Halloween Weekend Report!

As I expressed earlier the week, Halloween is something that I look forward to each year. This year was no exception! Some might say that I in fact spent too much time on Halloween this year, but I’ll let you be the boss!

It all started off with one reallllly boring math class when I decided to doodle rather than “follow along”… I got this idea that I could have fun with a Halloween Cake. So I put some lead to the paper and took a stab at what I might be able to create. I am aware that the sketch work needs some work, but bear with me.

It started with Purple cake, orange buttercream, and a lot of improvisation!

Eventually it all started to come together!

Unfortunately, everyone at the party liked the look of the cake so much that they really didn’t want to eat it. I had to cut it up and force feed our guests… eventually they stopped me, I wasn’t allowed to cut any further into the cake...

In other Halloween news, My Costume that was PROMISED delivery on Thursday NEVER ARRIVED. Friday morning after 23 minutes on hold, I was informed that it was “Out of Stock”. Well Sheeeet. What now? I guess I’m heading to the Fabric store.

Costume construction started late Friday night and carried it’s way into Saturday. Unfortunately I was so consumed with “Project Costume” I didn’t take pictures along the way. So you’ll have to settle for just a picture of the final project…. Ta Da…

I’m a cupcake! The only problem was some Halloween goers wanted to try my frosting…

This was problematic!

Then I was chased down by Luigi…

Finally we went out on the town.

These were some of my favorites for the night!

Eventually we had to head home because we had an early start in the morning! The Marine Corps Marathon of course! As a fellow runner, I must got out to cheer!

Finally, after a long day I headed home in anticipation of LOTS of Trick-or-Treaters!…sadly, we only had one visitor. But she was a cutie!

Happy Halloween!

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Halloween Hilarity!

Nothing really makes me more happy than the weeks leading up to Halloween. Seeing decorations in neighbors windows showcasing their little one’s art projects, community Halloween parades, don’t forget the candy, and even more so, I LOVE LOVE LOVE carving pumpkins.

(My Very First Halloween… not my very first intro to sweets!)

Now, don’t get too excited, Pumpkin carving will come later the week, but for now I have to focus on something that is dear to my heart! Most people in my life are all too aware that I take my costumes very seriously!! I’ve spent weeks and even months debating, researching, and concocting the perfect costume!

Here I present to you the beginnings of my costume fascination. I’m the little Jack-O-Lantern with the wig. Out of respect for my siblings I won’t name names on the rest of the crew!! Below I finally grew into the Dracula!

My mom was the super seamstress when we were kids sewing up all of our costumes and my dad was the highly revered Halloween Make-Up Artist, and thus both have inspired me to follow suit when I moved away!

By now you are probably thinking “Stop reminiscing and get to the point”, so I will. As I began my costume research this year, I started noticing some disturbing costume trends. Granted I know that part of Halloween is to be a little disturbing, but what I am about to showcase to you is a parental trend that is both wildly disturbing… and a whole lot of hilarious!!! I would also like to take this moment to thank my fantastic parents for being normal!!

I present to you my TOP 10 PICKS for the WORST thing you can do to your child on Halloween…

# 10

(No Comment)

#9

(I would like to highlight the “Utter System”)

#8

(where’s the butter sauce?)

#7

(Baby with Heart Burn)

#6

(I find this one hard with Thanks Giving around the corner…)

#5

(Really folks, a Taco?)

#4

(Gimme back that Filet O Fish…)

#3

(ummm sir, you have some Cheerios on your face)

#2 (This kid will never eat shell fish)

#1 (I have no comment…)

Well I hope I have managed to entertain some of you during your workday. Please please send me a link to any Halloween pictures you feel should have graced the Halloween Hilarity charts, there just might be some amendments made after the Marine Corps Marathon.

Have a great day!

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One Quacky Day…

Two weeks ago The Boss and I were hanging out and shooting the breeze at our neighborhood “Rally in the Alley”, this is a Friday gathering of folks in our neighborhood alleyway where we BYOB and depending on the current sporting season someone brings a TV. In our time there one of the guys who lives next door was telling me the latest news story about his baby girl and the goofy things that babies do. He was super stoked because they were currently planning her 1st birthday party, and wanted us to come. Of course we would be there… but I’m not one to show up empty handed. So casually I prodded him about his daughters favorite colors or if there was a theme to the party. Of course there was a theme….

This little girl LOVES LOVES LOVES her rubbery ducky! Apparently her first word was “Dad-da” and shortly behind came “Guck-ey” Yes… Ducky. Granted I’ve never made ducky cupcakes before or even attempted a three dimensional animal cake before, but hey, there is no time like the present. Since my favorite animal cupcake creation was by far my Bride and Grooms I thought I should take the cue from those small birds and go for an army of Rubber Ducks. Then I got the fever to go bigger… so I did.

I started by baking two big circle cakes along with a half dozen cupcakes. While those puppies were cooling off I started in with the key element to a super cute duck… it’s beak! (and maybe some feet).

The give away in the picture is the orange starburst wrapper in the backdrop. The beaks and webbed feet are “tempered starburst”. Ha ha okay okay, that really just means that I microwaved the starburst and then tortured my poor fingers by molding the really hot sugars! Then why the doughnut holes? Well they are going to be the ducky’s head, and I needed to make sure the beaks were in proportion to the heads.

So I frost the cupcake, stick on the head (beak not included) and then the questionable tail…

Doesn’t look much like a duck yet huh?

So I ended up with a bunch of duck options, and my only registered voter in the house at the time was the Boss, so he got to decide what “style” duck to go with.

Our choices here are:

1) Duck with sprinkles

2) Plain frosting duck

3) Duck with tail

4) Duck without tail

Mix these choices together and there is a pretty good combination to choose from. Ultimately we decided that the Duck with tail actually looked too much like a real bird, like Jay or Chickadee. If you could picture the bird in red it could actually be a Cardinal. And the sprinkles really made the cupcake more finished…

So here we have the first picture of the crew. Now granted we know that in any mix of people there will always be “one strange duck” and here there is no exception…

Doesn’t feel good to get laughed at does it Mr. Duck? As my Mom always used to tell me, “Don’t worry Bert, their day will come”.

So from here I moved on to the bigger task of the day… One Giant Duck. (Not to be confused with one giant sneaker!)

I’d like to answer YES to some questions that I heard the crowd mumble upon their downward scroll…

YES, that is my laptop AND rubber duck in the back round as my reference guide.

AND

YES I did use straws instead of cake doweling, one it is more cost effective, and to be honest people are a lot less freaked out by everyday straws being used than finding wooden poles in their cakes!

Then came the tempered starburst torture again…

 

You can see that the beak actually carried some weight, so when the cake started to crack (see pic above) around the mouth I had to bring in the reinforcements! (that would be the green and orange straws going trough the chest to the lower jaw of the Duck!!

… once you got him all dressed up, there was no evidence of the neck brace!

QUACK!

Finally I finished up the entire duck with frosting to spare! Then put all the little ducklings on board and we had a finished birthday cake surprise!

Last couple touch ups and….

A Quack-tastic finish!

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Look What I Did!

If you are a follower of both my blog and The Boss’s blog then you know that there are times where The Boss travels A LOT! For those of you wondering “who is The Boss”, then to clarify I am the real boss, but I like to call my Fiancé Ray by the nickname “Boss”… I think he likes to think that he’s the boss, buuuut lets be honest. Annnnnnnnyways, I’m already going to get in enough trouble for this post so I’m going move on.

So when The Boss leaves on extended trips, I usually start off by basking around, enjoying life at a much slower pace! But then about 2-3 hours go by and I have nobody left to irritate or entertain, so I come up with projects and ideas which I believe should be done around the house!

Above is just a quick reflection of the day I decided to go to Home Depot and bought bolt cutters!

However, this project was a little different. This time I am not re-organizing a closet, this time I am tackling one of the MOST annoying elements to triathlon training! The Water Bottles!!! Dear God we have about 80 of them! And for the most part they STINK! Literally they smell awful!

No mater what day of the week it is, there are constantly water bottles on the stairs, on the counter, in the sink, and rolling around the bottom of one of our car floors! I’ve made several conclusions regarding this issue. One is that they bottles are all over the place simply because neither of us really want to deal with the hassle of cleaning the bottles- more specifically waiting for them to dry. Instead they are left. Where ever they were last used, kicked, or dropped. Second conclusion is that the water bottles really don’t have a nice home. Over time we have piled and piled the continuous accumulation of bottles into one corner and then casually hid the mess with our giant “Love Sac”.

Now as you have been reading (visualizing your own giant pile of water bottles, or whatever junk pile you may be hiding) you may also be wondering- “how is she going to get in trouble with The Boss over this post?”. So this is where the fun happens! For me at least; so let me continue!

Well, the biggest issue that I have with the water bottles is that a lot of them have mold in them! That’s right, mold! And even if they don’t have mold in them, they have old water that very well could have been sitting in them for months! I mean we have 80+ bottles, so those suckers can be on the bottom of the pile for a while. So they stink! And their stench carries into the taste of the water. So imagine you are out on a 3- 4.5 hour ride in the heat and your dying, frustrated, over heated, and way to emotional to be on a bicycle, so you stop for a second to re-focus. You take a nice big swig from your semi-warm to hot water annnnd yummy, you can taste a hint of old sports drink mixed with a whole lot of gross! So much for refreshing. What is even more frustrating is that you could swear that you did the “Sniff Test” in the morning before you filled up that bottle! You know that trick, stick your nose in the bottle, sniff…ponder… sniff, and you either toss it back in the pile or you fill it up! The Boss must have taken MY bottle, and I have his! (He never does the sniff test… he assumes all is pretty!)

So now that I have The Boss out of the house I went BACK to Home Depot. Here I bought a slab of peg board, and cut it into the dimensions that fit into an old IKEA Frame!

And the IKEA frame actually has a thin plexi-glass front instead of a sheet of glass… this is great, now I have a splash board so the water drippings do not rot the peg board!

While the splash guard sounded good in theory, now I need a way to get the pegs through the plexi-glass?!?!…. SWEEEET! I get to use the drill!

“What is that you said?, is that a $3000 Cervelo P3 that you are using as a brace for your drilling project?… No, no no no” (Sorry Boss)

Moving on!

So I gathered up all the bottles…

Put them on the board…

Voilà! My water bottle organizer/ dryer! Albeit I need a few more pegs.

Alright, I can already hear the critics… “that doesn’t look like 80+ water bottles”… well that’s because it isn’t. And that’s where I’m going to get in trouble…

It’s Garbage Day! And I choose which bottles were allowed to stay, and which ones had to go. Using my Sniff test of course!… again, Sorry Boss. I kept your Shark bottle to the side though, maybe you could bronze it or something?

Have a great day, and wish me luck!

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