Happy birthday to an amazing man, one that continues to roll with all my crazy, including trying to figure out how to properly celebrate a birthday 11 days before Christmas.
We hope this homemade, gluten-free apple pie begins to express how much we love you.
I am always honored to be a part of this amazing community event. I can’t throw a bowl, but I can bake bread. I can’t think of a better way to come together as a community—for the community.
This handy peeler and corer creates squeals of joy and delight from every preschooler who lays hands on it.
When your son’s teacher hails from France, instead of Captain Crunch, you might find that he requests crepes for breakfast.
The fact that I created something this obnoxious is sign of true love for my now eight-year-old.
When your kids don’t like beef stew or any of those other traditional Irish dishes, this is how you celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. This was served with a choice of green milk or water and finished with homemade green peppermint ice cream.
One of the many secrets no one tells you when you have children is how much birthday cake you will be involved with.
You’d think it would be one cake per year, but that would be wrong. Because there’s the cake on their actual birthday. And then the cake on the day of their party. And then, because these things never line up on the same day, you need to make cupcakes for school. That’s three cake related items. I don’t care if you’re baking or buying, that’s just exhausting.
Here is the cake for the birthday party. After all these girlie cakes, I’m ready for a topic that’s a little less, well, PINK.
On a side note, if you ever think about strategically placing edible silver stars on the sides of a cake, stop right now. About ten stars into placing them on the sides of the top tier, I knew I had just signed up for an hour of tedious work. It took me about 15 seconds to sprinkle them on the top of the cake, which was just as effective and didn’t leave me with a big cramp in my hand.
For those of you who have been around for a long time, you might remember that same cake from here. Can you believe I saved those parts for four years? Now up for grabs—any takers?
Anyway, yay! It got the four-year-old stamp of approval.
Shep has been begging me to make peppermint ice cream. I think I might be raising a food snob—he had a taste of the store-bought kind, and declared it wasn’t good enough.
Of course, one of the best parts of making peppermint ice cream is whacking the heck out of the candy. Shep and Ellery happily obliged, hammer in hand.
As of late, we’ve been trying to let the kids to do more things on their own. They get dressed on their own, get their own drinks and forks, and help set the table. Neko has recently mastered scrambled eggs, which is good on all fronts, because I’m doing less work and everyone is eating more protein.
This is rather excruciating for someone with my personality, who really likes to see a job done right. Who stays up at all hours making sure things are just so. Who has an innate impulse to jump in and help out and sometimes commandeer a project.
This morning Shep wanted to help make muffins. Actually, that’s not true, he wanted to make the muffins all by himself. With no help. Pouring and mixing and putting batter into the pan. It wasn’t how I would do it, but he did a bang-up job for a five-year-old.
And there it is. The hardest thing I’ll do in parenting—letting them do it themselves, in their own way, and tucking their own accomplishments or failures under their belts. The hardest thing, but, clearly, one of the most important.
