THE QUEEN OF QUIRK

let the baking begin

Tomorrow all 3 girlies have Thanksgiving feasts at school and it's gotten to the point where I cannot volunteer for one class without getting some pretty pouty sulks from the other two. So, when I volunteered to make my awesome pumpkin spice cake for one class I knew I was going to end up making 3.

Thank goodness I love baking! :)

I was feeling a little overwhelmed but in the end it all came together pretty well. I have enough pumpkin puree in my pantry to crank out quite a few treats, though, now. I can't remember the last time I purchased 5 cans of the stuff!

I hope your Tuesday is fantastic and don't forget to stop by tomorrow to find out what's up for One Buck Wednesday in my shop! :)

monday, may day

Observed, that is. Today there is no school. It's a bank holiday in jolly old England. So, we're having a relaxing very productive day outside. The car is washed, vacuumed and de-funked. The lawn is mowed, grass clippings raked. Patio furniture scrubbed and de-bird pooped. Broke out the paddling pool for Noodle. She hated it, threw many fits and then we realized it was way past nap time. Colin even scrubbed a mysterious stain on the driveway. (It's still there, to his dismay.) Boy it's hot here today. And not just "hot for England" hot. It's pretty darn toasty. So, we're going to grill every thing in the house that can be grilled and then I'm gonna bake an apple pie. We don't really need a pie. We could just eat the cake I made yesterday. But pie, it is. Miss Mia has personally requested it.

Happy (observed) May Day, y'all.

bento babies

I'm trying out a new lunch style for the kidlets today. Trying to time myself and see how long this will take me in the morning. It went pretty well, I'd say. While the rice cooked, I chopped and steamed the other goodies, so it really only took 20 minutes.

I really want to be able to do this everyday, so I bought some cute goodies to help me make this more fun. Cute little rice molds and sweet little soy sauce bottles are always a nice way to start your day :)

You can buy the baking cups HERE. I purchased the rice mold and soy sauce bottles on ebay. So, today for lunch the kidlets had rice, soy sauce, steamed edamame, baby radishes, mini mozzarella, and whole wheat bread with apple butter. They were thrilled, to say the least. And it makes me feel good knowing that they won't have the same old, same old for lunch everyday. This blog is a great source of inspiration for me. :)

Oh! And here's a peek at my new hair!

This is about as wild as I get.  At least with my hair, anyway. ;)

That's about it for today. Lots of cleaning going on and laundry being done while trying to sneak in a bit of designing. :) I've got a super fab collab coming out soon. Can't wait to reveal it! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thursday! Ciao, all!

they call me thumper!

They don't really, but Thumper's about the cutest bunny in cartoon land, so he gets quoted today. :)

Well, the van details have all been worked out. Our order is processed and we'll have our new ride in 12 weeks. Yeah, that wasn't a typo. We're custom-ordering it from the States and it'll take that long for it to be ordered, built, driven to port, hauled across the ocean, driven to the nearest pick up station, brought up to UK specs and then registered and yada yada yada. Fun, huh? We could have had one of the many vans in stock, but 1) none of them were orange and 2) they all had TVs.

I'll prolly get labeled as a huge freak, but we specifically want a van with no TVs. We're not big TV people. We have so many distractions in our lives that we feel having TV, too, would just send us over the deep end. So, we get our news via internet and our favorite prime time shows via iTunes. We still own a DVD player, but we highly censor what our kiddos watch and are exposed to. So, having them plugged into a DVD while we're on a road trip just doesn't go with our lifestyle.

And there's something the shifty people at Dodge don't want you to know. Those fantabulous seats don't do ALL that is advertised. Oh, sure, they swivel and stow and there's a nice table. BUT you cannot get them all together. You can either get the seats that swivel which come with a table OR you can get the seats that stow in the floor and don't swivel. And no table. So, we chose to have the seats that stow in the floor. And since we're not getting the table, which the kiddos couldn't reach anyway, we're gonna get these:

They're in the PB Teen catalog, but I can't find them on the site yet. It's called the "Superstorage Lap Desk" and it's perfect! The kiddos couldn't even reach the table in the van if they wanted to (it's made for much bigger people) so this is a perfect solution.

Then this morning, we had a bit of a surprise.

We've hit a bit of a snag as far as the easter egg hunt goes....trying to decide if we're going to do it inside or send the kiddos out in their boots...

And I know the perfect kit I am going to use to scrap this photo!

Last night, we all sat down to decorate some yummylicious sugar cookies. I can't stand the store bought dough, so I always make it from scratch (and boy is it yummy!). The girls did a lot of the decorating and they're eggcited about giving them out as gifts. :) We're having 6 people over for a big lunch and the girls are calling it our "Easter party".

If you were my neighbor, I'd bring you a box of them. :)

I've gotta dash. Lots of cooking to do before everyone gets here. I hope everyone is having a wonderful day and I hope you can be close to those you hold dear. Happy Easter!