let them eat cake (not just a post title but a real place... you should check it out!)

you may recall this little disaster from p's first birthday. while it was tasty on the tongue, it was not so easy on the eye. it was suggested to me by my mother-in-law's bff that i might consider a cake decorating class at micheal's. not a bad idea!


not willing to accept defeat, i tried again. i made a cake for poppy and our friend gabe a few weeks later. i learned a little from my mistakes, but i had a long way to go.



fast forward to an email from my friend katie. she was perusing the community class schedule from a local community college. she wanted to know if anyone wanted to join her at a holiday cupcake decorating class. yes. YES! i'm ALL in!

and so today, i joined three other friends at let them eat cake in livermore for a three hour cupcake class. (good things come in three, right? right!)

cupcake master sarah (also the proud owner of this uber creative cupcake shop) walked us through cupcakes from start to finish. she taught us how to avoid some of the pitfalls that batter can present, how to make her version of the tastiest butter cream frosting (it was out of this world), and then how to make tons of adorable cupcakes. she was fab! her instructions made sense and were easy to follow, while her creativity was off the charts.


we started our cupcake journey with some spiders. these are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting (e's favorite). and then you added eyes, legs, a mouth... need i say more. here's katie showing off her first success. isn't this spider amazing?

and over the course of three hours we made trees, snowmen, tom turkey, mini ornaments, ghosts, and webs. i went home with enough sugary concoctions to induce a sugar in all three buser babes.

and isn't that cupcake stand quite nice? i won it. that's right. as an added bonus sarah had a little raffle for all of the participants. i'm thinking e's class will love it at their halloween party.

oh, and my taste testers? e, d, and p were happy to play the role.

i think it is fair to say that girlies likey.

3 little pumpkins

i think that every blogger with kids posts the "trip to the pumpkin patch" i did it last year with these...

and here i am, again, doing it with these: to make this post more interactive, as you view the snaps choose your fave... leave it in the comments if you choose. (i'm super curious because my hubby and i always pick totally different ones for totally different reasons.)

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

and i totally didn't plan this, but there is no P (e, d, & p). so if you think that the first photo of P sitting in front of her pumpkin pile is your fave, you can can choose P (not trying to sway you, seriously, choose YOUR fave).

unique of the week

last year wasn't a highlight in e's educational experience. she did a great job and loved learning but it sort of lacked some of the things that tingle my teacher soul. if you recall, i wrote about one them way back when from the preschool days and i still think about that experience years later. i longed for something similar last year and kept hoping it would come but it never really did. not in the same way. not with the same excitement.

don't get me wrong, e thrived in kindergarten. and while her teacher didn't do the things that make my heart sing, she was a good fit for e at the time. but i would be lying if i didn't say that i was praying for a different kind of teacher this year. i hoped my e would get someone that went the distance and poured her heart into her classroom.

at back to school night this year, i had high hopes. the presentation of the curriculum and classroom environment was dead on in its alignment for what i think is "best practice". as a former teacher myself, i have expectations. sometimes my expectations are too high, but this teacher seemed to hit that target. i went home excited and hopeful. i want e to love school, to reach her amazing potential, and to excel in an innovative environment.

this week (and at other times so far this year), i've seen that beginning to evolve. i love it!

each kid gets assigned the role of "unique of the week" at different times throughout the year. this week was e's turn. she came home last week with a blank poster that she was to complete. she was also tasked with filling the estimation jar with an item of her choosing. lastly, she was tasked with choosing 4 things to share with the class that are important/special to her.

filling out the poster was so much fun. over the course of a couple days, e and i went to work. we colored, brainstormed, and completed the above items. on sunday night, she did a run through of her presentation for her dad and i. it was adorable!

on monday, she skipped off to her class with her poster under her arm and her items tucked safely in her backpack. she was so excited.

she made her presentation to the class. then she showed off her webkinz dog, her photograph of her bff from chicago at the american girl cafe, told the story of her trip to niagara falls (sharing her wooden maid of the mist boat), and held up the first chapter book that she read all by herself (meet kit from the american girl series). she delighted in knowing the number of barbie shoes that she had deposited into the estimation jar and loved watching her peers make guesses at the magic number (all the while holding in that secret).

then, her classmates got to ask her questions. they asked her about her favorite games, her favorite fish, favorite bird... you know, typical hot topics in the life of a first grader. while she answered, her teacher created a poster all about ellie. while writing on the big poster paper, she modeled proper sentence writing- capitalization, spelling, punctuation etc.



later this week, all of the kids will create a page about ellie. they will draw a picture using ideas from her posters and then copy three sentences to tell about her. this will be compiled into a book that will return home for e (and her momma) to cherish for years to come.

e will remember this for years to come. her momma will, too.

i think it's going to be a good year.

p-nut

how did this girl

turn into THIS girl?

nothing to report, just that my little p-nut it getting too big too fast!

my own little angelina

while e has been off at school, my little d has been having some adventures of her own. she has begun her first independent class- ballet. i wish i could tell you how much i have loved every minute of watching her dance, but the truth is that i've missed lots of minutes. p is trying to get herself onto that dance floor and momma's been playing a lot of defense.

but here are some glimpses of what i've seen:

a pensive

determined

decorated

ballerina.

scriptless

a while back, my friend leslie blogged about what you can learn about a person from looking into their ice box (and some other exciting news). i was intrigued. so much so, that i took my own photo of my ice box and shared it with you. i was looking at my nightstand this week, and had similar thoughts. what does this little space, the last space i am in each day before retiring to sleep, say about me?

i'll let you come to that conclusion on your own. i'm curious if it is accurate or if it is more of a little snapshot of the "me" that i think i am.

but thinking about all of this made me want to see a whole lot of people's bed side tables. i think it would be interesting. i can just imagine that my friend jen would have a burp cloth laying next to hers and that my friend amy might have some cool graphic designs she's working on. i'm thinking that jodi's would contain some detailed documents about the layout she's working on for her new business and that Camia might have a stack of poetry journals. i'm pretty sure holly has kid's books on hers (she's a family bed sort of momma) and that a few of my friends might have some saltines by their bedside (not naming names here as they might not want their big reveal to be via t's blog post). anyway, as i said, i think it would be interesting.

if you care to share, i'd love to see.

the thing that is fresh on my mind from my own bedside table is the book that i just finished. it's titled scriptless. it takes me back to the summer before i made the big switch from Southerner to midwesterner. scott was doing a summer internship in chicago and every couple of weeks i would make a visit.

during the days he would work and i would wander around this amazing city (it was summer, so that word fits... not sure i would use the same adjective if i had been visiting in the winter). i took in the art museum and the lakefront, michigan avenue and the stores on armitage. but in the evenings, scott would always plan these fabulous date nights.

my favorite date was to second city. second city is where improv comedy was born (i don't really know that, but i'm declaring it as fact). it is where many of the saturday night live greats began. chris farley, tim meadows, tina fay, and adam sandler all did time here and that's just a few of many. it was hysterical! seriously, it is fall off your chair, don't take a drink or you might snort, go to the bathroom before the show begins or you might pee a little... funny!

after our first date there, i was hooked. we went back many times over our 8 years in chicago and each time was just as good (if not better) than the last. we also took in lots of other improv offspring from around the city. we went to the improv olympics, comedy sportz, and a show or two at the annoyance theatre. my husband is a good man- he's less of an improv fan than i am but he likes to indulge me. all of that to say- i love improv!

fast forward to this spring. i met a girl named andrea. there were about 8 people sitting around a table and we were giving the super condensed version of our lives. the girl was funny. she was talking really fast (which she doesn't normally do, but on this night, she did). in between two sentences, i thought she said she was a former cast member from second city las vegas. but then she went on to talk about other elements of her life. i wasn't sure i had heard her correctly, but did i mention she was really funny? it could have been true, but i wasn't i sure.

a few months into our friendship, andrea revealed to me that she was working on a book. i thought that was pretty cool. when we began to discuss the topic- she told me that it was about her time with second city and what that time speaks to her about a relationship with God. it was a "you had me at hello" moment. i had no idea how that book would unfold, but i was certain that i wanted to read it.

i finished the book today. i promise you, i'll be thinking about its contents for weeks and weeks. it's funny. it reveals a great deal about the behind the scenes in the life of improv. it challenged me in the way that i approach my relationship inwardly with God and how that relationship is manifested through my life. you should read it. it does not disappoint.