evicted

This, our first day of sunshine and no rain in about a billion years, meant that some outside maintenance needed to happen - a good portion of that maintenance requiring access to this little pumpkin's room. So she was kicked out and forced to nap in the kitchen amidst the pumpkin cooking, ginger grating, crust making madness that was our pre-Halloween activity. The pies were our admission to a very fun gathering of trick-or-treaters - that, and a cute baby in a hot dog costume. Pics of the costumes tomorrow. Time to take advantage of daylight savings time. And just in time... the whole house slept until NINE O'CLOCK a.m. this morning, and while absolutely delightful on all fronts for a Saturday morning, this household sleepiness has not been good for the whole getting-to-school-and-work-on-time bunch - at least not to work on time with hair brushed and some sort of obvious grooming having taken place.

But still, NINE O'CLOCK, and with two children in the house. That's what I like to call "The First Gift of Halloween". Hope yours was spooktacular.

the big wall, part one

Magnetic paint, first coat. We needed to get this done so we have enough time to make our Christmas presents for the girls - lots of crazy custom magnets. I'm thinking mix and match heads and bodies of friends and family, cars (of course) and enough stuff to make towns and roads and parking lots, and maybe some monsters and robot pieces. We haven't decided whether we're going to put white back over this wall, or paint something else over the magnetic primer. Still waiting for inspiration to strike. And a blank canvas is sometimes the best sort of inspiration.

whirlwind, and a broken rule

It's amazing how three kids can turn a perfectly neat room into this in less than five minutes. And don't get me wrong - I don't consider this mess at all. Some serious paper construction, a Playmobil hospital emergency, a Lego village and an enormous amount of books searched through for just the right one is the best kind of playdate of all. I picked up two extra kids while their dad and E's helped transport the head of the snake sculpture (remember that from a few posts back?) over to the school for the Spooky Sock Hop tomorrow night. They are going to finish the mosaics at the event and then install it soon in the play yard. The rain was pouring down, so I certainly had the much better end of the deal listening to the sounds of three really creative kids and the lack of sound of one really sleepy baby upstairs for the evening. So that's the whirlwind, here's the broken rule:

Bumper pads are sold with almost every bedding set despite the fact that they really aren't the safest thing to have in a crib. You are supposed to remove them once your kid gets mobile enough to smoosh their face over into it for the duration of the evening. But we did that, and the result was a kid who was mobile enough to promptly get her leg stuck through the slats and scream bloody murder when she tried to extract those plump little thighs by kicking madly at them. So we lay her down in the middle of the bed each night and she looks up at us with this sleepy little smile, turns her head to the side and makes a few jabs at her mouth with her thumb, connecting finally around the fifth or sixth try. Her eyes close, the thumb moves in and out, first with purpose, then at a rhythmic pace, and after about thirty seconds her body relaxes and it plops out on the mattress beside her. Everything in her body language says "I'm spent, and good night". Not another peep is heard, not a rustle or a grunt over the monitor for the rest of the evening. Tonight the kids screamed, the vacuum ran, the dryer revved up for its loudest spin cycle, and I went in and out of the room half a dozen times with folded laundry or new paper wrapped canisters and each time I entered the room she was absolutely still. But she was also the teeny-tiniest bit closer to the edge. By the last visit she was there - in her spot - with thumb and fist and face pushed up against it, snug as a bug, settled in for the night.

balance

Still trying to find it.

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Twenty-three days into working and I'm still trying to find the right balance between work and family and side tasks, exercise, baking, napping and reading. I probably should have thrown personal grooming into the mix there, but I'm trying to set a world record for longest period of time between haircuts, and I'm so very close.

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So I'm sorry the posts have been light, but the days are both long and short - long on the to-do lists, short on the time and energy and desire. But never short on the kisses for and from my three favorite people. Soon there will be plenty of pictures from the weekend of spooky events, but until then there's just this. Juggling, tinkering, budgeting, success and mistakes, with a pinch of guilt thrown in for taste.

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Thinking of all the rest of you out there doing the same.

quicker hand-me-downs

Someone got impatient with the time that it took for me to get her clean pj's out of the dryer tonight. When I got upstairs she had hijacked her sister's. Those are some serious cuffs.

whew...that's a lot of cupcakes

The last few days have been a complete whirlwind and it's 4:30 in the afternoon on Saturday and I'm just starting to catch my breath. The firm that I work for (and have just returned to after maternity leave) is celebrating its five year anniversary, and the completion earlier this year of a new office building in a fully restored, beautiful old building. Last night we hosted an open house at the building, and everyone in our firm contributed an amazing amount of work towards the event from the invitation designing and visual media and music to the absolutely incredible spread of food and drink. Even E donated her pumpkin which held open the front door so that the smell of the fire pit burning at the entrance wafted into the space. It was a really crisp fall evening and everyone seemed to enjoy the party immensely. I offered to do desserts and so much of my week this week was devoted to shopping and then testing and then baking and then icing and then transporting three trunk loads of these tiny little goodies. Five hundred, give or take a few eaten along the way. All the recipes were from one of my favorite blogs Cupcake Bakeshop, which was on hiatus for awhile but is back in business. The cupcakes were baked in Wilton's Nut and Party mini cups, which I think look great and also allow the baking of forty at a time on a large cookie sheet.

I tested each recipe with three cups filled at different heights - 1/2, 2/3 and 3/4 to see which would rise the highest without overflow. I made the batters and then scooped it into pastry bags and piped them into the cups, which was certainly a time saver - hand scooping would have been an absolute bear. I made seven different types of cupcakes, and each recipe made between sixty and eighty cupcakes.

Wednesday night I cleaned the kitchen, organized the ingredients into stations and reviewed the recipes, plotting out my Thursday. The next morning I dropped the girls off at their schools, and went back home to "work", baking the entire day and into the night. I went to bed just before one a.m. and woke up before five to set out butter to soften for the frostings. The chocolate ganaches were made first because they sit for a couple of hours to thicken.

I piped those on, and took them into the office mid morning while the butters for the buttercream frostings came to room temperature. Back home again I made the buttercreams and piped those on, and made trip two. Last came the whipped cream and cream cheese frostings and I took those in and got ready for the party.

gingered carrots and spiced flour

piped chocolate chili ganache

sugared carrot sprinkles made by creating a syrup from water and sugar, cooking the julienned carrots in the syrup, draining and drying until hardened and then chopped up for garnish

in front and then clockwise, Chai Chocolate Cupcake with Chai Spiced Buttercream Frosting, Pumpkin Cupcake with Ginger Whipped Cream Frosting, Ginger Carrot Cupcakes with Pecans and Cream Cheese Frosting topped with Sugared Carrot Sprinkles, Pear Filled Chocolate Cupcakes with Vanilla Bean Buttercream Frosting

other flavors: Chili Chocolate Cupcakes with Chili Chocolate Ganache Frosting, Himalayn Gogi Berry Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Frosting and Himalayan Pink Salt Garnish, Ginger Cream filled Pumpkin Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache Frosting

Setting up the gorgeous spreads of cheeses, olives, crostini, multiple pate varieties, hams, salmon, spiced plums and handmade relishes and one of the cupcake tables below. All were eaten except for one tray which we packed into various pans and distributed to friends around the neighborhood this afternoon. We're cupcaked out (for now) and back to a real life that doesn't revolve around a 350 degree oven.

sunday afternoon in the garden

I went to the garden late on Sunday afternoon to get rid of a bad case of the grouchies. These had taken hold after a morning and afternoon of church and running around doing errands that had left me tired and annoyed (not the church part, just the running around part). I was really just irritated that the laundry and dish fairies had bypassed our house while we were gone, and the piles were all still there upon return. Who wants to switch out loads of lights when the light outside is so very warm and brilliant on the trees? So I stormed out and tried to return back an hour later with a better attitude. For the most part it worked, and the gift of a good fall walk should never be underestimated. Man, I love this garden.

i promise, this is the last one

Okay, now I really need to go to bed. But I knew I had a pouty lip one of E at the same age. See this one as well.

flash from the past

I have so many other things that I need to be doing, including sleeping, since I won't be doing much of that over the next few days. I'm baking a ridiculous amount of very tiny, very tricky little cupcakes for an open house for work on Friday - the kind of recipes that are ten word sentences - but I still can't wait to try them all. Pictures of the madness to follow, I promise. Anyway, where was I?

Oh, procrastination...

I realized as I was posting the last two times that the photos seemed really familiar. (This happens all the time, I tell you.) So back into the archives we go. See photos below of E - one dressed up and propped up against the same pillow as F, and the second is E in her lame first Halloween costume. See the previous two posts for comparisons. I remember dressing E in that for her first or second day at daycare, and about three seconds after I snapped the photo she spit up all over it.

One marked difference between the two (since they obviously look a lot alike) - much less spit up the second time around. I consider that a significant improvement.

this picture is to make up for the last one

Not a spot of relish on her.

"i exist solely for the purpose of my family's amusement"

Oh, dear one, you exist for so many more reasons than that one...but this costume was just too cute to pass up. And your big sister has never met a hot dog that she didn't like. This is actually the too-big hot dog. The first one was too small, the second too large - the third one (that I procured from a far flung suburban Target a thirty minute drive from our house just tonight) should fit just right.

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For E's first Halloween we just dressed her in a onesie with a pumpkin on it and called it an early night. But you have a big sister who's really into Halloween this year, so the pumpkin onesie wasn't cutting it. Please be patient with us. It takes so little to amuse us.

friday night studio

Last year, the kids at E's school visited the garden to look at these sculptures and then created some smaller versions of their own in their studio art class. Towards the end of the year the students voted on the one that they wanted to see built at a larger scale and installed in their own school garden and a serpent like sculpture was chosen out of the lot. The creative parents of one kindergartner have built the majority of the sculpture out of a steel frame and over forty bags of concrete so far - only the head remains to be done. And the families have been descending on their studio on Friday nights to work on the mosaic that wraps around the concrete piece. Buckets of tiles, glass, pennies and metallic pieces were there for the choosing - each person could fill their own container with their favorites and get down to the messy work of attaching them. In a few weeks the sculpture will be complete and (with the help of some really strong men and women) will be set in the garden for all to play on. It was a great way to kick off the weekend, and even the baby managed to stay up late (past six o'clock is late for her!) to watch the tiles go on. I'll post photos of the finished product when it reaches its final resting place.

cheeky little monkey

That monkey was giving her fits...

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This last week or so, after finally perfecting the thumb suck, F moved on to exploring everything with her hands. Depth perception is lagging a small step behind her urge to reach out and touch someone, or something, and it amuses us to no end to watch her try and reach for an object again and again, often coming just short of it and scrunching up her nose with the effort. The two handed grab is equally as amusing. Both hands come at the toy from each side, and when they miss they end up clasping one another, which is a delightful diversion in itself from the task at hand. This afternoon she kept trying for the monkey, batting and swatting at it, and occasionally getting an arm or a tail which she would hold fast to for awhile. Then the elephant would sneak into her peripheral vision (which seems to be expanding as well) and she'd eye it for awhile before returning her gaze on the monkey. I was taking this opportunity to fiddle around with my camera, and in the midst of trying to figure out a new step she started cracking up at the monkey. She had managed to wriggle around the mat until she was just under him, and he was resting on her cheek. I thought this look was classic - the start of the impish side that is beginning to emerge as she grows and changes.

contemplating

bird art for this wall...

The magnetic paint is now covered with the wall paint and it looks great, and still works. (Those are some magnets that E has been playing with on the wall.) Next up - filling the wall above with artwork and some paper birds. Still working on the collection - there are so many great things out there, and I've got a few tricks of my own up my sleeves...

fun weekend, act two

A little more soccer on a cool, sunny fall day, and a pint sized observer.

fun weekend, act one

We made up for the soggy Friday's change of plans on Saturday, and hit the orchards and pumpkin patches in the sunshine. We had to dodge a few mud puddles, but we still managed to haul in twenty pounds of apples and the most perfect pumpkin ever. I see carving in our near future.

E's grandparents came in for the weekend to see her play soccer and attend a grandparents coffee at her school Monday morning. She threw a little violin into the mix, so we pretty much just celebrated E all weekend. And the baby slept her way through most of the festivities and a second go 'round on the chocolate cake.

M's parents treated us to dinner and tickets to see Phantom of the Opera here in town on Saturday, so we left all of those unaccustomed to staying up past seven o'clock in the evening at home with Grandma and pretended like we could stay up past ten o'clock. Dinner was fantastic, and the show was great as well. M had never seen it - and I saw it seventeen years ago at the ripe old age of seventeen when I was in London - and just thinking back to that time was a real trip. (An age where I found it much easier to stay up late!)