So… here is what we did to the remnants of my fail cake.

Now I’ll continue the tale of the Happy Birthday Cake! We sliced, layered and frosted up a storm!

The “7″ minute frosting turned into, 40 min frosting but it was peppermint goodness in the end.  I find that it helps to have the inspiration handy when tackling a project like this!

Happy Birthday Successs! We had a pirate potluck party and 16 people attempted to finish off this delicious cake! No luck at all…. we still had half a cake this morning… But won’t have it for to much longer!

Fail cake. Words that I don’t like to put together, but when you have three extra boys in the house, it’s not as bad as it could be!

I’m making Devil’s Food Layer Cake with Peppermint Frosting  from Bon Appetit for Colton’s Birthday Cake this year. He LOVES chocolate & LOVES Mint, so when I saw it on the cover of an Old Bon Appetit magazine, I knew it was meant to be!

The first round was not to successful.  When removing the cake from it’s cake pan… it fell apart… tears…. sadness… and henceforth fail cake. Which brings me to an important note, always cake’s a day in advance (so you have time to recover your losses! So, last night, I made another batch of  the Devil’s food cake!

Success!

Today, I’ll finish up with the layers of bittersweet chocolate ganache and white chocolate peppermint cream, and top it off with Peppermint icing!

Wish me luck!

When we moved into our house, I stashed my giant bead box of glory under the bed in our guest room.

There is has sat.

Waiting patiently.

Almost a whole year has gone by since I tucked it away so when I pulled it out this weekend, the beads quivered with excitement and glittery glory (slight exaggerated). I received a lanyard request from one of my co-workers, so lanyard away I went! After a fun stop at my favorite bead store, I lanyard up a small storm this weekend (storm included bead hurricanes and rainfall).

The request was for 3 lanyards, Blue, Green & Silver! Blue’s above, Green below, and silver on it’s way!

Now that I’ve got my head in the beads, a fully crafted Christmas is feeling a bit more possible!

The painting is done!

We peeled off the tape, packed away the spackel, and have retired the brushes and paint back to the garage! With a few extra minutes here & there, moving furniture and decorating the room, I’m happy to say we’re finished.

As you can see, we are all (including Java (the dog)) enjoying the fun new colorful room!

For decoration, I pulled the Birthday Flags out of the garage and re-painted an old shelf!

Our total costs for renovation were $50 for paint & paint supplies, and $24 dollars for baskets to store toys & diapers. Not to shabby!

So, I know it’s been a couple weeks since Halloween, but our digital cameras pooped out on Halloween, so we weren’t able to fully document the Spider Baby & Mama Web. We did enjoy the Annual Ashland Halloween Parade, and heard many a comment about our Spider Duo Costumes.

The Spider: We embellished Martha’s Spider Costume. I crocheted a simple black hat, and put some tassels on (to tie under the neck, since the wee babe is keen on pulling off hats). Then we hot glued 8 big googlie eyes onto the hat.

The way the spiderbody (legs and poofy body) attached to the baby was also pretty awkward, so instead of the belt attachment, I safety pinned the legs (decreased them to 6, because 8 we’re way to much weight for the babe)  to a black hoodie. Wala, she could easily walk and carry the weight. With the hoodie she also stayed extra warm!

The Web: For this costume, we used my mom’s wedding dress (thanks mom!), as the skirt. My sister-in-law hand tied the web onto the dress (after safety pinning the main threads to the inside of the dress, which is the stage the dress was in when I took this picture), at the bottom of the bodice.

Once the web was all tied together, I added a black little cardigan and was off! When Halloween was over the dress was un-safetypinned and looked like a wedding dress again (since we didn’t use the glue as recommended by Martha). The web did get tangled a big, and since I’m a big klutz, I ripped the last bottom layer of webbing off, as I walked out the front door on the way to the parade!

DOH!

Here is us at the parade, I’m not sure if I mentioned, but we only had a film camera, and this is the only shot of us in our Spider Outfits! As you can see, Etta wouldn’t have been a spider long without those tassels!

5:00am Alarm goes off, hit snooze

5:10am Alarm goes off, hit snooze

5:20am Alarm goes off, get out of bed and ready for work a.k.a. make coffee

5:45am Kiss the babe & hubby and leave the house to go to work, hopefully have my lunch & coffee ready to go

6:00am Arrive at work, it’s cold here, the heat doesn’t turn on till 7am, keep layers on, drink coffee, oh yea… catch up on my email

7:00am First conference call, hopefully have breakfast or snack before the call!

9:00am Everyone else starts to show up at work, I greet them with a smile, and ask “where have you been sleephead” or “how nice of you to join us”, they reply to me around 1:30pm, “where you off to, slacker”

10:00am snack time, maybe more coffee…. walk around & stretch, maybe socialize, work some more

11:30am Snack time again, maybe eat my lunch… make everyone else jealous of the yummy smells

12:00pm Baby delivery! Not all days, but some days, she visits, we chat, nurse, hang out for a while

1:30pm Do my work dishes, clean up my desk for tomorrow morning (I’m notorious for spilling coffee all over everything especially in the morning, so, if it’s a clean desk, it’s easier to save important things from the ever invasive coffee spill

1:45pm Head home to relieve the grandma of duty, commuting is fun (more fun when I can ride my bike, but it’s WAY TO COLD for that now)

2:00pm Home, Grandma Allen heads off to work/home, we nurse, play, nap, blog, walk, chat, shop, climb, hike, clean, sweep, laundry, roam, sing, dance and wash.

5:00pm Papa comes home from work (YAY), more time for chores and fun,  maybe even a shower or hot tub soak

5:30pm We start to make some tasty dinner

6:30pm Eat the tasty dinner and wash up

7:00pm Play a little, read a book (baby book) and then start to get ready for bed

7:30pm Bed time, brush the baby teeth, and off to snoozyland

8:00pm If we’re lucky mama get’s up and hangs out with papa (grown up time)

8:45pm Mama bed time

When we found out we were pregnant people wanted to know a couple things. 1) Sex 2)When we were due 3)What color were we going to paint the nursery?

We didn’t know the answer to 1, Election Day was 2, and PAINT? Who paints a nursery these days? Let alone, pick out the colors in advance, a baby can’t even see like us grown ups for weeks…. We laughed at 3 the most(even more so, cause it made it to the top 3!).

Now, fast forward, a year or so later, and the kid is finaly getting her own room. And paint!? Why yes, we suddenly do care, it’s amazing what a little time can do. She’s gonna have her own room (My crafty bits and I have been moved to the garage), she’s gonna need some color!

Time was spent in the paint store stealing samples,  then we had some discussions about color,  finally I snuck back to the paint store and bought my three favorites (sorry papa)!

Aquarian Sky (light blue).

Cactus Dahlia (sour pink).

Sea King (tealy blue).

I could tell you how I feel about paint names and their absurdity, but I’ll save it for later.

Our “map” to paint, the boys (my husband and his brother) figured out the ratio’s, borrowed a giant ruler (taller than me), and drew the painting lines on the walls  for me to follow up with tape & actual paint!

Pre-Paint, the room is preped!

The first two coats are on! One more to go…. will post that as soon! I hope!

So many leaves!!!

We had our first freeze (I actually had to scrape ICE), the night before last, and now all our the trees are dropping their leaves. Whabam (the sound of leaves dropping…. maybe a little more violent sounding than I intended, Whabam).

Etta thinks it’s pretty neat!

When Halloween’s over, Christmas begins, this weekend our local Goodwill Thrift Stores host their annual  Holiday Extravaganza. Each store own day special day to put out all their holiday goods, and the thrifters just go crazy!

Here’s what I picked up!

I just can resist 1)pink ornaments 2) young martha books and 3)gnomes/elfs/whatever those two cuties are!

I’ve also been keeping a look out for a little chair for our babe, today I hit the jackpot! A chair that’s also a  stepladder, made of wood  and  ORANGE!

The sweet lady who sold us the stool, also had a sister named Etta! So, we’ll just chalk it up to fate.

One year, exactly (well yesterday at 3:36pm).

When one became two.

When two were excited, exhausted, amazed, and shocked at the beauty of one.

One little baby who is now one year old.

Happy Birthday Etta!

You are the world to us two!