Both of you love Scoops because they have amazing ice cream and you can watch the cows while you eat. When we pulled up, they were closed. I guess I did not realize that they are not open during the day mid-week.

Not to worry. I quickly recalled that a cake shop was right down the road. We had seen their truck over the weekend at a Farmers Market. We did not buy anything from their colorful truck because cousin SG would not be able to eat anything. Your disappointment over the ice cream quickly went away when we pulled up to Sweet Temptations and went inside.

Since it was a special occasion, I told the two of you to pick whatever you wanted from the case. Dangerous thing to do, but I had an idea what you may select. Here is a look at the items that we brought home.

NHL, you immediately homed in on a dragon creation. It was two chocolate chip cookies combined with a large amount of icing inside it’s mouth and on top. When I picked it up out of the box, I was floored with how heavy it was. There was no doubt that you loved it since you kept “mmmmmm-ing” as you ate it.

JSL, you had one item in mind. You wanted something chocolate. It was the chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing, of course. One minute I saw the cupcake in your hands, the next it vanished. Since you were the only one that tried it, you must have really liked it since I have never seen you gobble up a cupcake like that.

Since Daddy was not with us, I did not have any idea what kind of cupcake to get him. After making cupcakes all weekend, I was in the mood to try something different. I opted to get the cookie sandwich to share with him. YUM! The chocolate chip cookies were gooey, fresh, and amazing. The frosting inside was the perfect amount and not too sweet. Half was the perfect amount for me to splurge on.

Little surprises like this during the summer have been so much fun. I hope that we get back to Sweet Temptations again soon to show Daddy all of the fancy cupcake creations that they have.

Love,

Mommy

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If you want to participate in Dear Kid Saturday, head on over to Cutest Kid Ever by clicking on the button below.

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Games for the Entire Family

Posted on August 19, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

We have collected many board games over the years. Even before we had kids, TechyDad and I had several that we bought for game nights and/or when we had company over. Back in the day, Scattergories, Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, and Upwords were favorites.

As a child, I remember playing board games with friends all the time. Titles that come to mind include:

The Game of Life
Allowance
Uno
Monopoly
Trivial Pursuit
Boggle

The list could go on and on. Games were huge on cold winter nights, or to pull out during summer days after we ran and played.

Now that we have kids, our most used games are things like Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, Memory, Rush Hour Jr, Uno, and others for 10 and under.

While NHL would prefer his Nintendo DS and Wii games, we all need to unplug. Board games are the perfect time to do this and allow us to have special time together where we can work on many skills. For NHL’s birthday, he received a new game and it has been used a LOT lately. Here it is:

What I love about this game is it takes something familiar with the kids (Disney) and puts a fun spin on it. The kids know the Pictureka game show, so they were excited to have a version for our house. Yes, it says ages 6+, but let me tell you my 4 year old was keeping up with us. The only item JSL needed assistance with was reading the cards. If people told him he was looking for “items with a tail,” he was good to go. Yes, I knew this would be a popular game in our house. Locating games that are appropriate for 4 and 8 year olds can be very tricky, or impossible at times.

So my question to you this week:

What are some of your favorite board games to play with your family and why?

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.

Aloha #165

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Lion Cupcake Construction

Posted on August 18, 2011 12:13 am by TheAngelForever

When NHL asked me to make his birthday party an animal, specifically lion, theme I did not cringe – well not right away. First, we went to the craft store, party supply place, and I went to Google to see what was out there. Thanks to a quick search on YouTube, I found a fun video and was all ready.

Let me take you on an adventure as I got ready for my practice run of the lion cupcakes. First, I had some of my items set to start. No comments about mixing Pillsbury and Betty Crocker items please.

Cake mix – Or, if you want, use a from scratch recipe
Frosting – I had two cans so I could have plenty of the two colors I needed to make
Black icing – Note: This did not work well. Thanks to this, I bought Wilton black sparkle
Food coloring – To make 2 shades of orange for the lion face
Popcorn – We now wonder if popcorn from our Whirly Pop with some salt may have been better to add a salty/sweet contrast

Not seen in the photo:

Pretzel sticks – lion whiskers
Mini chocolate chips – lion eyes
Cheerios – lion ears
Eggs – We did not use eggs because my niece is very allergic to them. I used the item below.

When making the practice batch of cupcakes, JSL wanted to help me out. He had a lot of fun making the “eggs” and mixing everything else together.

Then, the cupcakes were ready to head into the oven.

Thanks to the egg replacer, they bake faster and are still a bit “squishy” when they come out of the oven. While I was waiting for the cupcakes to cool, I set up an assembly line of sorts. For some reason, I took the photo before the cheerios were here. Then, my hands were full of icing and I never went back. You get the idea.

First, you use the darker orange to cover the entire cupcake and then put a smaller light orange circle within that.

Then, JSL helped me to put the popcorn mane around the entire cupcake.

Up next were the Cheerio ears and pretzel whiskers.

Then, we gently placed the mini-chips for the eyes and drew on the nose and smile.

Here are my practice lions. You can see the blobs that happened with the original black icing that I bought.

The boys were not upset with the blob faces on the lions. They thought they were quite fun and delicious.

When I made them on Sunday, I tried a few different things to make them a little easier. Although I liked the ease of the Wilton gel, it was runny and the faces did not stay the way I made them. Perhaps if there was room in the refrigerator that would have helped. Still, they came out cute. Here’s a view from the party:

If you are curious about the video I used, or the other animals here it is. The Howdini video: Jungle Animal Cupcakes: Monkey, Lion, Tiger, and Zebra Cupcakes.