141/365: Dragonfly

140/365: Cupcake Trial 1

I baked a trial run of cupcakes for Mika's party, since I wanted to make sure I can make them look like cups with ice cream.

The cupcake cups are from Bake It Pretty and they work amazingly well; they are self- standing so you just fill them and line them up on a cookie sheet.

I overfilled them though, they are taller than the regular wrapers so I thought I should fill them up more but.... they really need to be filled half way. That's what the trial runs are for, right? :)

The dough is the lemon cake from the book Confetti Cakes for Kids by Elisa Strauss and it is absolutely brilliant. It is extremely light and fluffy (uses only egg whites) although I will double the lemon zest and juice, since I want it to have even more lemony flavor... I will also probably reduce the amount of sugar in the dough, since the frosting is basically pure sugar...

139/365

Father's Day Card

The kids both put their hand prints in the card, one on each side: Mika on the left and Jack on the right.

Across the top we wrote:

Dear Dad we love you because, and then the kids came up with reasons why. Mika's reasons were written on the side with her hand:

- you tickle me
- make me laugh
- hold me up high

- play with me in the sand

- build lego castles with me

... and Jack's on the side with his hand:

- you help me with Pokemon

- you play video games with me

- you protect me

- you teach me things I need to know

- you tickle me; help me laugh

For the outside I cut out three circles for the letters DAD, and then we used the cutouts for 3 coupons. The coupons are for:
- a kiss
- pick a movie for movie night
- add a $100 to a Dream PC fund

I hope he likes it :)

138/365: Mother Nature kicks ass...

Just look at those colors!

I will have to take a break from this project, I will still post photos of interesting things I notice around me, but there is so much going on I simply don't have the time to post daily photos.

Right now on our to do list: clean up around the shed (at least a weekend), wrap up Mika's birthaday party, paint two walls in the house (another weekend), clean up Jack's room before he comes home for the summer (one day), back to school shopping, get the business off the ground....

137/365

June 9th: Manizotti for dinner... I followed the recipe from the box with a couple of changes, the family enjoyed. It's pretty much pasta filled with mushroom and green onions (original recipe called for spinach) in a ton of ricotta cheese.

136/365

June 7th: The little hiatus was due to me not having the camera since David and Jack took it with them to the Pokemon tournament. I'm afraid I don't have much today, I'm exhausted and ready to start winding down so just a shot of Mika's hopscotch...

135/365: Cupcake toppers

June 2nd: Here we go! Mika's birthday party is starting to come together, we have the invitations and most of the paper items designed. These will be the cupcake toppers...

In other news, we came home today to the table fully set and dinner made... all by Jack :) Granted, he made scrambled eggs (6) so some additions had to be made in order to feed us... but still, the kid made dinner :D

134/365: Oh ladybug, oh ladybug

June 1st: I originally wanted to capture the new shoots of this palm tree when I noticed the ladybugs...