Phineas and Ferb Cupcakes

Claire and Scott had their birthdays several months ago, but they thought it would be fun to have a swim party at my parents' pool. So we waited until the weather warmed up and had a belated birthday/"Welcome to Summer Vacation!" party the day after school let out.

And what better theme to celebrate summer vacation than Phineas and Ferb?

There's 104 86 days of summer vacation...

I used the same frozen buttercream transfer technique as I used on Kate's Hello Kitty cupcakes a couple years ago. So easy! Made the little buttercream stickers on wax paper ahead of time and kept them in the freezer. The day of, I frosted the cupcakes, my sister helped me roll the edges in sprinkles, then we stuck the buttercream stickers on them! Voila!

But honestly, the cupcakes were about it. We had the same CD of aquatic-themed music from Kate's swim party last year playing. We kept things low key. The kids had a blast swimming, so they didn't need much else.

Just to keep it real, the rest of the "decorating" was this table with a few wild sunflowers cut from my parents' property:

I Can Has Cheezburger Cake?

My best friend's son wanted a cheeseburger birthday cake.  When she called me up to see how hard I thought it would be, we both took a gander at Pinterest and then decided we could probably do it.

Yesterday I went over to her house and we had a go at it:

Our hamburger cake turned out even better than we expected!

Nailed it!

But like, for reals, not sarcastic.

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If you want more details on how we made it, you can check out my friends' blog post:

http://geekilyeverafter.blogspot.com/2013/06/do-you-want-fries-with-that.html

Hair At Last!

Kate had her last day of preschool and I took a few pictures of her.  As I was looking at the pictures, I was able to take a step back and realize that she has long curly hair now!

When did that happen?  Just 2 years ago we were here:

At the time, Kate's hair seemed pretty straight and thin and it was growing SO SLOW!!!  I guess I was comparing Kate's hair to the way Claire's was at the same age.

I tried to find a photo of Claire at almost 4 years old to compare to, but I didn't have much.  I had to get creative to make it "bloggable," sorry.  This is a photo of Claire's hair at almost the exact same age as Kate is now:

Claire's hair:  Longer, thicker, and curlier than Kate. 

Still, while it's not quite Claire's hair, it feels like all of the sudden I've woken up to discover that  Kate's hair has really come into it's own.

(And thank goodness, because Kate is the one who actually requests that I do fun styles like this heart with her hair sometimes!)

Photography Challenge Day #21 - Faceless Self-Portrait

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I want to force myself to practice taking photos a little more, so I'll be posting for this 30 Day Photography Challenge even though the "official" challenge is over.  However, posts are definitely not daily.

My rules for my self are:
1 - Take everything in manual mode
2 - No post-processing, only SOOC

Goodbye Teaching Preschool

Next year, I'm putting Kate in a paid preschool program.

I hate, hate, hate to spend the money, but after 6 years of helping to host/teach a preschool co-op/swap/whatever-you-want-to-call-it, I'm done.  I've earned my frugality badge and now I think I deserve to just throw money at this problem.

I've taught two years with Claire, three years with Scott (he did one when he was 2 yrs old), and a year with Kate.  Every time I have to teach, it ruins my week.  It arguably ruins the week before because I dread it so much and start obsessively making sure I have all the craft supplies and won't be forced to squeeze in a last minute shopping trip.  It also arguably ruins the week after because my house and I have to recover from it.  So you know, ruining 3 weeks every time I teach is not the greatest.

I don't know why, but I just struggle with teaching.  Nay, I loathe it deep in my soul.  It's not that the kids I've had to work with weren't fabulous children.  It's just that at the end of the day, they're small children.  It can only be so good.  I love them, really I do.  But they're a little slow on the uptake when it comes to things like algebra and physics.  So they're a little outside my skill set.  

I have never been good, nor will I ever be good, at making sock puppets talk.

I'm only teaching one more day after today.  I'm in the home stretch now.  But because the end is in sight, it's been even HARDER. The kids are still sweet.  I need to tell them, "It's not you, it's me."

And thank goodness these cute kids know how to butter me up.  They all collected these really pretty weeds from my back yard for me!

Okay, so maybe having them all over is kinda fun sometimes ;)