The big CUPCAKE adventure!

Last day of January, and I can truly say that I'm happy to see it end.  Not the best month for me in any year, but this year big time sucko!.. That being said, I haven't completely been sitting on my laurels, aside from being fully immersed in the Duniway Talent show, I have been putting my creative juices to work and have tried to perfect or at least improve my cupcake making and in particular the frosting... Now you may say "Really! That's what you've been doing in your spare time!"  and my response is that when your almost 10 year old son suggests that you should open a frosting store  because (and I'm quoting here) "Mom, you make the best frosting ever!", I don't consider that a waste of either my time or talent! LOL!  Not that I am going to rush out and open a frosting store anytime in my future, because lets face it it cupcakes would get very old very fast if I did.  But I am enjoying the experiementation of the process!  This week, Gingerbread cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting.  A couple weeks ago it was raspberry filled chocolate cupcakes with chocolate cream cheese frosting.  And considering cupcakes cost on average $3 a pop in stores I'm happy to make them myself.  (Thank god for Jazzercise and the kids who actually eat the cupcakes - and Darren who offsets the not so healthy food with healthy dinners and such!)  

Of course I didn't stop there.  I also created some chocolate covered

 pretzels yesterday too while Owen & Morgan had a bunch of friends over.)  I had wanted to create them as Valentines for the kids to give out at school, only to find out there is a rule about homemade treats at school as in, they aren't allowed.  Oh pooh!  Oh well kids got to take some home to their siblings after I had the fun of making them.    So there you have it!  What have you been up to?

Just another day in January......

Not that I have anything particularly interesting to write.  Woke up this morning to snow - again.. weird.  Last year it was constantly raining, this year SNOW!  Not that I'm complaining, I like the snow, it makes everything seem so crisp and clean, of course that is until it starts to melt.  I'm just glad that we aren't going to have a repeat of what happened before Christmas with the schools closing.  This is most definitely temporary.  Especially as it is already starting to melt.  

But that is not the reason for me to be blogging today.  I'm just trying to catch you all up on life. Darren's movie was pushed to later in the year and he is busy trying to get a start up company going with some partners.  I'm not going to go into any great detail as of now, mainly because I have no idea quite what it is he's doing.  Needless to say its something to do with the Movie Business.  It is a little scary have absolutely NO income right now - but he assures me that we will be okay.  Of course we have severely tightened our belts.  I had to actually think twice before I bought myself a new pair of socks yesterday, and the library is seeing an awful lot of me as of late.  I love the library!!  I know I'm not the only one in this boat what with the current state of the economy, but it doesn't make it any less scary!  

So my time is being spent working on putting together this year's Talent show at Duniway.  We are into week 3 of rehearsals.  It will all be over in another 2 weeks.  Show night is February 13th, and it takes up the majority of my time.  (Thank goodness the auction projects are both complete and turned in.)  What with rehearsals 4 days a week.  It's been interesting and there had definitely been a huge learning curve and I'm enjoying it somewhat.  All I can say is thank goodness for my Co-chair/organizer Jim van Hook, one of the dads at the school and Blake Sakamoto who has run the sound system for the past years during Talent Show.  There is absolutely no way we could have pulled this off with them.  But I will be somewhat relieved when it is all over.    

Here's the front of one of the programs that I created for Show 1.

So that's what has been going on in my life... how about you?

Belated "Happy" New Year

Yeah, I know I've gone dark for a few weeks and since the Christmas break it's just been non-stop what with trying to finish this auction project for the school and doing the 4th Grade one which has been somewhat of a scramble... and the start of Talent Show rehearsals that I, and my co-chair Jim (Thank god for Jim), are running this year I feel as if I have been running on full speed a head without any breaks or should I say brakes!  And none of it seems to be slowing down either.  Of course once the auction projects are out of my hair I will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.  For those who are not aware, Darren built a couple of benches (one for each class) and then I took photos of all the 2nd graders and transfered their images onto tile - with the 4th grade lot I had them draw a self portrait and those images will be transfered onto tile too.  I ran into all kinds of problems with the images though, the medium melted the image then the image chipped off the tile.  A project I've done before but has caused me no end of headaches.  All I can say is that never again.  Anyway have to run got a million details to get to plus art class for Morgan today, a trip to the library to return a book and pick up two more and a rehearsal to run..... phew.  Anyway here's Owen's self portrait that he did.