Sometimes

As a novice cake decorator, sometimes your cakes turn out pretty well.

 Noah's castle birthday cake

Jane's princess birthday cake

And other times they don't.

 Tiered wedding cake I was supposed to make for my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary

Ha ha!  Well, you can't win them all.

Honestly, I can't stop laughing every time I look at this picture.  It's just such a complete and total disaster!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

So it's several weeks past Easter, and we still have a couple of bags of Easter chocolate lying around.  For the sake of my diet, I've got to get all this chocolate out of the house.  So last night, I searched online for a muffin recipe I could throw a bunch of chocolate eggs into, and after a little tweaking of this one, I got what I wanted.  The recipe says it makes 18 muffins, but I made mini muffins and got about 40 of them.  Many happy chocolatey bites for my little family.  So here you go, folks.  A semi-healthy muffin, for your enjoyment.

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Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

1-2/3 cups rolled oats
2/3 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons flaxseed meal
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1-1/2 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. canola oil
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips or pieces

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Prepare muffin pan with spray or muffin cups.

Place oats in a food processor; pulse 5-6 times until oats resemble coarse meal.  Add dry ingredients (flours through salt) to a bowl with the oatmeal.  Stir to combine and make a well in the middle.  Combine buttermilk, oil, and eggs and pour into the bowl with the dry ingredients.  Stir until just moist.  Stir in chocolate pieces.  Spoon batter into muffin tins and bake for 10 minutes for mini muffins or 20 minutes for regular muffins.  Muffins are done when they spring back slightly when touched lightly in the center.

Enjoy!

A Wee Bit of Catching Up to Do

So I have a wee bit of catching up to do on the blog, eh?  Just a tad.  I had three blog posts last month.  Three.  The lowest monthly number ever.  Oh well.  Life is busy!  And I've been busy living it rather than writing about it!

I'll try to write individual posts about bigger events like Jane's birthday, but for now, here are a few random pics from the last little while.

For Valentine's Day, I made these cute little lavender filled sachets/ornaments.  I think they turned out so sweet.

By the way, I got the idea and the how-to from Pippa Middleton's book, Celebrate, which I would recommend.  It's an event planning book, organized by season, and I really like it.  When I opened it up, I expected that she would be trying to be the British Martha Stewart, but, actually, her ideas are far less fussy.  There's nothing in there like a craft that will take me an entire weekend and make my fingertips sore, for example. :)  But everything is still classy, sweet, fun, and thoughtful.

This is my Janey Beth after a party at Mother's Day Out.  My happy girl. :)

Jane and her friend, Elizabeth, having a little play date at our house.  In their laps: Jane has Pink Rosie, and Elizabeth has Pink Rosie's friend, Banana Pink Rosie. :)

I ran across this handsome guy at a lovely garden store I just discovered.  I want him.  But I have no place to put him. I'm tempted to buy him and save him to put out in my cottage garden I dream of having one day.

That's it for today, friends!  More later.

This and That

• I was feeling pretty annoyed that this one woman I follow on Pinterest has posted about 100 pictures of stuffed bunnies over the last week, flooding my "home" page, until I took a step back and realized how funny and absurd that really is.
• Noah's gymnastics classes are going well.  He definitely gets a lot of energy out in 45 minutes!  Today, I was glad he got all his roaring out while he was there.  :)  He's learning to do a cartwheel, but so far, all he does is put his hands down on the ground and, instead of his feet going over his head, they spin around from one side to the other.  So funny!  I wonder if, in his head, he sees himself doing something different.
• Janey still loves ballet.  She asks me almost every day if today is Monday.  I have to say, she is one of the most coordinated in her class.
• Clara's giving kisses now.  Big, sloppy, wet baby kisses.  It's so sweet!  She grabs your face with both hands, pulls you in, and basically sucks on your chin or your cheek.  It only sounds gross if you're not her parent. :)
• We have a lot of Easter chocolate around here. A lot. 
• Noah: "Why is it called Sin City? Is there a lot of sin there?" "Um, well, yes." "Oh.  That's not good."
• For some reason, Jane pronounces the "ed" on the end of all past tense verbs.  Like "I brush-ed my hair," and "I fall-ed!"
• By the time 8:00 rolls around every night and the kids are on their way to bed, I am too brain dead to blog.  It is now 8:21.  Good night.

For Easter: Resurrection Rolls

Here's a sweet Easter recipe that you moms out there may have seen before: resurrection rolls.

It's used as an illustration for preschoolers about how Jesus was put into the tomb and how it was empty on Easter morning.  Basically, it's just a marshmallow wrapped in a crescent roll, and when you bake it, the marshmallow melts, creating an empty space in the middle, just like the empty tomb.  It can really elicit a "wow" reaction in some kids, and besides that, it's delicious!

On Saturday night, we'll assemble the rolls, and I'll bake them for breakfast on Easter Sunday morning, the day that Jesus rose from the dead!  (Hopefully the overnight rest won't affect anything.)  And here's a tip: baking them in a muffin tin helps the rolls stay together.  Just grease it really well.

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Resurrection Rolls

1 package of 8 Pillsbury crescent rolls
8 large marshmallows
1/2 cup melted butter, for dipping
cinnamon and sugar

Preheat the oven according to package instructions.  Unroll the crescent rolls.  Place each marshmallow in the wide end of each triangle.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.  Roll the crescent around the marshmallow, sealing it off as well as you can.  Dip the roll in butter, then roll it in more sugar and cinnamon.  Bake according to package instructions.

Happy Easter!

What's Been Keeping Me

So several things have kept me from the blog for three weeks.  Here's a short list:

• Pinterest.  I knew it'd be a black hole for my time and had stayed away for a year or two despite friends encouraging me to get with it already, but I finally caved and have spent quite a few hours pinning craft ideas, crochet patterns, dream house ideas, etc.
• Cleaning out the garage, which happened this weekend.  Our garage was a disaster.  Imagine a disaster of a garage and multiply by a disaster factor of about 7.  We had unopened boxes from our move a year and a half ago, scattered tools and gardening supplies, about 50 cans of paint, dirt and leaves, old leftover supplies from our renovations (think stacks of wood with nails sticking out of them and boxes of cracked tile), etc.  It was truly awful, not to mention hazardous.  My hero of a husband cleaned it out and organized it this weekend, though, and after many hours of work and a trip to the dump, it is much, much better.  Like a new place entirely.  And, bonus!  We found a bunch of stuff we forgot we  had!  And the boxes of toys we opened were completely new to Jane and, therefore, total novelties.
• Nathan's travel.  He was gone for work for about ten days, first in Calgary, then in Boston (sorry, Boston friends--he would have loved to have gotten together with you, but the trip was quite short and he didn't have any free time).  And for at least a couple of weeks before he left, he was working every day in the evenings in preparation for these trips, so he was a little MIA even when he wasn't out of town.  Also, when he's out of town, it becomes even more clear that three kids is A LOT of work, especially when you don't have that extra pair of helping hands at the end of the day.  So by the time everyone was in bed in the evenings, I was too mentally exhausted to blog.
• Nathan took our laptop on his trips, which meant that posting pictures involved extra trouble, and I wasn't up for it. [see point above]
• I've been crocheting Jane's flower blanket, but, as I think I've mentioned, I've been a little drained in the evenings, and I haven't gotten as far as I would have liked.
• Noah got really sick this weekend.  He had a stomach bug or food poisoning, and he couldn't even keep water down for about 24 hours, poor baby.  He is still recovering, and I don't think he's up for a full day of school tomorrow, so I'll probably keep him home for one more day, lucky dog.  He made it clear that this is okay with him as long as he does not miss his book party on Wednesday, okay???
• Jane was randomly sick last week.  She threw up twice with only slight other symptoms, but it was enough to keep us home for about three days and thwart all our other plans, just in case.
• We had our kitchen and the odds and ends in our living room painted, F.I.N.A.L.L.Y.  The bits of painting that remained had disturbed my peace for long enough.  But clearly, not enough to make me pull out a paint brush and sand paper (Nathan, either), so we finally decided to call in a professional. At this point, the only things left to do in our house are updating fixtures and curtains, painting a few rooms, and renovating the upstairs bathroom.  Oh, the upstairs bathroom.  {Sigh.}  That is a conversation for another day.
• I read The Great Gatsby for book club.  The discussion meeting is this week, and it is going to be super fun, because the husbands are invited, and the couple who is hosting is going to have a little Gatsby-esque cocktail party.  Okay, so it won't be all that Gatsby-esque, as it will be a much quieter affair, I'm sure, but they will be serving cocktails. :)  And I think it'll be fun to see what a book discussion is like with the guys.  They'll mix things up, I'm sure.
• Jane turned three!  Pictures to come.  And Clara turned 6 months!  I'll post about that, too.

Later, peeps.  It's bed time.

Clara's New Stats

Clara had her 6 month well visit the other day.  Here are her new stats:

Height: 27.25" - 92nd percentile
Weight: 16 lbs, 3 oz. - 49th percentile
Head Circumference: 16.75" - 57th percentile

Holding steady as a tall girl!