Hoppy Easter !!

It has been a whirlwind month...busy with school functions and planning...playdates...fundraising for March of Dimes...cake pops, cake pops, cake pops...Earth Day fair at Mills College in Oaklandd (which is gorgeous and the people are super nice, we met a student that makes awesome jewelry using shrinky dinks)....spending a lot of time outdoors with my kiddos...quality time with my hubs....there are just never enough hours in the day, I swear. But I hear on discovery channel that the days will be longer eventually because of the earth slowing down or something...so maybe someday I will have an extra hour or two to get more done. Easter is almost here, I have a busy weekend with my kids and our family... Tomorrow is an egg hunt at the park which is orchestrated by the city, my middle son is more excited that they will be selling hotdogs than he is about the actual egg hunt (since last Saturday at his brothers elementary school he fell and skinned both knees during their egg hunt)... The boys saw the Easter bunny at bass pro shop last weekend, my youngest freaked out just like with Santa so I am in the picture. Good thing I was dressed nicely and actually did my hair that morning. Then I have to come home and make some deviled eggs and yams before heading to visit my dad (POP) at his rehab home (broke his hip a couple weeks ago) with all of the grandkids and my siblings so we can have Easter dinner in their living room area. Home in time for hubs to get home from work so we can dye all of the hardboiled eggs I made today. Come Sunday morning I should have everything ready for the boys Easter baskets and all of the plastic eggs filled in time for the bunny to hide. I bought plastic golden eggs for them to find with dollar bills in them. I think I am more excited for Sunday then they are...I love Easter...I love every holiday really, but it just seems so magical to do these things for my kids so they have something to believe in. It is so fun for me, I love being Santa on Christmas eve and putting everything out for them...I am looking forward to being the tooth fairy soon when my 5 year old loses his loose tooth. My kids even believe in leprechauns. This is why I had kids, I have looked forward to these events since I can remember. It is just so special for me. I hope they love it and remember these moments, if not I will have the pictures to show them. I hope everyone has a wonderful and blessed Easter weekend

Busy Busy Bee

It is that time of year...SPRING! My favorite!!! But with that comes more time spent outdoors and way less time crammed inside the house with the kids which means less time blogging, facebooking, card making and baking. So I have been neglecting this. The weather has been so nice for the past week. I also spent the weekend before my anniversary in Carmel with my husband, it was so beautiful and peaceful! Well April has made a quick start and it is full of activities and things needing to get done. My oldest started soccer yesterday which goes twice a week, my middle son starts soccer next week too...I have a cake pop order, bigger than my normal orders...cake pops to make for the earth fair on the 19th...oh and sampler village pops as well. I wish April would slow down a bit. So if you do not see me blogging much or facebooking a lot, you know why. I decided to move Freebie Friday to facebook, but no one seemed to want to participate. I want to know that people are actually paying attention to the site so I asked everyone to comment about one of my pictures and tell me which one they like the most. But no one participated in it. So for this month I am just going to take a break from Freebie Friday and get all of my orders ready to go. I bought a mold for Easter cake pops, I am going to make little bunny heads. Now taking orders for Easter :O)

I am neglecting my followers

Sorry have not posted in awhile. I feel like I have been super busy between school meetings and sick kids and cleaning...oh and internet issues. But I am back for today at least. I am leaving on a mini vacay with my hubs tomorrow for the weekend in beautiful Carmel California. It is supposed to rain which I am bummed about, but we will still make the best of it. Last week my sister and I went to the scrapbook expo and it was awesome. I was so excited and wished I could buy so many things. But a  lot of things are now on my wish list. It opened my eyes to so many ideas...I did take my camera, but a lot of places did not allow photos. So I only have a few.

 The lady at this booth was nice enough to show us how she made this paper flower. They are super easy and adorable.

 Making a glass pendant.

 This was so neat.

 My littlest man went with us and he was super good...eating a pbj

 One of the booths that actually allowed photos.

 This was at the brad and eyelet booth.

The eyes are eyelets..

 I want this desk someday...in white

 My dream workstation....so awesome.

 We did a make it and take it at this booth and I bought some tubes to play around with for favors.

Well that was my day last Friday. I braved the miserable cold and pouring rain and it took over an hour for my pants to dry from running inside from our far away parking spot. But it was so much fun.

It's a flavor revolution!!!

Happy Friday everyone!

While I want to get to what I came on here for, I first want to take a moment to reflect on the terrible tragedy going on in Japan right now. My heart goes out to everyone affected by the earthquake and tsunami! I cannot imagine the amount of fear, horror and loss so many people are going through right now. May God be with them in this terrible time.


So I am in the kitchen today, with my mini notebook computer...brainstorming and baking.  I have more than 68 cake pops to get ready...some of them are not due until middle  of the week so I am just getting my cakes baked and pops rolled so I can freeze them and dip them later in the week. Today marks the official start of spring break in my household, not that it really means much; except that my kids will drive me crazy for an extra four hours each day this coming week and lose structure in their routines. But for right now, my kids are still in their school day routine and taking a nap before we go out front to ride bikes and create noise and havoc on our neighborhood.

So I am announcing my experiment! I am going to try candy bar cake pops (maybe a butterfinger variety, snickers or something else), cookies n cream cake pops, (once I find the recipe) coconut chocolate cake pops (that in my vision taste like eating a mounds candy bar) and the flavor I will try today will be rocky road since I already bought the extra ingredients for that one. I also want to try cherry chip once I find a recipe for it and my own version of tiramisu once I find the ingredients I need to try that one. In addition to those flavors, I want to try something with caramel and maybe do a make your own flavor combo option.

Tell me what you think, do you have any flavor suggestions you would like to see?

It's that time again!

Welcome new followers! It is that time of the week again! Freebie Friday!! I have not heard from Starlette66 from last weeks win yet...I will choose a winner after 6pm today, so there is still time to tell your friends to follow me. I have a tall order this weekend! 68 cake pops to get done, just to go out to customers (and 30 of which are going to sampler village for March Yummilicious boxes). Then in addition to that I will be making some rocky road cake pops to allow my family to taste test for me, they are my guinea pigs. If they like it, it must be good since they all seem to be picky in one way or another. It appears to be shaping into a nice day outside today, so I know my kids will want to go to the park again after school...so it will be a long afternoon in the kitchen for me. But I look forward to it! I am also toying with the idea of cake pop of the month club, the idea has received some interest from recent customers...Just trying to work out the kinks in my head first. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, I will be out all day tomorrow with my kids at the annual St. Patrick's Day parade and festival in my hometown of Dublin and then dinner with family after. Hoping for a relaxing Sunday!!! Good luck in todays drawing!

Newness & Reflections

I just want to thank everyone that is a follower of my blog, it means a lot to me. I am still sick, I start to feel better then  do too much around the house and bam it hits me harder. Now all of the boys are coughing too which is no good. I have been slacking bad...I have not really worked on any cards, have only used my new gypsy once because frankly it intimidates me, I have been spending more time at the park with my kids this week, I spent an entire day cleaning to make up for all of my sleeping and downtime from being sick last week. So it is already almost Thursday and the week has not been much of an accomplishment, except for my kids. My oldest is in kindergarten, on Monday they sent them home with potatoes. Why you ask? They are potato babies for the week, the kids had to name them and decorate them. They must carry them around everywhere they go all week long, if they cannot take them somewhere they must find a babysitter. So his potato baby is Spongebob Potatohead. We decorated him on Monday afternoon...sadly in one day he has lost both hands, both feet and one tooth. My youngest tried to bite a chunk out of him and then threw him from the swing...and my oldest tried to make him the driver of his firetruck and it took five minutes of prying and pulling for my husband to get him out. So he is pretty bruised up already and it has been three days. He must journal his day with his baby every night and read his potato baby a story before bed time. I thought it would be neat, but my son is less than thrilled with it. The excitement wore off after the first night. It takes forever to journal because I must spell all of the words out for him...I cannot wait until he knows how to read!

Another new development is my oldest has a wiggly tooth...it kind of freaked me out when he told me. I feel like he  is still so young, a loose tooth already. I am not ready to be the tooth fairy too...it is a good thing he is a hard sleeper. I remember when I found my baby teeth in my dads drawer when I was probably 7 or 8 and I was puzzled how he got them from the tooth fairy...then I think my brother is the one that told me there was no such thing. I pride myself every year on trying to make my kids think there is an Easter Bunny and Santa. I go to great lengths to keep it real for them, it is fun for me...so now to add one more thing to the list. I am just not ready. But alas the tooth will come out, and I will keep it forever...add it with his baby book. Time just flies by so fast. In two months he will be graduating from kindergarten. I was at the park today, pushing my youngest on the swing, standing there watching all of these bigger kids running around playing freeze tag. It reminds me of how much fun it was to play as a kid..how carefree everything was..how simple things were entertainment. It made me realize, when I had my kids, I only imagined how they would be as babies. I never pictured them grown. I of course knew they would get bigger, but they amaze me everyday with the things they know and say, how grown they act sometimes. It just felt weird standing there seeing my oldest playing tag with his friends and realizing soon he will be going to school for a full day, he will be reading, learning to tie his shoes (hopefully sooner than later), spending the night at friends houses, wanting to hang out with friends after school, getting into trouble, eating more food than you can ever imagine one person could eat...all three boys will do these things and while they seem so young for now, before I know it BAM they will be teenagers. Makes me sad because I know I will look back on these days and miss them terribly...but in the moment they make me crazy. But for now I am just adjusting to the idea of my first born losing a tooth soon.

Outrageous

So I am still recovering from whatever bug I have had for over a week now...feeling good then feeling worse, it is a vicious cycle. Now I am addicted to words with friends on my android phone..a good game to play against other people when facebook has become boring. I was able to get some cards finished a few days ago, have a cake pop order I need to work on later  this week and another one for shamrocks next week. I loved getting all of the orders, but they have already tapered off which is a big bummer. I noticed when I left the house yesterday as I drove by the local gas stations...OUCH, seriously $3.49 was the cheapest I saw for one gallon of gas. My husband fills his tank at work every three days. I wont be able to take my boys anywhere with gas prices like this, we have been spending a lot of time at the park the past week (the non rainy days). This is ridiculous! How are people that were already struggling to get to work supposed to do it at this rate. Well I am happily allowing my husband to proceed with obtaining his motorcycle permit and then license. If prices continue to go up we will definitely need him to switch from his mustang to a more economic choice. California drivers are paying more per gallon of gas than any other state in the country...makes me miss Arizona prices. It is a good thing spring is headed our way so that the boys and I can walk to and from school and save our money. Hope everyone had a bearable Monday and that your week is pleasant.