Turning 5 is Grrreat!

“If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn.”

Speaking of dandelions, I made a dandy of a lion for Gavin's birthday today that I'd love to share!  After it was set that he was having a jungle theme this year I started looking for ideas everywhere, and the Wilton circus cat cake looked super easy, just what I needed for his pre-school cake seeing as I needed to bake and decorate it on Valentine's day, the easier the better!  Though I opted not to purchase a whole box of ice cream cones just to use one for his party hat, maybe if he had a summer birthday, but I don't foresee us using the rest of the cones before they go bad.

Using my Mother-in-Laws petal pan, from 1980 something, and a half of the sports ball pan I have for the face, I dirty iced the bottom with homemade super rich chocolate butter cream and yellow icing for the face.

I then iced 2 oreo cookies for ears and it's started to look like a Lion in no time!

Then the fun part with tip #21 and making the mane, you can't make mistakes with this, the more layers the better!

I rolled out a tootsie roll for the nose and decorated the rest with butter cream

Happy Birthday Gavin!  And even though he's 5 he knows he'll always be my little guy!

Now tomorrow I start to make his cake for the party on Sunday.  So glad next week Lent starts, I'm gonna need to fast to make up for yesterday and this weekend alone! 

You're the coolest, Valentine

Penguin cookie-pop Valentine

Made from a Double Stuff Oreo, melted chocolate and heart sprinkles for the beak.

Was the hit of the pre-school party!  Gotta love edible cuteness!

Lined paper for Kindergarten

A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring. ~The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams


Ahh, this quote speaks to a lot of things, but I'm so grateful Mothers were born with these qualities too!  When it comes to doing homework with my preschooler I need all the gentleness and endurance I can muster sometimes :)  Practice and making it fun is the key... well, even bribery works wonders too (ie: after you complete this assignment then we can have snack).

I've been noticing it's a difficult task trying to find lined paper for Kindergartners.  I remember having tons when I was younger ( and oddly enough I remember the thin quality and discolored appearance too) and of course it was carried in typical stores back then, not like today's stores.  So until I'm enlightened on a store other than Education Etc. that charges an arm and a leg for things I'm going to try to print my own.

I came across this photo that I right-clicked and saved in 'My photos.'

Then I went to Microsoft Word, opened the photo, pushed 'Copy' and pasted a ton of them until my page looked like this.  Easy peasy as they all went right below each other on the page, so no work of lining everything up!

Ta-da!  These will tide me over until the Fall when I"m sure we'll go thru tons of it and I'll need a pad of lined paper; or stock up in erasers :)

To help my soon-to-be 5yr old get used to writing his name at the top of the page, I used 'Word Art' and slid 'Name:' on the top line to get him used to seeing it on everything he'll be writing on.  Now I'm on my way to making this writing letters thing a daily occurrence, wish me luck!