Happy Halloween!

Our favorite holiday is here! I sure had a busy and fun October. I'm looking forward to November and December, especially all the yummy treats and eats!

This is my "Big Mac"

Our little "Top Chef" and her pizza brother.

A little patch of mini red velvet cupcakes with butter cream leaves and Brach's pumpkins. This was for Bella's first Halloween party in school. She was super happy and excited.

Super yummy mini browned butter pumpkin cupcakes. I made a little adjustments from the Fine Cooking recipe for this creation. I used 1 tablespoon of pumpkin pie spice instead of the called for spices, added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and used organic canned pumpkin. For the frosting, I used marshmallow fluff, cream cheese and browned butter. Make the browned butter as directed and blend with the cream cheese. Once those are well combined add the whole contents of a 7 1/2 oz jar of marshmallow fluff and mix to combine. The flavor is fantastic! This is more of a spice cake with a hint of pumpkin because of the pie spices and organic pumpkin. I will try this recipe again to see if it has more of the familiar pumpkin flavor with the Libby's canned pumpkin.

Wilton class update and Max's Birthday cake

It has been two weeks since I have completed the Wilton Cake Decorating class 1. I have not decorated a cake until yesterday, I made one for Max's birthday. I only remembered to take two photos during class so the following are what I have from class.

This technique is called the shaggy mum with the grass/hair tip. I got a kick out of this tip because it reminded me of a fuzzy monster. I don't think I'll be decorating any thing with shaggy mums, monsters and grass, but no shaggy mums.

This is the cake I designed and decorated for the final class. I thought I'd get a practice cake in for Halloween. I used Brach's pumpkin candies and Peep's marshmallow ghosts. Sure, I could have molded the pumpkins from marzipan or fondant, but this was decorating basics and didn't want to look like I shouldn't have been taking the class. Plus, with the time given to decorate in class, using candy was a great time saver. So what flavor is the cake? It was chocolate cake with peanut butter cream filling and frosted with vanilla butter cream icing (sorry Wilton, I could not use or eat the recipe given for your butter cream. I had to use butter in mine or the kids would not touch it. Although the Wilton butter cream recipe is excellent for practice, but again I could not bring myself to eat shortening.) 

This is Max's favorite plush. I thought not only would it be easy for me to translate to cake, but it is something that he sees everyday.
 

This is a browned butter banana and apple cake frosted with vanilla butter cream.

Max was super happy with his cake and he enjoyed eating it as well. How do I know? He asked for it by name! He did the baby sign for more and said "nana". Max had a wonderful party, I am less stressed. All are happy and now on to the next project. I'm thinking cupcakes again and work on decorating sugar cookies.

Confession

I have to finally admit that taking care of three children is a ton of work!  Random strangers frequently comment,  "You have your hands full!" and I would just smile. Now, it's hitting me that yes I do have my hands full! Up until now, I was handling the three pretty well and thought "hey it's not that bad" but now that I have one that is in kindergarten and one in preschool, trying to juggle everyone's schedule is proving to be a challenge.

I've been stressing over the 1st birthday of my youngest. I don't know why, he's only turning one. It's not like he'll one day say, "Mommy, my first birthday was a bust!" I plan on making him a banana cake (this is the flavor we have made for all the 1st birthdays) in the shape of his much loved turtle pillow. Yeah, the thought of a ton of green icing is making me cringe, but he will hopefully recognize it and love it.

I always felt so overwhelmed for all the children I hear about who are on a full schedule. Well, my son is getting to be a popular young man and is about to attend another school birthday party and it's only been five weeks of school! Great for him, but not for us. When he wants to go, one of us has to go and what about the siblings? Oh, speaking of what to do with siblings, he has already gone on a field trip and another one is coming up soon. I want to chaperon, but who is going to watch the other two? That's when I have to remember that my parents never chaperoned any trips and I was ok, so he will be ok too. I will try not to over schedule the children and emphasize family time being the most important. Once they get older, they won't want to hang out with us and play board games.

Kai's lunches have been kinda on the plain side and sometimes I run late and forget to take pictures, but I do have a few more and will post those soon. 

I received a surprised package from one of my sisters yesterday and it was a bread machine. I love it! I have already made two loaves of bread (sweet potato and peanut butter). I really love how quick and easy it is. Bread making without the machine is not hard, I just don't like the kneading part and hate the waiting for dough to rise part. The bread machine does all the work, so fantastic! Now, I'm thinking of all the fantastic breads I can make. Good bye grocery store bread, I have a bread machine now.

I have completed my Wilton decorating class and as soon as I figure out how to organize my time, I will post pictures. I don't know how other mommy bloggers do it. I am happy if I remember to blog once a week. I am not the journal writing type of girl. I try...oh I tried. I have many journals that have the date of January 2, with hopes of capturing my year, but after about two weeks the journal disappears to be found a year later after I have bought another journal. I have quite a collection of pretty journals that I now use as grocery and to do books.


If any of you busy mommies have any tips on how to find time to blog please share because I would love to share more pictures and recipes with all of you.